Looks like you never tried any creative PoE builds. Last time I played I had 3 characters:
Avatar of Fire Melee Totems (this one relatively straightforward)
Baron Necromancer (this requires you to gather 1200 strength along with minion nodes, and I ended up using Brawn jewels, Blood Magic, Brutality, and a cheap aura like level 1 mana regen just to trigger some bonuses on my minions)
Flat lightning damage Lightning Arrow/Barrage totems. Now this was something. All my base damage was from items that add flat lightning damage, including those static electricity jewels. Most bow nodes were useless, since they scaled physical damage. Between planting totems, I was plinking away with multishot Frenzy with double curse on hit. I was so amused by the build I spent like 15 exalts on it (barrage helm, sun flask, etc), though I barely managed to kill Shaper with it.
What drives me mad about playing PoE is probably my own perfectionism. Once I was through initial learning stage, I strated to really crave for loot, currency, and those sweet league prizes. But I just couldnât stop, I wanted the best tier rewards.
As a result I have 2 completed totems (Talisman and Harbinger) in my hideout. But this experience was so taxing on my nerves I lost my will to play PoE further.
Iâve done my fair share of interesting path of exile builds, and usually try to go against whatever the meta is during a current league.
Some notable build examples were my EO SoS Cremation build, my flat lightning scaling Shrapnel Shot Traps Deadeye, my Shock Nova CwC Lightning Tendrils Inquisitor, and my Ignite Proliferation Infernal Blow 2h Mace Elementalist.
At the end of the day, however, the gameplay still boiled down to one-shotting everything or being one-shot myself, so despite the vastly different mechanics of the skills, all the gameplay began to feel the same. Even Uber Elder, which I once struggled with immensely, is just something I sweep away nowadays due to the insane damage on every build.
I think thatâs why I prefer builds in this game and Grim Dawn. When monsters arenât instantly deleted and when AoE doesnât consume the screen, you begin to appreciate the tradeoffs and mechanics of each individual skill.
Another thing that I find negative about PoE is evetually you will overpowered the game, & every build is a braindead speedbuild that play the same because enemies fall like dominos, except for like less than 1% of the time against muliple stage end bosses.
Spam your AoE skill,
movement skill/piano your flasks
repeat 1 & 2.
Diablo 3 for instance, have far less builds, but most pushing builds feel different & play different. âSpam big AoE-Movement skillâ just wouldnât work for 99% of pushing builds. YOu need to know when to use your cooldown, buff/debuff, where to position, which enemies to engage, which to skip. Group them, isolate, or lead them etc. If you play in group, even more critical to know group synergy & how to compliment one another.
MP in PoE, is the ones with fastest movement & AoE skills clearing, the rest picking up left behind loot.
I want to bash POE as well, not because I think it is all bad, but because it was good, could be amazing, and puts a lot of effort into becoming worse. They somehow got into their heads that grinding was why people liked to play it, and they should make more grinds at every turn.
Itâs still better than Last Epoch (sorry devs, but itâs still beta here), so if you like this game, itâs worth looking at. In fact, most of the problems mentioned in this thread are solved if you simply play the game to about the halfway point (level 80 - 90), and only play cheap builds.
I agree with your ideas, specially with trading and bugs. GGG is very stubborn towards making a easy to use trade system, people are wasting hours just to trade, this condition of trade is literally unheard of any online game in 2019.
For the bugs part ; there are so many game breaking bugs unsolved or solved in months. It seems half of their studio resources is focusing on creating cosmetics instead of fixing damn bugs.
My only fear that EHG follows that path and falls into the greed⌠I hope not.
