Why I like the rune system and don’t want the crafting bench
|
I’m a bit inspired to talk about the rune system for Poe 2 as someone who never played Poe 1 or experienced the crafting bench. Obviously I think this update is superb but the only thing (if I had to pick A pain point) critic-wise I am a bit hesitant to say is an upgrade is the number or runes for sake of “it’s the runes league”. I don’t personally have a negative opinion on there being tons of runes but I have heard from many that there is? The way I see it the number of valuable ones won’t really change. The slots on people’s gear didn’t increase and the fact there is more, doesn’t change the value of them either just which ones ARE valuable. The reason I find this not to be a problem is because we have a filter system for item loot. Just don’t interact with runes you know are worthless and once you understand it’s ok to have worthless items that help more niche playstyles like it's fine.
One thing I have seen emanated from many big YouTubers who play the game as a job is that they feel the large number of runes is becoming more equivalent to the big LIST of the crafting bench and so why not just dissolve the system down to the bench. They feel it is more user friendly and I want to state how I feel like they are missing why making each rune an item does something different. A new player DOESN'T own the stash tab for runes. They genuinely have no CLUE how many exist in the game. For them a socketable is a drop that they have to read 1 line of text to understand and can determine if they think it’s valuable then and there. There is no bloat, it is a granular case by case system. They read and then save if they believe it’s valuable or could just drop them when they think it’s not. The bench is a large enough list with many different costs and affixes all hitting you at once (so far as I understand at specific unlock points) whilst it is easier for players who have already read and mastered the game to find it all in one convenient place. In general it is worse the more stuff there is in one spot for a new player. It should make you think of that first time experience showing Poe to a friend and they open the passive tree and LOG OFF then and there. It’s the EXACT same thing with a bench and list of affixes. Now I’ve also heard a ton of feedback about not getting all the runes you want or need to gear up before specific bosses and to that I wonder. I’ve not had a problem of needing resistances or attributes in the campaign really. If you save gear and swap especially rings I just cruise right through. Not the FASTEST but nevertheless quite easily. The ONLY resist I wish for is chaos for act 3. Many damage sources hit like a truck there without any chaos resistance. It doesn’t mean that this isn’t a fixable thing within the rune system. I’ve heard of suggestions about giving “resistance rune” that allows you to pick which one it is at a bench and to that I say why not just let you pick when you attempt to SOCKET them. Like this would help give agency and I’m all for this. But I wonder, I feel like many campaign re-runners just don’t really pick up gear LOOKING for upgrades they try to play faster and therefore ONLY pick up rares or currency… idk but I’ve found it definitely very manageable and that I didn’t need any help AT ALL to complete the campaign. Nor did I feel like I had to reach res cap or anything or even go through difficult processes to regear for any one boss. One negative aside from the massive list the crafting bench brings is a baseline to gear that isn’t really present in Poe 2 and I think it’s part of what makes ground loot more valuable to pick up early. The crafting bench can be done LAST so any item with 4 useful affix’s gets a 5th useful affix every time. It is pretty damn powerful in that sense. Sure these mods get eclipsed by late game but runes are PURELY additive at all stages of the game unlike the bench and until this update have ZERO impact on the items affixes. This difference isn’t really pointed out a lot either in peoples videos requesting the bench and I feel like it makes the rune system better in the long term because gearing is harder for longer. Maybe I am misunderstanding what I’m reading about the bench but looking at poedb for it, it has 800 different tags under “crafting bench”. This seems like a system that even I who has 500 hours in Poe 2 would be like ok I have to take a second to understand this and probably have a lot of reading. And yes I understand not all the poedb data is relevant patch to patch or displaying it properly in the in game menus or whatever you want to argue. The point is there seems to be quite a lot of recipes. Finally 1 thing that gets to be upside for the socketable system is the fact that they are items so there WILL be chase ones for them each league. Like with unique supports, this is just a good thing for longevity of scaling character power. This is why I don’t want to see them back off their stance and go back to the crafting bench system. Because I believe the pain point brought up about helping early game is solvable and the upside of the system is more valuable than Poe 1’s crafting bench because it is just additive on top of the affix’s not in place of them. It makes gearing even MORE fun imo. Anyways that’s enough yap from me. What do you guys think? If I really misunderstood something about the mechanics of the bench or you disagree with my take on new players not experiencing BLOAT about runes let me know? I actually want to have someone read what I had to say and disagree and tell me their thoughts because listening to so many podcasts I wished several times I could talk to the YouTubers to share this perspective of mine. Last edited by BadAtMid#0454 on May 17, 2026, 6:29:03 AM Last bumped on May 21, 2026, 2:14:23 PM
|
|
|
runes are the same as crafting bench but instead of scrolling through the mods in the bench you scroll through the runes in faustus, is people dumb and not realize that?
