Warrior/Mace - how to finaly fix it and still keep it interesting

Maces in Path of Exile 2 currently feel slow and clunky. Their attack animations and skills often interrupt movement, making it difficult to stay mobile, especially in fast-paced combat scenarios. Players have pointed out this issue, but simply tweaking numbers won’t solve the core problem. A more fundamental redesign is needed—one that aligns with the vision GGG has for PoE2.

Understanding PoE2’s Gameplay Vision

PoE2 introduces WASD movement and emphasizes player skill through tactical positioning and active combat. It’s no longer just about high DPS but about how well you engage with combat mechanics. Many skills incorporate movement, encouraging fluidity in battle. Maces, however, don’t fit this dynamic—they’re slow, stationary, and leave players highly vulnerable to stagger or interruption.

To address this, I propose a combo-based system for maces that rewards skilled play and constant movement.

Proposed Combo-Based Mace System

In medieval combat, warriors wielding heavy weapons like maces or flails focused on maintaining momentum in battle. Each strike flowed into the next, creating a continuous motion that was both offensive and defensive. Applying this principle to PoE2 could solve the issues with maces while introducing a unique, engaging playstyle.

Here's a video about fighting with a greatsword. Fighting with a two-handed mace is quite similiar (even though experts would probably kill me for that statement):

https://youtu.be/bo-dpBys-4w

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Here’s how it could work:

1. Opener Skills:
- Fast, mobile attacks designed to initiate combat and close the distance to enemies.
- They can include movement abilities or gap closers and have a higher chance to knock back, stagger, or stun enemies.

Purpose: Get into melee range while preparing enemies and the battlefield for the attack chain.

2. Main Skills:
- Used after an Opener-Skill. If timed correctly, Main-Skills benefit from:
-- Reduced attack animation time
-- Increased damage and/or additional effects (e.g., higher stun chance, larger AoE)

Purpose: Maintain offensive momentum and deal consistent damage while keeping the player mobile.

3. Finisher Skills:
- High-damage, high-AoE attacks intended to clear groups or heavily damage bosses.
- When used after a Main-Skill, they provide additional benefits, such as:
-- High stagger/stun chance
-- Temporary buffs, e.g., "30% increased attack speed for 4 seconds" to enable rapid chaining of the next combo.

Purpose: Deliver a satisfying payoff after a well-executed combo chain.

Advantages of a Combo-Based Mace System

- Encourages skill-based gameplay: The system rewards players for mastering combos and timing their inputs correctly, while still giving players the possibility to use main- or finisher-skills without chaining it
- Improves melee fluidity: Opener-skills provide reliable ways to engage enemies, while chaining the attacks keeps the player in motion.
- Rewards chaining: Successfully completing a full attack chain leads to faster attacks, better damage, and temporary buffs.
- Enhances mobility: Staying in attack motion allows melee characters to remain mobile, addressing one of the biggest issues with current mace (warrior) gameplay.
- Unique identity for maces: This system creates a distinct playstyle compared to other melee weapons and fits PoE2’s vision of diverse, skill-intensive gameplay.
- Greater build diversity: Players will need at least three different attack skills for optimal performance, similar to how spell builds combine multiple abilities (e.g., Firewall + Spark). But players can decide themselves, what opener-/main-/finisher-skill to combine, which makes atr least 3 skills (and their resprective support gems) necessary to unleash full potential.

Potential Drawbacks
- Significant development effort:
-- A full rework of current melee skills would be required, including animations and balancing to ensure Opener-, Main-, and Finisher-Skills chain smoothly.
- High input complexity:
-- Some players may find the combo system too demanding, especially compared to simpler melee playstyles in PoE1, since it requires 3 active skills for full potential.[/b]

Final Thoughts
A combo-based system for maces would bring them in line with PoE2’s gameplay vision by emphasizing skill, timing, and movement. It would create a unique, rewarding experience for players who enjoy melee combat while addressing the weapon’s current weaknesses. Though it requires significant effort to implement, the long-term benefits to gameplay depth and diversity could be well worth it.

PS: Yes, I let chat gpt polish my text.

Or:

Increase base attack speed, let the skills be used while moving with reduced mobility, remove -attack speed on tree and the remove or reduce the annoying unscalable animation speed.

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Waiden#9514 wrote:

Or:

Increase base attack speed, let the skills be used while moving with reduced mobility, remove -attack speed on tree and the remove or reduce the annoying unscalable animation speed.

I thought about that too, but I came to the conclusion, that this would end up in being melee from PoE1, except the movement during attack. Every warrior would just leap slam into the crowd, using that one good melee skill and that's it. It wouldn't feel unique and it's not skill-based, which is probably the vision that GGG has for PoE2.

The suggestion above would definitely give warrior/mace a unique and interesting playstyle. Monk for example gets very positive feedback from the community, because it has movement, it feels fast and has some good clear aoe. Warrior just feels like a stone. And just increasing attack speed or reducing attack animations won't give mace this same amazing feeling that monk has.

