Incline Path of Exile 2 - now available on Early Access

[jasonwh]

Welp, looks like they completely gutted all Cast-On-Trigger builds. Going from needing 1 Freeze to trigger a spell

I'm having more and more release D3 vibes - mostly useless uniques, general paucity of loot (although now it's better), skills tied to levels (so until I've got sunder on my Titan in the end of A3, my ST dps was nil, but now I melt stuff in like 5 hits or so despite choosing tanky ascendancy nodes, probably it'll also get nerfed), anything that provides this very PoE1-endemic feeling that you've broken the system is getting mercilessly gutted by the devs (like CM Diamond Skin/Energy armor Wizard did in D3 or its barb analogue).

re's just too much travel nodes and the pathing basically has 1-2 options ALL of the time.

For that they'd probably have to redo the stat requirements for the gems - I was basically forced to take plain stat nodes because I didn't have required str (100 or 90, don't remember) to level up / obtain certain skill gems. I fear it'd just restrict most of the builds to one stat and very narrow set of skills.

I feel like they keep nerfing stuff that makes you feel OP, which is frustrating. And the travel nodes? Don’t even get me started, it feels like the pathing is super limited.

 

[Saark]

So I was playing the CoF ice sorc. Nerf dropped and I just switched back to Frost Bolt + Cold Snap for general clear with CoF Comet acting as a secondary damage boost vs large packs and bosses. Build feels absolutely fine, albeit a tad bit slower (more control of my mana though.) Meanwhile reddit is straight up losing its shit, acting like all sorceress builds are dead.

That's just reddit being reddit. I stopped reading the PoE subreddit years ago for that very reason. It was kind of hilarious watching the Gas Grenade/Arrow nerfs come in, and people cried about the build being dead -- it's still one of the strongest builds in the game, mind you.

The trigger gem situation is a bit different, since they didn't just nerf the damage. Instead of nerfing the damage, which is still good, they changed multiple angles on the mechanic, and in typical GGG fashion any one of those would've been a fine nerf, but as a whole, they basically removed all trigger-builds from functioning. That's an entire archetype that is just plain unplayable atm. As in, if your build heavily relied on triggered gems to clear while only using other skills a vectors to get them to proc, the build is dead.

I can still map fine with just Frostbomb+Icewall explosions as the main source of damage, bossing is virtually unaffected anyway, and the CoF is just a nice bonus. Before the changes, I could breeze through T15s without a worry in the world, with a single Comet trigger basically wiping the screen. But I'm also on 200+ ex gear, and many people just recently swapped to the build, built items, and invested their gold into respeccing into it. I might still be able to play it, albeit significantly slower and riskier (despite running 9k ES), but many people won't be so lucky.
That's a bit of a problem when the current solution to making the archetype work is "spend a fuckton of currency" or "respec to something else". That was not an issue present with the previous incarnation of Gas Arrow/Grenade, because it simply nerfed the damage. But this nerf didn't touch the damage at all, but nerfed every mechanical aspect of it as well. That's something much more impactful as the trigger-skill archetype is dead in the water at the moment.

It's a somewhat fixable thing though. One of the main issues of the archetype is that it only has a single cluster on the passive tree, for starters. There is also no gear other than Jewels that would allow for easier Energy generation, and if those stats were more readily available on the tree and gear, then the change they made today would actually be pretty solid. Let's see what direction GGG intends to take with this, but as it stands, meta skills are no longer something you'd want to invest into, from passive points to Jeweler Orbs to GCPs.

 

[ArchAngel]

So I was playing the CoF ice sorc. Nerf dropped and I just switched back to Frost Bolt + Cold Snap for general clear with CoF Comet acting as a secondary damage boost vs large packs and bosses. Build feels absolutely fine, albeit a tad bit slower (more control of my mana though.) Meanwhile reddit is straight up losing its shit, acting like all sorceress builds are dead.

That's just reddit being reddit. I stopped reading the PoE subreddit years ago for that very reason. It was kind of hilarious watching the Gas Grenade/Arrow nerfs come in, and people cried about the build being dead -- it's still one of the strongest builds in the game, mind you.