|
|
|
the crafting bench is "better" because of how it heIps with crafting/determinism crafting. unveiI aren't the same i feeI
|
|
" I think there is a difference like I stated in the post. There is just less intimidation at first for a BRAND new player. They don't know what's out there and never really SUDDENLY need to know until they make that purchase or decide to go to that third party website. Maybe an argument can be made for the TRADE MARKET being a problem then as well... I didn't really think of that I guess the only thing I want to hear is if you think they are the same do you not care yourself which is in the game or would you rather them just use the crafting bench because I agree that once you take that step they become really similar but the difference I identify with is that runes are purely additive in the late game where is the bench is competing with affix space? |
|
|
yeah the only real difference is that runes add one more stat to your item and crafting bench takes 1 stat to be used, so yeah runes are more op than crafting bench late game and new players witnessing the rune stash tab might have several strokes.
|
|
" Determinism is something I DONT want to see a lot of in the start of poe 2 really personally. Why are we desiring for determinism when we should want this to be the longest time we can the play the game and enjoy it for when its the freshest version of itself it ever will be. Eventually even these good graphics will look old and the load times and code bases will be archaic. Then we can have more determinism because this will be someone's 100th run through the campaign not their 9th. I hated the homogenizing omen for its determinism where do you stand on that or did you not play during it? Obviously I don't think their implementation of the bench will be as good as they were but, more determinism makes gearing take less time and make ground loot less rewarding... |
|
" The comparison doesn’t really hold up in practice. Runes are limited and consumable, while the crafting bench in PoE 1 was effectively permanent and very low-cost to use. Because of that, the accessibility and opportunity cost between the two systems are quite different. |
|
" I marked you the point where you were talking about the tags of the crafting bench and I would like to ask you to start rather there before answering any other aspect of my post. Cause that seems to be for me the main reason of your misunderstanding the bench and the runes. ----------->Yes you do...<---------- You can find this line once again with searching the page with "CTRL+F" in case you didn't know. Also I didn't checked for mistakes or typos, so please excuse them, but tell me if something seems to make no sense or is not understandable. " What would be the problem or the negative about having this one rune permanently and for a low cost to recraft it on gear, instead of having heavy punishing prices on them and making them not only hard to find in campaign but literally uesless for anything else as 1 purpose,... which is damage? " Which again speaks for a crafting bench, that adds recipes, if you picked up one rune of a type and can use that rune as a craft with several effects, the way PoE 1 crafting bench worked. You find recipes along your path in the campaign, read them, could understand them and didn't had to have a stash tab or several 100 or 1000th of ex to obtain them when they get relevant. " Therefore a new player rather keeps any unnecessary and bad items they find and get mad about the limited storage space instead of sorting properly or getting a lootfilter, cause how they are able to tell if that item is actually worthless for them? They cannot! " If you ignore it till you get all recipes which is not likely, yes. But to begin your choices will also be limited, you don't get a wast amount of different recipes, you rather get a small list of 8 crafts and them split in between prefix and suffixes which makes a new player maybe wonder how that is of importance, which will lead him to more knowledge that is important for the game and crafting. " I personally cannot relate to that. I opened the skill tree and was amazed by it and wanted to explore all nodes and see whats possible. You could say the same about people playing factorio, where the game literally craps you with several dozens of building lines and overwhelms anything to explore, the game literally runs you over with the urgent feeling of "you never can build big enough to make it actually enough or matter", but some seem to like it. But you seem to have a really disturbing sense of a crafting bench and rather see a inconsequent system that is punishing for every new player which buffles me. " Sorry to say that, but that is rather part of a bigger problem. Cause bosses got literally tuned