how to make combat great

Hello.
I would like to share my ideas regarding the current combat - what is already good and how it can be improved.

1) What I like about the current combat is how the player can combo their skills in different ways together, how different skills feel (lets say use a slow windup attack vs a quick dashing attack), the build experimentation the game allows (already and likely far more with the additional skills from other characters), the well designed boss fights, when monsters have some interesting abilities and how that all ideally (and it does some times) comes together in really engaging combat gameplay.

2) However the gameplay often quickly falls apart: The combat feels best in boss fights and versus smaller groups of enemies that have interesting abilities and allow meaningful decision making in how to engage them. However with increasing monster numbers, they start more and more to feel like a generic, undistinguished monster mass that is defeated by repeatedly casting the same AoE skill (or repeating the same AoE combo) - boring. The screen also clutters with too many visual effects - many of which can not be meaningfull dodged through movement, because there are simply too many of them. A slower gameplay versus less, but stronger monsters with more interesting abilities and more player choice like which key threat targets to defeat first would do the game good.

3) Another issue is that endgame tends to the player either is being oneshot (or stunned and killed during stun and similiar things) or the monsters don't pose much of a threat. That is because the player has what feels like infinity health sustain via potions and easy potion refills. The former can be frustrating and the latter easily becomes boring. I would very much prefer a gameplay were the player can run out of health sustain in longer fights, so that avoiding damage is important, but at the same time the player isn't so suspectible to oneshots.

4) While there are some monsters with more interesting abilities like lasers that can follow you (which encourages hiding behind an obstacle, cc'ing or quickly killing the monster) or mines with legs, many have more generic projectile effects that just need to be dodged. That is fine. There is a huge potential here of adding more monsters that do interesting things and need to be responded to in different ways. That could also include new monster "archetypes" like monsters who support each other (lets say with shields, auras or buffs), monsters that get stronger over time if they are ignored (not merely damage up, but getting more abilities, etc.), monsters riding a mount (once the mount or rider dies, the other can continue fighting) or crazy new mechanics like observing monster evolution in real time (like them growing wings after a short time).

5) I also would think that monsters get more interesting, if they are designed as synergistic monster groups: if there abilities complement each other well, they can act together meaningfully as a group like more tanky monsters trying to protect the more vulnerable ones behing them or in general they just do things together (like one creating a damaging surface and the other monster pushing you into it) leads to good gameplay.

6) The game feels better when the attack telegraphs are clear visually and the screen isn't overloaded with effects. I find this to be quite well done in Sekhema already, but in other parts of the game the visual clarity really varies.

7) Builds that stack a lot of passive spirit skills are usually boring to play, because the passive skills do the work instead of the player actually doing something actively. I think this should never be the main way to play the game and the game shouldn't be balanced around players stacking lets say 3 defensive passives to make surviving easy.

8) And last but not least: the game feels best when the combat experience feels balanced: the monsters pose a serioues threat to the player, but can be defeated through skillful play. When they are neither too tanky that is takes ages to kill them nor so squishy that any more prolonged gameplay like crowed controlling them or using a combo becomes meaningless. Currently the balance is off: players can oneshot bosses (basically skipping the fight) through stacking multiple damage multipliers, the ability to survive of different build archetypes differs too much, AoE's can become screen wide (there is no engaging the monsters anymore, just mindlessly spamming the AoE), there are too many ways to break the game. The game becomes boring ones the character becomes overpowered. If thats an intended part of the game, please restrict it to gamebreaking uniques that can be avoided to keep engaging gameplay.

Fairly good and descriptive points. (I don't agree with enemy pack synergies that use aura buffs though since GGG has a history of VERY poorly balancing enemy auras)

Well written, and I agree with most of it although I think at this point in development, coding A.I. into the monsters to get the tankier one's to protect the weaker ones etc is cool, but just not realistic.

Maybe in POE3? =P