The trigger gem situation is a bit different, since they didn't just nerf the damage. Instead of nerfing the damage, which is still good, they changed multiple angles on the mechanic, and in typical GGG fashion any one of those would've been a fine nerf, but as a whole, they basically removed all trigger-builds from functioning. That's an entire archetype that is just plain unplayable atm. As in, if your build heavily relied on triggered gems to clear while only using other skills a vectors to get them to proc, the build is dead.

I can still map fine with just Frostbomb+Icewall explosions as the main source of damage, bossing is virtually unaffected anyway, and the CoF is just a nice bonus. Before the changes, I could breeze through T15s without a worry in the world, with a single Comet trigger basically wiping the screen. But I'm also on 200+ ex gear, and many people just recently swapped to the build, built items, and invested their gold into respeccing into it. I might still be able to play it, albeit significantly slower and riskier (despite running 9k ES), but many people won't be so lucky.
That's a bit of a problem when the current solution to making the archetype work is "spend a fuckton of currency" or "respec to something else". That was not an issue present with the previous incarnation of Gas Arrow/Grenade, because it simply nerfed the damage. But this nerf didn't touch the damage at all, but nerfed every mechanical aspect of it as well. That's something much more impactful as the trigger-skill archetype is dead in the water at the moment.

It's a somewhat fixable thing though. One of the main issues of the archetype is that it only has a single cluster on the passive tree, for starters. There is also no gear other than Jewels that would allow for easier Energy generation, and if those stats were more readily available on the tree and gear, then the change they made today would actually be pretty solid. Let's see what direction GGG intends to take with this, but as it stands, meta skills are no longer something you'd want to invest into, from passive points to Jeweler Orbs to GCPs.

How do you recover your ES ? just dodge until recharge kicks in or is there some gear or skills that help?

 

[geno]

So I was playing the CoF ice sorc. Nerf dropped and I just switched back to Frost Bolt + Cold Snap for general clear with CoF Comet acting as a secondary damage boost vs large packs and bosses. Build feels absolutely fine, albeit a tad bit slower (more control of my mana though.) Meanwhile reddit is straight up losing its shit, acting like all sorceress builds are dead.

That's just reddit being reddit. I stopped reading the PoE subreddit years ago for that very reason. It was kind of hilarious watching the Gas Grenade/Arrow nerfs come in, and people cried about the build being dead -- it's still one of the strongest builds in the game, mind you.

The trigger gem situation is a bit different, since they didn't just nerf the damage. Instead of nerfing the damage, which is still good, they changed multiple angles on the mechanic, and in typical GGG fashion any one of those would've been a fine nerf, but as a whole, they basically removed all trigger-builds from functioning. That's an entire archetype that is just plain unplayable atm. As in, if your build heavily relied on triggered gems to clear while only using other skills a vectors to get them to proc, the build is dead.

I can still map fine with just Frostbomb+Icewall explosions as the main source of damage, bossing is virtually unaffected anyway, and the CoF is just a nice bonus. Before the changes, I could breeze through T15s without a worry in the world, with a single Comet trigger basically wiping the screen. But I'm also on 200+ ex gear, and many people just recently swapped to the build, built items, and invested their gold into respeccing into it. I might still be able to play it, albeit significantly slower and riskier (despite running 9k ES), but many people won't be so lucky.
That's a bit of a problem when the current solution to making the archetype work is "spend a fuckton of currency" or "respec to something else". That was not an issue present with the previous incarnation of Gas Arrow/Grenade, because it simply nerfed the damage. But this nerf didn't touch the damage at all, but nerfed every mechanical aspect of it as well. That's something much more impactful as the trigger-skill archetype is dead in the water at the moment.

It's a somewhat fixable thing though. One of the main issues of the archetype is that it only has a single cluster on the passive tree, for starters. There is also no gear other than Jewels that would allow for easier Energy generation, and if those stats were more readily available on the tree and gear, then the change they made today would actually be pretty solid. Let's see what direction GGG intends to take with this, but as it stands, meta skills are no longer something you'd want to invest into, from passive points to Jeweler Orbs to GCPs.

