Controller Mapping is Rough and Inconsistent (Suggestions Inside)

I am 54 and play only with a controller, typing only to filter or chat. I have spent hundreds of hours on POE1 with the controller. The current mapping is very hard to use and inconsistent. Let my list the problems and suggestions on improvements.

1. Heal and Mana flasks should be on the shoulder buttons (above the triggers) like POE1 left and right flasks. This is because when you need these, you are under pressure and maneuvering and need to keep your thumbs on the sticks.

2. The skill panels for POE1 actually work better. If I hold the right trigger it switches to a new set of XYAB mapping aand left trigger the same. If we had that it would be much better as you would get 12 skills on XYAB and would be easier for multiple skills.

3. The D-PAD skills can remain with up being the portal (dont make people map it) and down toggling overlay map. The left d-pad should open up a league contextual menu. So push d-pad left to enter expedition setup then use D-Pad down to place explosives. Use d-pad right for showing and hiding the chat window.

4. Clicking left stick should shift to show detaialed information at all times. In combat mode it should show your life / mana and any buffs or debuffs which should be in the upper right and show text when you hold the left stick. In the vendor or inventory windows the same should happen. A single click should pop up a compare if contextually appropriate. Clicking the left stick on a skill in the skills window should pop up detailed stats for the skill. In general left click should be in info mechanism.

5. Right stick click should be a LOCK on button in combat mode. If I am fighting a rare or unique with other whites around it and I select the target I should be able to click to lock on and it stays locked on until I click the right stick again or the locked target dies. In info mode it should allow you to navigate the links like the left stick does now.

5. The spirit section on the bind screen is great. I wish I had this in POE1. Turn my auras off and on there.

6. Tab navigation in the character screen is perfect as are triggers.

7. When navigating your inventory the detail windows overlay the interface and make it impossible to know where your cursor is. First of all pop up the detail windows beside the inventory but only do that if the user clicks the left stick. if they want more info they can click the right stick while the left click window is up.

8. Stash navigation is bad. First of all the stash tabs are off the left side of the screen cut off. Second the new stash interface doesnt allow us to configure the tabs and set affinities. In POE 1 you navigate tabs by triggers. I dont mind using shoulder buttons but you should be able to go into stash options by clicking both sticks at once (. In this menu you should be able to re-order the tabs, rename or color them, set affinities and so on.

9. While stash or vendor window are open the player should be able to jump back and forth between vendor and inventory or between stash and inventory with the trigger buttons. The game should remember where I was when I flipped to vendor or stash (i.e. 3rd row 5th column). If I hit the triggers it should keep flipping back and forth between the spots. If I have something picked up that should come with the flip.

10. Since I am suggesting another use for left trigger chat should just bee on the d pad right toshow or hide the window in all modes. Wee have the stick to navigate thee stash we can use the dpad for this.

12. Selling and disenchanting is very bad and should be made consistent. Both interfaces should allow you to have a proposed sale or disenchant. Currently when you open disenchant you use Y to move the item but have to navigate to it and use A to reclaim it. That is really wacky. If I am on the ghost of the item in my inventory and hit Y again it should move the item back. Similarly in the selling interface I should have the same kind of window with proposals to sell and accept with RB. If I am on the vendor side and hit Y the item should be removed.

13. Jumping to the search bar in any inventory or vendor or even passive tree should be Hold left stick and hit A for search, hit B for clear search. Alternatively the user could just navigate to the search box and hit A or B.

14. You should Port all of these changes to POE1 so someone going back and forth between games is not fighting muscle memory.

15. There is currently no way to apply currency to a strongbox. While at the strong box our content context menu (D pad left) should bee enabled to apply currency. [Edit: I figured out how but its cryptic. I think the league context menu should be used for this. D-pad left, then up down left right to apply available currencies]

If these things were all in the game it would be much more friendly to controller use than the game is right now.

or just make the controller completely mapable with shift keys as options to put anywhere you want.

I dont agree, that would be chaos and even if you allowed that you need some sensible defaults and I think I have them.

It looks like you might not be aware how much flexibility GGG gave us to remap controller buttons, from the skill bind menu. If you click on a button that does not have something bound, you get a window with other interactions you can assign. You can also reassign which buttons you are using for your flasks just like you can assigning your skills (ex. - I use the left shoulder button for my health flask, but I prefer my mana flask on d-pad right).

