Another problem is that often when you have the downside on the first node, your character is much earlier in progression and it makes dealing with the downside so much harder
@@Achaa2 That's also true for Witchunter with the Sorcery Ward, it's not worth to take it before you have access to the last node because the penalty can actually make him weaker than without.
Its not a downside if your build is using it as an advantage. Even if you are not its act 2+3. For someone who already played that and knows the mechanics and enemies its not hard at all.
it's like they designed those to make warrior a slow heavy hitter then another team designed all the melee skills to also be super slow -- double dipping into awful. meanwhile monk is so good i'm basically living there as a mercenary because their tree is all upsides on upsides lol.
Warrior should feel slower but hits like a truck and is a beefy man, problem is enemies are too damn fast, armour is useless, and there no way to scale your attack/cast speed on mace skills. Also there's a lack of mobility skills for Warrior.
@@blazedehart2748 There is literally no reason to take any of the -% ASPD nods. That's how you protest dumb things... you don't take them. They can give me 100% DMG, i still won't take negative ASPD, because its dumb. DMG is additive, but multiple 100% means a diminishing return on yourself. You can't even reach +100% ASPD realistically, which means taking them is just simply dumb. They need to implement skills with ASPD that can't be modified, if they want us to take those.
The idea is fine, just not well balanced atm, if you have things that covers everything the game is broken and that's less fun, a simple example would be str stacking in POE1, it's one build to deal with all, not much room for build diversity to exist, for a game like POE1 which is way pass it's lifetime not a big deal, but not for 2. When you choose hitting hard you should hit slower, and you need to compensate rest of the build accordingly, it's harder to deal with surrounding mobs when you attacks slow, so you should use block to avoid most of them, take thorns as passive damage output or use an auto hit skill like wind dancer or arctic armour (never think of it did you? Wind dancer on a low evasion character procs often, and can potentially hit hard enough, that's why GGG give the skill a melee tag, let you scale its damage with your melee skills), use minions or whatever, that's how you make a build, and most of those tools are already in the game, just hard to build around needs a change or two with future patches, but the basics are there and can be done, even if you are not good at this, there are build makers who are, like realneato like Jungroan, they really love to find those weird interaction out of stereotype thinking
Great breakdown of the issue. There's also a few more issues that make PoE2 feel a lot more restrictive than PoE1, like the access to damage conversion, attacks being locked to a single weapon type., skills that shouldn't have a weapon requirement having it, passive three node duplicity.
Weapon-locked skills are one of my biggest gripes with the game. Right now it feels like it's less of an issue, but as more and more weapons/skills are added I feel it will start to prevent creativity. The weapon swap system is there to allow for scope with this system, but I'm not sure it's enough
big agree, at least let them share among subclasses. I should be able to use Lightning Rod as a Crossbower and Plasma Blast as a Bower . Same with using Stromweave with a mace or rolling slam with a quarterstaff
I think one reason Invoker monk is so popular, is that it's ascendancy actually does have a lot of choice. You can take various 2point ascendency options, adn the 4th is "nice to have" but by no means feels required.
That's because all of the invoker''s end nodes are fairly weak. Elemental Expression requires a niche build to work, armour is weak, meditate is cool but mainly used for bossing, and trigger skills were nerfed almost immediately, and Unbound Avatar is good but it's an extra button press that is only really useful in boss fights. Leaving the earlier nodes as stronger than the end nodes.
yeah but that's also bc the 4p ones kinda suck. elemental expression is a spell for whatever reason so it has no scaling with the melee weapon you need to trigger it with, and therefore does p much no damage. unbound avatar is cool but p short and can't gain energy while it's active, so it's gonna be turned off the majority of the time even if you freeze and shock the entire screen every second. and protect me from harm is a defensive downgrade bc armor is so much worse than evasion that even though in theory it's a 20% collective stat gain, you're still worse off. compare that to the 2p ones: - free 150 spirit - extra damage + helps you trigger statuses for heralds (or whatever else) - actual solid defensive skill (as opposed to protect me from harm) - full pene if you stack crit
You mentioned all but the most egregious non-choice, that of the blood mage, where you literally have no branches as a 1st choice, and the forced choice is a debuff so high most players cannot spec into it until they get the 2nd ascendancy to "fix" it with another non-choice of getting spell vamp so they can sustain the 100% double lifetap debuff.
That's not the same. You have the choice of picking bloodmage and there is no forced choice after that. You choose and know the first node you'll get. And there are a bunch of builds including attack builds that don't take leech. Imo it's the opposite who in their right mind would pick leech which doesn't work on overcapped life while being overcapped all the time? So no force either
@@monkeyd.luffy-taro3661draining life per mana cost of each skill used. It feels horrendous in its current iteration. Once you get momentum you can maintain damage via health orbs. But if you get after death ground creep your health gets lost just as fast as you may gain it
yeah bloodmage in current state of the game is the biggest example of a poorly designed ascendancy, 4 points of your ascendancy aren't even a choice since you don't get a branch at the start and have to take the purely negative sanguinmancy node and then are forced into leech just to make up for it. the only strong node on the entire tree is sunder the flesh. every time i make a new character after the first bloodmage i started with i start feeling bloodmage is even more poorly designed. if the ascendancy doesn't get any major changes in any future league i'm playing infernalist or chronomancer (will try a druid maybe depending on what he has that we haven't seen).
I strongly agree. Another issue is that the first node of the Blood Mage feels more like a disadvantage than a benefit, and it forces players to take it. The design is actually quite interesting since you have to pick this node before accessing the powerful ones, but before reaching 3-4 points, the gameplay feels extremely difficult.
It'd be fine being a forced first node if it didnt have that additional cost part. either remove it, make it so it's just makes spells cost life INSTEAD of mana, OR, life and mana with a 50% cost reduction
I see this opinion a lot, but I actually felt super strong right after picking my first ascendancy. I suspect Grim Feast might be mandatory if you want it to feel good, but it absolutely does feel good.
Didn’t feel this at all and honestly had the opposite experience. I went ice so my crit was pretty high and I proced senguamancy a lot especially on frost walls. I really only had an issue when I tried using eye of winter exclusively instead of frost orbs. I also got life recoup and damage taken from mana first, and felt really comfortable. I did feel cheated though when ascending added life cost, but grim feast adds no cost for being able to double ES
I wanted to try the "on kill 10% chance AoE burst" on witch hunter. The problem is doing so runs you into the problem of you spent 2 points.... the other useful paths, if you arent using weapon swapping, require 4 because you cant really get full effectiveness out of just 2. Made trying to make something useful around that such a pain i just swapped what i was using.
I chose the aoe burst because i wanted aoe effect for my grenades. THe 10% chance burst is amazing because mobs that are dying to poison or ignite that didnt quite die can explode and take out every other mob with them, and sometimes if an attack takes out a weaker mob first the weaker mobs AOE explosion will kill everything instantly.
yeah culling strike is p much the only 4p branch that does anything worthwhile if you only put 2 points into it. so if you go decimate+inquisition you can't do anything with your 2 leftover points. I'm even using weapon swaps, but the only weapon set points I needed were the crossbow cluster and the bow cluster, for which the base 24 are more than enough.
To me its not choice that's the issue. Its that spending half your points on an ascendency mechanic for it to be at all good just feels bad. The first two points should always be able to stand on their own as a good option, with the later ones augmenting it further and having them force to compete with the other two point options available. Sorc ward and hulking form are the most egregious by far. In no scenario would it be a good idea to take just the bag, or to spec into just the first two points of the sorc ward mechanic. You only are nerfing your character doing that. However, I would also say that the 40% block node on warbringer is a solid two point choice. There are alot of good shield prefixes that block competes with like life and armour. And in a world where armour and shield skills dont suck and you care about scaling base shield armour, then this node is alot more valuable. Also, like you point out there are strong uniques like the ultimatium shield that have ass base block chance and this node works really well with them.
I mean that is the illusion of choice, the illusion there is that the initial nodes on branches are singular options when many of them are only usable by taking the full branch. Renly's can be useful with those uniques shield I agree, but the point still stands, unique shield or not, if you're investing in block on a warbringer then you're going into turtle charm as well
@@dreamcore_gg Thats fair. To me I just thought that its not like I feel an illusion about having a choice its just some choices cost 4 vs 2 points. I am well aware that I am being dicked down by needing to invest 4. On renlys, I think there are other options within the ascendency that compete with wanting to continue to invest in the additional block stuff with the penalty. I could easily have a tree with both warcry nodes, armour break, and renlys. Needing to invest additional passive tree points due to the penalty is a big trade off and not one that I would always want to make imo. I actually think the war cry nodes are a better example of another annoying 4 pointer. The first two points to just make corpses explode from warcries seems pretty mid. I dont know of any build that would take that and not go the infinite warcry node after.
I agree, and I'm kinda surprised that chaos monk breach skill was not mentioned as an example. The second node both gives 2x the effect of the leech and 4x the effect of the damage boost since you're not sustaining max charges you'll have both better uptime and effect. Like you I don't really agree on the warbringer nor on the pathfinder as there are (or should be) single poison builds that could use the spread and save spirit on the herald to open up other choices. Pathfinder also has 3 others that are worth taking like extra passive points and ignoring slows.
I'm SUPER surprised that you mentioned Blood Mage but didn't mention the fact that you are literally forced to take the node which drains your life equal to mana spent for every spell. Such a bs mechanic. They really should make it split costs.
I think you made a lot of good arguments for the illusion of choice, and I strongly agree. I also thought that there was a problem, but my angle was a bit different. I really dislike the idea that an ascendancy node has to be weaker, in order to compensate for the strength of the next node, i.e. titans hulking form being after a purely QOL node. This makes the impact of the first ascendancy feel very underwhelming. Further, they have stated that getting 8 ascendancy points should be a difficult task, which impacts this further, especially if the third ascendancy is the first node in a branch. Also, we only see one ascendancy that has multiple branches leading to a node (Invokers "And I Shall Rage"), which I think shows a disturbingly linearly design of the ascendancies. The nodes interact too much with each other, and are not sufficiently strong/impactful on their own. This I think reduces the diversity of using these nodes, since you are shoehorned by design, into how you should use them. This is obviously a bit hyperbole, but I am a bit concerned about the design choice. Anyway - great video, and I look forward to the next! :)
I must disagree with this whole video. Why is everyone so hurt? Ascendancy and choices? Nonsense! If you are veteran and you have build planned, you dont care about some choices, you just take best stats and if it costs 4 points, it just costs 4 points, you dont care about path. And if you are begginner and you still progressing, its just upgrade to something you already want. Whole video is just missunderstanding of asce and looking for something that no one need.
You are wrong on warbringer. There are reasons to not get the 2. note because of the penalty. Two builds come to mind with Svalinn or The Wailing Wall where the super powerful mechanic is gated behind low base block. Having the block set to 40 and not nuke it with the 2. note is very very good.
The existence of a corner case where an ascendancy is not made irrelevant due to the existence of a unique item or two does not excuse what just looks like bad design. PoE as game is supposed to grant flexibility not found in other ARPGs, but this is the opposite.
My biggest issue is we lost so much variablity with weapon locked skills. Like imagine charged staff being on dual swords or daggers when we get them. It would be easy and it makes sense because its just a energy wave on hit. This game has less choice illusion or not.
Sure, but mace andies would complain that the game is too easy when they can just add projectiles to their weapon. Not that I personally would mind, though, just saying what would be expected
You say that like there weren't weapon locked skills already in poe1, they just made it easier to visualize. That being said it would have been fun to get a few more skills more generalized, example being charged staff could instead be infuse weapon and it could interact with other charges aside from power charges.
