Why does PoE 2 insist on self-referential builds?

I am playing an Ignite Oracle Caster (not shapeshifting) (because I am a masochist clearly) and thought Walking Calamity would work nicely with this build, but:

Here's what it says:

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Build Glory by gaining Rage while already at maximum Rage. When you have maximum Glory, roar to the heavens to bring them down upon your enemies. For the duration of the Skill, meteors rain down around you and you Gain Fire damage and Rage regeneration. This Skill's effects are suppressed if you leave Bear form, but will resume if you return to Bear form before the duration expires.

This ability is cool. It is thematic to Druids but is also just a great fire skill, it would be awesome on a Sorceress or a Druid caster. But you can't use it at all unless you're playing shapeshifter.

Why does GGG feel the need to limit everything to a pre-conceived build? Why can't we use this ability outside of bear form? And after having played every league since 0.1, this is not the first or second or third or 50th time this has happened. Whenever I think there's some cool interaction, it turns out you cucked me.

Even if GGG allowed us to generate Glory in another way, "effects are suppressed if you leave Bear form" - so if in 0.5 they release a Glory-generating Unique, you still wouldn't be able to use this skill outside of bear form.

It really feels like you're going out of your way to limit player agency as much as you can, and I'm sorry but as a 12+ year veteran of PoE and a borderline Whale for the MTX in PoE 1, PoE 2's design philosophy sucks.

It really feels like every "good" build is just a pre-approved combo of abilities.

I'd be so excited for Swords to finally come to PoE2, but I already know exactly what you're going to do: you will have Stances and "Finesse" and 5 new "Builder/Spender" resources that force us to use combos that you pre-approved. Like Double Strike? Too bad, unless you use Sand Stance first to generate "Double Strike Resource"

What made PoE 1 great was having options, being able to make our own builds. In PoE 2 it feels like I'm always playing someone else's. Guess what, Living Bomb and Fireball works together because they generate and consume fire infusions. Living Bomb is the only fire skill to generate a fire infusion. So you will always use these two together. Always.

Build variety will continue to suffer, as long as you keep creating "self-referential" Skills.

When Swords, Flails, Axes and Daggers come out: PLEASE GGG, consider how other classes might want to use them too.

[Removed by Support]

Why is every build, weapon, skill, and archetype predefined? I would say that it is due to the developers being scared of people having too much fun or figuring things out on their own.

Look at wolf for example. You have 4 abilities all of which revovle around the same thing. You're basically a Temu Icy Strike monk with extra steps.

They have for some reason removed all aspects of freedom, exploration, and build diversity and replaced it with pre packaged slop that you have to follow in order for the builds to function.

Any time an interaction that is "unintended" is discovered, it is nerfed into the ground or completely removed from the game - see Last Lament witch.

I should also be able to send down Moon Beams from Lunar Blessing without ever touching shapeshifting. WhY GgG!?!

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You'll play the game the way we want you to play and you'll like it!

/someone at GGG, probably

The limited scope of interaction between abilities is incredibly disappointing.

Everything is hived off into its own little silo of like 2 or 3 things in the entire game that it interacts with.

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Why does GGG feel the need to limit everything to a pre-conceived build? Why can't we use this ability outside of bear form? And after having played every league since 0.1, this is not the first or second or third or 50th time this has happened.

I really dislike this too. It feels like more synergies are explicitly prevented/removed than desired. These games live from build diversity.

Also if players find a way they like to play then just let them play. If its too strong nerf a little, but i think it’s a really bad practice to remove fun playstyles entirely (Lich + Last Lament, Incinerate self-sustain come to mind for recent examples) just to enforce a particular playstyle. These synergies are exactly why uniques are such an interesting concept imo.

You can achieve what you are looking already with firestorm and/or apocalypse and you don't have to bother with the rage mechanism.

I find the approach to the druid skills by most of the community is pretty inflexible and mono-themed, and honestly it is disappointing for me to see.

You can treat the primal shapeshifting skills as standalone skills just like you treat the skills for any other weapon.

This is not a situation where you must choose one specific shape to shift into, and then use only those skills assigned to that shape, and it's also not the case that these skills can't be used outside of wanting to base an entire "build" around whatever shape.

Just like you can be a Monk that spends time charging up plasma blast on a crossbow, or a Mercenary that spends their rage with flame breath as wyvern for a duration, you can be a Huntress that becomes a mauling bear for 10 seconds which also lets you regenerate rage, receive armour bonuses, and generate endurance charges for spending rage as a bear during that 10 seconds.

It's like every single person lacks an imagination and establishes limits of what's possible from a handful of popular YouTube build-guides that exist 5 days into a league.

Where are all the theory crafters and experimenters? There is too many people complaining.

This here more than everything else is my pet peeve about this game. Devs want to pidgeonhole us into a certain way to play the game. There is so many instances of this even in the tree. The pacing also is off since i will be on act IV with gear from act I and act II and ill enter maps and ill still wear pieces after plenty of em that i got in Act III. It's sloggish in pace and i feel like whenever i want to try out something cool it's "oh you need to have x weapon or y condition otherwise you can't use it". It's so limiting, give us more player agency. For example in PoE1 this league i played Atziri's Rule Saboteur and went ham with it, i used a staff not a dagger or sword, i didnt use any traps or mines either but the ascendancy complimented the aoe very well and i used 4 skitterbots 2 of em being a "burning aura" with burning legion and i had yoke of suffering and 2x tamings, i had willclash for power charge into spell block and ele damage and ralakesh which meant i also had max power charges, militant faith dominus into spell damage per power charge secrets of suffering as well since i was permacritting etc. . This was definitely not the idea of what saboteur should be but i had the player agency to make it something different. And i am not saying i am the first or last that played this kind of build probably many did if i take a look but my point is i had the player agency to do something different than what the ascendancy usually does and i had a lot of fun with it. I am actually thinking of going back to do these last 3 achievements due to how bad PoE2 is atm in both its league and its current restrictive iteration since i dont play it anyway atm and dropped it after a couple of maps due to it being a slog.

This is to the devs mostly, stop trying to pidgeonhole us into specific ways to play each class and ascendancy and gem skill. Remove the limiters and let us go wild with em that's what ARPGs are all about, give us more player agency dammit.

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This is to the devs mostly, stop trying to pidgeonhole us into specific ways to play each class and ascendancy and gem skill. Remove the limiters and let us go wild with em that's what ARPGs are all about, give us more player agency dammit.

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I quit werewolf when I found out the default attack is too baked into the combo loop to ever drop. Its not fun auto attacking a boss when I could use a cool ass skill but they do no damage without combo setup. Also mana and attributes are still way too strict