A noobs feedback on POE 2

As the title says, i am a complete noob to both POE 1 and POE 2, having only reached the start of end game in POE 1 and currently tier 13 maps in POE 2. I am in no way some expert, nor do i claim any deeper knowledge from other games that has been made over the years.

It might be a wall of text, so you are warned now but i will try and write down both the good and bad experience, in doing my part of giving some feedback.

Overall, i do enjoy POE 2 and how it feels. Many of the skills looks fantastic and are fun to use. The locations looks good and i am also a fan of both the sound effects and music.

The different builds that i have played so far, are a Ice strike invoker monk, a rage focused Titan warrior and currently a lightning spear amazon huntress. i have tried other classes but never reached the end game with them, so i cant speak too much about those.
Of those three, i felt that the monk was the better one (Patch 0.1) and it felt like a good agile fighter with some heavy mysticismen over it, plus that the way quaterstaffs are used is a big highlight for me, after getting tired of the cookie cutter unarmed strike monk that i have seen in SO many other video games; nothing wrong with it, im just tired of it.

Being able to respec this easy, is also a huge boon for this game, making it easier for a newcomer to make mistakes and tweak their playstyle as they go along, something that i felt was making it harder in POE 1 and felt more punishable for doing something wrong.

A big surprise for me, was when i was looking at the skill gems, i saw Flails! That is a win in my book!

There is a low level unique tower shield, that when a player is using Raise shield, it open up and shows whats behind its two folds, whiling hitting the mobs with elemental exposure. A nice detail and i hope to find more of these in the future.

Those were some of the positives, now for some of the negative things.

Maces, i like the idea of them but many of those skills are just soo slow. In the case of my titan warrior, i tried all sorts of skills with him but in the end, i ended up using the normal Mace strike, as my main attack. Sure i had Sunder for hordes but it was not my main thing; Hammer of the gods for big things or those evasive mobs, that made it personal (yes, even if there is just one left, i would use it, just for them!), Armor break to make it easier to deal some physical dmg and boneshatter when the opportunity was there. Many of the other skills, just felt... lacking; like something is missing. I get the idea and fantasy of using a heavy blunt weapon but it feels slow and some skills are just weird, like rolling slam; it looks dumb to me and i only used it until i could use a different skill.

Spears, i am a big fan of those and it was seeing the huntress for the first time, that i wanted to join the early access. Lightning spear is awesome to use and it just hit the right spot for me; not many games is offering me to play as character that can throw a lightning infused spear and watch it cause mayhem over the screen! And that is actually the problem; its simply too good, there are too many things that supports, that the other skills are getting overshadowed by it. I was looking into see if i could make a ice build of a sort but either there wasnt the correct support gems, items or it was too complicated to make it worth even trying. That one fire skill with the fire beam? i like the idea but there is hardly any other fire skills among the spears, that i felt it was not interesting to try and make a fire build. Also, what is up with the backjump? it looked dumb, i see no point to the backflip.

Armor; many have said it and come up with a much deeper explonation about it but i stil feel that i should give my own take of how it was for me.
When doing the campaign, sure, armor helps and you feel like you can take a beating. Enter end game and doing maps; sure it can stil do something and i have had situations where either my warrior or huntress was saved by it but thats it. On my monk, having both evasion and Energy shield, i was able to survive alot more things because of those two defence layers that i had, especially energy shield, made it possible for me to tank alot of hits and giving more Health, then on my titan that is pure strength, armor and block, yet none of those things matter against hits that is either ground effect or none physical damage, energy shield can soak it all.

Other things.

1: Sometimes when engaging the mobs and using some skills, at times i would suddenly be out of the terrain; places like the swamp, against the Colossus and Trial of chaos were where i mostly ran into this and only once did i try, where neither mobs could hit me nor could i hit them for half a minute or so.

2: More of a small thing i noticede about raise shield; i dont know how but appearantly, my huntress who is using a armor & evasion based shield, was able to tank more hits on her Stun bar, then my titan fighter who is using a tower shield and he also had some stun threshold from passives and gear. I know that the tooltop says that evasion cant be used while using Raise shield and that it's used for this skill but stil, it feels odd to me.

3: Loot and Loot drop. This one is a weird topic for me. In patch 0.1 i saw maybe one or two divine orbs. This time, as of patch 0.2, i have found 7 divine orbs, where 4 of them came from doing the campaign with two characters. Yet, when i tried to make use of some of the atlas points, to either increase the essence drop and increase of greater, better strongboxes or more rogue exiles, it didnt feel that it had any impact at all.


As for the future, what do i hope.
Armor needs some love in some kind and maybe evasion, though that and block have helped me out, so i am not sure about those. Energy shield works good and i see no reason that it should be nerfed to the ground.
From what i have seen and observed, it looks to me that, there have been a focus on spellcasters and Dex based characters, currently we only have Warrior and Mercenary as starting around the Strength based side of the passive.
New acts with new equipment; Vanity is a bitch sometimes.
Some skills needs a redo at the design table, the same can be said about some of the ascendencies.

This is my take on some feedback. I will let others who are more knowledgeable, let them handle the number crunching and deeper details.

Hope that this was somewhat useful or not too boring of a read. I do hope that GGG will continue with adding and improving on this game. It may hit some few bumps along the way but if i didnt have faith in them doing good, then i wouldnt have bought the early access to begin with.

Heres to some good times and good gaming for all exiles.

Thank you for the feedback, it's good to have a well-balanced write-up. One thing that stood out to me:

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Dysjong#5454 написал:

That one fire skill with the fire beam? i like the idea but there is hardly any other fire skills among the spears, that i felt it was not interesting to try and make a fire build.

This is a frequent theme I'm seeing among new players and PoE 1 "veterans" (read: players used to using 1~2 skills to do all the damage): many players insist on using only the skills presented in a class. Spear (pure dex) has easy access to crossbow (dex/str) to support a fire build. Every class has access to spells that have utility even at low levels (read: low Int investment). Whether that fire build is any good is a matter of balance, but many players aren't even looking to start.

It's definitely something the devs need to consider: do they make more tutorials? Do they make more "easy skills"? Do they just write off some players and market more to others?