@@paetroalexius9299poe2 skill Lock works stronger. In poe1 most skills locked in melee/ranged weapons. So you can take idk molten strike and use it with any melee weapon you want. But in poe 2 if you want to play ice strike you locked in warstaff only and have no chance to build "monk" skill with axe
@@Karregog TIL molten strike doesn't require a mace lol I guess I never saw people running anything other than that. Anyway back to topic, that doesn't really change the fact that there are a majority of skills in poe1 are designed the same way. The only things making it more noticeable are the lack of "overlapping" weapon types and total skills. They also may change skills as we get new weapons to enable their usage across other weapons when they come out (i.e. Sunder has always been on axes and maces is one I would think could potentially change after axes are added). A majority of Axe and Sword skills have a large amount of overlap in poe1 the only ones that don't wouldn't make thematic sense (hence my surprise with molten strike working with swords). Also they already have a few that work with multiple types (unarmed or with quarterstaff) which shows that they are still thinking of doing stuff like that. They may even add an extra tab on the gemcutting window at some point that is labeled hybrid or something as well for cross weapon skills (though that's pure speculation). I could also be totally wrong and they want the skills to be directly tied to whichever weapon but for now it's just wait and see.
they should've given "Giant's Blood" to Titan exclusively. The node would fit very well thematically and, as it is, it creates massive problems on the passive tree... maybe remove the backpack and the small passives node -> new 2 points = cannot be knocked back / 4 points = Giant's Blood
It feels like they designed the ascendancies as if you already had all 4 notables. My guess is because they playtested the classes at a "mid to high level" to test if they were working within expectations. The problem is that a bunch of the ascendancy notables feel wonky has heck until you get further along. There are quite a few notable pairs which need to be swapped in their acquisition order and a few that need to give you a benefit right away (or a better one) for the drawbacks they give you. Edit: There is a problem with the Stormweaver pair of nodes where the first node (Strike Twice) gives you a benefit to your Lightning Damage -> Shock Twice, BUT if you plan on going Cold Damage and you want to Shock (Shaper of Storms) you need to path through a useless node first. These nodes seem totally bizarre because depending on what you are doing either the first notable gives you nothing or the second notable gives you nothing unless you are doing weapon swaps, but in that circumstance you may feel yourself forced to take all 4 notables in the middle.
I don't agree with calling this an illusion of choice, might just be semantics on how I interpret that concept, but I do otherwise agree with your point. It is simply more interesting to have the first point function as a standalone than having it be a stepping stone to the full power of the branch. The Deadeye example is perfect for demonstrating this, in POE1 it's a genuine decision whether or not you want to invest into the back half of the branch because the first half is standalone good. In POE2 these branches are designed such that you are purchasing a completed feature in two pieces instead, you are not meant to view the start of the branch in isolation. In effect they could have compressed the branches down to a single node with "this node costs 2 points". Basically, I don't think we have an illusion of choice, rather we have less choices that are more expensive. Functional, but less interesting. I would love to see them review the ascendencies to make more of the first nodes compelling without taking the subsequent nodes into consideration.
this is indeed a semantic disagreement, he is arguing the exact same thing. the "illusion of choice" is that if you spent 2 points investing into the branch, then on your next ascendancy, you dont actually have a choice to make: you are going to complete the branch. your "choice" was already made on the first investment, and thus the second investment is a formality, not actually another meaningful choice between options.
@@Vizaru Yeah, that's why I opened with that. I just don't see this as an illusion of choice, you are simply weighing the entire branch instead of weighing it point by point. Also, I think the argument falls apart a bit if we change the perspective. We have been looking at these nodes as if they are the first ones we are selecting and have all points available. Lets say you have already selected 3/4 points on Deadeye, the two frenzy ones and removing the distance accuracy penalty for example: Gathering Winds is now a potential option but Wind Ward is not. You have to weigh Gathering Winds by itself against the remaining options. To be clear, I'm not saying all the "stepping stone" first pointers are going to be great as a final point, but in principle these decisions do still exist so I don't see them as illusions. I do fundamentally agree with the notion that these points SHOULD be worth considering in isolation, and if they aren't that's a balance issue that should be addressed.
In poe1 the first passive is the main mechanic and the second passive is an extension of that mechanic ... In poe2 the first passive is a cost and the second passive is the main mechanic
@@alexsterling5788 yes, we understand your point...but it would just be infinitely more engaging if they designed it in a way where every point matters. You may be comfortable having zero choice since it hamstrings you into pick branches, but most of us think that is copium thinking and the design is just bad. We can agree to disagree.
@@iansane1928 lol I won't agree to disagree because you didn't even read my posts 🙃 I stated in both comments that things SHOULD be changed to be more interesting. I don't fundamentally disagree with the current design, there ARE choices to make, but IT WOULD BE BETTER if they did a balance pass to make every individual point more compelling.
concerning the titan issue and your opnion on replacing the additional storage witha node to be immune topush effects,i highly approve this.i'm currently a shield charge-stomping steps with bonestorm beside which highly scale of strength stacking,and when i charge an ennemy a bit far and another big ennemy push me from the side,i often end up completely missing and just having to wait,which feels just horrible cause shield charge actually has a down time when you miss that even if the cooldown is over,there's a really small time where you won't be able to use it again,and then there will be the wind up time.the passive effect node is extremly important for my build,yet the storage capacity is just meaning i sacrifice a really important part to take the passive effect one and it feels really bad.
Hulking Form/ Colossal Capacity on the Titan, should increase your character size, melee range, and something with shoving enemies out of the away. They need to fix armour and make you thematically a bulky Titan.
I hate that Concoction Skills are locked within Pathfinder, Where PoE1 it is a normal skill so, you can combine Concoction Skills to every class instead of just one class like PoE2
Anecdotal from my titan. I absolutely prefer the idea of a large enough entity inturrupting my windup. What i find infuriating is a running bird moving me 20 meters away from my engagement because "lol youre just being pushed back" Not to mention stampede being stopped by entities the same size. Its just frustrating...
100% true Skill tree also has MANY places where there are 2 +5 attribute nodes where only one would be enough, making it feel like GGG wanted to reduce travel distance. If I wanted additional attributes, i would take them from anywhere, but having to path through them when they are not needed feels bad
It seems like a conscious decision from the developers to have these "taxes" on player power in a lot of places in PoE2. It can make for some interesting design spaces when there's an abundance of choice. However, the one place players don't have that abundance is ascendancy points. Having to "pay" 2 or even 4 ascendancy points sometimes to get access to more player power in these situations almost always feels bad. Ascendancy decisions should always be a significant boost to player power, I really don't agree with putting taxes into the coolest parts of my character decision making.
It still makes no sense to me that the Ancestral Spirits aren't considered "minions" so none of the minion passive tree nodes apply. There needs to be a way to boost the ancestral spirit damage and health.
i double checked and all seems that they do scale with minion modifiers, and additionally with totem life modifiers. What makes you think they dont scale with minion nodes?
@ That is true, but he is talking about the ancestral spirits which come from the warbringer ascendency node. And i wonder why he thinks that they are not considered minions and don't scale with minion modifiers, because they absolutely do ^^
As other people here have mentioned, Blood Mage suffers from this with the leech node when using a spell build (when excluding archmage and DD). I would prefer that the spell leech node be rolled into the first notable of the ascendancy, which would greatly reduce spellcaster survivability problems during the campaign. Then maybe change that node to something that benefits from the high life costs of spells to make blood magic more of an option if they aren't going to change mana values much. Or something else more interesting than what I can think of. The leech node feels mandatory for spellcasters during boss fights since they have moves that can easily chunk you if hit and high life costs can easily drop you low enough to die from one of these during prolonged fights (unless you have high enough dps to immediately burst them down). Alternatively, there are some desired changes that I've heard tossed around, though most certainly not all at once. 50% of mana costs converted to life costs, generally reducing mana costs as gem levels go up, making life orbs draw towards you so you don't have to hug a boss to grab them. I like the overall design of Bloodmage but that first node really needs to be improved imo.
I think you missed a really powerful example of this. Constant Gale ( You have Arcane Surge ) and Force of Will ( Your Arcane Surge is better ) on the Sorceress tree create an illusion of choice. You'll never take Constant Gale without also taking Force of Will. But if you reverse their positions, you create massive opportunities for build diversity within the same archetype. The player can choose to run Arcane Surge support, spend ascendency points on Constant Gale, or build around Aspiring Genius on the passive tree. Their build could even move from one of these to the another as they grow in power, creating a satisfying sense of progression as they get stronger. With Constant Gale as the first node in the branch, all of this texture is lost. It's weird that the Arcane Surge ascendency never wants to use "ways to get Arcane Surge" passive points or unique items.
7:58 *louder* so they can hear you in NZ. Our first thought upon seeing that node was "Why is this not something we can buy in the mtx shop?" We would also argue your larger point exists in a broader sense on the Main Passive Tree as well. Think Acrobatics, MoM, Chaos Innoculation.
Really good video. I do worry like. Even though it is EA, how much of what we have now when it comes to stuff like ascendencies is actually going to change, with there being so much of the game still missing
I think a lot of stuff like the issues discussed in the video can be fixed with adjustments to balance on each node, swapping some modifiers around etc.
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. The point of putting the downside up front is so that you can't spread out to 4 different different branches and get 4 notables that are super strong up front with no downsides. It's to make the ascendancies less strong up front by making you invest all the way down 2 branches. It's not an illusion of choice; its locking you in to fewer branches so you can't pick all the OP stuff too easily.
There's much less packed into each ascendancy in an attempt to streamline but that does come with it's downsides. Witchhunter really needs a stronger sorcery ward because without peak investment you're only getting 3.5k Life and still have to deal with Chaos damage. Can Ward apply to chaos too and a Gale Force type mechanic for losing Sorcery Ward stacks. Obsessive Rituals 25% less Armour and Evasion Rating Grants Skill: Sorcery Ward When Hit, Gain a Sorcery Warding Charge +5% more Armour and Evasion per Sorcery Warding Charge +5 Maximum Sorcery Warding Charge Lose Sorcery Ward Charge if not hit recently Barrier recharges after (8.1-10) seconds Elemental Damage [remove: from Hits?] is taken from the Barrier before your Life, Mana or Energy Shield Barrier can take Elemental and Chaos Damage up to 30% of your Armour and Evasion Rating
"One with the Storm" - Quarterstaff Skills that consume Power Charges count as consuming an additional Power Charge ---> "One with the Ascendancy" - Designer Skills that invent Ascendancy Nodes count as inventing an additional Ascendancy Node.
I think you’re spot on. The build diversity would be much more flexible if they for example: - moved “remove galeforce on hit” downside to the 2nd node - moved 50% less EV/AR to 2nd sorcery node - flipped the warbringer block nodes, but keep the downside on the 2nd node It feels like some of these nodes are balanced around being 2 point investments at a time, but don’t feel as balanced once you take the whole picture into account as half of your ascendency.
I actually think infernalist is one of the worst offenders. For most builds there are only 4 notables that do anything positive and for some builds there are only 3. You are pretty much always pigeonholed with that ascendancy, some builds get to choose between two notables that are both kinda bad on their last ascendancy but that's it.
I dont agree here. Probably one of the more interesting, powerfull and versatile ascendencies. Selfcast, minion, critbased, shapeshift, selfignite. There is so much potential on those points.
I'm guessing this is a symptom of the fact that PoE2 will have 36 ascendancies compared to PoE1's 21. Instead of adding more choice within each ascendancy, they are spreading the choices out across multiple different ascendancies. We just don't see it yet because we are missing so many ascendancies.
Yeah a lot of ascendency trees are like something Blizzard would make. Anything that says "grant a skill" and then the next node is "that skill is 50% more effective" should be reworked. The skill itself should work on it's own, whatever the follow up is could be something that has more general usefulness while maybe still affecting the previous ascendency skill. With the way it is, you don't get the real skill unless you spend 2/4 ascendency nodes on it
the being knocked around, the crowd control and the invisible walls and thin corridors really makes you not control your character about half of the time.
poe1 ascendancies also started like this, but as of now they are quite cool. i assume that the same will happen in poe2, as time goes on they will rework some of them and little by little we will have interesting ascendancy choices.
@@dreamcore_gg i think that some of nodes could be combined into one than put isolated choices. case by case basis. Sorc ward could be one node. Blood mage for example, it should be that base skill is default for picking ascension. this saves 2 ascension points and allows class to pick it's prefer gameplay style but some of need buffs/rework to work.
