Poe2 Ascendancy

How i understood Jonathan is that minions are a method to do damage, like spells or weapons.

He wants to design ascendancies to be open for each way to fight.

Best example is Deadeye having a focus on projectiles insetead of bows. This means you can use bows/crossbows, spells and even melee and minions as long as they create projectiles.

With the newly amount of specialised skeleton minions one could probably fit them in almost every class if they want.

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BeldhanFR#5781 wrote:

infernalis: is about using fire damage and demon power, ok, but you will need a very high hp regen for use it
bloodmage: is about use your blood as source for get more power, nice, but if you don't deal enough damage you will die by yourself...

Still 2/3 I wonder what is last ascendancy for witch... something like Occulist? Duno if golems are a thing in PoE 2... probably no. Sooo cold and chaos remaining... and maybe cold is for sorc,...

I'll try:
1) Melee Chronomancer ???
2) SRS + Infernalis ???
(if possible)

don't get me wrong i'm to planning to try new stuff and mess around, but soo far i think i will avoid the witch.
nothing make me want to play it anymore.

like i have said somewhere else, no point to play minion build if nowhere we have an ascendancy that can help it. what the point to take an ascendancy that will only have 2-3 nods interesting for a minion build.

another point i feel it's wrong to say: "we don't want an ascendancy that will be the go to for minion build" and at the same time have the dead eyes that is specialized into projectile skill. you can't have one and not the other one.

and i feel, like i have said before, that instead to think you have only the necromancer as build minion, it's to create other ascendancy that will be minion oriented, by example a druid that is a shapeshifter that have an ascendancy called master of the pack that will rely on the fact to have animal of the same type of shape that will be there for go with the druid, it will be really fun to have this sort of thing.
it will give choice and offer more than one type of minion build.

ascendancy is means to be specialiaty... it's means to offer a different way to play around with something you will choose to play with.

yes you can play around with skill, but we can't play around with ascendancy... and whatever they try to do, if you have no ascendancy that is specialized in minion... why use the ascendancy?
and it become a glaring problem if you think about the fact that ascendancy is really important in the game. you can't play without it...

another point, let's say infernalis and bloodmage offer some branch that is focus on minion, ok, here two problem... infernalis is means to be fire damage oriented, means if your atlas is with a passage with high resistance to fire or immunity to fire you are screwed and same if you have one that have immunity to drain... how they will work around this?

we clearly don't have all the info yet, but it's concerning to see them say, we don't want a minion ascendancy and i can get behind this, but in this case make us feel that if we play a minion build we can still have a purpose to pick an ascendancy?

plus necromancer is the master of death, it can become a lich, it can be oriented bone magic, it can have a domain of death (aura) and such... i feel it's wrong to remove one of the emblematic ascendancy of the witch, where we still use tons of necromantic spell...

we need to have a serious discution about it, we need to understand what they want to do and why... but they need to explain it, because soo far on one hand we have a lot of improvement to the minion and on another we have more downside to play minion. it's like they don't really want us to play around with minion and maybe is wrong, but that the feeling i have get around everything they have said soo far.

who cares about all that.

Will I need to buy a bunch of stash tabs again? I would rather not if its all the same, but I guess its a way they make money.

not the subject, but the stash tabs you have purchase in poe will be keep in poe2 if it's still used, by example some tabs will be useless like the map tabs.

another thing i find concerning about ascendency in general, they are talking to allow people to play with any skill with any class, ok... but i will not take projectile skill with a class that have a heavily focus on melee like the warrior. you can probably make it work, but it will be subpar since them ascendancy will not support this sort of gameplay...

i feel they want we see all the class like the scion what is an error... each class must have his identity, some will have a better time at play around with different weapon while other will have harder time...

an example, if i want to play a 2hand weapon character i will not play the witch at the base, what the point since most of the nods at the start will not support this gameplay... you can probably make something work if you begin with a class that have a better start and later switch to have a few curse spell for make a sort of dark knight, but i don't see anyone start from the witch for make a character like this.

same for make a character that is in heavy armor with big mace, no point to start as ranger since no ascendancy will support this gameplay in any form. that why hybrid class exist witch is not an hybrid class, like ranger or warrior, they are kinda a base for a caster, ranged and melee character. what is fine by itself.

not every class are means to play around with everything and have a few specialized one is not bad by design... option are there for this.

and like i have said instead to focus on adding one minion main ascendancy only in the witch why not add more of them around, like for the druid.

