My biggest gripe since diving back in: Overdesign. POE 2 needs mechanics trimmed.

Enjoying the game a bit again, but I just feel confused most the time.

I'm playing a warrior, and ATM I don't even really know what ability to spam.

Does armor break stack? Which abilities does it amplify the damage of? Should I use it as a primary source of damage?

I'm getting these endurance charges... what should I even be using them on? Will it be worth the investment in skill and gear?

I have these shield talents and skills... how much damage does a counter attack do? Timing attacks against all the various enemy attack lengths to trigger a fire counter attack is really frustrating most of the time. Would feel better if you simply unloaded damage based on how much you've blocked over a given time.

Often times we have to go through 3 tabs just to see what the mechanics are of an ability, and afterwards I feel more confused than when I started.

What even are the bread and butter damage skills for warrior? So many skill gems you think will increase damage like delay timer on totem, but then it doesn't work.

There are just SO MANY layers of additional complexity that don't pay off, they don't hit. I never feel like i'm getting my build locked in, I never feel like i'm learning the game and can now theory craft.


It all just feels like bloat, it all feels like it can be scaled WAY BACK and made distilled.

"Common monsters have a power of 1, rare of 2 and uniques are 5, and based on this you will gain 0 to 5% more bonus power on every other attack, but only based on your magic damage, but only every other weekend and there are some bugs in the damage calculations, and HOLY MOLY WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING!

None of this makes the game better. You guys have overdesigned almost every element of the game, and at the same time nothing feels fun or exciting to get because you need to tweak and tune and build for every single skill to just make it usable.

Charge has a long cooldown, the double swing skill feels wonky and makes you easily killed, break armor doesn't seem to do anything when I use it, it takes 5 friggin' seconds for the spikes to erupt out of the darned ground when I use that break ground skill, that one ability only does damage when enemies have been hit 50x and have stun buildup, my shield reflect skill only does damage for .5 seconds right when enemies hit, and the telegraphing on enemies is so uneven and hard to predict it's really frustrating to use.

Nothing about this game in the early game as a warrior is satisfying, and these arbitrary and secondary mechanics just hit you in the face right out of the gate so hard. These secondary mechanics would be FANTASTIC if they were on skill gems or unique items and gave unique mechanics to think about that you could look at and htink "Yes this is a cool bonus, i got it from this rare gem or item and I can take it or leave it."

I'm kinda just over the idea that in order to play the game at an absolute base level you have to watch many tutorials and learn tons of secondary mechanics and systems, and all I want to be doing is finding attack speed, crit chance, and FUN things. But I can't, everything is about stun resistances and stun buildup and all these mechanics that divert away from the fun.

POE 2 kinda feels like this giant amalgamation of failed ideas to create build diversity at this point, and you guys have put many of these unfun and secondary mechanics front and center, especially for warrior.

Instead of stun resists and stun buildup, more and deeper mechanics for damage mitigation, amplification, attack speed, survivability and movement would have been far more fun, easier to understand, and just far more intriguing for the player to read up on.

I'll spend days learning about the best item loadouts and skill setups to get more and more damage and survivability in interesting fun new ways. But it's such a chore looking over resist rates and stun mechanics, and endurance charges, and all this random bloat that hasn't made this game any more satisfying or deep to play, it's just lots and lots of busy work.

This game would be so much better if the mods of stun amp and stun meters and all that jazz were gutted from itemization and mods. Make it a tertiary mechanic like a % of hits stun a mob, keep it really simple, this overdesign of unfun systems has taken a massive toll on this game in so many ways. Excessive tooltips, boring item mods no one gets excited for.

And worst of all, it's just sitting there taking up space that COULD BE more exciting modifiers and mechanics that are actually FUN.

Just my 2 cents. Really wish there were more bread and butter abilities. Just for comparison i'll list some abilities that would have more flavor and easy to pick up tooltips that players could be excited about without feeling as though the game makes no sense and is an overdesigned mess.

Break Armor: Increases all physical damage done to the enemy up to 30%. 5% per hit, each stack lasts 15 seconds.

Berserker: Increases attack speed and run speed up to 30%, but increases incoming damage by up to 30%

Fire Bash: Releasing block deals 200% of damage blocked up to 300% weapon damage (NO JANKY TIMING BS! but can still be artfully mastered with great timings), fades out if you block too long to encourage SOME level of skill

Erupt: The world erupts in a small AOE, only 1 second delay, but deals low damage, the more you smash one area the more damage it does, the bigger the AOE, and the longer the delay. Fully charged erupts do a stun.

Currently erupt just feels wonky and it takes forever. It's not good for strong enemies because it doesn't do enough damage, and against weak enemies it takes so long you coulda just killed them with a different attack!

Anyhow, feels like you guys got lost in the woods of design a long time ago, and now there is all these systems and items and modifiers and they all service this big bloated unfun mess of modifiers that are confusing and dn't really enhance the game in any meaningful way, and worst of all, they are there taking up space for what COULD be meaningful, fun, and exciting mods and bonuses. BUT I'M REPEATING MYSELF AT THIS POINT!

Love the game, will keep playing, but this is always nagging at me. I just want to know how much damage my skills are doing, I want to know which skills are support skills, which are bread and butter skills, and I want support gems to be transformative and rare, not something we have to use to just make these skills usable at a base level. takes WAY too much studying and looking over a multitude of systems and stat pages to just figure out what abilities to use early game as mace warrior.