It's a pity that so many times, GGG ignore the progress they already made in PoE1 and start seemingly without having learned lessons from PoE2 in some regards though
11:50 Not necessary a bad thing to separate those 2. Cooldown manipulation is a big part of this class. There are scenarios where you want recoup to be 8 seconds! Because YOU CAN TURN BACK IN TIME! every X seconds or so... X can be under or over the 4 or 8 recoup time Depending on your build!
Can't remember from which stream I found your channel from, but I hope YT sends a lot of people your way, you are GOATED my good sir. Keep the great content coming!
I think the problem with tailwind/wind ward isn't necessarily that there's no tradeoff. The tradeoff is *supposed* to be the opportunity cost (not picking one of the other standalone 2-point passives). The problem is that the other options aren't compelling enough to consider as viable alternatives. If Called Shots was, for an unrealistic example, 100% more damage to marked enemies instead of allowing 2 separate marks (much less useful), you'd have a more meaningful choice to make between glass cannon or more balanced defenses. The actual version of called shots isn't really in the running because it's just not good enough by comparison. It doesn't really have anything to with whether tailwind mechanics have built in downsides or not. You can make every ascendancy node pure upside and still have meaningful choices via opportunity cost.
Blood Mage is also a huge issue. You instantly lose 4 ascendancy points and can only chose one of the sides. I feel very pidgeon holed to specific choices in most poe builds atm.
My problems with the Ascendancies is a bunch are either ruthlessly punishing if taken when you should be taking them (Blood Mage) or look like they should be great until you realize they don't do what you'd expect from POE1 like Gemling's Crystalline Potential since Supports don't get quality at all, so the point ends up being kind of shit.
This might be good feedback if a lot of people feel the same. Early Access though, what happens when they fill out the rest of the ascendancy orbs. My biggest negative for the game as a new player who just finished the 3 act campaign is there is no update timeline. No idea when the next update is or how big it is, is crazy. I wanna play templar and druid, paid my $30, when can game my game
Its not a choice its a choice tax. Like in darktide how some nodes force you to spend 3 points to get them. The downsides are just completely fake unnecessary "balance" for literally no reason. You're forced into it, you're punished early game, in some cases youre forced to not have an ascendancy until you have finished two trials. I have no idea why the devs are obsessed with making everything worse. Like all the "buffed" uniques getting 10 cold damage and then 30% reduced attack speed to "keep it in line". If they want poe1 to vanish forever they should at least give us asvendencies and play styles that honour its legacy
The ascendances all feel like you get 2 nodes instead of 4, which is even made so much worst by how few people even get the 4th so they are just playing with 1 "good" node and then just have a 50/50 upside/downside node.
With around 400 hours on my witch hunter, Ceremonial Ablution isnt a go-to for me. sorcery ward in itself already grants massive elemental effective hp, alongside CI, the only damage you'll ever be worrying about is physical. I just take zealous inquisition and just kill everything that gets remotely close to me. Then for pinnacle bosses, i just remove sorcery ward, CI, and zealous, and go the concentration nodes. Since around lvl 90, ive removed Ceremonial Ablution, and my witchhunter is lvl 96 now, and ive died so little since then
It is an issue, BUT I do think that is a lot less of an issue for hulking form. I do think it would be better to split Hulking form into 2 25% notes that you can EITHER invest into a bit of a boost for 2 points OR 4 for maximum bonus, but I do like the design of Hulking form a LOT and it is so powerful that it needs to be "hidden" behind one note that doesn't grant ANY player power
I think the idea they were going for was that respecing should be more popular. Like the idea of waiting for your 2nd ascendancy to truely unlock it's potential. And having the tree built like that is more deterministic on the characters play style, so rather than a illusion of choice I would say it's more of a commitment. I play a blood mage and honestly don't care about how deterministic it is.
While I do overall agree with the point that the second ascendancy point locked behind a first is largely all upsides and no downsides, I have a personal disagreement with Warbringer's block branch: Svallin is a very strong shield still which has a normal base block chance but doesn't have the increased block chance prefix and does benefit from Renly's node alone, as reaching even the reduced max block chance is difficult with just the passive tree alone unless also heavily investing into block chance on jewels. I have a Corrupting Cry Warbringer that uses the armour break node as a 4th ascendancy instead while using Svallin. I also find that too many of the Ascendancies currently are all just isolated branches, i.e A just leads to B, whereas PoE1 had more interesting design+layouts like converging paths or multiple choice branches like what the Infernalist example had.
You ought to have mentioned Bloodmage as it's the roughest ascendancy to level by far. I played BM for my first PoE 2 character and had to ignore my ascendancy until I had at least 4 points so that I could take Grasping Wounds for its 25% damage reduction. Even then, I had to use a wand with Chaos Bolt as my primary damage source so that I could fight bosses without dying until I got a spirit gem for Sacrifice. In contrast, I'm currently leveling a Deadeye ranger and it's very easy compared to BM. Deadeye is simple as I don't have to worry about picking up blood orbs just so that I don't die from using my skills.
My only issue personally is with contagious contamination. Either improve its radius by minimum 2x, make it stack with herald of plague(it currently doesn’t), OR make it spread ALL poison stacks not just one. Because in every aspect it’s worse then HoP and EVERYONE can use HoP. An ascendancy noteable should be something that no other class has. You know a reason to even pick that ascendancy. Just my 2¢
I feel like it only comes across as illusion of choice because some nodes are just terrible. Like the examples you've shown, there's no choice but to take the second node. For Tailwind, like you said you lose it on hit regardless. While it makes you incredibly evasive, the upgrade makes it so you take less damage when you rarely get hit (because you're likely going Evasion/Acro with it). This also has the downside that Armour and Energy Shield are just worse options when you take this as well, since you lose any way to inherently avoid damage. Hell, even Blocking would probably take it away because you're still being hit, you just take zero damage. Other examples are just as good, but that one in particular is so much worse because it not only forces 4 Ascendancy points to be used, but limits the use of other defenses as well. Hulking Form and Sorcery Ward are also similar in how they can pretty much warp your build around them, forcing specific passives to be taken or certain gear to be used. At the very least Huking form has a pretty big positive that it opens a lot more build variety for Warriors by making some of the less accessible stats available in higher amounts without absurdly high investment into gear. A counterpoint to Blood Mage's Gore Spike. It's strong to offset the fact that Sanguimancy essentially has no real upside. I get that it works thematically, but that also effectively means you only have three real ascendancies because of how meh it is. Also doesn't help that most of the Blood Mage's other passive are also terrible. Vitality Siphon? Leech is barely a stat. Blood Barbs? Decent enough to build around because Bleed has actual support, but very niche. Infinite Curse? Breaks or doesn't interact with most things involving curses. Grasping Wounds? Would be good if Life Recovery had better options. It isn't until you get to Crimson Power that you reach another node that is actually powerful. But to have the option of taking it you're either: A.) Not a Caster, meaning Sunder the Flesh does nothing for you B.) Not a Crit Build, meaning Sunder doesn't matter to you. In which case, why play BM at all? C.) Giving up Sunder in a build that would benefit from it, forcing gear to be extremely good to compensate (if it even can)
Witch hunter tree is infuriating to me, I love zealous inquisition and cull+decimate, but that leaves me with 2 leftover points I can't spend on anything that has even a minor benefit. Options are the following: - "Concentration" break to increase monster cooldowns (whatever tf that is lmao, sure doesn't make bosses any slower), would only do anything with 4 points where it gives a damage multiplier - Sorcery ward (already covered in video why 2p is a bad idea, upfront downside which 4p mitigates) - Weapon master, which actually does seem cool but would need a niche build to work, I swap between crossbow and bow but I'm not even using all 24 of the base weapon set points let alone 48
Aren't ascendencies as a whole not just illusion of choice but removal of choice? They really just restrict how your character is meant to be played. If choice is all we care about, then a classless system is best, every character is the same and starts at the same spot in the tree, this enables the maximum amount of choice, your character can literally do anything, at the same level of efficiency as any other character, you could respec from the best spell build into the best melee build if you wanted, with ascendencies you'll never have that choice. But then the question becomes, what determines what a choice actually is? Because to me, not taking the damage reduction node behind tailwind is still a choice, even if it's a bad choice, there's nothing forcing me to use that, I can be a glass cannon if I want to. And if you believe that making a bad choice is not a choice, then doesn't the illusion of choice start from character creation? Are we going to say that the ability to play as a saboteur is illusion of choice because only 0.3% of people have picked it?
The extra space that Titan gets is pretty critical since the class is often going for dual 2 handed maces atm. Of you are carry hot swap gear like helms or a shield boots etc, the extra space is amazing. Without it, carrying items and maps and tablets will end up being a slog fest back in hideout. So as i agree it doesnt seem to huff directly the titan. The extra spaces allows for gear swap and fun interactions for the titan without impacting the players gaming flow and time.
im in full agreement. Another thing that I recently came across that I thought would make for a top tier build is the "allies within your presence" stats. Example. The Yix amulet. And combine that with the Necromantic Talisman passive. The passive takes your amulet and gives it to your minions. Since the "Allies in your presence" stats don't give us anything if we personally use them, my natural thought process was, give it to our minions. Which then made me wonder. Is it only going to give the buff once? Or since the amulet is given to ALL my minions is it going to give me the buff per minion. You can see where this is going. A perfect Yix gives "Allies" 50% Crit Chance, 50% Crit Damage, 20% Cast Speed, and 20% Attack Speed. Now imagine having 10 minions. I don't think I could possibly give up on a 500% Crit Chance, 500% Crit Damage, 200% Cast Speed, and 200% Attack Speed buff can you? Which then lead me to thinking about that Chober Chaber Two-Handed Mace. Where all minion damage increases and decreases also affect the player... Sadly the interaction doesn't exist. Sure this isn't really an illusion of choice per say but it would be nice to have this interaction.
I hate how many harsh downsides there are on Ascendancies. It's so stupid that they took that concept that worked well for Uniques and applied it to so many other aspects of the game in bad ways that cant be built around
Preceding Hulking Form should be the node: Heisman Grants Stiff Arms Grants Full Back - Stiff Arms: character collision kinetic mass is increased by 500%. You cannot be moved by monsters. Instead, when a monster attempts to move you, they are slowed by 90%, and carried in the direction you were moving for 0.5s. - Full Back: while your stun threshold is greater than your evasion rating, your character size is increased by 20%, and you cannot be blocked by enemies. Enemies who collide with you are knocked back.
I would just settle for the preceding node to also grant "no movement speed penalty from armour" at this point. Why is big stronk man being weighed down by puny armour
I think this is more of a design choice for ascendancy in PoE2. It seems that GGG wants the 2nd point of ascendancy to strictly be an upgrade/extension of your build choice instead of having any kind of upgrade option (hence, not really an illusion imo more like streamlining the design). You can also see that in most ascendancies, there are build defining nodes (e.g. totems and shields in warbringer) and general use nodes (jade form and minus armor in a way) that further reinforces the idea that they wanted to streamline build option from the start (aka picking one build defining tree + general nodes). However, is it better than having more choice for tweaking your build? I disagree. I am always pro for more option.