How do you recover your ES ? just dodge until recharge kicks in or is there some gear or skills that help?

Energy shield? It recharges after 4 seconds without getting damage, if your gear or passives don't specific any other change.

 

[ArchAngel]

So I was playing the CoF ice sorc. Nerf dropped and I just switched back to Frost Bolt + Cold Snap for general clear with CoF Comet acting as a secondary damage boost vs large packs and bosses. Build feels absolutely fine, albeit a tad bit slower (more control of my mana though.) Meanwhile reddit is straight up losing its shit, acting like all sorceress builds are dead.

That's just reddit being reddit. I stopped reading the PoE subreddit years ago for that very reason. It was kind of hilarious watching the Gas Grenade/Arrow nerfs come in, and people cried about the build being dead -- it's still one of the strongest builds in the game, mind you.

The trigger gem situation is a bit different, since they didn't just nerf the damage. Instead of nerfing the damage, which is still good, they changed multiple angles on the mechanic, and in typical GGG fashion any one of those would've been a fine nerf, but as a whole, they basically removed all trigger-builds from functioning. That's an entire archetype that is just plain unplayable atm. As in, if your build heavily relied on triggered gems to clear while only using other skills a vectors to get them to proc, the build is dead.

I can still map fine with just Frostbomb+Icewall explosions as the main source of damage, bossing is virtually unaffected anyway, and the CoF is just a nice bonus. Before the changes, I could breeze through T15s without a worry in the world, with a single Comet trigger basically wiping the screen. But I'm also on 200+ ex gear, and many people just recently swapped to the build, built items, and invested their gold into respeccing into it. I might still be able to play it, albeit significantly slower and riskier (despite running 9k ES), but many people won't be so lucky.
That's a bit of a problem when the current solution to making the archetype work is "spend a fuckton of currency" or "respec to something else". That was not an issue present with the previous incarnation of Gas Arrow/Grenade, because it simply nerfed the damage. But this nerf didn't touch the damage at all, but nerfed every mechanical aspect of it as well. That's something much more impactful as the trigger-skill archetype is dead in the water at the moment.

It's a somewhat fixable thing though. One of the main issues of the archetype is that it only has a single cluster on the passive tree, for starters. There is also no gear other than Jewels that would allow for easier Energy generation, and if those stats were more readily available on the tree and gear, then the change they made today would actually be pretty solid. Let's see what direction GGG intends to take with this, but as it stands, meta skills are no longer something you'd want to invest into, from passive points to Jeweler Orbs to GCPs.

How do you recover your ES ? just dodge until recharge kicks in or is there some gear or skills that help?

Energy shield? It recharges after 4 seconds without getting damage, if your gear or passives don't specific any other change.

I know it does but not getting damaged for 4s seconds in middle of battle is not that easy. And you do not have potions (well there is that keystone that makes potions heal ES, maybe I should go for that one). But I would like to know from someone already doing high level maps how having ES as main defense works.
I was planning to go Grim Feast + Ghost Dance for ES recovery in addition to taking nodes that reduce time it takes for ES recharge to start.
Also was planning to mostly use ES+Evasion gear except the helmet slot that has the passive node that gives bonus ES for helm slot.

 

[tritosine2k]

keystone that makes potions heal ES, maybe I should go for that one)

First interesting fact about the game itself for me.
Cry or laugh.

 

[Saark]

How do you recover your ES ? just dodge until recharge kicks in or is there some gear or skills that help?

Don't get hit/kill enemies before they kill you. There's 2 clusters on the tree that can give over 150% recharge delay improvement, drastically shortening the amount of time it takes for ES recharge to kick in. That together with a cold-based build that chills, slows and freezes a lot, makes it almost impossible to die, once the ES pool is big enough.

 

[ArchAngel]

How do you recover your ES ? just dodge until recharge kicks in or is there some gear or skills that help?

Don't get hit/kill enemies before they kill you. There's 2 clusters on the tree that can give over 150% recharge delay improvement, drastically shortening the amount of time it takes for ES recharge to kick in. That together with a cold-based build that chills, slows and freezes a lot makes it almost impossible to die, once the ES pool is big enough.

