Systems and designs in contradiction with each other and/or simply obsolete

I wish most people would reply with ideas on how to lead PoE2 towards what it intends to be instead of discussing or saying how it's impossible and "this is that" and "that is this" and whatnot nonsense. ARPG's aren't meant to be whatever they have been so far in every respect, just like MMORPGs shouldn't just stick to tab targeting because that's how it was in the past due to limitations or lack of creativity. Ridiculous notions supporting outdated designs.

In that respect, let me share what I personally think is essential to change/rework for starters:

1) First and foremost monster density, monster speed, monster health.

First of all, monster density should be much lower to promote deliberate combat, secondly... I strongly believe it must not be up to the players to decide the density of said monsters in most cases unless we're talking about specific challenges such as a trialmaster run or something similar. Something as wide as "monster pack size" stat needs to go away.

Large pack sizes are pretty much in antithesis with deliberate combat so they need to be much smaller and carefully controlled.

The rest of the points (monster speed/ monster health) essentially play into this as lower density monsters would have to mean they are more durable and harder to deal with and more complex fights mechanically speaking (a fairly broad move set for each enemy). As for speed, it's essentially again one of those stats that shouldn't be tempered with too much as it may completely go against skill design itself.

I've made a post about this before talking about these points in relation to pure melee skills but it does apply to everything in the end really:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3662303

2) Some base mechanics need to be heavily reworked. Which ones I am talking about? Evasion and Passive Block chance mainly.

Dodge roll and Evasion are systems in contradiction with each other. Same goes for passive block and active block.

Essentially, what needs to happen to these 2 mechanics is that they need to become ACTIVE mechanics instead of PASSIVE mechanics. They've practically already done that with active block however they still haven't let go of the old one. Now, I can't give a lot of opinions on Active block itself as I haven't tried it yet but I assume it might need some more work as well aside from just removing passive block in it's entirety.

My idea for the rest? The Evasion stat for example could be a stat that builds up towards getting limited instances of "evade the next hit" that can be accessed actively through different means and skills. Not only could this be a method to make evade an active and deliberate mechanic but it could also prove extremely useful in making melee class characters much more desirable/versatile to play.

Here's a direct example: Let's say you have 2 stacks of "evade the next hit" available, and you have a really slow skill to charge up such as Perfect Strike but perhaps you haven't built your character around stunning/freezing or electrocuting enemies. You could instead activate this stack during your channel to evade 1 incoming attack and thus successfully hitting that enemy without dying in the process. Obviously these stacks should have cooldowns and how many you have would be determined by how much evasion you managed to get on your gear and the type of skill you're using (melee, ranged or spell).

Evasion could also simply increase the distance of dodge roll as well if specced into. Some type of characters might not automatically want a longer distance roll and as such it might need to be an option through the talent tree or otherwise.

Needless to say, the stat that needs to be removed or reworked along with this is accuracy. My personal opinion on accuracy is that it should be removed as it serves no real purpose other then a pointless stat check.

3) A lot of skill rework, especially those that promote passive playstyles. Automation of skills is the nr. 1 enemy of deliberate combat.

The skills that I can think of the most when it comes to these are, of course, minion skills. Inherently minions are hard to tackle in that respect but there are ways to do it. Many ways to do it, in fact. All you need is to be creative.

Thankfully, the correct direction for that has been mildly tackled by GGG already, which is command skills. But they need to heavily expand on that concept and heavily retract on previous concepts such as passive damage and passive protection provided by the minion's existence.

The power scaling between command skills and auto-attacks should be around roughly 90%-10% respectively. Auto-attacks could provide benefits to your active command skills or some of your own skills instead of being a source of direct damage.

For example: Your X minions could stick arrows/needles or such into your enemies and you could use this as a resource for different active skill activation or command skills, similar to combo points. Most command skills you would still need to aim yourself respectively, like you need to do with Gas arrow. Generally, minions need more then one Command skill to give more options and more variety.

In terms of defensive potency, this is a bit more complicated and I don't have a perfect suggestion for this as there are specific ideas that would conflict with each other, but in general, monsters need to largely ignore your minions and go for you instead, that way it would greatly limit the defensive potency of minions. Another alternative would be for minions to share damage taken with you, which makes sense since they would be an extension of you, however this would imply much better control over your minions.

Which brings me to the perfect example of what minion gameplay should truly look like and what it should be inspired by. I'm sure a lot of you might have seen Castlevania's Animated Series latest season... but if you haven't... Maria is the PERFECT example of what the (power) fantasy of minion gameplay should TRULY look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymcl7taS3CE

Notice how she controls the movements of all her summons. SHE is in control. there's no automation there. I don't feel like this at all in PoE when I play minions, not even close. THIS is the essence that should be captured and not the idea that minions are for people that want to do nothing instead of actually playing the game.