What about Witch? The Blood Mage ascendancy has a great concept behind it, and I love the idea, but the Sanguimancy node is completely counterintuitive. Most spell ascendancies scale their damage by increasing gem levels, but Sanguimancy actively punishes you for that. Losing ~600 life per cast feels ridiculous and is a pure downside. There’s no way you're sustaining life with Sanguimancy's "help". In the current PoE2 meta, you can't easily get Blood Mage to 5-6k life without heavily investing in strength. Normally, you sit around 4k life, meaning you only get about 100% more multiplier from Gore Spike while losing 600 life per cast-hardly a fair trade. Don’t get me wrong, there are ways to make Blood Mage ridiculously strong. For example, I built a Poison Detonate Dead Blood Mage with infinite curses, 3.2k life + 10k ES, 18% damage taken from mana, ~2m poison DPS, and 90% fire resistance-my max hit number is insane. But you can only achieve this by avoiding all of the ascendancy’s intended mechanics, primarily by keeping Detonate Dead at a low level and avoiding all sources of increased spell levels so you’re not forced into the leech node. Alternatively, you can bypass the issue entirely by going melee, with Bleed Hammer of the Gods or Quarterstaff Blood Mage, both of which work really well. In SSF, Blood Mage performs best as either a Detonate Dead caster or a Quarterstaff build. I could understand if GGG intended for BM to be a hybrid class, but it’s clearly designed as a caster ascendancy-every small node provides specific spell bonuses rather than general ones. If, instead, these nodes gave something like “15% increased chance to apply bleed with a critical hit” without tying it exclusively to spells, the ascendancy would be much more flexible and viable. But in its current state, Blood Mage is a complete mess and one of GGG’s biggest design failures.
I'm not opposed to there being '4 point packages ' in an ascendency. I think that's actually fine. I think it's a real problem if those points are essentially mandatory. But that's a problem every time an ascendency only has one way to play it. I also think that for a lot of ascendency's the 4th point doesn't feel that important, while being the hardest one to get. That just feels slightly weird to me.
"Path of exile mostly consists of design issues." Fixed that for ya lol. They put so much time into making sure the maps were pointlessly huge, crafting was abysmal, that you had no control over the endgame, and that you are inconvenienced and have your time wasted so constantly that they didn't make anything even remotely interesting about these skills and classes, or the endgame mapping.
I see what you mean, and you make a good point. However, you lost me a bit at 4:57 (or 5:10). Saying there's no choice being made when you take wind ward because it's all upside. You get 8 ascendancy points, and there are 16 nodes. The choice is the trade off. Where else could those 2 points go? You could argue that it's stupid to take gathering winds without also grabbing wind ward, but that's not the same as saying there's no choice because it's all upsides. Even if all the nodes have nothing but upsides, the choice is "what are you NOT getting by choosing this?" Anyway, interesting video! Thanks!
Yeah I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I said it's all upside, that's not really what I was trying to convey in that example - more that tailwind on deadeye is basically a 4 point investment forgone conclusion, you're taking both notables every time (but that example in particular is also more of a balance issue because the 2-point branches on deadeye are fairly weak)
What annoys me more are the ascendancies that basically cost 4 points, like Sorcery Ward in your example. It feels like the ability is balanced around you taking both major nodes.
Sorcery ward could scale with gem level instead of requiring 4 passive points, could put a fun node similar to the Titan backpack if they feel it's too strong for just 2 points. Maybe the permanent map icons for rares and uniques?
i did think it was weird that an entire ascendancy was just a spirit skill (which has an oddly low range), but i figured maybe that's normal balancing for poe2.... nope
I disagree on PoE1 pathfinder being meaningfully if any different of a choice to PoE2. The act of building up stacks for both is such a trivially simple one that the downsides for both barely exist. It doesn't meaningfully matter wether it's on the first or the second choice.
It's not a downside losing tailwind. It's never worse than not having tailwind at all. It's just a balance thing so that tailwind is not completely bonkers.
The case of sorcery ward is a very compelling argument, but not all of these other examples are as bad as you're making them out to be. e.g., I took only half the recoup path with my sorc. There's no illusion of choice here as you can spend the other two points to get other very strong large-nodes. Deadeye's tailwind branch: You just say "why wouldn't you". All the other 4 paths are offensive, while wind ward is defensive. If you were comfortable with how well your build survives, then it would be perfectly reasonable to go down the other 4 paths. Taking wind ward/full recoup paths isn't nearly as necessary as taking the second half of the sorcery ward branch for witchunter.
I like the POE 1 Ascendency balance. Take Chieftain for example, we can take individual point and it still plays very well and its effect is noticeable. Edit: I think GGG is overthinking about POE 2 ascendency, while in the POE 1 the ascendency point we can replace it as very strong support skill or notable.
Very good thing to look at and maybe some of these ascendancies do need tweaks. I think for the Chronomancer's "The Rapid River" though you don't actually want that ascendancy unless you have a LOT more recoup than just the prerequisite "Circular Heartbeat". Recoup is not removed when you reach full life and therefor having it last the default 8s instead of 4s can help you later after you fully heal from a flask or from casting "Temporal Rift".
This is a very interesting take on the system. I don't think there's a problem with some very OP nodes being effectively 4pointers, but they are very prevalent and I wonder if there shouldn't be more where an initial buy-in 2point has ok value and from there having is a path split to 2 nodes with mid-high value. This means you could pay 4 points to finetune your initial purchase to your preference, or take both splits with 6 points to round it out even further. Stuff like lowering downsides or increasing effects would fit well there. Of course this shouldn't be very common, but then again the "very OP" 4pointers shouldn't be very common either. I think having this kind of approach could give more room for player choice without giving up on design options that require big investment to receive a big reward.
And then there's the Chonk Into to Breach branch that does not even work as a 4 pointer. You can't sustain more than 4 flames at a time. Picking up a new one simply does not extend the duration of the older ones. And don't get me started on the Darkness branch, it's hilariously bad. The first 2 nodes makes you give up Spirit altogether trading it for a maximum of 600 eHP at lvl 100. And the next 2 gives you up to 30% more damage. Chayula might be the worst designed ascendany in the whole game.
Your first example falls flat because the choice in POE2 is about whether you wind ward or you go for more DPS on a different branch. You don’t need to take wind ward, you’re not always taking it if you’ve taken gathering winds, plenty of people take projectile nodes instead. But lastly, inventory space was one of the most beloved ascendancy nodes from affliction and people are often taking titan literally just for that node.
You have 8 ascendancy points, you take projectile nodes(4 pts) you take tailwind (2 pts), you are taking wind ward. Also, nobody is clicking an ascendancy for additional inventory slots. They're taking that node because they have to take it to reach hulking form. The inventory space in affliction was free, and not tied to your build choice, in addition to being tied to the most late-game wildwood ascendancy with charms(that 95% of builds used or aspired to use in their final form)
@dreamcore hard disagree. Someone could easily be wanting to stack attack speed for a projectile build but not be dependent on just charges, and take 4 in projectiles, 2 in frenzy, 2 in tailwind. Someone could be relying on a mark and take 2 in mark, 4 in projectiles, 2 in tailwind. Your insistence that you’re going to take wind ward is just untrue for quite a few kinds of builds. That is meaningful choice right there. You need more creativity in your thinking. And no, plenty of people on the POE sub said they would league start titan specifically for the inventory node. I don’t think you remember how many people said they would take whatever ascendancy had that no matter what on the subreddit extremely often and loudly.
As soon as I saw the title of this video, I knew what this was about and immediately agreed with it. Went back to PoE1 recently and both the skill tree and the ascendancy trees are so much better.
another Issue Im having with PoE 2 is that support gems that convert damage should be allowed to be used as many times as you want the fact you can only use one at a time unless you use gemling or the unique headpiece that does the same thing as an ascendancy skill which is cool but still its an issue with that limitation
When I posted most of the POE 2 issues within the first week, all I got was nasty comments from idiot elite losers saying stuff like "game is perfect", "It's EA, skill issue" "GitGud"
For me its not an 'illusion of a choice' but more of a payment or investment in to the skill branch.Tho i do agree there are some strange design choices(great example of this is titan's hulking form). Other than that it seems more like a balance issue. Giving you a passive with a big downside for 2 points sucks in a first place, but importantly it kinda neglect the power boost you should get from your ascendancy(as if for some classes game was balanced around 4 ascendancy points, tho u get only 2 per trial as poe1). Personally my biggest issue with classes right now is that there's just not so much unique stuff for choosing a specific ascendancy.
Well, I think it's your choice to pick Gathering Winds or not, just like it's your choice to pick Wind Ward or not. Gathering Winds in PoE 2 is meant to offer you speed, and in order to maintain it, you have to build your character around not being hit, basically following the evasive character archetype. Nevertheless, you are choosing a defensive branch, sacrificing an offensive branch, but it's your choice. Nobody is pointing a gun at you when you are playing. The Infernalist though... THAT is a problematic asccendancy. The Demon Form branch "Mastered Darkness" is pure trash, no upside in picking it, you are loosing your weapons to mantain a form that only gives you a "dash".
I think the issue is also due to their game design being less focused on speedy power go zoom, that dropped the average power of ascendancies, whereas it really should not be. It makes no sense from a game design standpoint to have ascendancies be this weak
A lot of the 4 point branches on the ascendancy passive skill tree might as well be just 3 small passives followed by 1 high value notable. However if you look at it that way it is nice that you get at least something small in the intermediate stage (like 40 base block shield before getting the big block node, or getting tailwind before getting the full power potential of gale force). So in that regard it isn't too bad. However, I would prefer interesting ascenadncy choices weren't locked behind a prerequirement that gives a weaker version of the thing you want. I wouldn't even be opposed to chosing between like 8 different 2 point branches, so you can try any combination you like (or port over the searing exarch/eater of world unique jewels from poe1, which allow all those fun combinations of ascendancy passives)
witchhunter feels omega bad, the cull node feels worthless because you only take it for decimating strike + sorcery ward nodes. Both of those node branches feel bad without both. Hopefully the other ascendancies are set up differently but i doubt it
Small stupid detail: the travel node before gore spike is spell crit only...so while melee builds want to take gore for the CD, the travel node is absolutely wasted on them, maybe this is meant as a balance but it just feels pretty useless and not needed, nerf warrior i guess.
The ascendancy points were a lot like the normal passive points for me nothing was very exciting. I didn't really care about doing labs as soon as I got to them because either nothing was going to be impactful or it has the ascend from poe 1 problem you need multiple labs before you get anything you would notice. The normal passive points kind of felt the same way I either just put them all into stat nodes (because it was a pain in the ass to equip gear or gems) or I ignored them for 5-10 levels because nothing was to impactful or exciting to take quickly. The most exciting thing I wanted to rush for was using 2h weapons and a shield before I noticed I'd never be able to get the str for that before endgame.
![Expedition Is Better Than You Think! [PoE 2 Patch 0.1.1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0ZeI-VtQeFs/mqdefault.jpg)
Another problem is that often when you have the downside on the first node, your character is much earlier in progression and it makes dealing with the downside so much harder
I can see you played bloodmage...
Infernalist as well. No I don't want to to take more chaos damage early game
@@robertosnow3841 Then go with the doggo, until you get second ascendancy. Infernalist at least has options vs Bloodmage.
@@Achaa2 That's also true for Witchunter with the Sorcery Ward, it's not worth to take it before you have access to the last node because the penalty can actually make him weaker than without.
Its not a downside if your build is using it as an advantage. Even if you are not its act 2+3. For someone who already played that and knows the mechanics and enemies its not hard at all.
The downsides on nodes are just awful. Entire Strength side of the tree is filled with -% attack speed. What even is this?? Why would they do that?
it's like they designed those to make warrior a slow heavy hitter then another team designed all the melee skills to also be super slow -- double dipping into awful.
meanwhile monk is so good i'm basically living there as a mercenary because their tree is all upsides on upsides lol.
@ yes. I feel like one has to go. Either from the tree or from the gems. It’s just too damn slow.
Warrior should feel slower but hits like a truck and is a beefy man, problem is enemies are too damn fast, armour is useless, and there no way to scale your attack/cast speed on mace skills. Also there's a lack of mobility skills for Warrior.
@@blazedehart2748 There is literally no reason to take any of the -% ASPD nods. That's how you protest dumb things... you don't take them. They can give me 100% DMG, i still won't take negative ASPD, because its dumb. DMG is additive, but multiple 100% means a diminishing return on yourself. You can't even reach +100% ASPD realistically, which means taking them is just simply dumb. They need to implement skills with ASPD that can't be modified, if they want us to take those.