You played OP build so easy for you to say. I plan to try to get this ED witch all the way into endgame, enemies are not slowed and they do not die quick and my minions can only keep them at bay for so long. Many just ignore them completely and jump on top of my character. I hope Bone Cage will be still be useful in maps at keeping enemies away for few seconds when they get too close although it does nothing if a rare beelines for you and it is fast.

 

[Saark]

You played OP build so easy for your to say.

As much as I can relate to this, having played absolute glass-cannon builds in the past, your survivability is ultimately down to your build choices. There's only so much you can do with shit abilities, and that's one of the biggest issues PoE2 currently has. Chaos DoT builds, Bone Damage skills and, frankly, most self-casting skills are utter trash because their damage output is just too low. Comet does about 15 times the damage of an Eye of Winter projectile, and about 8x the damage of an Ice Nova. ED at gem level 19 has about 220 base damage per second, which is just not enough to take down enemies in higher level maps (Comet's base damage is ~1.1k at the same level, for comparison).

Fundamentally, there's no way to fixing your issue, you will have to take hits and the only way to not get hit is to either avoid getting hit through skill, or higher damage. That's a choice you made by playing a Damage over Time build, enemies won't die quickly. So you can either try and increase your damage (what's your current weapon look like?) or figure out a way to kite enemies better. Frostwall would be an easy choice, you could also opt into playing a Spirit Scepter in your offhand for additional Spirit, and run Enfeeble+Temporal Chains in a Blasphemy setup. Blasphemy drastically lowers Curse effectiveness though, but maybe thats a viable option for you. You could also cast Temp Chains yourself, of course. With some curse investment (maybe even a weapon swap making use of curse nodes), that could add a bunch of survivability, but curses are very expensive on mana.

One go-to defensive set up at the moment is running Mind over Matter, use Eldritch Battery, and then play the Ghostwrithe Unique Chest, which turns half your max life into ES. Costs 1 ex. This ES does not get converted to Mana with EB, giving you a sizable boost to survivability if your ES ends up depleted. I don't know if they fixed this interaction, however.
Another option would be going into block. It's not hard to find >40% block shields, and depending on your position in the tree, you could grab some of the block nodes on the Templar side of things. You'd be able to get ~60% block without issue, and that should take care of most melee enemies.
Your best bet is going down these three avenues at the same time: Increase your damage by getting a better wand (ideally a +3 or +4 chaos skill want with some spell damage and chaos damage), better EHP by switching up your defensive setup, and lowering enemy damage through curses. You won't be able to just Contagion+ED like you did in PoE1 and survive, unless you have a 10k+ ES pool.

 

[blessed king of longing]

holy fucking shit you zogbots who reddit downvote the auction house

ive tried to buy one unique from 7 different people, NOBODY FUCKING RESPONDS. fuck you

diablo 3 all over again, doing everything EXCEPT playing the game, 10+ people now btw

 

[ArchAngel]

You played OP build so easy for your to say.

As much as I can relate to this, having played absolute glass-cannon builds in the past, your survivability is ultimately down to your build choices. There's only so much you can do with shit abilities, and that's one of the biggest issues PoE2 currently has. Chaos DoT builds, Bone Damage skills and, frankly, most self-casting skills are utter trash because their damage output is just too low. Comet does about 15 times the damage of an Eye of Winter projectile, and about 8x the damage of an Ice Nova. ED at gem level 19 has about 220 base damage per second, which is just not enough to take down enemies in higher level maps (Comet's base damage is ~1.1k at the same level, for comparison).

Fundamentally, there's no way to fixing your issue, you will have to take hits and the only way to not get hit is to either avoid getting hit through skill, or higher damage. That's a choice you made by playing a Damage over Time build, enemies won't die quickly. So you can either try and increase your damage (what's your current weapon look like?) or figure out a way to kite enemies better. Frostwall would be an easy choice, you could also opt into playing a Spirit Scepter in your offhand for additional Spirit, and run Enfeeble+Temporal Chains in a Blasphemy setup. Blasphemy drastically lowers Curse effectiveness though, but maybe thats a viable option for you. You could also cast Temp Chains yourself, of course. With some curse investment (maybe even a weapon swap making use of curse nodes), that could add a bunch of survivability, but curses are very expensive on mana.

