Feedback for GGG about league

Short summary

- Best POE2 league by far
- Temple is uber awesome, although I almost don't engage with it, I benefit tremendously and it's an awsome mechanic to have, where entire economy can benefit


Longer read

- Economy is cracked. This was the first time ever I used divine orb as an orb, not as currency, and rerolled stats on my gear items / number of songs on kulemak jewelry
- Endgame gets stale. But with the QOL changes made and the base content available (citadels, special bosses, abyss overruns) its engaging enough. Of course it would be awesome to have more depth there. I enjoyed crafting builds strong enough to easily clear citadels / special bosses.
- Classes. Druid. It's been said enough, but I'll say it again. The talisman AND the druid ascendancies are just really, really good. Talisman is my favorite martial weapon by far. Nothing else even comes close.
- Classes. Pathfinder rework. It's OK. I couldn't really find a great use for the starting point mechanic so I'm a bit underwhelmed. After I already gave up making it work, I did theorycraft couple more options but now it's gotta wait until next season. Overall I didn't really appreciate the pathfinder rework. Especially the flask nodes, the concoction nodes and the ES for elemental damage reduction nodes look like trolling, specifically at 50% value. To make armour/elemental reduction at least noticeable, at least 100+% value of armour seems to be needed.
- Classes. Elementalist light update. Overall enjoyed the improve remnant nodes, at least they are playable. Unfortunately, elemental vortex / elemental skills limit still feel like total trash.
- Classes. Varashta. I think this needs just a bit more cooking. The ascendancy felt solid, but some nodes, specifically the extra radius for jewels were very meh. The best djinn by far is phys damage. The fire damage djinn only valuable skill seemed to be the trap. The pseudo bone storm it has looked to be intended to do high single target damage, but it's completely outclassed by phys damage djinn. What I DIDNT like about varashta, is that having other minion along with djinns seemed to be a requirement. I quickly ran out of nodes that helped with djinn specifically (pretty much all minion dmg nodes and command CDR nodes). After that the progression felt stale (again, I didn't really want to add other minion, was focused purely on djinn). But overall it's a really cool class and enjoyable.
- Classes. Witchhunter. Well, the changes to sorcery ward finally made this class into something unique and interesting, that no other class has - oustanding tankiness. Much appreciated. Enjoyed playing the witchunter, hopefully more weapons for that part of the tree are coming. I'm not a big fan of crossbows as well as bows, so ended up playing with talismans, lol. Spears seems to need big support from ascendancy to make them feel powerful.



What I'd like to see next season

- Endgame, obviously
- More single target oriented spells. Comet as being the best one by far, as much as I'd like to Cast on Crit, is cool but I want more diversity for spells.
- More chaos damage options, also for spells. ED/Contagion is very good, the rest feels like garbage. Especially the chaos blast. I still don't get the change that made it only castable on curses that have 50% or more of duration expired. It's not even doing that much damage to justify such treatment. May be if it did 2x-3x more damage it'd be justified.
- More phys spells too. Bone cage and bone storm are very niche and awkward. Plants are good obviously.
- Spell totem is kinda a failure. By the time I can freely use it without much
downtime its actually much more efficient to cast all the spells myself. Why bother with totem when I can screen clear with couple buttons anyway? Totem feels clunky, it's inherently bad at most elemental spells (no infusions). I found totem casting plants pretty decent, but again, why bother with totem when I can just cast it myself? Given the power charge requirement, totem is nearly useless. For some reason it feels dark effigy got nerfed somewherre along the way too, because I used to be able to easily kill rares with it, now it's just good for blue/white monsters.
- MORE VISUAL CLARITY PLEASE. The clarity is really bad, especially on maps with a lot of plants / debris. It's insanely frustrating to get surrounded on a wall, where as in game it looks passable. After a while I just started making characters so tanky that idc if I get surrounded since I dont die anyway, but man, clarity needs some work


So anyway, I just put together my random thoughts after wrapping up this season to hopefully help improve the game going into the next one.

i disagree that this was the best league.

temple is busted, if you didn't grind it - then you're just stuck mapping for nothing vs 30-50 div/hour (or whatever the rate is there now with all the nerf/buffs)

mechanics should not be this imbalanced EVER. choice matters, and players should get similar drops between all the different mechanics.

I just feel like GGG trying to just tell us how to play the game and it feels bad.

i really enjoyed cold/fire djinn this league; however, being unable to lower the CD past a certain point forces you out of raw damage into chaining explosions - it's fine, but overall feels kind of meh.


1000% agree on clarity - hard to see anything with the life steal aura from abyss mob when i get it from killing the mob with HH

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tdonov5#2743 wrote:

i disagree that this was the best league.

temple is busted, if you didn't grind it - then you're just stuck mapping for nothing vs 30-50 div/hour (or whatever the rate is there now with all the nerf/buffs)

Nope, you can easily make 50-60 div/hour without temple. If you have full temple it's 500+ divs, may be as much as 800.