The idea is fine, just not well balanced atm, if you have things that covers everything the game is broken and that's less fun, a simple example would be str stacking in POE1, it's one build to deal with all, not much room for build diversity to exist, for a game like POE1 which is way pass it's lifetime not a big deal, but not for 2.
When you choose hitting hard you should hit slower, and you need to compensate rest of the build accordingly, it's harder to deal with surrounding mobs when you attacks slow, so you should use block to avoid most of them, take thorns as passive damage output or use an auto hit skill like wind dancer or arctic armour (never think of it did you? Wind dancer on a low evasion character procs often, and can potentially hit hard enough, that's why GGG give the skill a melee tag, let you scale its damage with your melee skills), use minions or whatever, that's how you make a build, and most of those tools are already in the game, just hard to build around needs a change or two with future patches, but the basics are there and can be done, even if you are not good at this, there are build makers who are, like realneato like Jungroan, they really love to find those weird interaction out of stereotype thinking
Great breakdown of the issue. There's also a few more issues that make PoE2 feel a lot more restrictive than PoE1, like the access to damage conversion, attacks being locked to a single weapon type., skills that shouldn't have a weapon requirement having it, passive three node duplicity.
Weapon-locked skills are one of my biggest gripes with the game. Right now it feels like it's less of an issue, but as more and more weapons/skills are added I feel it will start to prevent creativity. The weapon swap system is there to allow for scope with this system, but I'm not sure it's enough
@@dreamcore_gg Im copium that weapons when added will share some abilities, e.g. flail/mace, axe/maces, axe/sword
big agree, at least let them share among subclasses. I should be able to use Lightning Rod as a Crossbower and Plasma Blast as a Bower . Same with using Stromweave with a mace or rolling slam with a quarterstaff
@@dreamcore_gg are we talking about this cos its 1 weapon only? poe 1 had similiar but more weapon range
@@dreamcore_gg fuck it add a third weapon set and lower attribute requirements (this is probably too complex and not a good solution)
I think one reason Invoker monk is so popular, is that it's ascendancy actually does have a lot of choice. You can take various 2point ascendency options, adn the 4th is "nice to have" but by no means feels required.
That's because all of the invoker''s end nodes are fairly weak. Elemental Expression requires a niche build to work, armour is weak, meditate is cool but mainly used for bossing, and trigger skills were nerfed almost immediately, and Unbound Avatar is good but it's an extra button press that is only really useful in boss fights. Leaving the earlier nodes as stronger than the end nodes.
yeah but that's also bc the 4p ones kinda suck. elemental expression is a spell for whatever reason so it has no scaling with the melee weapon you need to trigger it with, and therefore does p much no damage. unbound avatar is cool but p short and can't gain energy while it's active, so it's gonna be turned off the majority of the time even if you freeze and shock the entire screen every second. and protect me from harm is a defensive downgrade bc armor is so much worse than evasion that even though in theory it's a 20% collective stat gain, you're still worse off.
compare that to the 2p ones:
- free 150 spirit
- extra damage + helps you trigger statuses for heralds (or whatever else)
- actual solid defensive skill (as opposed to protect me from harm)
- full pene if you stack crit
Where is 3.26 hiding?!
EDIT: 💀💀💀
Sorry I ate it, give me 2-6 months to digest it
3.26 Will be POE mobile release pog
Do you have thought about good or bad design for the Monk ascendancies?
Delayed for sure.
Should be finding out about it soon, thought eta was mid feb
You mentioned all but the most egregious non-choice, that of the blood mage, where you literally have no branches as a 1st choice, and the forced choice is a debuff so high most players cannot spec into it until they get the 2nd ascendancy to "fix" it with another non-choice of getting spell vamp so they can sustain the 100% double lifetap debuff.
That's not the same. You have the choice of picking bloodmage and there is no forced choice after that. You choose and know the first node you'll get.
And there are a bunch of builds including attack builds that don't take leech. Imo it's the opposite who in their right mind would pick leech which doesn't work on overcapped life while being overcapped all the time? So no force either
Debuff?
@@monkeyd.luffy-taro3661draining life per mana cost of each skill used. It feels horrendous in its current iteration. Once you get momentum you can maintain damage via health orbs. But if you get after death ground creep your health gets lost just as fast as you may gain it
yeah bloodmage in current state of the game is the biggest example of a poorly designed ascendancy, 4 points of your ascendancy aren't even a choice since you don't get a branch at the start and have to take the purely negative sanguinmancy node and then are forced into leech just to make up for it. the only strong node on the entire tree is sunder the flesh. every time i make a new character after the first bloodmage i started with i start feeling bloodmage is even more poorly designed. if the ascendancy doesn't get any major changes in any future league i'm playing infernalist or chronomancer (will try a druid maybe depending on what he has that we haven't seen).
Clearly you never played blood mage if you say such bs
I strongly agree. Another issue is that the first node of the Blood Mage feels more like a disadvantage than a benefit, and it forces players to take it. The design is actually quite interesting since you have to pick this node before accessing the powerful ones, but before reaching 3-4 points, the gameplay feels extremely difficult.
It'd be fine being a forced first node if it didnt have that additional cost part. either remove it, make it so it's just makes spells cost life INSTEAD of mana, OR, life and mana with a 50% cost reduction
i ascended, looked at the skill, refunded the points and waited until i ascended again
It also feels like you only have 6 ascendancy points, just feels bad in general.
I see this opinion a lot, but I actually felt super strong right after picking my first ascendancy.
I suspect Grim Feast might be mandatory if you want it to feel good, but it absolutely does feel good.
Didn’t feel this at all and honestly had the opposite experience.
I went ice so my crit was pretty high and I proced senguamancy a lot especially on frost walls. I really only had an issue when I tried using eye of winter exclusively instead of frost orbs.
I also got life recoup and damage taken from mana first, and felt really comfortable.
I did feel cheated though when ascending added life cost, but grim feast adds no cost for being able to double ES
I wanted to try the "on kill 10% chance AoE burst" on witch hunter. The problem is doing so runs you into the problem of you spent 2 points.... the other useful paths, if you arent using weapon swapping, require 4 because you cant really get full effectiveness out of just 2. Made trying to make something useful around that such a pain i just swapped what i was using.
I chose the aoe burst because i wanted aoe effect for my grenades. THe 10% chance burst is amazing because mobs that are dying to poison or ignite that didnt quite die can explode and take out every other mob with them, and sometimes if an attack takes out a weaker mob first the weaker mobs AOE explosion will kill everything instantly.
yeah culling strike is p much the only 4p branch that does anything worthwhile if you only put 2 points into it. so if you go decimate+inquisition you can't do anything with your 2 leftover points. I'm even using weapon swaps, but the only weapon set points I needed were the crossbow cluster and the bow cluster, for which the base 24 are more than enough.
To me its not choice that's the issue. Its that spending half your points on an ascendency mechanic for it to be at all good just feels bad. The first two points should always be able to stand on their own as a good option, with the later ones augmenting it further and having them force to compete with the other two point options available. Sorc ward and hulking form are the most egregious by far. In no scenario would it be a good idea to take just the bag, or to spec into just the first two points of the sorc ward mechanic. You only are nerfing your character doing that. However, I would also say that the 40% block node on warbringer is a solid two point choice. There are alot of good shield prefixes that block competes with like life and armour. And in a world where armour and shield skills dont suck and you care about scaling base shield armour, then this node is alot more valuable. Also, like you point out there are strong uniques like the ultimatium shield that have ass base block chance and this node works really well with them.
I mean that is the illusion of choice, the illusion there is that the initial nodes on branches are singular options when many of them are only usable by taking the full branch.
Renly's can be useful with those uniques shield I agree, but the point still stands, unique shield or not, if you're investing in block on a warbringer then you're going into turtle charm as well
@@dreamcore_gg Thats fair. To me I just thought that its not like I feel an illusion about having a choice its just some choices cost 4 vs 2 points. I am well aware that I am being dicked down by needing to invest 4.
On renlys, I think there are other options within the ascendency that compete with wanting to continue to invest in the additional block stuff with the penalty. I could easily have a tree with both warcry nodes, armour break, and renlys. Needing to invest additional passive tree points due to the penalty is a big trade off and not one that I would always want to make imo. I actually think the war cry nodes are a better example of another annoying 4 pointer. The first two points to just make corpses explode from warcries seems pretty mid. I dont know of any build that would take that and not go the infinite warcry node after.
I agree, and I'm kinda surprised that chaos monk breach skill was not mentioned as an example. The second node both gives 2x the effect of the leech and 4x the effect of the damage boost since you're not sustaining max charges you'll have both better uptime and effect. Like you I don't really agree on the warbringer nor on the pathfinder as there are (or should be) single poison builds that could use the spread and save spirit on the herald to open up other choices. Pathfinder also has 3 others that are worth taking like extra passive points and ignoring slows.
I'm SUPER surprised that you mentioned Blood Mage but didn't mention the fact that you are literally forced to take the node which drains your life equal to mana spent for every spell. Such a bs mechanic. They really should make it split costs.
I totally agree with this video. I wish we didn't have to spend 4 total ascendancy points just to get some of the skills.
“You’re guaranteed to be taking Ceremonial Ablution, it is a forgone conclusion” IS THIS MF DOOM?
RIP DOOM 😢
I think you made a lot of good arguments for the illusion of choice, and I strongly agree.
I also thought that there was a problem, but my angle was a bit different. I really dislike the idea that an ascendancy node has to be weaker, in order to compensate for the strength of the next node, i.e. titans hulking form being after a purely QOL node. This makes the impact of the first ascendancy feel very underwhelming. Further, they have stated that getting 8 ascendancy points should be a difficult task, which impacts this further, especially if the third ascendancy is the first node in a branch.
Also, we only see one ascendancy that has multiple branches leading to a node (Invokers "And I Shall Rage"), which I think shows a disturbingly linearly design of the ascendancies. The nodes interact too much with each other, and are not sufficiently strong/impactful on their own. This I think reduces the diversity of using these nodes, since you are shoehorned by design, into how you should use them. This is obviously a bit hyperbole, but I am a bit concerned about the design choice.
Anyway - great video, and I look forward to the next! :)
8:38 Armour should inherently scale to reduce the amount you are pushed. This node should allow you to push monsters scaling with armour as well
and dont get me started on the fact the titan tree side provides more downsides than upsides. Which is fun. so fun
I must disagree with this whole video. Why is everyone so hurt? Ascendancy and choices? Nonsense! If you are veteran and you have build planned, you dont care about some choices, you just take best stats and if it costs 4 points, it just costs 4 points, you dont care about path. And if you are begginner and you still progressing, its just upgrade to something you already want. Whole video is just missunderstanding of asce and looking for something that no one need.
You are wrong on warbringer. There are reasons to not get the 2. note because of the penalty. Two builds come to mind with Svalinn or The Wailing Wall where the super powerful mechanic is gated behind low base block. Having the block set to 40 and not nuke it with the 2. note is very very good.
The existence of a corner case where an ascendancy is not made irrelevant due to the existence of a unique item or two does not excuse what just looks like bad design. PoE as game is supposed to grant flexibility not found in other ARPGs, but this is the opposite.
My biggest issue is we lost so much variablity with weapon locked skills. Like imagine charged staff being on dual swords or daggers when we get them. It would be easy and it makes sense because its just a energy wave on hit. This game has less choice illusion or not.
Sure, but mace andies would complain that the game is too easy when they can just add projectiles to their weapon. Not that I personally would mind, though, just saying what would be expected
Agency was removed in every aspect of the game. Dumbed down for the masses.
You say that like there weren't weapon locked skills already in poe1, they just made it easier to visualize. That being said it would have been fun to get a few more skills more generalized, example being charged staff could instead be infuse weapon and it could interact with other charges aside from power charges.
@@paetroalexius9299poe2 skill Lock works stronger.
In poe1 most skills locked in melee/ranged weapons. So you can take idk molten strike and use it with any melee weapon you want.
