My Thoughts on EA

TLDR: Acts 1-3 are more or less exactly what I want from the game, well thought out deliberate combat with good telegraphing and excellent bosses. The end game however feels like a completely different game, punishing, but not challenging, and ultimately booring (at least initially). The endgame needs to learn a lot for the story.

So to frame my feed back I've played a Mercenary though to end game and done a bit of mapping (to lvl 75) and stopped when I ran out of higher tier waystones, a Warrior through full to endgame and then only a couple of maps, and now I've just started a witch. I'd played PoE1 back in it's early stages when the Vaal Oversoul was the last boss, then agian when act 3 came out, replayed it a little later when the full game released, but quit in act 6 as honestly couldn't get past how bad the combat felt, then more recently finished the story just before PoE2's early access.

Story:

For me Acts 1-3 of PoE2 and the WASD controls solved all the problems I had with how PoE1 played, the combat now felt engaging and reactive, it wasn't just a mess of particle effects accross the screen, I actually had to play attention, and my personal player skill mattered rather than the game just being decided solely on the build I made. Act 1 felt the best, great theme and good pacing, Act 2 was also very enjoyable, Act 3 while enjoyable definitely out stayed it's welcome in cruel.

Endgame:

The endgame however feels terrible, maps all have the same objective making them feel like a monotonus chore, which isn't helped by how absolutely punishing the endgame is. At endgame the game no longer feels challenging, it's either I delete the enemies without even seeing them on my screne, or the kill me in seconds, either way there isn't an decission making in combat anymore, and very little engagment. It does not help either that if you die the modifiers that add a little bit of interest to the endgame disappear from your atlas map, not to metion the loss of XP after a certain level and waystones. To me it feels like the endgame of PoE2 is a poor copy of PoE1's endgame without any regard for the change in game pacing between the 2 games meaning my only option is to play PoE2 endgame in a PoE1 way, or just quit and go back to the campaign which I find far more enjoyable.

Simply put the endgame isn't tense it's just punishing and for me atleast encourages play patterns where I avoid being punished rather than enjoy taking tense risks - this has resulted in a play pattern where after trying each endgame (league) mechanic I now avoid maps with them so that I won't loose them is I die, and now only play blank waypoints. This issue is made worse by most of the league mechanics just being different flavours of monsters swarm you in rediculous numbers, don't make any decissions, just have a build that can delete them all instantly of die.

To resolve my issues with the endgame I'd suggest removing the loss of modifiers on maps with death, the loss of a waystone you've invested resources in, and the XP peanalty are already punishing enough, though honestly I don't think the game would be anyworse for removing the XP penalty. I'd also recommend varying up the objectives for maps not just kill X rares, if the map has a league mechanic on it tie the map objective to completing that mechanic. For league mechanics, if they don't want endgame to just be a copy of PoE1 endgame make them less moster spammy and more inkeeping with the design philosophy of PoE2 during the campaign - considered, deliberate, and engaging gameplay.

Though I haven't really engaged with it I'd like to see the option to attempt pinical bosses multiple times, that what you can learn their mechanics as you play rather than feeling forced to look up guide before you even attempt the boss.

On the trials:

Trail of Sekhemas it feels like it invalidates melee playstyles, I know they're going to slightly decrease honor damage at closer range, but it still feels like that won't help, on my warrior I found the only way to really pass the trial was to make AoEs soo big the hit enemies off screne and then just using audio ques to kill enemies without ever seeing the, or using totems to body block while I wound up the painfully slow and static club skills. I'd like to see something like gaining honor from kills with melee skills to make melee viable - feels thematically appropriate that killing in melee would earn you honor. Also beyound the first trial I feel it simple takes too long, I'd like to see the option to do just the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th trial, as when you're up to those the earlier trials effective just become a boringly slow runback posing no challenge at all.

For the Trial of Chaos many of the modifiers seem to just be copied from ultimatum in PoE1 without any concern for the differences between the 2 games, and it very much feels like you can just end up with 3 run ending mmodifiers to choose from. I'd like to see the modifiers toned down, or prefferrably the option to take no modifier and not earn that trials specific loot, but still be able to go through the trial and progress further. This change I believe would put interesting decission making into the trial - is it worth this gear for this debuff - rather than it just currently feeling like every run is just a gamble on whether you can progress or not. This change would also smooth out some of the frustration a lot of people are expressing at getting ascension points.

