Feedback Regarding the Rigidty of the New Skill Gem System and Skill Gem Progression

TL;DR: PoE2 treats Skill Gems as an end point of player power instead of the building blocks of player power; This is a mistake and feels bad.

The Uncut Skill Gem system, while a significant improvement in many ways, including accessibility of gems and demonstration of their effects, has in my opinion two major flaws. The first is that the system is too rigid to allow for players to experiment, and the second is that the progression is too drawn out and makes the campaign less enjoyable.

First, rigidity: The limiting of skill gems to loot drops is, frankly, a downgrade from PoE1. I think getting rid of the Siosa/Lilly Roth skill gem vendor in favor of putting that decision-making into the skill gems themselves when you first use them is legitimately one of the best decisions GGG has made coming into PoE2; It makes finding dropped skill gems feel much more rewarding and ensures that nobody 'misses' having access to the full options that skill gems provide at the appropriate time for their character progression. However, the decision to get rid of skill gem vendors completely was, in my opinion, an error. The benefit to the skill gem vendor system was that, for a fairly nominal currency investment (no gem being more expensive than 1 alt) and with no trade friction, players could freely experiment with the full universe combinations of every skill and support gem available to them.

Contrast with PoE2's system; While skill gem drops are mercifully fairly plentiful, especially from world bosses, the fact that they are inherently limited and tied to drops instead of a shop discourages players from trying different skill combinations, especially those outside the class recommendations. If you try a support, or an active skill, or especially a reservation skill that doesn't work out, it is easy to feel as though essentially wasted a fairly significant currency item, much more significant than the 1 alt that the top tier skills costed in PoE1. Additionally, it can end up severely punishing players who invest heavily in skills that end up being unsuitable for their build or for the area they're in. If a player runs out of skill gems while leveling and is unable to progress through the current, their options are to either grind the previous area, or start a new character and farm more gems that way, both of which are miserable experiences.

Second, skill pacing: In PoE1, every skill in the game is available by the end of Act 4 with some effort (traveling between Highgate and Siosa depending on if you want a A1-3 or A4 gem), and Lilly Roth becomes available right at the start of A6. For the rest of the campaign, A5-10, you can play any skill build available to you, so long as you have the player power to back it up; While it's true that some builds do not come online until late-game, those builds are never limited by their skills themselves, and the (justified) limitations on player skill progression are lifted a little less than halfway through the campaign. Additionally by providing a large-step removal at the end of A1 (Siren's Song), halfway though A3 (Sever the Right Hand), and halfway through A4 (Fury and Desire), the player feels rewarded for making campaign progress with a bevy of new tools, often ones that define their intended build at each stage of the early campaign.

Again, contrasting with PoE2: The skill gem system is tied almost purely to levels, and the level gating extends to Level 52 for active skills and level 58 for reservations, by which point the campaign is nearly completed, with Tier 3 support representing an almost solid third of all support gems in the game only dropping, similarly, from A2C/A5 and onward. While limits on skill progression are, certainly, justified, PoE2's limitations are significantly more extreme that necessary. Nothing about Ball Lighting, as an example, justifies being locked behind level 41 when the skill, near-identical in PoE1, was available at level 28. And is turning the no-cooldown dodge roll into an on-cooldown blink really such an extreme increase in character power that it justifies being hidden behind level 58? There are several more examples like this (Fireball, Flameblast, Whirling Assault just to name a few); And there is also at least one example of the reverse with Lightning Arrow, that is available at level 1, but powerful enough to form the core of high-level build strategies.

It is my opinion (as shaped by PoE1) that, by the midpoint of the campaign, a 'normal' build (i.e. one that doesn't rely on particular interactions that are only available at high level) should be using the main skill that that build intends to use well into endgame, in the manner it intends to use it. It should not, naturally, not be as powerful or effective as it ultimately will be, but that power should come from item drops and the skill tree. That way, casual players and players at season start will have an at least partial campaign experience that reflects what they will ultimately be playing for the rest of their play time for that character, improving the campaign experience for casual and hardcore players alike. PoE2 instead has a tendency to lock away character defining skill gems until at least midway through the campaign and in some cases behind levels at which a player will be nearly finished with the campaign by the time they unlock them.

Ultimately, both prongs of my feedback stem from a single point; In PoE2, the whole skill gem system is treated as an end point of player power. Having a good skill build is not seen as something that enables power to be expressed from the item drops and skill tree choices the player made, but instead a direct end of player power in and of itself. While this view is not, strictly speaking, incorrect, the emphasis on skill gems as player power instead of skill gems as an enabling factor for the other forms of player power (items, passive skills) ultimately forces the skill gem system into a restricted state that punishes the very experimentation and flexibility that PoE1 embraced and designed the original skill gem and link system to enable.

I really hate the enforcement of class fantasy and arbitrary feeling restrictions.

Mostly agree with this feedback, I suppose I'm more okay with finding gems and not buying them.

My biggest pain point I think in the entire game so far however is the vast pigeonholing and straight jacketing of weapons to skills and narrow as hell build diversity.

I feel like POE2 has about 1/1000th the build diversity of POE.

I want to EQ with Pillar of the caged gods... instead my class fantasy is restricted to only using fast quick hitting staff skills. Lame oh well, guess I'll hpe they put Brutus lead sprinkler into the game...

Oh wait thats going to be a flail 100%... wont work with EQ either... fuck.
I LOVE FLAILS and BLS might be my second favorite unique... but I wont be able to use EQ with them. LOL this shit is so cursed...

I guess I have to hope that whatever skills work with flails will be skills I enjoy using... yikes what a terrible design choice. But I'm suspecting they will be quick hitting skills as well which means RIP flails as an exciting build option for me.

I'm sad that Pillar is relegated to a best use case of ES Hand of Wisdom and Action builds using fast hitting skills. This is just massively constricting player choices for no good reason.

You took my favorite unique and my favorite skill and forbid me from using them together.

It gets worse: you gave my favorite unique a use case that is almost purely synergistic with my most hated health pool resource (ES).

All for no good or explicable reason. Just arbitrary pigeonholing.