But in poe 2 if you want to play ice strike you locked in warstaff only and have no chance to build "monk" skill with axe
@@Karregog TIL molten strike doesn't require a mace lol I guess I never saw people running anything other than that. Anyway back to topic, that doesn't really change the fact that there are a majority of skills in poe1 are designed the same way. The only things making it more noticeable are the lack of "overlapping" weapon types and total skills. They also may change skills as we get new weapons to enable their usage across other weapons when they come out (i.e. Sunder has always been on axes and maces is one I would think could potentially change after axes are added). A majority of Axe and Sword skills have a large amount of overlap in poe1 the only ones that don't wouldn't make thematic sense (hence my surprise with molten strike working with swords). Also they already have a few that work with multiple types (unarmed or with quarterstaff) which shows that they are still thinking of doing stuff like that. They may even add an extra tab on the gemcutting window at some point that is labeled hybrid or something as well for cross weapon skills (though that's pure speculation). I could also be totally wrong and they want the skills to be directly tied to whichever weapon but for now it's just wait and see.
they should've given "Giant's Blood" to Titan exclusively. The node would fit very well thematically and, as it is, it creates massive problems on the passive tree...
maybe remove the backpack and the small passives node -> new 2 points = cannot be knocked back / 4 points = Giant's Blood
It feels like they designed the ascendancies as if you already had all 4 notables. My guess is because they playtested the classes at a "mid to high level" to test if they were working within expectations. The problem is that a bunch of the ascendancy notables feel wonky has heck until you get further along.
There are quite a few notable pairs which need to be swapped in their acquisition order and a few that need to give you a benefit right away (or a better one) for the drawbacks they give you.
Edit: There is a problem with the Stormweaver pair of nodes where the first node (Strike Twice) gives you a benefit to your Lightning Damage -> Shock Twice, BUT if you plan on going Cold Damage and you want to Shock (Shaper of Storms) you need to path through a useless node first. These nodes seem totally bizarre because depending on what you are doing either the first notable gives you nothing or the second notable gives you nothing unless you are doing weapon swaps, but in that circumstance you may feel yourself forced to take all 4 notables in the middle.
I don't agree with calling this an illusion of choice, might just be semantics on how I interpret that concept, but I do otherwise agree with your point. It is simply more interesting to have the first point function as a standalone than having it be a stepping stone to the full power of the branch. The Deadeye example is perfect for demonstrating this, in POE1 it's a genuine decision whether or not you want to invest into the back half of the branch because the first half is standalone good.
In POE2 these branches are designed such that you are purchasing a completed feature in two pieces instead, you are not meant to view the start of the branch in isolation. In effect they could have compressed the branches down to a single node with "this node costs 2 points". Basically, I don't think we have an illusion of choice, rather we have less choices that are more expensive. Functional, but less interesting.
I would love to see them review the ascendencies to make more of the first nodes compelling without taking the subsequent nodes into consideration.
this is indeed a semantic disagreement, he is arguing the exact same thing.
the "illusion of choice" is that if you spent 2 points investing into the branch, then on your next ascendancy, you dont actually have a choice to make: you are going to complete the branch.
your "choice" was already made on the first investment, and thus the second investment is a formality, not actually another meaningful choice between options.
@@Vizaru Yeah, that's why I opened with that. I just don't see this as an illusion of choice, you are simply weighing the entire branch instead of weighing it point by point.
Also, I think the argument falls apart a bit if we change the perspective. We have been looking at these nodes as if they are the first ones we are selecting and have all points available.
Lets say you have already selected 3/4 points on Deadeye, the two frenzy ones and removing the distance accuracy penalty for example: Gathering Winds is now a potential option but Wind Ward is not. You have to weigh Gathering Winds by itself against the remaining options.
To be clear, I'm not saying all the "stepping stone" first pointers are going to be great as a final point, but in principle these decisions do still exist so I don't see them as illusions.
I do fundamentally agree with the notion that these points SHOULD be worth considering in isolation, and if they aren't that's a balance issue that should be addressed.
In poe1 the first passive is the main mechanic and the second passive is an extension of that mechanic ... In poe2 the first passive is a cost and the second passive is the main mechanic
@@alexsterling5788 yes, we understand your point...but it would just be infinitely more engaging if they designed it in a way where every point matters. You may be comfortable having zero choice since it hamstrings you into pick branches, but most of us think that is copium thinking and the design is just bad. We can agree to disagree.
@@iansane1928 lol I won't agree to disagree because you didn't even read my posts 🙃
I stated in both comments that things SHOULD be changed to be more interesting. I don't fundamentally disagree with the current design, there ARE choices to make, but IT WOULD BE BETTER if they did a balance pass to make every individual point more compelling.
concerning the titan issue and your opnion on replacing the additional storage witha node to be immune topush effects,i highly approve this.i'm currently a shield charge-stomping steps with bonestorm beside which highly scale of strength stacking,and when i charge an ennemy a bit far and another big ennemy push me from the side,i often end up completely missing and just having to wait,which feels just horrible cause shield charge actually has a down time when you miss that even if the cooldown is over,there's a really small time where you won't be able to use it again,and then there will be the wind up time.the passive effect node is extremly important for my build,yet the storage capacity is just meaning i sacrifice a really important part to take the passive effect one and it feels really bad.
Hulking Form/ Colossal Capacity on the Titan, should increase your character size, melee range, and something with shoving enemies out of the away.
They need to fix armour and make you thematically a bulky Titan.
I hate that Concoction Skills are locked within Pathfinder, Where PoE1 it is a normal skill so, you can combine Concoction Skills to every class instead of just one class like PoE2
Anecdotal from my titan.
I absolutely prefer the idea of a large enough entity inturrupting my windup.
What i find infuriating is a running bird moving me 20 meters away from my engagement because "lol youre just being pushed back"
Not to mention stampede being stopped by entities the same size. Its just frustrating...
100% true
Skill tree also has MANY places where there are 2 +5 attribute nodes where only one would be enough, making it feel like GGG wanted to reduce travel distance. If I wanted additional attributes, i would take them from anywhere, but having to path through them when they are not needed feels bad
Blood Mage only having 1 choice at the start that locks 2 of your ascendency points.
This guy : Excellent design.
Lol
It seems like a conscious decision from the developers to have these "taxes" on player power in a lot of places in PoE2. It can make for some interesting design spaces when there's an abundance of choice. However, the one place players don't have that abundance is ascendancy points. Having to "pay" 2 or even 4 ascendancy points sometimes to get access to more player power in these situations almost always feels bad.
Ascendancy decisions should always be a significant boost to player power, I really don't agree with putting taxes into the coolest parts of my character decision making.
It still makes no sense to me that the Ancestral Spirits aren't considered "minions" so none of the minion passive tree nodes apply. There needs to be a way to boost the ancestral spirit damage and health.
Especially thar you have the mace that makes minion damage increase your damage.....its like an obvious choice for a hybrid build
I'm kinda sure that they are considered minions and are scaling with minion passives and minion support gems.
i double checked and all seems that they do scale with minion modifiers, and additionally with totem life modifiers. What makes you think they dont scale with minion nodes?
I don't know about spirits, but totems are scaled with direct damage nodes. Attack damage, melee damage, mace damage... All of that affects totems
@ That is true, but he is talking about the ancestral spirits which come from the warbringer ascendency node.
And i wonder why he thinks that they are not considered minions and don't scale with minion modifiers, because they absolutely do ^^
As other people here have mentioned, Blood Mage suffers from this with the leech node when using a spell build (when excluding archmage and DD). I would prefer that the spell leech node be rolled into the first notable of the ascendancy, which would greatly reduce spellcaster survivability problems during the campaign. Then maybe change that node to something that benefits from the high life costs of spells to make blood magic more of an option if they aren't going to change mana values much. Or something else more interesting than what I can think of.
The leech node feels mandatory for spellcasters during boss fights since they have moves that can easily chunk you if hit and high life costs can easily drop you low enough to die from one of these during prolonged fights (unless you have high enough dps to immediately burst them down). Alternatively, there are some desired changes that I've heard tossed around, though most certainly not all at once. 50% of mana costs converted to life costs, generally reducing mana costs as gem levels go up, making life orbs draw towards you so you don't have to hug a boss to grab them.
I like the overall design of Bloodmage but that first node really needs to be improved imo.
I think you missed a really powerful example of this. Constant Gale ( You have Arcane Surge ) and Force of Will ( Your Arcane Surge is better ) on the Sorceress tree create an illusion of choice. You'll never take Constant Gale without also taking Force of Will. But if you reverse their positions, you create massive opportunities for build diversity within the same archetype. The player can choose to run Arcane Surge support, spend ascendency points on Constant Gale, or build around Aspiring Genius on the passive tree. Their build could even move from one of these to the another as they grow in power, creating a satisfying sense of progression as they get stronger.
With Constant Gale as the first node in the branch, all of this texture is lost. It's weird that the Arcane Surge ascendency never wants to use "ways to get Arcane Surge" passive points or unique items.
7:58 *louder* so they can hear you in NZ. Our first thought upon seeing that node was "Why is this not something we can buy in the mtx shop?" We would also argue your larger point exists in a broader sense on the Main Passive Tree as well. Think Acrobatics, MoM, Chaos Innoculation.
Really good video. I do worry like. Even though it is EA, how much of what we have now when it comes to stuff like ascendencies is actually going to change, with there being so much of the game still missing
I think a lot of stuff like the issues discussed in the video can be fixed with adjustments to balance on each node, swapping some modifiers around etc.
Oh, no worries! They made it this way, in order for Poe2 to have some "Diablo like" flavor 😅
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. The point of putting the downside up front is so that you can't spread out to 4 different different branches and get 4 notables that are super strong up front with no downsides. It's to make the ascendancies less strong up front by making you invest all the way down 2 branches. It's not an illusion of choice; its locking you in to fewer branches so you can't pick all the OP stuff too easily.
Sounds really fun.
There's much less packed into each ascendancy in an attempt to streamline but that does come with it's downsides. Witchhunter really needs a stronger sorcery ward because without peak investment you're only getting 3.5k Life and still have to deal with Chaos damage. Can Ward apply to chaos too and a Gale Force type mechanic for losing Sorcery Ward stacks.
Obsessive Rituals
25% less Armour and Evasion Rating
Grants Skill: Sorcery Ward
When Hit, Gain a Sorcery Warding Charge
+5% more Armour and Evasion per Sorcery Warding Charge
+5 Maximum Sorcery Warding Charge
Lose Sorcery Ward Charge if not hit recently
Barrier recharges after (8.1-10) seconds
Elemental Damage [remove: from Hits?] is taken from the Barrier before your Life, Mana or Energy Shield
Barrier can take Elemental and Chaos Damage up to 30% of your Armour and Evasion Rating
"One with the Storm" - Quarterstaff Skills that consume Power Charges count as consuming an additional Power Charge ---> "One with the Ascendancy" - Designer Skills that invent Ascendancy Nodes count as inventing an additional Ascendancy Node.
Okay dude 🤣
I think you’re spot on. The build diversity would be much more flexible if they for example:
- moved “remove galeforce on hit” downside to the 2nd node
- moved 50% less EV/AR to 2nd sorcery node
- flipped the warbringer block nodes, but keep the downside on the 2nd node
It feels like some of these nodes are balanced around being 2 point investments at a time, but don’t feel as balanced once you take the whole picture into account as half of your ascendency.
I actually think infernalist is one of the worst offenders. For most builds there are only 4 notables that do anything positive and for some builds there are only 3. You are pretty much always pigeonholed with that ascendancy, some builds get to choose between two notables that are both kinda bad on their last ascendancy but that's it.
I dont agree here. Probably one of the more interesting, powerfull and versatile ascendencies. Selfcast, minion, critbased, shapeshift, selfignite. There is so much potential on those points.
i like to add to this is the hard lock on the starting node, for a game that preach build diversity they failed the first step.
I'm guessing this is a symptom of the fact that PoE2 will have 36 ascendancies compared to PoE1's 21. Instead of adding more choice within each ascendancy, they are spreading the choices out across multiple different ascendancies. We just don't see it yet because we are missing so many ascendancies.