That's the reason why I came up with the above suggestion. It's EA, therefore big changes can be made now. Once it's 1.0, it will be much harder to make such big changes to a weapon/character class.

Another good thing about the suggestion above is, that ascendencies could be balanced around these mechanics. Something like "25% more damage for each successive chain-attack, can stack up to 4 times. Stays active for 4 seconds after a finisher". Example:

1. Opener (+0%) -> Main (+25%) -> Finisher (+50%)
player has now 4 seconds before stacks are lost.
When player uses opener during these 4 seconds:

2. Opener (+75%) -> Main (+100%) -> Finisher (+100%)
player has now 4 seconds before stacks are lost.
When player uses opener during these 4 seconds:

3. Opener (+100%) -> Main (+100%) -> Finisher (+100%)

So as long as you stay in the chain, you get that huge buff. This would emphasize this combo play. Your goal would be to do your dish out your chain attack until the finisher and then reposition your character in those 4 seconds, just to start the next chain of attacks.

None of this will ever happen.

Why bother even posting this? For a suggestion to have a hope of being implemented, it has to be more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

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RickyDMMontoya#7961 wrote:

None of this will ever happen.

Why bother even posting this? For a suggestion to have a hope of being implemented, it has to be more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Because this is EA. This is the only time you can suggest things that may have a huge impact on the game and require drastic changes to the system.

I think I've understood what kind of game GGG wants to create with PoE2. I'm not happy with everything, but I certainly do like PoE2 and the direction it goes fundamentally (WASD, dodge roll, more skill based, slower pace, interesting bosses). And I think current warrior/mace is not where GGG wants it to be. They said they want to fix melee, but there is still some work needed. And my suggestion is my personal take on that existing problem.

Will GGG do this? I don't know, very likely not 100% of what I've suggested. But may it inspire them to go that direction? Maybe. The possibility is not 0%, so I take my chances.

Combos don't really work in this game. You don't have time to do something like this due to the constant onslaught.

Opening and finishing skills are already here- shield charge in, boneshatter break. Thats all. Even with unique crest shield thats like 20lvl and zero increased stun, even in cruel most mobs are primed for stun and immediatelly blown up with boneshatter. The problem isnt a warrior. The problem is elemental spells and spirits that obliterate 3 screens with 1 button

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raptas#1569 wrote:

Opening and finishing skills are already here- shield charge in, boneshatter break. Thats all. Even with unique crest shield thats like 20lvl and zero increased stun, even in cruel most mobs are primed for stun and immediatelly blown up with boneshatter. The problem isnt a warrior. The problem is elemental spells and spirits that obliterate 3 screens with 1 button

But that's the whole problem. Almost all melee skills are to slow. The only real "gap closer" is shield charge, which you can only use with shield. What about 2h play? And what if you don't want to use shield charge but something else?

Perfect Strike? Stationary for an extremely long time while charging up
Superchagred Slam? Stationary for an extremely long time while charging up
Earthquake? Stationary while attacking
Earthshatter? Stationary while attacking
Molten Blast? Stationary while attacking
Sunder? Stationary for a long time while attacking
Rolling Slam? Extremely slow, but at least some movement
Leap Slam? Wind up + running is too long, jump is way to short and also slow
Stampede? Very clunky and no real control during movement

As you can see, there is literally no combo system right now. I talk about a design where these skills complement each other, creating a fluid melee experience with constant mobility.

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FruitLord#0833 wrote:

Combos don't really work in this game. You don't have time to do something like this due to the constant onslaught.

But that's because it's not balanced yet. The game is supposed to be played slow, but the whole endgame doesn't work like that. I think GGG knows that and will adress this problem at some point. But when they have adressed it, warriors still need a rework.

Combos aren't the fix. Besides, those already exist, and are balanced around using Strikes. Warrior/Mace's issue is primarily one of reliable survivability. Aside from Armor/Life just being underpowered and there not being nearly enough means to get it (especially given ES just being so much flat EHP) and armor itself being a terrible defense when it does nothing for elemental hits and falls off exponentially with larger hits, Warrior/Mace also lacks tools.

I posted my own thread https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3699608 but here's the summary:

1. More Life in passive tree, mostly red area, maybe buff Strength to be 3 life per point, as well as more access to sustain.
2. More Passives like Heatproofing so armor can affect Chaos and other Elemental damage.
3. Persistent buffs, especially ones that work around slow attack speed and provide damage reduction.
4. Support gems that help slower skills, mostly through a new tag called "Wind Up" used for all skills with flat added time to use, that increase DR/Armor while using Wind Up skills, plus a support gem that removes the Wind Up for various drawbacks, mostly damage and AoE. I know lots of people want to use Sunder as their bread & butter skill and that would allow for it.
5. Improving combat flow, in particular slow skills have way too much "recovery" time which makes slow skills like mace slams feel bad until you get like 30% attack speed.

I think that would cover it, a handful of Armor/Life focused buffs and a few that would work across all skill and class trees.