down to oblivion, set to be easily doable with no gear, cause the sources of player power are so limited. Cause runes aren't available at the time we need them and are scarce in most cases to the point they got irrelevant. The bosses in 0.1 were fun and engaging, every new boss implemented into the game was already nerfed several times and very harshly in nearly any aspect. Because player power was just extremely limited, but GGG mostly only looking for 1 - 10% of the playerbase which just rushes through all stuff in terms of gear and which have the knowledge how to get easily gear that will carry them through all content instead of the majority. Which is sad and helps nobody for real. " This is only true, partially, since most attacks/spells are based on phys damage and convert a part of their damage to chaos or the element of the boss/creep and yes chaos being the second worst damage type you can encounter since we have no meaningful way to prepare against it. But armor itself makes most of the stuff here far more easy or literal damage that clears screens. Which again is poor and sad. " Why is that? Maybe cause runes are ass? Maybe cause the gear on the ground is mostly not worth it, people not even use rares they find cause you can easily gear yourself with level uniques, which make the whole content trivial. And here again, most people up to the interludes will completely ignore resistances. They will get armour, armour applies to ele damage maybe, speed and damage, cause no other defense really matters. Since the campaign in a not league start environment is just to easy. You are the proof for that, since you just overlevel here and there, take your time with everything and have literally no problems progressing or fighting bosses, except of the one you get no real defense against. But luckily you just can do enough damage and skill to dodge the few abilities you have to endure in that time. " You mean more valuable in terms of vendoring it for more gold and being able to actually buy good gear from vendors via gambling systems? :,D Cause that is literally what is happening at the moment, since the ground loot is mostly just bad. Most speed runners also don't really use any of the crafting currency mostly. " Which again would allow the game to have more challenge and more engaging fights rather than a slog in campaign? :/ " Sry but this makes no sense to me at all. They are not purely additive or the mods we get on the crafting bench in PoE 1 are also only additive... We don't have anything multiplicative except of maybe crit multipliers. " The gearing even without a bench is harder for longer, cause we don't have nearly as much possibilities in crafting or fixing our gear in ways we had in PoE 1, switching resistances, deleting cheap specific prefixes or suffixes, blocking mods. All these things are not available in PoE 2 and already making gear progression harder as much as the new level requirements for gear. In PoE 1, the time you got throught the campaign as a normal person you finally were able to buy gear which did hold for a while at last. Like at least 20 levels if not even 30. In PoE 2, we finish the gampaign and are still forced to change the gear frequently and to invest money in trash items which we have to replace in the next 10 - 20 level once or twice again. Thats ass. People don't want to spent that much time trading, yet you emphasize exactly that. Where is the view for new and casual players in that take? There are only a limited amount of runes and at the point you see use of these other runes you will as a newbie not have any, cause as you said before they weren't worth it. Next is to go to faustus and realize that said runes were actually worth pretty much and are also pretty expensive with the few ex and maybe chaos you dropped in the campaign and used frequently in hopes to get a good mod on your gear. So your take contradicts itself in that. " Yes you do,... many of them have different tiers from which you can choose depending on the level you are and again they are not available all at the same time you get a crafting recipe normally that adds several of them, similar to runes, just that they are not as expensive and not as punishing for your stash or your understanding about the game. The current state of the game we have 64 runes which would result in 148 TAGS not including the soul cores or idols... every tag is a single mod. Which runes have 3 of them. A crafting bench had several mods and if you clicked one, you could choose between several tiers. like in a drop down menue " Which is maybe true, but there are only a fracture of recipes since tags are not recipes... the same as runes are not single tags but combine several tags in them. So you should inform yourself a bit better in this case before