Very possible, I also think these are pretty easily solved with balance and moving modifiers between nodes
Yeah a lot of ascendency trees are like something Blizzard would make. Anything that says "grant a skill" and then the next node is "that skill is 50% more effective" should be reworked. The skill itself should work on it's own, whatever the follow up is could be something that has more general usefulness while maybe still affecting the previous ascendency skill. With the way it is, you don't get the real skill unless you spend 2/4 ascendency nodes on it
the being knocked around, the crowd control and the invisible walls and thin corridors really makes you not control your character about half of the time.
poe1 ascendancies also started like this, but as of now they are quite cool. i assume that the same will happen in poe2, as time goes on they will rework some of them and little by little we will have interesting ascendancy choices.
I agree, a lot of this is quite easy to solve with balance/modifiers being swapped around
@@dreamcore_gg i think that some of nodes could be combined into one than put isolated choices. case by case basis. Sorc ward could be one node. Blood mage for example, it should be that base skill is default for picking ascension. this saves 2 ascension points and allows class to pick it's prefer gameplay style but some of need buffs/rework to work.
It's a pity that so many times, GGG ignore the progress they already made in PoE1 and start seemingly without having learned lessons from PoE2 in some regards though
Really good video as usual! The other problem with the warbringer 40% node is that it's actually worse than what a properly rolled block shield (45%).
11:50 Not necessary a bad thing to separate those 2.
Cooldown manipulation is a big part of this class.
There are scenarios where you want recoup to be 8 seconds!
Because YOU CAN TURN BACK IN TIME! every X seconds or so...
X can be under or over the 4 or 8 recoup time Depending on your build!
Can't remember from which stream I found your channel from, but I hope YT sends a lot of people your way, you are GOATED my good sir. Keep the great content coming!
I think the problem with tailwind/wind ward isn't necessarily that there's no tradeoff. The tradeoff is *supposed* to be the opportunity cost (not picking one of the other standalone 2-point passives). The problem is that the other options aren't compelling enough to consider as viable alternatives.
If Called Shots was, for an unrealistic example, 100% more damage to marked enemies instead of allowing 2 separate marks (much less useful), you'd have a more meaningful choice to make between glass cannon or more balanced defenses.
The actual version of called shots isn't really in the running because it's just not good enough by comparison. It doesn't really have anything to with whether tailwind mechanics have built in downsides or not. You can make every ascendancy node pure upside and still have meaningful choices via opportunity cost.
Blood Mage is also a huge issue. You instantly lose 4 ascendancy points and can only chose one of the sides. I feel very pidgeon holed to specific choices in most poe builds atm.
My problems with the Ascendancies is a bunch are either ruthlessly punishing if taken when you should be taking them (Blood Mage) or look like they should be great until you realize they don't do what you'd expect from POE1 like Gemling's Crystalline Potential since Supports don't get quality at all, so the point ends up being kind of shit.
This might be good feedback if a lot of people feel the same.
Early Access though, what happens when they fill out the rest of the ascendancy orbs.
My biggest negative for the game as a new player who just finished the 3 act campaign is there is no update timeline. No idea when the next update is or how big it is, is crazy.
I wanna play templar and druid, paid my $30, when can game my game
Its not a choice its a choice tax. Like in darktide how some nodes force you to spend 3 points to get them. The downsides are just completely fake unnecessary "balance" for literally no reason. You're forced into it, you're punished early game, in some cases youre forced to not have an ascendancy until you have finished two trials. I have no idea why the devs are obsessed with making everything worse. Like all the "buffed" uniques getting 10 cold damage and then 30% reduced attack speed to "keep it in line".
If they want poe1 to vanish forever they should at least give us asvendencies and play styles that honour its legacy
I love how they did Colossal Capacity and Hulking Form myself. I'll be starting with that upon game release I believe.
The ascendances all feel like you get 2 nodes instead of 4, which is even made so much worst by how few people even get the 4th so they are just playing with 1 "good" node and then just have a 50/50 upside/downside node.
With around 400 hours on my witch hunter, Ceremonial Ablution isnt a go-to for me. sorcery ward in itself already grants massive elemental effective hp, alongside CI, the only damage you'll ever be worrying about is physical. I just take zealous inquisition and just kill everything that gets remotely close to me. Then for pinnacle bosses, i just remove sorcery ward, CI, and zealous, and go the concentration nodes.
Since around lvl 90, ive removed Ceremonial Ablution, and my witchhunter is lvl 96 now, and ive died so little since then
It is an issue, BUT I do think that is a lot less of an issue for hulking form. I do think it would be better to split Hulking form into 2 25% notes that you can EITHER invest into a bit of a boost for 2 points OR 4 for maximum bonus, but I do like the design of Hulking form a LOT and it is so powerful that it needs to be "hidden" behind one note that doesn't grant ANY player power
I think the idea they were going for was that respecing should be more popular. Like the idea of waiting for your 2nd ascendancy to truely unlock it's potential. And having the tree built like that is more deterministic on the characters play style, so rather than a illusion of choice I would say it's more of a commitment. I play a blood mage and honestly don't care about how deterministic it is.
While I do overall agree with the point that the second ascendancy point locked behind a first is largely all upsides and no downsides, I have a personal disagreement with Warbringer's block branch: Svallin is a very strong shield still which has a normal base block chance but doesn't have the increased block chance prefix and does benefit from Renly's node alone, as reaching even the reduced max block chance is difficult with just the passive tree alone unless also heavily investing into block chance on jewels. I have a Corrupting Cry Warbringer that uses the armour break node as a 4th ascendancy instead while using Svallin.
I also find that too many of the Ascendancies currently are all just isolated branches, i.e A just leads to B, whereas PoE1 had more interesting design+layouts like converging paths or multiple choice branches like what the Infernalist example had.
You ought to have mentioned Bloodmage as it's the roughest ascendancy to level by far. I played BM for my first PoE 2 character and had to ignore my ascendancy until I had at least 4 points so that I could take Grasping Wounds for its 25% damage reduction. Even then, I had to use a wand with Chaos Bolt as my primary damage source so that I could fight bosses without dying until I got a spirit gem for Sacrifice. In contrast, I'm currently leveling a Deadeye ranger and it's very easy compared to BM. Deadeye is simple as I don't have to worry about picking up blood orbs just so that I don't die from using my skills.
My only issue personally is with contagious contamination. Either improve its radius by minimum 2x, make it stack with herald of plague(it currently doesn’t), OR make it spread ALL poison stacks not just one. Because in every aspect it’s worse then HoP and EVERYONE can use HoP. An ascendancy noteable should be something that no other class has. You know a reason to even pick that ascendancy. Just my 2¢
I feel like it only comes across as illusion of choice because some nodes are just terrible. Like the examples you've shown, there's no choice but to take the second node.
For Tailwind, like you said you lose it on hit regardless. While it makes you incredibly evasive, the upgrade makes it so you take less damage when you rarely get hit (because you're likely going Evasion/Acro with it). This also has the downside that Armour and Energy Shield are just worse options when you take this as well, since you lose any way to inherently avoid damage. Hell, even Blocking would probably take it away because you're still being hit, you just take zero damage.
Other examples are just as good, but that one in particular is so much worse because it not only forces 4 Ascendancy points to be used, but limits the use of other defenses as well.
Hulking Form and Sorcery Ward are also similar in how they can pretty much warp your build around them, forcing specific passives to be taken or certain gear to be used. At the very least Huking form has a pretty big positive that it opens a lot more build variety for Warriors by making some of the less accessible stats available in higher amounts without absurdly high investment into gear.
A counterpoint to Blood Mage's Gore Spike. It's strong to offset the fact that Sanguimancy essentially has no real upside. I get that it works thematically, but that also effectively means you only have three real ascendancies because of how meh it is. Also doesn't help that most of the Blood Mage's other passive are also terrible.
Vitality Siphon? Leech is barely a stat. Blood Barbs? Decent enough to build around because Bleed has actual support, but very niche. Infinite Curse? Breaks or doesn't interact with most things involving curses. Grasping Wounds? Would be good if Life Recovery had better options.
It isn't until you get to Crimson Power that you reach another node that is actually powerful. But to have the option of taking it you're either:
A.) Not a Caster, meaning Sunder the Flesh does nothing for you
B.) Not a Crit Build, meaning Sunder doesn't matter to you. In which case, why play BM at all?
C.) Giving up Sunder in a build that would benefit from it, forcing gear to be extremely good to compensate (if it even can)
Witch hunter tree is infuriating to me, I love zealous inquisition and cull+decimate, but that leaves me with 2 leftover points I can't spend on anything that has even a minor benefit. Options are the following:
- "Concentration" break to increase monster cooldowns (whatever tf that is lmao, sure doesn't make bosses any slower), would only do anything with 4 points where it gives a damage multiplier
- Sorcery ward (already covered in video why 2p is a bad idea, upfront downside which 4p mitigates)
- Weapon master, which actually does seem cool but would need a niche build to work, I swap between crossbow and bow but I'm not even using all 24 of the base weapon set points let alone 48
Aren't ascendencies as a whole not just illusion of choice but removal of choice? They really just restrict how your character is meant to be played.
If choice is all we care about, then a classless system is best, every character is the same and starts at the same spot in the tree, this enables the maximum amount of choice, your character can literally do anything, at the same level of efficiency as any other character, you could respec from the best spell build into the best melee build if you wanted, with ascendencies you'll never have that choice.
But then the question becomes, what determines what a choice actually is? Because to me, not taking the damage reduction node behind tailwind is still a choice, even if it's a bad choice, there's nothing forcing me to use that, I can be a glass cannon if I want to.
And if you believe that making a bad choice is not a choice, then doesn't the illusion of choice start from character creation? Are we going to say that the ability to play as a saboteur is illusion of choice because only 0.3% of people have picked it?
The extra space that Titan gets is pretty critical since the class is often going for dual 2 handed maces atm. Of you are carry hot swap gear like helms or a shield boots etc, the extra space is amazing.
Without it, carrying items and maps and tablets will end up being a slog fest back in hideout. So as i agree it doesnt seem to huff directly the titan. The extra spaces allows for gear swap and fun interactions for the titan without impacting the players gaming flow and time.
I have seen one deadeye build take only the first 2 points of frenzies and it was a resonance build
They said last points didn't work
im in full agreement. Another thing that I recently came across that I thought would make for a top tier build is the "allies within your presence" stats. Example. The Yix amulet. And combine that with the Necromantic Talisman passive. The passive takes your amulet and gives it to your minions. Since the "Allies in your presence" stats don't give us anything if we personally use them, my natural thought process was, give it to our minions. Which then made me wonder. Is it only going to give the buff once? Or since the amulet is given to ALL my minions is it going to give me the buff per minion. You can see where this is going.
A perfect Yix gives "Allies" 50% Crit Chance, 50% Crit Damage, 20% Cast Speed, and 20% Attack Speed.
Now imagine having 10 minions.
I don't think I could possibly give up on a 500% Crit Chance, 500% Crit Damage, 200% Cast Speed, and 200% Attack Speed buff can you?
Which then lead me to thinking about that Chober Chaber Two-Handed Mace. Where all minion damage increases and decreases also affect the player... Sadly the interaction doesn't exist.
Sure this isn't really an illusion of choice per say but it would be nice to have this interaction.
I hate how many harsh downsides there are on Ascendancies. It's so stupid that they took that concept that worked well for Uniques and applied it to so many other aspects of the game in bad ways that cant be built around
Preceding Hulking Form should be the node:
Heisman
Grants Stiff Arms
Grants Full Back
- Stiff Arms: character collision kinetic mass is increased by 500%. You cannot be moved by monsters. Instead, when a monster attempts to move you, they are slowed by 90%, and carried in the direction you were moving for 0.5s.
- Full Back: while your stun threshold is greater than your evasion rating, your character size is increased by 20%, and you cannot be blocked by enemies. Enemies who collide with you are knocked back.