But you can just run breach or chaos or citadels and easily make 50+ divs due to temple players having so much currency and injecting all those divs into the broader economy

"

EVGENIUS#2976 wrote:

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tdonov5#2743 wrote:

i disagree that this was the best league.

temple is busted, if you didn't grind it - then you're just stuck mapping for nothing vs 30-50 div/hour (or whatever the rate is there now with all the nerf/buffs)

Nope, you can easily make 50-60 div/hour without temple. If you have full temple it's 500+ divs, may be as much as 800.

But you can just run breach or chaos or citadels and easily make 50+ divs due to temple players having so much currency and injecting all those divs into the broader economy

im saying raw

the feeling between mapping and running temples is vastly different.
temple players will continue to play - mappers will not

"

EVGENIUS#2976 wrote:

Short summary
- Classes. Pathfinder rework. It's OK. I couldn't really find a great use for the starting point mechanic so I'm a bit underwhelmed. After I already gave up making it work, I did theorycraft couple more options but now it's gotta wait until next season. Overall I didn't really appreciate the pathfinder rework. Especially the flask nodes, the concoction nodes and the ES for elemental damage reduction nodes look like trolling, specifically at 50% value. To make armour/elemental reduction at least noticeable, at least 100+% value of armour seems to be needed.

I agree and disagree what you said about pathfinder rework and here's my opinions:

I played HCtrade as pathfinder ice strike (quarterstaves) up to level 98 and it was the most fun i've ever had in poe2.

In season 0.3 i played invoker quarterstaff ice strike and i started at the dex/int location. On this new pathfinder rework i was able to start at the intellect starting location which was almost exactly the same passive tree build that i had with invoker, but with pathfinder ascendacies.

- Immune to slows as a melee is almost a must have thing.
- Sustainable Practises with my 20k+ evasion rating gave me insane protection vs any huge spikes of damage, because most of the time when you get hit by large hit it is not purely physical damage or single elemental. It is in most cases combination of all damage types (like waystone having monsters gain x% fire/cold/lighting damage etc.) So when you get hit by 5000 damage it might be 3000physical, 2000elemental in which case having 10000 worth of "armour vs elemental" actually makes a huge impact. I was using CI, so only damage i took was physical+elemental.
- When it comes to the flask node, i also think its kinda lackluster. However, there is a nice use with it if you are using "Shavronne's Satchel" belt, because it allows you to use life flask for energy shield gain while using CI.
- I've only ever tested the poison and lightning concoction nodes. Poison is decent, but not really needed considering how strong poison build was this season already. Lighting concoction would be really nice, if GGG made that you could set it up for second weapon set and not always use the weapon set you have active currently (since it is an ascendancy skill, you cant choose weapon set but instead have to manually swap weapon set before you use it, if you want different passive tree benefits.) The lightning concoction is specially nice on bosses, because you can have second weapon set giving you massive shock magnitude and lighting concoction has +50% MORE magnitide. Giving you close to 100% shock on targets you use it.
- Extra note: Traveller's Wisdom is one of the most thoughtful addition to ascendancies. It makes attributes on your gear a valuable stat and also gives you nice minmax for endgame when you get enough attributes to equip your gear and use skill gems.

Before 0.4 patch notes dropped, i didnt even plan to play pathfinder for season 0.4, but after seeing the starting location option and traveller's wisdom and previously playing melee without slow immunity -- a single tear came to my eye and i couldnt wait for 0.4 launch.

Edit: Link to my pathfinder ice strike https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/dd8i90oc

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tdonov5#2743 wrote:

mechanics should not be this imbalanced EVER. choice matters, and players should get similar drops between all the different mechanics.

As someone who enjoy the temple as a mechanic (find some crystal, build a cool temple, explore it) i can only agree with this.

Even as a SSF player, this league is: If you dont do temple you're wasting your time. And that's not normal. They need to tune it down by a lot and they shouldnt had a mechanic so busted next time that it erase the rest of the game.

I'm not farming crystal and doing my temple over and over cause i find that boring. I kill the architect now and than cause i play HC and i dont want my temple to be out of control.

I'm behind everyone i see/talk to.
When i'm doing my maps with abyss and rituals i feel like i'm wasting time, even tough it's what i enjoy.
I try to not compare me to others because it's useless but you still get that feeling of "time waste" and that's bad.

I wont talk about the economy because i play SSF but it still seem to be completely out of hand compare to other leagues.

If they want to keep it that way they need to power up every other content for drops/XP but i personaly think it would be a mystake because the game would be too easy and less fun for my taste.

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BlastYa#4875 wrote:

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tdonov5#2743 wrote:

mechanics should not be this imbalanced EVER. choice matters, and players should get similar drops between all the different mechanics.

If they want to keep it that way they need to power up every other content for drops/XP but i personaly think it would be a mystake because the game would be too easy and less fun for my taste.

It will most likely be heavily nerfed coming into next league. At least for the reason of wanting to redirect people's attention to the new mechanic.

"

Taistelija#5483 wrote:

Short summary
- Immune to slows as a melee is almost a must have thing.

Immune to slow and number of poisons doubled are the best nodes hands down. I just wanted a little bit more out of the ascendancy so overall rated it as meh