critizising the crafting bench I believe. Like controlling what tags mean in this subject and how many tags your preferred system would have in comparison. " The crafting bench was always something for basic uses or to get small things on your gear you are lacking, the same as the normal runes are. But again runes are just punishing and in most cases irrelevant, except of adding "#% increased armour/evasion/energy shield" later on or getting more base damage on your weapons for campaign purposes. This stuff doesn't have to be runes. They could easily say the new rune bench will make this! Keep the chase idols and soul cores, which offer a real addition to the game and the experience and not just punish new player. I'd rather see them letting me craft actual mods on my gear and let me use these sockets to get these little stats fixed I would need for int or dex or whatever I miss so that I can skill for the only stat that actually matter in the campaign, strength, to get more life! " For that they should first get to make the bosses and acts challenging again and interesting for a better re-playability... since the second toon you play will just blast through them anyway... " This is only true for the absolute endgame of the game where you already have perfect items with 6 affixes and want to get more out of the items itself, were again people mostly use 1 rune (Increased armour/evasion/energy shield). In any other case you try to fix your items in a way to make your character res capped, having the right stats to level and use certain skills or to get more damage on your main weapon. You don't add more diversity or immersion to the game with runes, you rather limit the outcome and punish new players with it. No one has 6 mods on their items that are all valuable the moment they get out of campaign or before. You have at most 4 if you are lucky. Therefore you normally always have room for a craft with the crafting bench which allows you to not change gear frequently and stick to certain items. Yes you said you had not to gear up for bosses and other things, but as example minion players cannot sleep on their sceptre, cause their meat shields are bound to it and it needs frequent upgrades or improvements as much as any other character is bound to upgrade their weapons frequently, for you it might feel like you only upgrade your gear every few days, for anyone who has some knowledge it is a matter of hours if not even minutes. And then to use runes, which are just wasted is bad. " PoE 1 was bloated with mechanics in the campaign which made the new player experience and still makes it horrible. You get league mechanics shoved down your throat without being able to deny them and for all you get quests and what not else... In the end none of them are really relevant and runes are the same. You don't really need the most and those you need you don't have or used them before and therefore regret your decision of using them, especially as a new player. There it would be rather good to get runes as recipes which you can combine or use on a crafting bench, that let you invest transmutes/augs or regals to get certain mods on the item and combine the mods with the actual costs you would have. Like if the item is white and your crafting bench offers "#% increased physical damage" use 1 transmutation orb to get that result with an open suffix. There is attack speed in a higher roll, use a regal orb to get that mod on the item. But in the current state the runes are just bad and gave GGG another reason for another stash tab which is again really really bad for new players cause the stash tab mania is some of the major reasons why people quit, since they have to spent money on "necessary" stuff to be able to enjoy the game to the fullest, in addition to currency, maps, frags and what not else... Therefore I am rooting for a rework of runes and combining them with the crafting bench similar to the essences and make sockets actually meaningful! Like with the chase idols or other runes! Stay safe! Last edited by InvisiblePosture#7553 on May 17, 2026, 1:48:45 PM
|
|
" Yes, misunderstanding. Crafting bench recipes must be found in the world before you can use them or their higher tiered versions. At the start there's only 10 crafts available. Much like runes, except benchcrafts are not gated by rng drops. the 800 tags is a total misnomer as someone else mentioned also. The # gets so high because of stuff like crafting "+(x)% to Cold and Lightning Resistances" has 4 tags (cold, lightning, elemental, resists), and the craft comes in 3 tiers and some base types dont share the same craft (crafting t3 life on a ring is different than t3 life on body armour). Hyrbrid resists alone is probably 1/3rd of that 800. Please GGG, I need my sparkly crown MTX in PoE2.
