Fate of the Vaal (0.4) Experience from the perspective of a new(ish) player

I finally decided to try PoE2 for the first time after finishing my Keepers challenges and felt like writing down my thoughts so here we go.

To start off with a lot of praise, my first impressions were extremely positive. I was super skeptical about WASD movement coming from the mouse based movement from PoE1 but quickly got used to it and found it to be enjoyable even seventy hours in. The general change of pace in the combat coupled very well with the somewhat slower and more methodical movement and I think the ability to dodge adds a lot of depth to the otherwise somewhat stat checking nature of PoE1 gameplay we've come to expect. The upgrade in graphics is also not something to gloss over, both the art and engine team did an amazing job here with fresh motifs that are rarely explored in other media. Progressing through the campaign was memorable, I particularly enjoyed the more complicated bossfights with choreographed attacks and mechanics, though I did wish I was punished a bit more for failing obvious dodge checks. The interlude felt a bit unnecessary to me but if I understand correctly that might be because it's a placeholder to be replaced in a later patch. My only feedback here aside from my post on the map UI (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3912928) is that sprinting is clunky to use and too easy to unintentionally start.

Now for the meat and potatoes. The endgame has been a mixed bag to me. Usually around the time I get to maps I do a sizable respec to really get my build going as I always go in blind with a class I want to play and then try to patch together a worthy build from there. My first point of friction came from my skill tree, and my experience with this has not improved since I hit the higher levels, simply put the skill tree feels very hard to navigate. Worthy point clusters seem so many points apart you really have to do a lot of research to get your points worth out of it. Many point clusters feel like they require too many smaller passives to access the notable, not even mentioning the amount of points you need to get to the clusters in the first place. It also doesn't help that many notables either carry conditionals or major drawbacks, making way too many undesirable. The absence of PoE1 style masteries here is sorely felt, which often are the only nodes with conditionals and drawbacks there. The best validation I had for these feelings was looking around at some of the top builds when I ran out of ideas and finding that a lot of them are made up of around 70 to 80 percent attribute nodes to get to the good clusters or gem sockets.

Next up I want to touch on ascendancies, which I've actually enjoyed a lot. Making getting ascendancies harder was frustrating at first, but when I relaxed and took a step back I've found it a great motivator to push me forward and improve my game. The only friction I felt here was that I really think, at least for the first six ascendancy points, it should be free to attempt a trial. Getting your ass kicked trying to learn the mechanics, only to find that you now have to scour the market for level appropriate baryas or ultimatums, which at this point in the league is prohibitively expensive, felt a little evil. I gained a newfound appreciation for both trails and still enjoy doing them up till now.

Finally I want to touch on a few smaller points surrounding mapping. I think some value was lost when the decision was made to make entering portals free. Limiting the amount of portals has always been a great motivator to keep the gameplay flowing and to ditch items less likely to be valuable, I've found myself endlessly going back and forth to replenish charms or collect some random rare items for gold when I really wouldn't have done so in PoE1. Then, I'm assuming it might be a technical limitation, but the way respawning works with map bosses is really weird and I hope that in the future the whole map doesn't reset when you die during the encounter. Somewhat related to this is the fact that nearing the endgame, when you got a few projectiles going, it can be extremely hard to see what the hell is going on. This issue is also present in PoE1 but it's not that big of a deal there because PoE1 really feels like more of a spreadsheet game where you can stat-check most mechanics, those defensive options are simply not present in PoE2. Related to this is also a missed opportunity with rares, instead of giving major stat buffs I really expected rares to function more like campaign bosses with many well telegraphed dodgeable attacks, which some do have but are not as common as I would've hoped.

To close off I will leave you with the most pressing point of contention I have with both games. Please please please GGG, let us see the last attack that killed us, even if it's some internal debug name or only the damage number and damage types, it's still something I can't believe a game that's basically a spreadsheet simulator doesn't provide. Knowing what attack or damage types are impacting you the most is invaluable for finding out if you simply have a skill issue, or something in your build is holding you back.

Thanks for reading and for any GGG reading this thanks for working on the game. It's already a blast to play, I can't wait to see what future updates bring.