Full Back sounds pretty fun
I would just settle for the preceding node to also grant "no movement speed penalty from armour" at this point. Why is big stronk man being weighed down by puny armour
I think this is more of a design choice for ascendancy in PoE2. It seems that GGG wants the 2nd point of ascendancy to strictly be an upgrade/extension of your build choice instead of having any kind of upgrade option (hence, not really an illusion imo more like streamlining the design). You can also see that in most ascendancies, there are build defining nodes (e.g. totems and shields in warbringer) and general use nodes (jade form and minus armor in a way) that further reinforces the idea that they wanted to streamline build option from the start (aka picking one build defining tree + general nodes).
However, is it better than having more choice for tweaking your build? I disagree. I am always pro for more option.
What about Witch? The Blood Mage ascendancy has a great concept behind it, and I love the idea, but the Sanguimancy node is completely counterintuitive. Most spell ascendancies scale their damage by increasing gem levels, but Sanguimancy actively punishes you for that. Losing ~600 life per cast feels ridiculous and is a pure downside. There’s no way you're sustaining life with Sanguimancy's "help".
In the current PoE2 meta, you can't easily get Blood Mage to 5-6k life without heavily investing in strength. Normally, you sit around 4k life, meaning you only get about 100% more multiplier from Gore Spike while losing 600 life per cast-hardly a fair trade.
Don’t get me wrong, there are ways to make Blood Mage ridiculously strong. For example, I built a Poison Detonate Dead Blood Mage with infinite curses, 3.2k life + 10k ES, 18% damage taken from mana, ~2m poison DPS, and 90% fire resistance-my max hit number is insane. But you can only achieve this by avoiding all of the ascendancy’s intended mechanics, primarily by keeping Detonate Dead at a low level and avoiding all sources of increased spell levels so you’re not forced into the leech node. Alternatively, you can bypass the issue entirely by going melee, with Bleed Hammer of the Gods or Quarterstaff Blood Mage, both of which work really well.
In SSF, Blood Mage performs best as either a Detonate Dead caster or a Quarterstaff build. I could understand if GGG intended for BM to be a hybrid class, but it’s clearly designed as a caster ascendancy-every small node provides specific spell bonuses rather than general ones. If, instead, these nodes gave something like “15% increased chance to apply bleed with a critical hit” without tying it exclusively to spells, the ascendancy would be much more flexible and viable.
But in its current state, Blood Mage is a complete mess and one of GGG’s biggest design failures.
I'm not opposed to there being '4 point packages ' in an ascendency. I think that's actually fine. I think it's a real problem if those points are essentially mandatory. But that's a problem every time an ascendency only has one way to play it. I also think that for a lot of ascendency's the 4th point doesn't feel that important, while being the hardest one to get. That just feels slightly weird to me.
"Path of exile mostly consists of design issues." Fixed that for ya lol. They put so much time into making sure the maps were pointlessly huge, crafting was abysmal, that you had no control over the endgame, and that you are inconvenienced and have your time wasted so constantly that they didn't make anything even remotely interesting about these skills and classes, or the endgame mapping.
I see what you mean, and you make a good point. However, you lost me a bit at 4:57 (or 5:10). Saying there's no choice being made when you take wind ward because it's all upside. You get 8 ascendancy points, and there are 16 nodes. The choice is the trade off. Where else could those 2 points go? You could argue that it's stupid to take gathering winds without also grabbing wind ward, but that's not the same as saying there's no choice because it's all upsides.
Even if all the nodes have nothing but upsides, the choice is "what are you NOT getting by choosing this?"
Anyway, interesting video! Thanks!
Yeah I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I said it's all upside, that's not really what I was trying to convey in that example - more that tailwind on deadeye is basically a 4 point investment forgone conclusion, you're taking both notables every time (but that example in particular is also more of a balance issue because the 2-point branches on deadeye are fairly weak)
What annoys me more are the ascendancies that basically cost 4 points, like Sorcery Ward in your example. It feels like the ability is balanced around you taking both major nodes.
Sorcery ward could scale with gem level instead of requiring 4 passive points, could put a fun node similar to the Titan backpack if they feel it's too strong for just 2 points. Maybe the permanent map icons for rares and uniques?
I feel personally attacked after trying to cook my own build and using the exact pathfinder nodes you referred to
i did think it was weird that an entire ascendancy was just a spirit skill (which has an oddly low range), but i figured maybe that's normal balancing for poe2.... nope
I disagree on PoE1 pathfinder being meaningfully if any different of a choice to PoE2. The act of building up stacks for both is such a trivially simple one that the downsides for both barely exist. It doesn't meaningfully matter wether it's on the first or the second choice.
It's not a downside losing tailwind. It's never worse than not having tailwind at all. It's just a balance thing so that tailwind is not completely bonkers.
The case of sorcery ward is a very compelling argument, but not all of these other examples are as bad as you're making them out to be.
e.g.,
I took only half the recoup path with my sorc. There's no illusion of choice here as you can spend the other two points to get other very strong large-nodes.
Deadeye's tailwind branch:
You just say "why wouldn't you".
All the other 4 paths are offensive, while wind ward is defensive. If you were comfortable with how well your build survives, then it would be perfectly reasonable to go down the other 4 paths.
Taking wind ward/full recoup paths isn't nearly as necessary as taking the second half of the sorcery ward branch for witchunter.
I like the POE 1 Ascendency balance. Take Chieftain for example, we can take individual point and it still plays very well and its effect is noticeable.
Edit: I think GGG is overthinking about POE 2 ascendency, while in the POE 1 the ascendency point we can replace it as very strong support skill or notable.
Very good thing to look at and maybe some of these ascendancies do need tweaks.
I think for the Chronomancer's "The Rapid River" though you don't actually want that ascendancy unless you have a LOT more recoup than just the prerequisite "Circular Heartbeat". Recoup is not removed when you reach full life and therefor having it last the default 8s instead of 4s can help you later after you fully heal from a flask or from casting "Temporal Rift".
This is a very interesting take on the system. I don't think there's a problem with some very OP nodes being effectively 4pointers, but they are very prevalent and I wonder if there shouldn't be more where an initial buy-in 2point has ok value and from there having is a path split to 2 nodes with mid-high value.
This means you could pay 4 points to finetune your initial purchase to your preference, or take both splits with 6 points to round it out even further. Stuff like lowering downsides or increasing effects would fit well there.
Of course this shouldn't be very common, but then again the "very OP" 4pointers shouldn't be very common either. I think having this kind of approach could give more room for player choice without giving up on design options that require big investment to receive a big reward.
And then there's the Chonk Into to Breach branch that does not even work as a 4 pointer. You can't sustain more than 4 flames at a time. Picking up a new one simply does not extend the duration of the older ones.
And don't get me started on the Darkness branch, it's hilariously bad. The first 2 nodes makes you give up Spirit altogether trading it for a maximum of 600 eHP at lvl 100. And the next 2 gives you up to 30% more damage.
Chayula might be the worst designed ascendany in the whole game.
Your first example falls flat because the choice in POE2 is about whether you wind ward or you go for more DPS on a different branch. You don’t need to take wind ward, you’re not always taking it if you’ve taken gathering winds, plenty of people take projectile nodes instead.
But lastly, inventory space was one of the most beloved ascendancy nodes from affliction and people are often taking titan literally just for that node.
You have 8 ascendancy points, you take projectile nodes(4 pts) you take tailwind (2 pts), you are taking wind ward.
Also, nobody is clicking an ascendancy for additional inventory slots. They're taking that node because they have to take it to reach hulking form. The inventory space in affliction was free, and not tied to your build choice, in addition to being tied to the most late-game wildwood ascendancy with charms(that 95% of builds used or aspired to use in their final form)
@dreamcore hard disagree. Someone could easily be wanting to stack attack speed for a projectile build but not be dependent on just charges, and take 4 in projectiles, 2 in frenzy, 2 in tailwind.
Someone could be relying on a mark and take 2 in mark, 4 in projectiles, 2 in tailwind. Your insistence that you’re going to take wind ward is just untrue for quite a few kinds of builds. That is meaningful choice right there. You need more creativity in your thinking.
And no, plenty of people on the POE sub said they would league start titan specifically for the inventory node. I don’t think you remember how many people said they would take whatever ascendancy had that no matter what on the subreddit extremely often and loudly.
Curious where dreamcore was when we got the rucksack in affliction league
Did he complain about that too?
I dont see anything about it
As soon as I saw the title of this video, I knew what this was about and immediately agreed with it. Went back to PoE1 recently and both the skill tree and the ascendancy trees are so much better.
It would be very cool if the points connected to each other more to create more of an interconnected webs
another Issue Im having with PoE 2 is that support gems that convert damage should be allowed to be used as many times as you want the fact you can only use one at a time unless you use gemling or the unique headpiece that does the same thing as an ascendancy skill which is cool but still its an issue with that limitation
another banger dude love it
When I posted most of the POE 2 issues within the first week, all I got was nasty comments from idiot elite losers saying stuff like "game is perfect", "It's EA, skill issue" "GitGud"
The consideration of Opportunity costs are still choices. Going down the tail-wind path means you cant get something else. That is a major choice
For me its not an 'illusion of a choice' but more of a payment or investment in to the skill branch.Tho i do agree there are some strange design choices(great example of this is titan's hulking form).
Other than that it seems more like a balance issue. Giving you a passive with a big downside for 2 points sucks in a first place, but importantly it kinda neglect the power boost you should get from your ascendancy(as if for some classes game was balanced around 4 ascendancy points, tho u get only 2 per trial as poe1).
Personally my biggest issue with classes right now is that there's just not so much unique stuff for choosing a specific ascendancy.
Well, I think it's your choice to pick Gathering Winds or not, just like it's your choice to pick Wind Ward or not. Gathering Winds in PoE 2 is meant to offer you speed, and in order to maintain it, you have to build your character around not being hit, basically following the evasive character archetype. Nevertheless, you are choosing a defensive branch, sacrificing an offensive branch, but it's your choice. Nobody is pointing a gun at you when you are playing. The Infernalist though... THAT is a problematic asccendancy. The Demon Form branch "Mastered Darkness" is pure trash, no upside in picking it, you are loosing your weapons to mantain a form that only gives you a "dash".
I think the issue is also due to their game design being less focused on speedy power go zoom, that dropped the average power of ascendancies, whereas it really should not be. It makes no sense from a game design standpoint to have ascendancies be this weak
Inflexibility would be the best word I'd use for PoE2.
A lot of the 4 point branches on the ascendancy passive skill tree might as well be just 3 small passives followed by 1 high value notable. However if you look at it that way it is nice that you get at least something small in the intermediate stage (like 40 base block shield before getting the big block node, or getting tailwind before getting the full power potential of gale force).
So in that regard it isn't too bad. However, I would prefer interesting ascenadncy choices weren't locked behind a prerequirement that gives a weaker version of the thing you want. I wouldn't even be opposed to chosing between like 8 different 2 point branches, so you can try any combination you like (or port over the searing exarch/eater of world unique jewels from poe1, which allow all those fun combinations of ascendancy passives)
witchhunter feels omega bad, the cull node feels worthless because you only take it for decimating strike + sorcery ward nodes. Both of those node branches feel bad without both. Hopefully the other ascendancies are set up differently but i doubt it
Calling poe2 a half-baked potato is an overstatement
Small stupid detail: the travel node before gore spike is spell crit only...so while melee builds want to take gore for the CD, the travel node is absolutely wasted on them, maybe this is meant as a balance but it just feels pretty useless and not needed, nerf warrior i guess.
The ascendancy points were a lot like the normal passive points for me nothing was very exciting. I didn't really care about doing labs as soon as I got to them because either nothing was going to be impactful or it has the ascend from poe 1 problem you need multiple labs before you get anything you would notice. The normal passive points kind of felt the same way I either just put them all into stat nodes (because it was a pain in the ass to equip gear or gems) or I ignored them for 5-10 levels because nothing was to impactful or exciting to take quickly.
The most exciting thing I wanted to rush for was using 2h weapons and a shield before I noticed I'd never be able to get the str for that before endgame.