Let the Game Help Players Find Unique Items That Fit Their Builds

Proposal: Unique Item Recommendation System for Players

One of the biggest challenges for new and mid-level Path of Exile players is discovering which unique items could actually help their builds. The game has hundreds of unique items, and most players probably haven’t heard of more than a small fraction of them — maybe 5% at best. Because of this, a lot of interesting and creative build possibilities go unnoticed.

I’d like to suggest a feature that could help bridge that gap:
a Unique Item Recommendation System that suggests items relevant to the player’s current skills, passives, or playstyle.

The system could scan your active skills, ascendancy, and key passive nodes, then suggest unique items that synergize with them.

For example:

- A player using Cyclone could be shown uniques that boost attack speed or movement while spinning.

- A minion build could get suggestions for minion-damage or aura-related uniques.

- These suggestions could appear in a small “Recommended Uniques” tab in the character panel, or even as optional tooltips in the item filter.

- The goal isn’t to make the game easier — just to help players learn and explore more of what PoE already offers.

Why this would help:

New players would learn faster and feel less overwhelmed.

Mid-level players could discover underused uniques that fit their builds.

It would encourage build diversity and experimentation without needing to rely on third-party websites or copy builds.

I personally don't like PoE 1 be the next diablo 4, where you can finish your Build in 10 Hours or less.

PoE has and always had a high learing curve, changing this can attract newer Players but also take away things which makes PoE special, for example the trading part.

Tbh, 80% of Uniques are useless, even if they fit your Build and that's also a big part of PoE - Rares and also Crafting.

"It would encourage build diversity and experimentation without needing to rely on third-party websites or copy builds." <-- This is Balancing and has nothing to do with Uniques.

For me it's a clear and undiscussable "no thanks". (No Offense)

I think what is going to happen will be third party AI companion programs that will be telling you what to equip where and what to look for.

This exists you just have to do some extra steps.

In PoB, you can do custom searches for items that give you the greatest boost to defense, offense, other metrics, and turn that into a live search on the website, where it can rank hundreds of items and give you the best item for you funds.

You can also limit the search to uniques, although why would you?

The danger is, I suppose, you stop making decisions for your build at all and just follow the algorithm.

But most people already do that using meta builds because its more effective.

"

xxn1927#3319 wrote:

I think what is going to happen will be third party AI companion programs that will be telling you what to equip where and what to look for.

I was going to use chatgpt as my coach this league with the idea of writing a magazine article about the experience. It only took an hour to realize what an awful coach it would be, and that my article would just be a comedy. Among other things, it gave me a link that was a 404 error, as well as mentioning the need to kill Hillock in Act 2.

If you don't know the game chatgpt sounds like an expert.

My highest character ever is only level 88 but chatgpt was making recognizable errors very quickly.

I get what your meaning, however as LikeyX#7028 mention 80% of the uniques are garbage for whatever builds you are doing. personally I look at at like this, so many items drop that you can make your loot filter act like what you describe, I believe neversink has created a filter per class https://www.filterblade.xyz/

This is probably too hard to even try to do. The game has too many paths, interactions and potential outcomes.

I also like that the game isn't on guardrails. There are plenty of games that force you down a narrow path with a predictable outcome. It's orderly, simple to balance and less of headache overall for the developer. It's also boring.

I think a nice middle ground would involve having a few preset suggested builds for new players that are good enough to carry through campaign and into maps.

The main problem with your idea is rares are often better than uniques. Some uniques are build-enabling, but most offer general modifiers that are weaker in potential than their rare counterparts. Most builds only want a couple uniques, because they need rares to actually function.

What would be very useful is if GGG trained an AI to create unique builds pre-launch. They could then look at what the AI found to be broken and patch it out before it ever is released to us players. GGG has released some truly broken mechanics at time. There was one league where you could literally become immortal for example.

that s part of the build making BUT at minimum there should be an ingame list of uniques imo. because you re not gonna drop the uniques you need :) it s always about finding them in the list and trading. looking at uniques dropping is 99% bait lol.

Poe.wiki and poedb.tw both offer that option. GGG can't completely remove all sources like that, because they are part of the community building aspect, and the PoE player community is one of GGG greatest accomplishments. How many other games can boast the same player to player helpful interaction and low toxicity? Look at the content from the PoE 1 veteran streamers compared to the pilgrim streamers from other games after PoE 2 was launched.