Yes, but there are no class nodes that are restricted by your ascendancy choice. It’s simply a starting place on a convoluted map, where you also have the option to select from node that aren’t associated with your class/ascendancy choice.
Sure, but by that token, passives and masteries have a LOT more in common with GD. It’s obvious GD was the main influence when creating those. And you can’t respec those in GD either, even though plenty of people have asked for it.
It’s almost like the game encourages the creation of alts. Strange how that happens.
4 Likes
I get that answer. It is still arbitrary in the sense that you can go further and say your class is a paladin that just cast spells, or a melee one. So they draw their line in the mastery but not the skills. I still think is unnecessary and a way to inflate the time people spend playing the game and that never feels good. I woukd rather spend my time playing the game doing something I enjoy more than leveling the same class again.
All design decisions are arbitrary to those outside. Not autopicking shards is arbitrary. Having FP on items is arbitrary. Not being able to resell items in trade is arbitrary. But to the devs that are designing the game, they serve a purpose.
That is not to say they will never change their minds about something. They have, plenty of times. But as can be seen by the repeated threads on this issue, the arguments presented aren’t enough to sway them on this.
And to further put out a point about perception: you’re getting to mastery choice and thinking “this class seems like would synergize well with my skill”, so your main decision is based on the skill you’re using.
I get to mastery choice and think: this seems like a fun archetype and then try to make skills work with it. Just because skill A doesn’t work with mastery X doesn’t make mastery X less fun.
Edit: this is player Mike speaking.
For me personally, the distinction lies in the name really. A Mastery being something that you spend those 10,000 hours in and it becomes part of your identity. It sure doesn’t take that long in game but that’s how I view the choice. It’s your character cementing their identity in the world. They transition from being a simple Rogue who is still finding their way in the world and experimenting into a Bladedancer, an elegant weapon who wields blades with the precision of a master.
Edit: developer Mike here now
From a gameplay standpoint alone I can totally see how it feels arbitrary. It is something we have debated many times and I’m sure it will be debated again. The feedback does not fall on deaf ears. For now however, we do not intend to change this. Who knows though, maybe we end up with a couple new masteries for each class and get to a point where having so many classes just becomes unwieldy. The game will continue to evolve and grow.
7 Likes
Ascendancies in POE are absolutely not comparable to Masteries in LE.
And PoE, you can respec your ascendancy there as well.
How so? Other than the message when you choose (& you know as well as I do just how much people read), there’s nothing else that might imply that the choice your class instead of something like your mastery.
Like picking your class at the beginning when the game asks you what class you want to create the character as?
Yup, just like in PoE, maybe you want to be an elementalist, maybe a necro, or an occultist.
If we’re being pedantic, you can’t select any skills within an ascendancy…
Does that happen in PoE?
I’d give it a try. For science!
And then doesn’t give you many character slots. Strange how that happens.
Then why the overlap?
1 Like
Yeah, but that’s supposedly going to get rectified after 1.0? I know it’s been a complaint since online mode became a thing.
2 Likes
Yes, but PoE makes you do the lab again, so it’s not as straight forward as the other 2. D4 can become a bit expensive as well, but not nearly as much as in PoE.
It doesn’t because it’s an expensive strategy and it’s much cheaper/time effective to simply pay for a carry (or get one from a friend/clan member).
But in D4, yes, it does happen quite a lot. Not to mention respeccing to defeat the ubers and then respeccing back to do dungeons.
I was gonna answer that, but @DirePenguin already did. They said they will increase the character slots, let’s see on how many they land and if they further increase it down the line.
You spend 1 hour getting your ‘mastery’
For example Druid is FAR better than Shaman for most things but becomes very evident at 90+, so now we just reroll as the Druid has slightly better stats? why cant the Shaman learn to become a Druid?
You do realise Path of Exile requires Regret orbs to change passives and requires 40 per ascendancy switch
You also have to run the lab again on top of that.
Good point, let’s change the game to require 10,000 in-game hours to select a Mastery!
3 Likes
I can’t tell if trolling or not but just in case. A common idea in real life is that it generally takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. I was relating why it makes sense that something which has the name mastery might not be so easily changed once completed. Your character may have spent the first 9,999 hours practicing before we join them in the story.
3 Likes
Let’s not think about that too much… because if that’s the case, the character is clearly from Dragonball Z : in the next 25 hours (after the 9999 hours), he will transition from auto-attack and 1 basic skill to epic nukes that deals 100k crit 
(I’m just jesting)
P.S. : IT’S NOT EVEN MY FINAL FORM!
1 Like
History Chanel Aliens Meme Guy
{ Time Travel }
2 Likes
Not with Ascendancy, because they are very expensive to respec during early and mid endgame.
But this kind of thing already does happen in PoE a lot, where you level with skill A and transition into skill B.
If Ascendancy Respec would be significant cheaper (comparable to respecting skills or passives in LE) I am sure there would be some strategies including Ascendancy switches
How is that trolling?
It takes 1 hour from character creation to get it. Gaspar gives it to you and you dont even go through that Shadow realm anymore. You do nothing to get it, he just makes you a …whatever class. Thats it you are now mastered, sounds like you are actually trolling me right now
PoE you have (had) to do:
6 trials in the campaign
3 Labyrinths during campaign with increasing difficulty
Fight Izaro 9 times
Map to yellow maps and RNG find 6 trials that got harder to find all 6 as you found more and more (removed but you still need an Offering)
Do Uber lab and fight Izaro another time
If you die in any Lab/Izaro you have to repeat it. Traps infest the lab doing %hp damage
After doing all that shit, if you want to change your ‘Ascendancy’ (not MASTERY) you need to unspec all your ascendancy nodes at cost then run lab AGAIN. I think after all that abuse you should be able to change ascendancy class
1 Like
I actually dont change my ascendancy at all for a quicker leveling boost. I only change it if the other ascendancy on offer is simply better longterm and that is rare OR I completely shift the character into something else which means im still stuck with the base class anyway
Thats why when making a 150-200+ hour character its better to look at your options of the base class so you possibly CAN switch later to something else.
Typical scenario starting as a Necro summoner and transitioning into Max block self cast Necro much much later
1 Like
What @EHG_Mike meant is that the LORE behind mastery is that it’s something that it takes you 10k hours to MASTER_
Obviously in-game it doesn’t take you 10k hours. Hence the doubt about trolling.
Actually, you ascend as soon as you do the first lab. The rest are just to get more passives. But as soon as you complete the first lab, you’ve ascended and are a necro/shadow/templar/whatever. And if you want you can simply spend 10 orbs of regret (or even none, since many campaign quests give you refund points) and do the lab again to change it.
So the typical scenario is not changing ascendancy.
It’s possible that meta gamers use ascendancy respec sometimes, but even then I’d say it’s extremely rare. I’d be surprised if, during a league, you’d have more than 1 ascendancy respec per 1k characters.