Screen Clearing Meta Makes Builds Feel Less Diverse

Did you guys play PoE1? Why all the surprise?
Campaign, being great and all, is just a small step. This game is about blowing up whole screens. Period. Me and many people love it for that.
You don't like it - well, tough luck.

I disagree with this statement because being a screen-clearing build doesn’t automatically mean you’re good at bossing or other endgame content outside of Breach. And that’s a good thing—it forces you to adjust your build to handle different mechanics, like Simulacrum, which adds depth to the endgame. These are great design choices, and GGG deserves credit for them. What’s not great, however, is the XP loss on death.

There should absolutely be consequences for death, but I don’t think XP loss is the right approach. It feels overly punitive, especially in a system that’s riddled with one-shots and, if your goal is to engage and complete all endgame content, requires constant adaptation to tackle different challenges.

It would be great IMO if there were different types of endgame content that allowed for single target damage to shine vs screen clearing buildings but so far the screen clearing builds are just used to one shot bosses too.

There will always be two kinds of builds :

Screen clearers,

and bossers.

It may be that right now,its easy to make a do everything build.

Plus I think 49% of players are playing stormweavers.

The meta is the meta.

Not sure what the real issue is here.

Diablo 2-4 : Make a character that clears enemies the fastest.
POE 1 & 2 : Make a character that clears enemies the fastest.
Warhammer Chaosbane : Make a character that clears enemies the fastest.

That's ARPGs.

Doesn't matter what the devs give us to work with, we will ALWAYS find the builds that are capable to handling 'trash' the fastest we can, that is also capable of handling bosses. It's just the way ARPGs ARE. Sure, some of them make it harder to do that, but doesn't change that the thing you are actually arguing against, complaining about?

Is the players.

Because that's who continually looks for every single bit of ability to clear enemies faster than other players.

So, what would be your suggestion? Not have spells? Because, one of the biggest clear speeds I have played so far works off of fireball (which isn't a massive AOE of any kind) triggering comets. Sure, bigger AOE, but really, do you want casters who can only throw 'darts' of magic?

Or, for mace skills... slams that make BIG coverage? Want to make all mace attacks only single target or really tiny AoE? Who really wants to do THAT?

Sorry, but what you are arguing for is a REALLY boring game that doesn't make anyone feel like they have actually grown. There's basically no power gain when all you do is hit one or two people harder (but they have more life and defenses, so it ends up feeling the exact same it always did).

End Game has devolved into who has the best lawn mower, tbh grinding maps all day gets stale real quick despite each mini game you can set up.

This is one of the biggest issues with the end game and their vision. The vision is for slow and methodical gameplay yet they introduce mechanics that actively work against that.

Breach and Delirium both reward you on a timer - the quicker you move and the quicker you kill things before the timer ends the more rewards you get. This is completely and utterly counter to their vision by encouraging you to go faster. Of course players are going to build for faster clear, we all want more rewards.

Ritual they pack full with a ridiculous amount of mobs and limit the arena size; again countering slow and methodical gameplay and encouraging the full wiping of packs of mobs in order to even survive and get your reward. You can't have slow methodical gameplay inside a restricted arena when you are swarmed by mobs.

The campaign was beautiful in following their vision. Notice what was missing from the campaign? Mechanics counter to the vision. Nothing in the campaign forced you to go faster and clear entire screens. Did it make things easier and more friendly? sure... but did you HAVE to do it to get rewards? No.

Breach, Delirium and Ritual are fine, if you want PoE1 gameplay. If you don't want PoE1 gameplay then these are terrible mechanics to have brought across. Ritual could work if you tone it down so that each ritual is 3-5 strong mobs - now you can slow down the gameplay. Breach and Delirium, or anything with a timer, is counter to the vision and needs to be scrapped entirely or completely changed. It doesn't fit the game they supposedly wanted to make.