|
|
" Rather than doing what you did with individual quotes I will just pre-quote and talk about each aspect individually mostly. Firstly, The amount of tags being wholly representative of the LENGTH OF LIST is not the point. Simply put, the amount of options seems equally "BLOATY" to the amount of runes we will end up with after this update. Arguments involving simplicity in the systems are invalid from this perspective because both will be equally complex that is the point I was trying to convey. Despite the fact that the bench adds complexity the RUNES also do. When you reach new level milestones or new campaign acts, new runes become available to equip. This is "like" getting new recipes the MAIN difference I am able to spot is the impact on a new player. I'm talking about act 1-2 level of player. GGG themselves have placed the trade system at act 4 I guess this is their idea of when introducing that massive influx of information to the player is acceptable but until then menu-ing and even total different types of affixes on gear is heavily limited to help reduce complexity as much as possible. For this purpose the rune system is far superior because it is a read by read item drop case just like everything else that drops. You read and decide if you think its worth keeping. I have onboarded many friends to the game since Poe 2 launched I generally feel I have a pretty good take on learning perspectives. Something else minorly relevant is I partake in many tutoring practices and teach somewhat for a living. I do not claim to fully have experienced everyone's perspective but this is feedback from those players I've have noticed. Something else I noticed is that people who are new hate using orbs of augment, transmute and regals on gear. They just don't understand that these will #1 become abundant and #2 can have really meaningful effects. They try them, see some really shit result, and feel like they are useless. Anyways this is a bit off topic. At the point of reaching several thousand runes in inventory you do not personally care about the difference in the system. You are well invested in the game and should likely have your own tactics to deal with the runes you encounter and there are MANY tools you can use. Storage space is not a relevant limiting factor, sure one can proclaim that needing to BUY storage tabs is bad game design but POE 1 has this much worse I can imagine... I did not know to what extent each unlock progresses the bench. If it is truly only 8 or so for each step It seems like the bench isn't quite as bad and could likely be brought in this manner. Trust me I am in agreeance with agency being priority in the early rune system as well. I think and mentioned that "resistance rune" becoming your choice of resistance would be just a good addition. Just that I see no reason to justify this by making it a MENU like a bench instead of item drops. I think looking towards speedrunning is quite a bad thing for this discussion. I don't really think of anything a SPEEDRUNNER is doing to complete the game fast as NORMAL gameplay. This does not concern what the game is... they are speed running. This is a skill and talent. The systems and manners they interact with the game should likely not be "balanced around" as this is a 1% player base that is already very proficient in your game and it allows themselves to play at very high levels. I think if you were required to learn the movement tech speed runners of Mario games use to say just "beat" a level as a casual these games would SUCK. I do find the point you make about the baseline being that stronger allows for better balance a very interesting one. Unfortunately I don't think baseline items makes the difference you desire happen. The big example I will use is Johnathan's own wording when describing what life on passive tree is like. In an interview that I could find if you so NEEDED me too was this: "life on the tree is kind of like a noob trap" Basically I interpret this like them adding more baseline power makes them have to balance around it in mind thus making someone who doesn't know to take it a loser who will just die more. Then you may argue that runes are the same but because they are purely ADDITIVE this effect is not the same. When you suddenly realize that runes are, as a player, what you need to clear a certain boss you can just farm for it AND ADD it to your build. There is no decision of choosing THIS or THAT ever. No tradeoff for affix space on gear. No limitation to one per piece or no passive tree node "requirements" to meet. In this sense the system is more FREE if you had unlimited access to runes. Unfortunately it is also more POWERFUL because of this fact and they try to use DROPS as a balancing lever letting you apply runes when you think is necessary but without just giving them away. Perhaps this balance isn't quite right and that agency should be higher but I do not believe it is bad. And my biggest drawback is aside from more determinism (which I feel like is bad) The bench doesn't really make anything better like the runes COULDN'T. Its like a good rune system will just be the bench but better no? When I say additive I mean that they don't compete with other mods. Aka currency and runes don't "share" a purpose space. Runes in the giga late game apply much more power because of this fact as you probably don't need resistance to cover where you affixes are lacking anymore. The bench as far as I understand has meta crafting options similarly to the power runes can give but overall is not MEANT for that to be a additive power outlet. I don't understand why changing gear is a bad thing. Wanting or needing to change gear gets you engaging with the gear and its systems. This is part of an arpg no? I really like that Poe in general asks of me to solve lots of problems with my gear and pressures me to make MEANIFUL gear choices for longer. That I need to procure enough affixes to defend myself whilst also getting enough to attributes "equip" my stuff as well and then also get enough rarity to PUMP my loot. Like I don't actually want them to do away with pressure and replace it with determinism because I feel like I would have LESS game to play? To your final point here. Would modal early game specific runes solve your own personal concerns with the rune system? Because I also believe that such a fix for progression is possible. I do think though that to just make a blank rune for everything with tiers and change the menu into a bench system is NOT strictly better. I do believe this sort of change should really only target redundant early game runes such as the resistance rune, The defense rune (so they could change the values depending on what defense you are buffing), Recovery rune (Life on kill, or hit and mana) and damage rune for flat damage buffing. I think this is relatively low impact and fine whilst letting the DROP excitement aspect still exist. Where would you draw the line? |
|