Lastly I hope the 3rd trial will be a boss rush, bosses are by far the best element of PoE2 and it's a shame there's currently no endgame mechanic that let's you progress just throguh fighting bosses

Defences:

Energy Shield seems by far the best for of defence making other defences worthless by comparison. On my mercenary I used armour/evasion gear through most of my play through iwth moderate investment, but at endgame found some high item find energy shield peices so switched over and found that even with no investment into ES it vastly outperformed armour and evasion, giving much greater survivability without having to spend any passive points on it.

Evasion seems ok, not as good as ES, but better than Armour, but I haven't engaged with it too much.

Armour seems completely worthless, beyond act 2 I found that my warrior paper thin defences even with moderate investment into Armour, it basically became kill trash mobs before they can attack me - not easy with the slow wind up of mace skills, and for bosses jusst dodge perfectly, which isn't too bad with the good telegraphing, unfortunately at endgame there aren't many bosses and a lot of trash mobs making armour a very poor defence at endgame. What's worse is it seems armour gear reduces you movement speed whihc is really your only effective form of defence (getting out of the way). I've seen it floated around that the damage reduction for armour is = Armour/(Armour + 12x(Damage)) which seems very bad, having to have armour 12x the damage you're taking to only get a 50% damage reduction, honestly give that armour only applies to physical damage (without uniques) it feels that even if the reduction was = Armour/(Armour + Damage) it's still be a lot weaker than ES, and slightly weaker than Evasion. Either the damage reduction equation for armour needs change or players need to be given massively more armour on gear (about 5x). Also remove the movement speed reductions for armour. As it stands warriors are running around in robes aas the meta choice because armour is so bad, surely that can't be intentional.

For resistance I though they're mostly fine, though I personally don't like decrease in resistance with acts, not a fan of my character getting weaker as I progress the story and feels like resistances then just become a stat tax at higher levels. I don't think it needs to change, but I just don't like it.

Classes:

Mercenary - I tried to build a Aliment pure crossbow build - not great but useable crossbow skills seem a little weak early on, but overall an enjoyable class, just surpising that energy shield would be the best defensive option.

Warrior - By far the most fun playstyle, felt great slamming through the first act, but got progressively worse as the game progressed, Armour felt balance in the first act and then useless after. Not being able to move at all when using many mace skills feels really bad when moving out of the way is your only real defence. Would like to see either the ability to move while using all mace skills, or significant damage reduction (of all types) while winding up skills. Later in the game, and especially in the endgame the slow windups and ineffectiveness of Armour really come into play ruining what would otherwise be a very fun playstyle

Witch - too early to comment much but seems like a good easymode with minions.

Itemization / crafting / trade:

Belts should get extra charm slots implicitly with item level - say level 40 2 slot, level 70 3 slots. As it stands why would you trade a permanent stat bonus for one you have to gain charges for and that only lasts a short time. If GGG want charms to be used all belts should get more slots over a certain level.

Boots should have movement speed impicitly. Movement speed is by for the most important stat for boots, if they don't have them they're useless, so if it's a mandatory stat just put it on all of them, and tie the speed bonus range to item level.

Increased item rarity shouldn't apply to currency orbs, having it apply to them just encourages people only to stack item rareity as currency orbs are the meta progression of the game. We've already seen this lead to hyper inflation & deflation in the trade leagues. I's suggest upping all orb drops to match high levels of item rareity currently and then decoupling orbs from the stat. Tha way we'd see crafting orb deflation as everyone has more of them and inflation in the price of good items. The result would be greater encouragement to craft because crafted items would be more valuable and you'd have more resources to craft with. With is increased item rarity would still be good for finding better gear, but it wouldn't be so good that no other playstyle is viable.

Introduce some method of essence extraction from gear. E.g. allow you to choose a modifier on a peice of gear break that gear down and get essence related to that stat. for magic gear give the normal essence for rare give the greater essence. This would give a reliable source of essence and allow for a little more deterministic crafting (letting you kinda choose 2/6 modifiers on gear you craft) encourageing people to craft their own gear more.

Add a shop at endgame that sells white (normal) versions of every peice of gear at an item level equal to your level for gold. This would make it much easier to get bases for crafting and once again encourage more people to craft by decreasing the friction in getting started.

In general I'd like to see more done to encourage crafting and reduce the friction involved in doing it, as I believe it provides a good avenue gear progession that doesn't just rely on getting more currency orbs so you can buy off the trade site.

I'd like to see the trade site, or at least it's function properly integrated into the game. As it stands I think it's disengaging to have to check an external webiste when looking to trade for gear. I'd like to see an equivalent to the currency exchange, where you pay a little gold and list an item for a certain number of orbs of whatever type and people can look in game for said items and automatically make the trade through an NPC giving their currency and getting the item without having to go through all the frinction of the current system.

+100

Good and valid points.

+100 Agee with you and well stated.