Casual ARPG player - Thoughts so far (110 hours, midway through act 2 Cruel.)

I've played three different characters, and gotten two of them up to cruel. I'm not going to talk about endgame, because once I got to maps in PoE1, I got bored and rerolled, then quit (~300 hours in PoE1, 7 years ago).

It's been said that gamers are excellent at seeing where there is a problem, and terrible at proposing solutions. As such I'm definitely going to be proposing my solutions.

I love giant swords. I've 100%'d Elden Ring, and played all of the other Soulsborne games to hell and back, going full Ultra-Greatsword every time. In ARPGs melee is bad, and ranged is good. One of the things that drew me into PoE2 was the idea that we'd have improved melee, and slower, more tactical combat. That's... technically true so far. Melee's just still so far behind fighting at range that it's an embarrassment.

I have a Stormweaver, a Titan, and a Pathfinder, started in that order. The first two over level 50.

The Warrior has problems that never, or barely become relevant in either of the pure Int or pure Dex classes. Mages solve their mana problems by leveling the stat that ups their mana. Mana regeneration by default grows as max mana grows. Spells auto-hit, and the magic part of the tree has lots of resistance penetration built in. The Archer only started seeing mana issues by the end of act 3, but leech fixed that immediately. I was able to use Lightning Arrow to replace my basic attack pretty early on. There isn't really a similar "replace basic attack with fire attack" in the Mace tree. Moreover, weapons requiring accuracy is solved inherently by the fact that dexterity is the accuracy stat, and you need high dexterity to even wield a bow. The strength tree solves none of these problems, and so you're pulled in multiple directions, both into mana, and into accuracy. The solution IMO is to change how accuracy works. Instead of weapon attacks, have accuracy apply to projectiles of all kinds. This introduces a new wrinkle to mages, who still have access to AoE's which wouldn't need accuracy, while eliminating a problem that the weakest fighting style has to deal with.

Both Evasion and Armor suffer from the same problem. They work until they don't. High life, high armor, and maxed out resistances don't matter when you prevent less damage the harder you get hit. This means that armor is in many ways all or nothing. The less you have, the less it does twice over. Evasion doesn't mitigate damage at all. You either don't get hit at all or you take full damage. With nothing to soak it. Defences are meant as tools to avoid getting one shot. Regeneration, either through passive recovery, leeching, or flasks fills in the gaps, but surviving the hit is step one.

There are three places on the tree which let you take damage to mana before life. On the border between the future Str/Int character's zone, and the pure Int zone, and in the same general area but on the Dex/Int size. This means that, aside from Energy Shield preventing all incoming damage no matter the source (can't evade slams, zones, or AoE's), and no matter the damage type (other than the slight weakness to Chaos, which you can instead be immune to, also in the Int tree), you can replace your life entirely with mana, which as stated above, regenerates for free the more you have.

Mages are the toughest class, in spite of warrior being the life and defence class. This is several kinds of silly. Lucidity and it's ilk should be in the strength tree. The ability to sacrifice mana to keep yourself alive instead of using it for attacks should be one of the advantages you take for going for primarily physical weapon attacks.

Pathfinder's first keystone passive is busted in half. The ability to move and shoot (especially using WASD) is an incredible game changer. With the generally good hit boxes for attacks, the ability to position yourself to avoid them adds a level of skill expression that I am a big fan of. I'm not a big fan of being able to circle strafe an enemy such that they can't hit me at all, and just die to infinite arrows. Or Kite against enemies who stop to attack, and miss because I've gotten out of range by the time they swing. The evasion stat may be something I have no faith in. But actual factual evasion is the god tier defence.

In real life, it is vastly harder to move and shoot a bow than it is to move and swing a sword. Montante is an Iberian greatsword style which includes instruction on how to keep moving as you control space with your giant sword. Most mobile archery that I'm aware of requires a platform. Moving while swinging your giant weapon is about building and keeping momentum. This is something that is only partially realized in the mace tree. Among the things that could have brought melee and ranged closer together is to switch which is the one that is good at using abilities on the move.

Speaking of momentum, mages being the ones who have access to the best defence against getting shoved around by enemies is yet another "mages get everything" problem. The big lad with the big armor, and big stick gets shoved around while the waif gets to summon self replicating ice walls that block projectiles and enemies, damage anything that can walk through them, and draw aggro (yet another free layer of defence). If you give either the mace tree, or the strength tree access to things that root you in place (some kind of hyperarmor while in the added mace attack time or something) then the guy powering up his giant attack doesn't feel like he's getting blown around like a feather.

Elemental access. It's pretty clear that Int=Cold, Dex=Lighting, Str=Fire. Except that dex also gets the chaos bow, and poison, Elementalist gets everything. Witch gets fire, and chaos and physical etc. Mace is the only weapon that doesn't have access to at least two element types. Fire is the worst CC element. Which is fair, except that it doesn't seem to have the damage to counter act the fact that it does not interfere with enemy movement at all. Sure stun buildup does that a bit. But stun is the worst of the Freeze/Electrocute/Stun cc family. And both Bow and Quarterstaff get that too. In addition to freeze.

In order for the damage of melee of any kind to be worth the downside, then it needs to do more per hit relative to the time it takes to close to the enemy. If an archer can shoot five times before the enemy gets to them, then the melee guy needs to be able to do about five times the damage by the time they actually get their first swing off. With no CC, and no real CC resistance, the warrior gets bullied.

Finally, the way the bow, quarterstaff, and Elemental skills are presented are an excellent secret tutorial. Lightning Rod and Lightning Arrow are available immediately. Temple Bell almost immediately, and flame wall immediately. These are all excellent at teaching a new player early about the strength of mixing and matching abilities. It's the foundation of the tactical gameplay that we were told would be moving away from the one click wonder builds of PoE1. The closest thing you get in the mace tree to the setup, payoff gameplay is Infernal Cry. A buff for one single attack, which relies on being close to many enemies. You get additional empowered attacks based on Endurance charges, which... you can't generate in any meaningful way. 1 extra attack which does up to double damage once every 8 seconds vs upgrading every attack you make for a long duration. It's not close. Mace doesn't teach you how to play with powers. It teaches you that your abilities require outside support to even work.