"

They may not admit it, but I have a feeling that they hate the minion as main source of damage playstyle.
From the 2 ascendancies we have available and the confirmation that Necro won't be the 3rd, it's clear that they want to push minions in a support role.
The ascendancies are all about the Witch and what she can do herself, while the minions are there as support. Might be wrong, but that's how it feels like....

This is not my read of the situation at all.

Games are about choices. If they eliminate choices, it eliminates the game.

One of the very intentional changes for POE2 is to get away from the no-choices 0-1 button optimal builds. In Jonathan's words as I recall them, "you can do that, but it won't be optimal". In POE2 players will need to synergize skills and use them situationally to get the optimal result (damage output or survivability or whatnot).

There was one brief comment about how this applies to minions, and how they want minion gameplay to be more active and intentional. (like all POE2 gameplay)

So my read is notthat they want the minions to be in a support role (damage wise), they just don't want the player to be passively uninvolved. You will be able to choose whether your minions are the majority of your damage or you are, but either way you will be pushing buttons and making choices to handle the situation if you want to get the most out of your character.

They also stated that the reason they are hesitant to have a minion-specific ascendancy, is that it gets minion players stuck into only one ascendancy. In fact most ascendancy perks we've seen are not tied to much, but are flavor. So minion players can choose which flavor of witch they want... or none of them and roll a gemling legionarre minion build.

These are really the same decision.... Games are about choices. If they eliminate choices, it eliminates the game.

"

another thing i find concerning about ascendency in general, they are talking to allow people to play with any skill with any class, ok... but i will not take projectile skill with a class that have a heavily focus on melee like the warrior. you can probably make it work, but it will be subpar since them ascendancy will not support this sort of gameplay...

There isn't total flexibility, but there is probably going to be more than in POE1, simply because in POE2 you are not locked into getting DEX from the passive tree stat nodes near your DEX class... You can choose what stat you get from the passive tree stat nodes. So if you want to build a STR witch, you actually can in POE2.

Where this will be useful and not useful will be for players to experiment with... but they certainly gave us one big tool to try, which is the mercenary - gemling legionarre, which can meet any gem requirement with any stat... meaning you can build him with ANY base stat (choose STR if you want to run a two hander), and not only can you equip any skill gem (which you kind of could anyway), but you can level those gems to max, because you will meet their stat requirement with your base stat. Of course if you want a minion build, you will still need a big source of spirit, which probably means a scepter from what they said.. but I expect there to be more practical flexibility than in POE1.

i did feel the same about the mercenary it's a big toybox we can play in many different way and that fine like this.
about the fact that player is passive when playing pet, it's not totally true, instead to be the one that will use the skill for damage, you will spend most of the time avoiding and making sure your army is still present on the field. with the spirit used for the permanent pet, you will need to abandon aura for get more pet, which means often less damage or less survivability.

not all class need to be about combo and fast paced combat, you can have strategic class that will more be general type and decide how you will use your minion for fight the enemy. like you said it's about choice... here the trouble, we don't have the choice to have an ascendancy for a minion build, it's not means to be the build that will buff the pet, it can be an ascendancy that will help to support the battlefield, by either debuffing enemy or buffing and getting more option of control over the minion.

the only thing they have said, it's they don't want the necromancer to be the go to for the minion and i have said a lot, it can be solved easily by putting more minion ascendancy.

and it's not because you get necromancer that the other ascendancy will not be played, by example if someone want to play an army of the hell they will probably go infernalis if they have put enough nods for support this sort of gameplay.

but that the point we don't know what they plan or why they plan it like this... that why i raise concern and want to start a discution about it. naturally we will get the whole picture about infernalis and blood mage in 9 days, but we don't know about the plan for the third ascendancy nor what they plan to do with the other class ascendancy.

for now all we have is the fact that they said they don't want the necromancer to be the go to for minion and that maybe why we will not get necromancers. what feel strange, because if we don't have any ascendancy for pet build.... what will be the point of ascendancy for someone that want to play minion build where they only have minion for have an army under them control? they talk of choice while, in way, saying you will not have the choice to play a minion build with an ascendancy that will support it. what feel strange.