One of the interactions that you can assign is 'Focus Fire Toggle' (I use left trigger + left shoulder for this); this allows you to toggle lock on. With focus fire toggled on, you need to use the right stick to change targets. This definitely works better for some classes than others, with the 'stickiness' to stay on a target feeling very solid to me when playing a witch, but the lock tends to break pretty frequently on a ranger. The difference in 'stickiness' feels intentional, and honestly I like it that way.

The game does not do a great job of explaining the flexibility with button assignments, but they do seem to give you pretty good control over how you use your controller. Unfortunately, if there is a way to assign the stick clicks, I have not found it.

I do feel I have just barely enough buttons to use all the skills I want, but I really have to use every available button and even then, I am excluding some context buttons to do so. Luckily you can remap potions in PoE2 compare to PoE1. Having more buttons available like L3/R3 (press down on stick) would be nice, particularly for those utility "skills" like toggle aim mode, open map, or any other thing you want to bind an action to.

It would be nice having a third swap menu instead of the current two bars. Although inconvenient sometimes, I liked that PoE1 put all the league mechanic context actions on a 4th page so you still had 12 buttons to work with and 12 more buttons on weapon swap. Also, would be nice to have some way to continuously peek at your second bar. In my case, I put HotG on my second bar and it would be nice to see when it is available without swapping to it to check.

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novemsol#7951 wrote:

It looks like you might not be aware how much flexibility GGG gave us to remap controller buttons, from the skill bind menu. If you click on a button that does not have something bound, you get a window with other interactions you can assign. You can also reassign which buttons you are using for your flasks just like you can assigning your skills (ex. - I use the left shoulder button for my health flask, but I prefer my mana flask on d-pad right).

One of the interactions that you can assign is 'Focus Fire Toggle' (I use left trigger + left shoulder for this); this allows you to toggle lock on. With focus fire toggled on, you need to use the right stick to change targets. This definitely works better for some classes than others, with the 'stickiness' to stay on a target feeling very solid to me when playing a witch, but the lock tends to break pretty frequently on a ranger. The difference in 'stickiness' feels intentional, and honestly I like it that way.

The game does not do a great job of explaining the flexibility with button assignments, but they do seem to give you pretty good control over how you use your controller. Unfortunately, if there is a way to assign the stick clicks, I have not found it.

I am aware of the Bind functions. That doesnt change this.

my biggest issue with controller aside from not being able to inventory with mouse. Is the fact that if you are using a to attack and a is your action button as well. If you do something like put bell down. You just wont attack if youre by the bell. Also if theres loot on the ground and your inventory is full it will priorize looting. I remember they adjusted this and it was awesome for trial of the sekhemas to hit the crystals but its not near as fun while fighting. Double edge sword.

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novemsol#7951 wrote:

One of the interactions that you can assign is 'Focus Fire Toggle' (I use left trigger + left shoulder for this); this allows you to toggle lock on. With focus fire toggled on, you need to use the right stick to change targets.

Focus fire toggle is dog dodo because the right stick changes targets. I want to LOCK the target. This is a mechanism used in Dark Souls and it works well. Click right stick to lock, click right stick to unlock.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

my biggest issue with controller aside from not being able to inventory with mouse. Is the fact that if you are using a to attack and a is your action button as well. If you do something like put bell down. You just wont attack if youre by the bell. Also if theres loot on the ground and your inventory is full it will priorize looting. I remember they adjusted this and it was awesome for trial of the sekhemas to hit the crystals but its not near as fun while fighting. Double edge sword.

This has been a problem in POE1 as well. You might want to map it to the right d-pad button if you moved your flasks to the shoulders like I did. It takes some getting used to but leaves A free to use. I personally dont map anything to my default A, just my alt A. I suppose I should consider mapping to d pad right but my brain might balk at muscle memory.

As for inventory management see the changes I suggested above. They want this to be available for PS5 and XBox users and this is what they need to do in my opinion.

There just isnt enough buttons to play warrior effectively. You would have to be able to move with left joystick and hit the shift button on the left d pad to use other abilities.

Not worth the work.
If i wanted to solve a rubix cube i would be playing with a rubix cube.