Do you think POE 2 has the build variety in classes that you imagined prior to EA?

Very limited numbers. Lets speake about necro and minions for example.
Skeleton warriors - pure meat.We cant stack bleed or poison like in poe 1
Archers - okey, i heard that some people try to use them with "fire"(poison-explode mechanic) - but i didnt see even 1 in endgame. they are also sucks. You cant stack poison more then 2 probably.
Bombers - they work fine.
Lightning mages - they are kinda supportive for shock. single damage sucks. Active skill - revive MAGE and deal aoe damage. so if you wanna use it - you have let your minion die under boss and its kinda difficult to do without convocation.
Zombie - we dont have desecrate to use them on bosses.
Unearth - same issue, we dont have decerate for bosses.
VD/DD - same issue,we dont have desecrate for bosses.
Big melee skeletons - actually didnt check them,may be they are fine.
Frost mages - they are weak. Nothing to add. Clear is weak, boss damage also.
SRS? - they are ok with bombers. at least same fire damage and they dont consume same gems as you use for bombers.(cause for srs i use popcorn setup)

As result minion variety are shit// only 1 build or may be 2 if big skeletons are playable.

My second character was frost mage. FB+Nova is nice for clear during the acts. You can press FB, they fly and i press nove with unleash when its needed.For endgame too slow.
Self cast comet - too slow.Good boss kiiler
Eye of winter - its more about crit debuff since its low range(low range of first proj and low range of second proj). I tried different gems(faster proj, ricochet etc) - skill is not comfortable for clear.
- frost bomb - good supportive/exposure/damage for bosses
- Ice Walls - amazing boss killer.
The problem of frost mage - is clear. I have variety of skills for killing bosses and i have very(!!!) decent skills for clear. Where is my "ice spear of splitting"???? Ofc it was okey if im using CoF and CoC but after nerf pure frost sorc feels very decent if not very bad.

What i dont like completely - is gem system with limit on 1 support. Cause i have multiple dps skills and wanna cold pen everywhere. The issue also that some gems are sucks like crit gems. "more crit chance ,but 8 seconds cooldown"- wtf is that? Or i have to install aura which generate frenzy,use keystone which convert frenzy to power,then use support which consume the power charge and gives me crit. - this mechanics in poe 1 was better and much simple. Like we dont have too mcuh support gems like in poe 1 and a lot of them here are garbage.

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Berzal#5810 wrote:

As result minion variety are shit// only 1 build or may be 2 if big skeletons are playable.

The problem of frost mage - is clear. I have variety of skills for killing bosses and i have very(!!!) decent skills for clear. Where is my "ice spear of splitting"???? Ofc it was okey if im using CoF and CoC but after nerf pure frost sorc feels very decent if not very bad.

What i dont like completely - is gem system with limit on 1 support.

Thank you for the education on minions, since I haven't played them yet. Even though the bad news is the viable/strong minion choice is poor, it looks like the good news is just a number change for the other minions to provide a solution for combinations/builds.

Your conclusion for boosting the frost mage looks like it will take a clear speed solution. Hopefully, that will be worked out by the community, and if not by GGG hearing from them. At least they have boss-busting power which sounds like would be a good choice in a group.

Yeah, one support gem per skill is something I am fine with provided the other support gems are balanced out. We don't want gems to be in a position where few are good and most are not.

I say no overall at least for builds but 12 classes bring a variety to build, but in reality no , i confused myself with that statement lol, alot of the "trolls" shout you can build 100s of different ways to play when you cant, there's maybe 3 at most actual good builds for each class, its odd to me with a game with such a over big skill tree to actually nerf any thing really... but thats just me...

Sadly no, I am very disappointed we are being forced to only use 1 support skill for all my abilities. Why?? I can't use the same support skill for multiple skills like I could in POE 1.

I don't mind that we no longer have to worry about pairing the right colored links, but it feels a bit dumbed down in some regards to this. I really do not feel like I have any true build diversity, because of all these major limitations.

It's beginning to feel more like a standard ARPG where you choose a class and then choose 1 of a few builds that everyone else will be running. Why can't we have the diversity as we did in POE 1?

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Palad1n72#2974 wrote:

Sadly no, I am very disappointed we are being forced to only use 1 support skill for all my abilities. Why?? I can't use the same support skill for multiple skills like I could in POE 1.

My approach is wait and see if they provide a good number of support gems where variation with win out over reuse. My understanding is they want people to come up with skill solutions that work together by having good support combinations.

