PoE 2 new gem system concerns and thoughts

After watching D4 gameplay last few days and how skills are managed there I realized that it very much will resemble new gem system in PoE 2.
Basically in contrary to current skill/build system of PoE 1 where build revolves around one particular skill, in PoE2 and D4, builds are not limited by gem links. They are multi skill builds.

I find this bad/concerning for few reasons.

1) Atm in PoE builds are defined by that one combat skill that you use all the time and that is on full power by max links. You can in rare cases use 2x6L or in exotic cases 3 linked gems to max potential. Rest of the gems are for mobility/utility/support etc.
This gives very particular feel and flavor to every single build.

Giving player ability to have multi skill build will most likely ruin this uniqueness that we have now.

2) Having multi 6L skills will lead to balance issues. Players always strive for more power and I fear that goal will be to use combo of 6L hit/duration/dot skills on a single character while sharing same tag to maximize damage (spells especially).

3) Currently if you want to play specific skill you would make particular char for it.
If it becomes norm that you use 3-4 main skills per char, players will chew up skills faster than before and get also bored faster.
It can be compensated by giving constant influx of new gems but it will also put devs on a thread mill. And again, balance issues.

Nothing will really change gameplay wise.

The only thing that we can expect is a large push into even more damage with the ability to have a single target and aoe setup at the same time, same as a 6l aura setup along with other nice enhanced utility setups.

Builds that normally required crafted 6l gloves or helmets also benefit out of the additional 6 link setups and are more viable early on without big investments.
It also might opens up some new build types in some ways.

This is THE BEST thing that they could've made and they could also get rid of the socket colour system for that matter.
The basic game progression which is increasing the power of your skills through more support gems is extremely frustrating since you get held back so much by, number of sockets, number of links and colour types. This is the BASIC progression and it's obviously the best decision to unlock it with the skill level instead of spending horrendous and atrocious and ginormous amounts of grinded currency to just TRY TO get the basic progression on your character (And end up spending 3k+ fuses for nothing).
Also, having more skills open up for more situational skill sets instead of trying to embrace everything with just one build, making hybrid playstyles more viable than they are rn.
And at the end of the day you can simply not use those extra skill slots and 6l and experience the game in the same way PoE1 :D.
Only gains for everybody XD

Socket color and link matching on gear is one of the worst design systems they made in PoE and every time you level up a new character you feel this pain instead of actually playing the game.

At first I thought the PoE2 gem system would be shit

But then I realised it will actually be sick...

Imagine the endless possibilities to come from being able to run can you imagine to run more than 1 skill. Can you imagine all the different combos you can now run, if anything this will help balance because instead of there being one single meta, or a few OP skills... there will now be hundreds of OP skills and thousands of combonations you can run.

There will always be OP skills the question is do you want to choose between 1-10 as per the current game or 1-100 in PoE2.

The possibilities really are opened up so much

1 skill to spam is arpg philosophy of the past. 4 equaly useful skills is present day standart. i don't want POE to last in a shadow of diablo2 forever. it's time to move on and try new things

Gem link and color system is what makes POE - well, POE.

In any other ARPG i played gem sockets in gear allowed to insert a bunch of stat sticks in there. POE redesigned this from ground up and instead allowed stat boosting jewels in your passive skill tree.

Getting a 6L is a problem only in SSF. In trade leagues you usually have enough currency to buy a random corrupted 6L off trade by the end of the campaign - find your socket colors and that's it. The armor will likely have some life and resistances on it which is a nice bonus.

The new system for POE2 basically just makes every item a potential 6 link, nothing more, so all we get is more gem slots. Having one primary damage skill isn't caused by that alone, i'd argue it's not even the main reason.

Your passive tree and your items will also be tuned towards a specific type of damage and this won't change. Even if you have one hit skill and one dot skill, you can't scale both effectively so one of them will suck, 6 link or not.

I also doubt people will start using 5 or 6 different main skills that all share the same scaling simply because there is no reason to do so. At best you have a clear skill and a bossing skill, something that's pretty common even today. Or the case like with BF/BB where two skills depend on one another. Can't really imagine anything beyond that. Even D3 builds had typically one or 2 main skills for damage, rest being supports. It just makes the most sense from a game play perspective. Even if there is technically the option to go another direction, there is no point in doing so.

Just hope the balancing isn't based entirely around cooldowns coz I hated that part of D4 gameplay. This makes you pay more attention to your skill bar to track cds rather than what's happening on the screen.

Other than that, the only builds I can foresee which will really benefit from having multiple 6 links is minions, DoT builds & aura stackers. Some of it is easy to fix - Eg: dots can be changed so that the same type of damage does not stack. Minions can have an upper limit on permanent minions you can have at a time, so you have to cycle through them based on the situation, etc.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I also doubt people will start using 5 or 6 different main skills that all share the same scaling simply because there is no reason to do so. At best you have a clear skill and a bossing skill, something that's pretty common even today. Or the case like with BF/BB where two skills depend on one another. Can't really imagine anything beyond that. Even D3 builds had typically one or 2 main skills for damage, rest being supports. It just makes the most sense from a game play perspective. Even if there is technically the option to go another direction, there is no point in doing so.

That's probably the way it will play out, unless the game goes scarcity mode, so people start going for overlapping several skills that can do damage simultaneously, because you can't go ham on your main skill that easily. I can't see that happening, fortunately.

However it plays out, It's good that the option will be there. I like using multiple skills so not having to go 2h or look for a specific influenced item to get two effective setups is nice.
Looking back, I used multiple skills a lot recently, I played gauntlet with cascade/hydrosphere and it was more fun than if I used just cascade. My current league character has a selfcast and a totem balefire setup and I also got a 6L firestorm on unleash, it's nice to have when something has to go down extra fast. Freeze pulse tornado in one of the previous leagues was also pretty interesting, tornado scales indirectly so having it on 4L is fine.
One more thing I liked doing before are summoner hybrids, however those got a bit socket starved so too many skills end up underpowered. Easier hybrid characters is probably what I look forward the most about the new system.

That aside, I also have my concerns. For instance if you want to test a new gem setup now, you can just buy a trash corrupted 6L or a tabby. In PoE2 you might have to recolor your main gem or, more likely, buy another 6 linked main gem with the right colors, and that could turn out quite an expensive test.