Of course, there's a lot more to talk about other skills but this is, imo, one of the most important one that needs to be done right first.

Honorable mention for skills that need heavy rework are also trigger gems, but also in general all skills that result in a passive playstyle and automation.

4) Support Gem design goes against build diversity.
I've made a thread discussing this before. To put it shortly, Large damage multipliers on support gems were a mistake and GGG knows that yet they did not act on it in the end. Here's the thread on that specific matter:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3689783

I would honestly love to see more stuff like this in the community rather then the endless conflict of why things can't be a certain way because that's how they've always been and they hate change.

+

Decent points all around.

Point 1 I especially agree with.

So hear me out, and this is a bit of a weird idea.

-All skeletal minions have the command skill with a default 10 second cooldown; however, none of them do anything by default. They each have their current passive abilities but with tuned effect so that it doesn't do quite as much (looking at you skeletal mages, yall could stand to a couple of less passive dps)

-One additional appropriate skill gem can be socketed into skeletal minion links. Skeletal minions gain the ability to support that gem ignoring attribute requirements up to 3/4 of the primary skeletal minion's level, to work around needing a billion of every attribute but also give necessity to seeking sources of minion levels. Additional gems in the link pick up the player's modifiers to skill speed, gem level, and ailment specific effects, and otherwise use the minion's stats instead.

-Skill modifiers to attack or cast time (ie comet's +1 seconds to spell time) apply +200% to command's cooldown per second of use time in addition to applying to the commanded minion's own ability speed.

-Minions cannot use skill gems that have a cooldown, or abilities that produce remotes or other minions, or consume corpses.

-Skeletal warrior: can use active skills that require a sword or a shield.

-Skeletal Sniper: can use active skills that use a bow.

-Skeletal Arsonist: can use active spell skills that deal fire damage.

-Skeletal Storm Mage: Can use active spell skills that deal lightning damage.

-Skeletal Frost Mage: Can use active spell skills that deal cold damage.

-Skeletal Reaver: Can use active skills that use an axe.

-Skeletal Brute: can use active skills that use a mace.

-Skeletal Cleric: If left unsocketed, command casts the cleric's resurrect skeletal minion skill. Otherwise, can use active skills that produce a curse or mark (ie the direct gem, no blasphemy or chayula strike).

Pros: turns skeletal minions into a build of mixing and matching skills from a whole lot of different trees. Want to shatter a stack of frost walls with a stack of shield walls? Now theres a funny build for that.

Cons: I dunno, no more arsonists lazy mode I guess.

"

Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

So hear me out, and this is a bit of a weird idea.

-All skeletal minions have the command skill with a default 10 second cooldown; however, none of them do anything by default. They each have their current passive abilities but with tuned effect so that it doesn't do quite as much (looking at you skeletal mages, yall could stand to a couple of less passive dps)

-One additional appropriate skill gem can be socketed into skeletal minion links. Skeletal minions gain the ability to support that gem ignoring attribute requirements up to 3/4 of the primary skeletal minion's level, to work around needing a billion of every attribute but also give necessity to seeking sources of minion levels. Additional gems in the link pick up the player's modifiers to skill speed, gem level, and ailment specific effects, and otherwise use the minion's stats instead.

-Skill modifiers to attack or cast time (ie comet's +1 seconds to spell time) apply +200% to command's cooldown per second of use time in addition to applying to the commanded minion's own ability speed.

-Minions cannot use skill gems that have a cooldown, or abilities that produce remotes or other minions, or consume corpses.

-Skeletal warrior: can use active skills that require a sword or a shield.

-Skeletal Sniper: can use active skills that use a bow.

-Skeletal Arsonist: can use active spell skills that deal fire damage.

-Skeletal Storm Mage: Can use active spell skills that deal lightning damage.

-Skeletal Frost Mage: Can use active spell skills that deal cold damage.

-Skeletal Reaver: Can use active skills that use an axe.

-Skeletal Brute: can use active skills that use a mace.

-Skeletal Cleric: If left unsocketed, command casts the cleric's resurrect skeletal minion skill. Otherwise, can use active skills that produce a curse or mark (ie the direct gem, no blasphemy or chayula strike).

Pros: turns skeletal minions into a build of mixing and matching skills from a whole lot of different trees. Want to shatter a stack of frost walls with a stack of shield walls? Now theres a funny build for that.

Cons: I dunno, no more arsonists lazy mode I guess.

That's actually a really cool idea!

Maybe you didn't consider it but weapon swapping was supposed to achieve that kind of mixing for different skills from different weapons, while Minion builds are practically devoid of any use for weapon swapping considering how spirit works which is understandable (as is at least). This would essentially mirror the mix and match available to non-minion builds without actually having it.