Hi I have been playing PoE previously and some other ARPG’s. Here comes a rant on things I like or would like to se improvement on after a first playthrough to lvl 90 with a paladin.
Campaign
I really liked the premise and the world building but the dialogue and characters can be very bland this could use some work. Jumping in to the “dinosaur era” was a wow moment which greatly made me want to understand and learn more about the “lore” of the game.
Tooltips
This was great. One of the first games that actually has the information to play the game in the game with formulas! Something I would like to se however is in the character stat screen where you can select damage/defense/minion to display to go even more in-depth and ad a scrollbar for a particular skill to se the numbers for that skill. Additionally many skills simply just display dps (what is including and assumed in this estimate?). I found myself looking for external sources of information because I could for example not understand whether the skill had a innate base damage or not. This should be displayed!
passives
I enjoy the simplicity of the system. Its easy to understand. The passives themselves were not always very interesting. The gladiator passive grants 30 block effectiveness after the first point. The power of these flat additions do not take of as you get higher level and it becomes evident that the passive “Armor clad” with percentage damage mitigation is much better. To me passives such as Prayer aegis or Divine essence are interesting skills that encourages you to build your character in a certain way to maximise a “special” effect. Make skills such as: * * * Gain 10% of your block effectives as endurance.
- Gain block effectives equal to the healing done over the last 4 seconds.
- Whenever you have healed yourself for 2000 health gain 10% more damage for 4 seconds and the character “glows” more per each stack.
- Convert Void damage modifiers to fire at 1.5 the amount for 4 seconds and viceversa for 4 seconds. Forcing you to swap between skills and being a “a light and dark paladin”.
Skills
I like the system but there is an illusion of choice at times and less options then what it seems at first glance. Within the skill tree there are many things points that are either mutually exclusive or are clearly just there to be played with a particular sentinel spec or even a particular skill. As a paladin I could spec a bit in to VK tree but what would I get from it? I didn’t see it at least, it seemed that if I wanted to experiment with some skills there i’m better of as a VK. Multistrike can proc a forgestrike but is it really an option if you can’t specialise in to forgestrike as a paladin? I diden’t se it and realising that most “more” multipliers come from the skill tree I don’t think this would be useful to anyone but a FM. My current build is a judgment fire consecration DoT and its not really a choice to specialise in to javelin because a 1.60 multiplier can not be passed up upon. Hence the illusion of choice. There simply aren’t as many ways to build some skills and masteries as the game says you have options to. I would either fix this by making specialisation skill trees change depending on your mastery or adding more options or make the modifiers more generic. E.g: when multistrike has full armament trigger “selected skill” that has 4s cooldown or more +10 mana cost.
Overload and interloping of stat boosts
Currently there are passives, equipment, specialisation slots, idols, blessing. I’m not against the quantity but give each type a more defined role and diminish the overlap otherwise they are just different flavours of stat sticks. A example (not necessary a good one) would be:
- Equipment grants base stats in absolutes +10 armor + 30 healt etc.
- Uniques build enabling/mechanic changers
- Passives grant % increase to such stats plus stats build around. Such as haste while below endurance threshold
- Blessing item farming specialisation e.g. +% to helmets.
- Idols niche increases to certain mechanics that exists already such as rate at which you cast smite chance while warpath.
And I realized I have a lot more to say then I thought so I will leave the feedback at this unless I get requested for more 