One go-to defensive set up at the moment is running Mind over Matter, use Eldritch Battery, and then play the Ghostwrithe Unique Chest, which turns half your max life into ES. Costs 1 ex. This ES does not get converted to Mana with EB, giving you a sizable boost to survivability if your ES ends up depleted. I don't know if they fixed this interaction, however.
Another option would be going into block. It's not hard to find >40% block shields, and depending on your position in the tree, you could grab some of the block nodes on the Templar side of things. You'd be able to get ~60% block without issue, and that should take care of most melee enemies.
Your best bet is going down these three avenues at the same time: Increase your damage by getting a better wand (ideally a +3 or +4 chaos skill want with some spell damage and chaos damage), better EHP by switching up your defensive setup, and lowering enemy damage through curses. You won't be able to just Contagion+ED like you did in PoE1 and survive, unless you have a 10k+ ES pool.

Since my plan is to try Demon Form which does not use any items in hands I will not be able to use shields and stuff (I hope they improve this bad side of Demon Form, it is not powerful enough to completely shut down both hands). I am currently using spirit scepter as off hand but that is so I can have summons and Buffs but will last until I can get 3rd ascension that limits Demon Form to 10 stack that are managable to keep it on all the time.
But there is a good chance I will need to respec out of Demon Form once I hit maps or if I can get some really good weapons for maps. Currently I do use chaos wand with +2 to all chaos skills and about 30% increased spell damage and my scepter gives me extra 40 spirit or so. Build works so far and there is that build up freeze with chaos dots support at tier 3, hopefully that one helps with survivability.

 

[Saark]

But there is a good chance I will need to respec out of Demon Form once I hit maps or if I can get some really good weapons for maps.

I think one of the main issues at the moment is that there's really no good ascendancy for Chaos DoT (or curses) quite yet. I don't know if they intend to fix that when they introduce the third one, which is likely gonna be related to Occultist more so than the others, so hopefully that'll end up giving some much needed respite for some of the more dogshit builds at the moment. Sorc kind of has the same issue where neither ascendancy really support a perma-casting playstyle, it's just all procs and triggers and, frankly, it sucks to play. Spark-Archmage is kind of the only exception but that's gonna get nerfed soon enough too if I were to take an educated guess.

 

[ArchAngel]

But there is a good chance I will need to respec out of Demon Form once I hit maps or if I can get some really good weapons for maps.

I think one of the main issues at the moment is that there's really no good ascendancy for Chaos DoT (or curses) quite yet. I don't know if they intend to fix that when they introduce the third one, which is likely gonna be related to Occultist more so than the others, so hopefully that'll end up giving some much needed respite for some of the more dogshit builds at the moment. Sorc kind of has the same issue where neither ascendancy really support a perma-casting playstyle, it's just all procs and triggers and, frankly, it sucks to play. Spark-Archmage is kind of the only exception but that's gonna get nerfed soon enough too if I were to take an educated guess.

Considering how they are nerfing many builds until morale improves, eventually ED+Contagion will catch up :D

 

[Saark]

I'm having more and more release D3 vibes - mostly useless uniques, general paucity of loot (although now it's better), skills tied to levels (so until I've got sunder on my Titan in the end of A3, my ST dps was nil, but now I melt stuff in like 5 hits or so despite choosing tanky ascendancy nodes, probably it'll also get nerfed), anything that provides this very PoE1-endemic feeling that you've broken the system is getting mercilessly gutted by the devs (like CM Diamond Skin/Energy armor Wizard did in D3 or its barb analogue).

