0.2 Feedback

Just a list things that I think should change. Will be referencing other games I've played


Defenses

Armour: not sure how you guys want this to go. But I think Armour should reduce any damage coming to health bar. Give it diminishing returns. Your HP bar should decrease in a less spiky manner.

Energy Shield: there's this 1 thing I'm still not sure, does extra damage to energy shield spill over to HP? I just think that damage to ES shouldn't spill over to health. Just for that 1 hit that drops ES to 0.

No comment on evasion as I feel like it seems fine. Your HP bar will fluctuate a lot but that's how evasion always works.

Resistances.. I think they should change. Right now you basically have 3 resistances. Elemental resist, Chaos resist, and Physical resist. Yes armour feels like physical resistance that is easily erased by some mobs. That's why it feels bad to build armour. And why armour is very confusing to deal with right now. Resistances in my opinion should play the role of Ailment Threshold. Higher resistance % should mean that you have lesser chance of being inflicted with that ailment. Maybe resistance should apply damage reduction up to a cap of 50%, then anything above 50% should also give ailment resistance. OR resistance should give you less ailment damage and effect.

Right now the reason why Evasion/ES builds have the best survivability is very simple. You have a big Health pool, with reduced damage taken from resistance AND a chance to ignore damage. Who would've picked armour then?


Skills

Some skills should play a role as utility skills. For example Escape Shot, you should have 100% evasion during that skill execution. While you guys have put out support gems like Untouchable and Unabating, I doubt that using it during Escape shot feels good. Escape shot should have a role of making breathing room for ranged characters, as you're stepping away from the enemy then freezing or chilling them. At least that's how I used it during early leveling stages where enemies are sparse and slower. Never seen anyone use that in endgame.

Again I'm harping about Escape Shot because it is a perfect example of what a skill based evasion should be. Any jumping skills should have some extra effect on them. Escape Shot, Electrocuting Arrow, should have 100% evasion as they are a full utility skill. While Leap Slam and the likes of it should have armour or damage reduction tagged on them. Basically if you're leaping to deal damage, some damage should be allowed to go in, think of it as a risk factor of diving in to deal damage. While leaping away from danger should give the players either 100% evasion or immunity to damage. Yes, it should also work on boss mechanic like Arbiter's one shots we've seen. If you're skillful enough to time it you should be rewarded for it. Exception to special cases such as CC boss mechanic like Zarokh's time stop, as it is an integral part of the encounter.


COMBOS

Right now we already do have combos, I'll list combos that I used in 0.1. Gemling Pillar stacker uses Tempest Flurry to kill white mods while dropping bells + curse for rares and bossing. Chronomancer gunner uses Siege Cascade, with frostwall during bossing (gutted). Infernalist minion uses a myriad of minions to combos with, either flame wall + projectiles, or cold bombing with frost skele mages. It is actually very fun to set up minion combos on infernalist.

From all this example I'd say it is actually really fun to run some combos while we are bossing. We just hate to be forced to combo while dealing with trash mobs. Even the whirlwind + twister combo that was available early league didn't interest me due to the pacing interuption. Especially if you're forced to evade a deadly aoe while putting out the combo. It honestly feels like we're being brake checked on top of brake checked in a highway. Being forced to run whirlwind 3x, then twister is bad. My only input would be to let Whirlwind have only 2 stages, normal and greater with 50% chance of getting greater whirlwind. This gives more incentives to run the combo faster and banking on being rewarded with greater whirlwind.

I just got reminded of V rising new expansion and would like to direct your attention on how their combat feels if you guys really want combo based gameplay. Especially at the endgame or top level, you can either basic attack twice or just use 1-2 quick skills to clear packs, not the weird 3-4 combo we had.


Crafting and Trading

Crafting right now feels like too much of an RNG. Even trading feels bad to run due to people not responding to trade requests. I personally wish that Essences play a better role in trading in the sense that you can only put normal essence on a blue item, while greater essences could only be used on a yellow item. There's enough RNG there that at least you have 2 unwanted modifier on items, not to mention each modifier can range from low tier to high tier. That's all I can think of on using a system that's already available today.


Zone and Pathing

SOOO many dead ends. And the dead ends is sooo far away from the main path.


Build Diversity

Honestly I am very disappointed that currently this league is plagued with Lightning Spear. On poe2.ninja you can see that Lightning spear has over 53% usage on the new league. Honestly it is very very bad and boring to see Lightning Spear everywhere on my youtube recommendation. Would love to see more builds next league just like 0.1 where there are at least 1-2 builds per ascendancy there.


Early Access

Lastly I personally would pitch for a League where you guys really treat this as Early Access where buffs and nerfs gets applied every week. Give us a full reset every week, let us break the system and economy. And please let us have fun breaking the game at least 2-3 months before 1.0 so you guys got enough time fix everything you found.