Melee and Early Mapping - I hate this game.

I legitimately have no idea what the thought process was when mapping was put into this game, nor do I have any idea what it is you guys were thinking with some of these decisions. After suffering and slogging through the campaign and trying my damned best to run Molten Vaults even after the patch to get currency and gear to try and survive early mapping, I'm done. I am not going to keep beating my face into a wall and giving this my time. I'm going to highlight some of my frustrations, do with the feedback what you will.

1) Melee Skills in General: This one perplexes me. This is the only game in history where leveling your melee skills is potentially a bad thing, given they're entirely unsustainable, or drain you too fast. You've spoken about wanting to use multiple skills, well, unless I'm investing 100 attribute points into intelligence for mana, and getting no less than 150% mana regen, I had to downrank Ice Strike to level 10 to even be able to use it with any regularity, and still be able to support Bell, Palm, etc.

Additionally. The fact that the default melee attack is actually stronger, does more flat DPS, and costs ZERO mana to use is obscene.

Leech is ENTIRELY reliant on physical damage. Elemental cannot trigger it. I thought this was supposed to be a 'build the way you want', and instead, I'm forced to path to every mana node I can get on the right side of the tree, while other damage nodes are basically just a bonus where I can get them, assuming I can.

2) Early Mapping is, frankly, fucking atrocious. The maps are incredibly large, and if you die once.... that's it? Map closed, bonuses lost, waystone gone. Tough shit, spend 5k gold and try again. For how damned big the maps are, the fact you have to do it all in ONE shot, being entirely reliant on the grace of god for good luck drops leading up to this point, this is absolutely batshit insane. Nevermind half the time you DO clear a map, what you're getting is a couple blues. Maybe another waystone. Maybe, if you're really lucky, you'll even get a single rare. The loot dispaity is absolutely insane.

Maps seem to be an infinite mode. There is no reason to reset an area, and gatekeep an infinite game-mode behind some arbitrary one-shot clear mechanic. I've played PoE1 for ages. I get that they are different games. This is NOT how you're going to bring new people into the end game. They're going to hit a wall, and they're going to give up. They're already complaining the campaign is too hard, the vast majority haven't even run into this problem yet.


Melee absolutely fucking sucks. Early mapping is a nightmare. These two things combined are just an exercise in futility.

Why do the developers of PoE2 hate PoE1 so damn much? It seems like they've done everything in their power to destroy what made PoE1 fun, while adding nothing to the game that can be considered an advancement outside of a graphical engine update. What, you think dodge rolling is what makes a game and you can balance everything around that? I'm sorry, but this is not it. Not even a little. I enjoyed the campaign pretty highly, up to about midway through act3, even if certain parts were frustrating, but this end-game is a nightmare.

I bet thats why Alkaizer is blasting maps on his melee character and says playing PoE 2 is the only thing on his mind. He must really like the fact that melee is very very bad.