Don't get me wrong, this will be tough to implement if they don't have those support gems being meaningful. So far with my character progression, it seemed like the support gems worked out well for me with enough variation.

It would be good if eople in the late game could provide their feedback on this here in the thread. From watching the steamers with higher level characters, I don't remember hearing anything negative about it. But, that's not to say they don't have issues and frustration with it like you are stating.

Support gem choice will be a win if people end up having a difficult time deciding which ones to use rather than feeling like they had to take a bad choice. This is another big puzzle piece to solve for the overall health of the game.

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Palad1n72#2974 wrote:

It's beginning to feel more like a standard ARPG where you choose a class and then choose 1 of a few builds that everyone else will be running. Why can't we have the diversity as we did in POE 1?

Yes, this is the last thing we want in the game. Providing good feedback like you are doing is important. The difference from most other ARPG companies out there is GGG will listen. Things may seem pretty standard right now with the diversity, but this game will grow into something very special in this regard. Let's stay positive and hope for the best.

Balance was my biggest fear before the early access and oh boy It is far worse than i thought. They really should hire more people and do internal testing or the actual launch might be even worse with 6 new classes and 18 new ascendancies????? Will we play beta game when this launches once again ?

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eternalJOURNEYofTHEloser#5873 wrote:

Balance was my biggest fear before the early access and oh boy It is far worse than i thought. They really should hire more people and do internal testing or the actual launch might be even worse with 6 new classes and 18 new ascendancies????? Will we play beta game when this launches once again ?

You stated exactly what my gut tells me about the balancing not being where I thought it was. Hopefully, it will be a lot of number tweaking which would really be a quicker solution than constantly reworking core/foundational designs. Reasoning through the thought-provoking comments in this thread, it brings me closer to the conclusion that this may be in EA longer than a year, and possibly a lot longer.

It is concerning to me how people will react if GGG "dares" to take more than a year for the game to be worked on in beta. The vitriol from the mouth-breathers sends a chill up my spine, but my belief is they will take all the time they need until they feel it is ready.

The thing that has stunned me the most with the recent patch is not the nerf bat they swung, but the lack of a respec. The only reasonable conclusion I can draw from that is GGG is basically saying to get ready for a lot of nerfs/reworks, and if you get unglued now you should just come back later. They are not pulling any punches with that patch. It will be interesting to see how other big changes will go. Hold on to your butts, this will be a wild ride.

no there isn't any build variety, there are certain builds everyone will use and if you dare to use something off meta ur a noob and its a "skill issue" all because you didn't follow that one you tube video this game is still in EA and there is already a meta forming you dare to put 1 skill point in the wrong place or you want to use more then just lighting or just freeze ur trash kid, this game is very much shaping up to be a "pick ur poison" type game, you want shock, guess what you cant freeze you want freeze no stun you want to do multiple damage types all at once how about you do no damage and get shafted on the respect cost for an ARPG there is not a lot of "RP" going on when it comes to builds, why cant i be a monk that can shock freeze stun and do chaos damage? all within reason of course i dont want to be op i just dont want to be stuck hitting bell for 3 years or whatever same damage type another day hitting the same bell or same 3 buttons, its literally no different to using a "meta" class in call of duty

Nop, since they made the game so hard a vaste build variety will be pretty difficult to achieve, most builds won't even be able to do the high or higher maps.

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TylerDurden#9296 wrote:

no there isn't any build variety, there are certain builds everyone will use and if you dare to use something off meta ur a noob and its a "skill issue" all because you didn't follow that one you tube video this game is still in EA and there is already a meta forming you dare to put 1 skill point in the wrong place or you want to use more then just lighting or just freeze ur trash kid, this game is very much shaping up to be a "pick ur poison" type game, you want shock, guess what you cant freeze you want freeze no stun you want to do multiple damage types all at once how about you do no damage and get shafted on the respect cost for an ARPG there is not a lot of "RP" going on when it comes to builds, why cant i be a monk that can shock freeze stun and do chaos damage? all within reason of course i dont want to be op i just dont want to be stuck hitting bell for 3 years or whatever same damage type another day hitting the same bell or same 3 buttons, its literally no different to using a "meta" class in call of duty

^ this. We are back to following builds made by hardcore players or else we die in the game. I thought POE 2 is going to be different but I guess you STILL NEED to follow meta builds once again. Just like POE 1.

Why bother putting up different skill gems when you will just end up following someone else build or else....

But what am I saying?! It's still EA. There is still a lot of nerfing to balance things out! LOL.