It's something I mentioned to my friends as well who all agreed. In the current state that the EA is in, there's really not a lot of choice on stats or gearing. Attributes are so hard to come by that venturing beyond your archetype is all but impossible or comes at massive cost (GL trying to satisfy the 200 int requirement of level 20 gems and also managing to pick up 100 dex for some of the monk spirit gems), gear is very binary with simply playing res on suffixes and mana+life or mana+es on prefixes (with the occasional prefit like spirit on chest/neck), and the 1-support limit also means that you essentially don't have much choice in what to socket into gems either, especially as you venture into 5L territory. All builds for a single class/ascendancy or archetype will look the exact same.

 

[Israfael]

GL trying to satisfy the 200 int requirement of level 20 gem

There is also the fact that some gems are accesible at certain gem levels, which naturally does not allow you to run things like CWDT + Vaal Molten Armour at low skill levels that are easily reached by any build / class etc. This puts even more restrictions on top of the possible choices (a somewhat moot point as all available strength auras just suck donkey balls as compared to POE1 repertoir)

 

[CountNemo]

The woke writing is annoying for sure. Everything post-PoE1 Dominus with couple exceptions is terrible, so far after half of act 2 PoE2 is even worse. The art guys on the other hand are still coomers.

View attachment 58425

how is the writing woke? lmao

 

[CountNemo]

I see reddit zoomers are screaming even more.
I would suggest everyone to play this version of the game while you can, it is only going to get worse as time passes.

why would they make this game more like PoE1 when they clearly broke the game off because they wanted to make something they like, not what "the community" forced them to do by screeching over the years?

 

[ArchAngel]

I see reddit zoomers are screaming even more.
I would suggest everyone to play this version of the game while you can, it is only going to get worse as time passes.

why would they make this game more like PoE1 when they clearly broke the game off because they wanted to make something they like, not what "the community" forced them to do by screeching over the years?

Because as soon as player numbers drop rapidly and do they not see a raise in numbers with new league/release they will panic and go back to more like PoE1.

Although the recent rounds of nerfs to strong builds that make endgame look more like PoE1 might mean the slide into PoE 1 will go slower than I expected.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE1 still exists. Go play that if you prefer that gameplay. I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to understand. On top of that, PoE2 isn't even as difficult as PoE1 Ruthless mode. There is 0 reason to turn 2 into 1.

 

[Saark]

If they fix currency acquisition rates during campaign, maybe offer a few free rare weapons or gear like the PoE1 campaign, and fix some of the overtuned bosses and shitty ascendancy methods, the game is in a great state. Mapping/Endgame drops plenty of gear and resources, and even the shittiest of rings sell for multiple ex at the moment, with every map dropping about 1-3ex in raw currency already, and that's not even juicing the maps all that much. Exalts are the new Chaos, because people regularly use them to craft upgrades, and honestly, that's not a bad thing. Once more people hit endgame and Omens and Greater Essences become more readily available, things are gonna be solid economy-wise.

 

[Kruyurk]

PoE1 still exists. Go play that if you prefer that gameplay. I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to understand. On top of that, PoE2 isn't even as difficult as PoE1 Ruthless mode. There is 0 reason to turn 2 into 1.

Criticizing something is always fine but I hate this consumer mindset of criticizing something for what it is not, as if everything should appeal to our personal tastes.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE1 still exists. Go play that if you prefer that gameplay. I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to understand. On top of that, PoE2 isn't even as difficult as PoE1 Ruthless mode. There is 0 reason to turn 2 into 1.

Criticizing something is always fine but I hate this consumer mindset of criticizing something for what it is not, as if everything should appeal to our personal tastes.

People wanting a game to be something else wouldn't have been such a big problem if we didn't have this democratisation of game design epidemic going on. Devs are too eager to listen to what some (vocal) people want and this betrays a lack of vision and, frankly, balls. They also need to learn to filter good/intelligent/reasonable/justified criticism from bad, but it seems there's a dearth of critical thinking skills amongst devs.

 

[Saark]

Ritual providing as usual.

Omen of Whittling still selling like crazy.

 

[Yoomazir]

Did PoE1 had enemies respawn when you die? It's kinda annoying.

 

[Perkel]

Did PoE1 had enemies respawn when you die? It's kinda annoying.

No.

Imho this change kind of don't make a sense with checkpoints atm. I think it will get revised.