[Feedback] Melee Summoner is not possible, no spirit for melee.

I tried POE2 at a friends place.

Tried to make a melee summoner.

Game said Nope.
So i wondered why and turns out i need spirit, ok, don't i get default 100?
Game: Nope. Go equip a sceptre for that.
Me: But i cant block attacks then!
Game: Not my problem


So yeah, I thought i'd get to try out my only class from POE1 where i have fun in the game and i literally cant.

Shield raise is cool and all but but i cant use that because no gear gives me spirit by default that also allows me to actively block.

The second weapon slot i also 200% useless, whenever i switch to it and or back i loose summoned skeletons due to lacking default spirit.

Firstly, you do get up to 100 Spirit from the campaign, plus Spirit on body armour and amulet slots of equipment, as well as sceptres. Some of these aren't options for a newly-created character, but that's the way of things.

You can use a sceptre in your main hand with a shield in your off-hand which would allow you to use active block while using a sceptre.

Weapon swap isn't going to be useful for every build.

I played the game for 4 hours in coop, I saw 0 spirit items besides the offhand sceptre which I gave up on using as switching back and forth for skeletons was a complete time waste.

Just stuck to shield and that's it. I won't spend 16 hours of playtime just so that I finally could have skeletons as melee.

Meanwhile my coop buddy Merc was rofl-bowing all enemies we came across while i was poking enemies with a mace like a child would a 200kg sumo fighter.

In poe1 i could get skill and get summons, easy peasy. In POE2 I have to bleed on my keyboard to do the same. Which isn't fun.

Welcome to POE. while you can make about any build you want on any character you want, some require more work.

As in POE 1 some builds need to be played as something else until you have access to the stuff you need. As a melee warrior you'd need to focus on being just that until you have enough spirit gear to make a comfortable summoner. Now with easier and cheaper respecs it's even more easy to switch.

This is one of the reasons GGG tired so hard to give classes some identity. In the first game, people just tried all sorts of weird builds and failed. Also reason why build guides are so important in this game: while anyone can do anything, truly figuring out the "quirky weird builds" needs more work and time many people do not have/do not want to waste.

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lupasvasile#5385 wrote:

This is one of the reasons GGG tired so hard to give classes some identity.

Which goes directly against the design the game is known for. You want to make a Summoner Ranger? Nothing's stopping you. You can even do it from the get-go, just equip a Lapis amulet and get some INT as you level. It's even completely viable, perhaps far from optimal, but it works. You got aura nodes nearby and you can travel down to the Witch/Templar area through Scion and pick up jewel sockets along the way. You cannot do this in PoE 2 - your Minions will just die all the time and you cannot save them with auras because a.) you need it on a sceptre if you want it "for free" and b.) Minions reserve Spirit, a resource you need for auras.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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lupasvasile#5385 wrote:

This is one of the reasons GGG tired so hard to give classes some identity.

Which goes directly against the design the game is known for. You want to make a Summoner Ranger? Nothing's stopping you. You can even do it from the get-go, just equip a Lapis amulet and get some INT as you level. It's even completely viable, perhaps far from optimal, but it works. You got aura nodes nearby and you can travel down to the Witch/Templar area through Scion and pick up jewel sockets along the way. You cannot do this in PoE 2 - your Minions will just die all the time and you cannot save them with auras because a.) you need it on a sceptre if you want it "for free" and b.) Minions reserve Spirit, a resource you need for auras.

Well you can't please anyone I guess. Because for many people the way they did it in POE 1 was apparently too hard to understand....which led to POE 2.
Personally I like the first game and the mega freedom it gives, and I don't find it hard either, sadly I'm in the minority group. Also not the biggest fan of the forced class identity, but I have enough experience to work around it.

Well in POE1 we had too much freedom which lead to extremely difficult balancing from the Dev's side hence on top the powercreep.


I also read that in the beginning you got 100 spirit by default and it got recently changed to 0

You can literally make a titan summoner, its not even bad, its probably just a more budget friendly version if anything. Go look at yt i forget who even made it was it ghazzy maybe? And you can go watch all the prelaunch videos about summoner builds, titan/gemling/infernalist was pretty much what everyone was theorycrafting on.

Just because you have no idea what you are doing doesn't mean something is impossible lol.

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Dragosh#2477 wrote:

Well in POE1 we had too much freedom which lead to extremely difficult balancing from the Dev's side hence on top the powercreep.


I also read that in the beginning you got 100 spirit by default and it got recently changed to 0

But the powercreep didn't come from off-meta builds like hybrids. These were barely viable already.

It came from the broken combination of some uniques and mechanics.

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Dragosh#2477 wrote:

Well in POE1 we had too much freedom which lead to extremely difficult balancing from the Dev's side hence on top the powercreep.


I also read that in the beginning you got 100 spirit by default and it got recently changed to 0

What do you mean by "recently changed to 0" ? It is 0 in the beginning for all flesh characters and we receive base spirits from quests through Acts.

My summoner with 2H mace has 150 spirit. (50 from necklace and 100 from quests.)


Edit
And we don't block hits with sceptre but shield. :P