"

KuroSF#6521 wrote:

"

They may not admit it, but I have a feeling that they hate the minion as main source of damage playstyle.
From the 2 ascendancies we have available and the confirmation that Necro won't be the 3rd, it's clear that they want to push minions in a support role.
The ascendancies are all about the Witch and what she can do herself, while the minions are there as support. Might be wrong, but that's how it feels like....

This is not my read of the situation at all.

Games are about choices. If they eliminate choices, it eliminates the game.

One of the very intentional changes for POE2 is to get away from the no-choices 0-1 button optimal builds. In Jonathan's words as I recall them, "you can do that, but it won't be optimal". In POE2 players will need to synergize skills and use them situationally to get the optimal result (damage output or survivability or whatnot).

There was one brief comment about how this applies to minions, and how they want minion gameplay to be more active and intentional. (like all POE2 gameplay)

So my read is notthat they want the minions to be in a support role (damage wise), they just don't want the player to be passively uninvolved. You will be able to choose whether your minions are the majority of your damage or you are, but either way you will be pushing buttons and making choices to handle the situation if you want to get the most out of your character.

They also stated that the reason they are hesitant to have a minion-specific ascendancy, is that it gets minion players stuck into only one ascendancy. In fact most ascendancy perks we've seen are not tied to much, but are flavor. So minion players can choose which flavor of witch they want... or none of them and roll a gemling legionarre minion build.

These are really the same decision.... Games are about choices. If they eliminate choices, it eliminates the game.

"

another thing i find concerning about ascendency in general, they are talking to allow people to play with any skill with any class, ok... but i will not take projectile skill with a class that have a heavily focus on melee like the warrior. you can probably make it work, but it will be subpar since them ascendancy will not support this sort of gameplay...

There isn't total flexibility, but there is probably going to be more than in POE1, simply because in POE2 you are not locked into getting DEX from the passive tree stat nodes near your DEX class... You can choose what stat you get from the passive tree stat nodes. So if you want to build a STR witch, you actually can in POE2.

Where this will be useful and not useful will be for players to experiment with... but they certainly gave us one big tool to try, which is the mercenary - gemling legionarre, which can meet any gem requirement with any stat... meaning you can build him with ANY base stat (choose STR if you want to run a two hander), and not only can you equip any skill gem (which you kind of could anyway), but you can level those gems to max, because you will meet their stat requirement with your base stat. Of course if you want a minion build, you will still need a big source of spirit, which probably means a scepter from what they said.. but I expect there to be more practical flexibility than in POE1.

All that aside, the issue that really makes me scratch my head is: the reason they decided this and how ironic it is if you compare it to other Ascendencies.

"We don't want people to have only 1 option for minions"......meanwhile all other Ascendencies focus on rather specific things, sure with a bit of flexibility.
You want slams you go Titan, you want poison you go Pathfinder, you get the idea. Why are minions the odd one out?

"

BeldhanFR#5781 wrote:

a lot of thing we did learn recently feel weird, i explain myself:
- the fact that a support gem can't be used on multiple skill, what about minion?
- the fact that spirit is used for aura and minion, forcing us to choice between one and another.
- the fact that we don't have an ascendency that support minion... wth
- the fact that they have said that spin to win will come back, be dependant of one skill is ok, but be dependant of the minion is bad

and i feel something is not right, maybe they have trouble to balance it and feel that is a more passive role, when they clearly want us to be more active... but that the thing, as summoner/necromancer you are extremely active, we will probably have no aura, no attack skill, no defense skill, we will need to move all the time for avoid any one shoot mechanic, it's not passive, yes the damage is made by the minion, but we still need to be cautious.

The whole feel we got from the witch is that you will have attack skills alongside your minion. Since you do not nee d to even click to summon your minions you have free time to do your own damage.

you seems to have different pet outside the permanent one, then who know. maybe all of this is because they have not shown all and maybe i'm overthinking, but the way they have said they don't want an ascendancy for minion only feel weird...