What this game needs..

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Veta321 wrote:

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

What I mean is POE has essentially just 2 skills:
Group 1) Kill stuff
Group 2) Buffs & Curses

Compare to Diablo, 3 for example, where each class had skills for the following purposes:
Group 1) Generate resource ("mana")
Group 2) Spend resource (kill stuff)
Group 3) Defense & Movement
Group 4) Ulimates (long cooldown skills)
Group 5) Passives (buffs)

See the difference? POE can't get too dynamic because all the skills are too tightly clusted in narrow categories. There are no movement skills. No bi-directional interactions with mana. No "panic button" skills. The game can't force players to do different things because there are only 2 things that players can do, and in every situation you always do both.

I think PolarisOrbit nailed it. While Nurvus is right that analogues exist, they don't exist in the same way.

The biggest difference between D3 combat and POE combat is that the latter lacks bidirectional mana interaction. This takes the form of group (1) skills, but they are not really necessary in POE. That's because there's already so many options for managing the mana throttle (flasks, passives, clarity, itemization). Bidirectional mana in combat would necessitate a deep mana pool, low regeneration, high damage mana-spending skills and low damage mana-generating skills. The latter could be achieved with new skills and/or support gems. For example a Mana Gain on Hit that decreases damage by 50%. This all would require major effort on the part of GGG so I don't anticipate it happening any time soon.

POE has an abundance, maybe overabundance, of group (2) skills. Because of the aforementioned options for mana throttle, these damage dealing skills are often their own resource generators and/or are sustainable for long periods. That results in stale combat and a feeling monotony. There are also few non-spam group (2) skills. Where are the viable channelling, timing and DOT skills? Incinerate is a channelling skill but I'm not sure it's high end map viable. We're definitely missing skills meteor strike and blizzard. And the existing DOTs need some love.

Group (3) defense/movement skills in POE leave something to desire. Panic buttons are very much the territory of flasks. But even our movement skills are not dynamic compared to Diablo 3. Diablo 3 balances such skills with mana drain and cool downs. We don't necessarily need cooldowns but movement skills based on the mana throttle aren't a bad idea.

POE has a severe lack of group (4) "ultimates". I agree with Nurvus that long cool downs are lazy balancing at best and more likely horrible design. But I'm not sure I like the idea of an additional "ultimate" resource. It's inelegant at the very least. That said maybe it could work, a gauge that fills up based on kills/damage dealt much like a flask. You could make it yellow and slap it on the mana orb, like shields on the life orb. Actually that might not be bad at all. Although it's again a tremendous effort on the part of GGG.

POE is doing a good job with group (5) passive buff/debuff skills. They are constantly bolstering their ranks and adding new dynamics like trigger gems.

As an aside, I think this topic merits its own discussion entirely. A feedback thread going into more depth and POE's respective combat deficiencies deserves attention.