*Most* Uniques feel vastly underpowered is just my observation. Other than some having very low lev. req. so they can be used to power up new characters (which is cool). Many of them are SO beautiful, I'd like to use them more, but mostly they just seem underwhelming. Thoughts?

Fun fact, some of them, like lifesprig, aren't actually locked to a level like they are in PoE 1, they can actually have different required level depending on when and where they drop.

My lifesprig for example is required lvl 66 :) Making it effectively useless for leveling unlike the original which had no level requirement.

I think a lot of them is going to benefit from future added content, gaining synergies with new uniques.

1. there are three types of uniques - 'chase', 'stat sticks', and 'niche'

Chase: High performing gear that is usually locked behind end game activities, that can easily be considered 'best in slot' or 'build enabling'. These are usually kept to endgame activities, and are often gated behind different content... or just straight up 'good rolls' and rng.

Stat Sticks: These have some innate power to them that provide immediate benefit. They're often early leveling gear, or designed to be replaced by better rares. Tabula Rasa from POE1 is a great example of this - a 0 level requirement, 0 defense chest piece that gave you a six-link. If a stat stick is ever 'best in slot', then it would make the entire gear economy of rares worthless. So, to keep things viable, most nebulous stat sticks usually come at some sort of tradeoff. If they don't, they're likely a chase item.

Niche: Some items feel like they have next to no upside, until members of the community put their heads together to find some way to use the item in a really unique way. The Writhing Jar from POE1 is a flask that spawns low health worms. On paper, that's useless, but in practice folks it has potential for triggering hit effects. These items usually require building your character in unique ways to make use of.

It should be noted that a 'memorable unique' usually fits into more than one of these categories. Pillar of the Caged God is a great stat stick for the entire leveling experience while also enabling niche stat stacking builds.

2. the game is fresh and we're missing over half the total ascendancies

The Writhing Jar example from POE1 took the community a long time to crack and get creative. More tools are added as the games lifespan goes on, and folks figure things out over time. Expecting to find all the 'niche value' of gear right away is setting yourself up for dissapointment. On the flipside, it's really cool to see the POE2 community figure out how to make those corpse-walker boots viable for POE2 mapping!

3. uniques compete against the value of rares, and don't often compete as direct replacements

POE attempts to keep rares as the predominant gearing method. Uniques fit in sparingly, offering something 'unique' as a tradeoff for more bountiful stats from good rares. Expecting to have a full set of unique gear on your character for every single character you build would make rares obsolete, and since uniques (often) have a pretty steady base level of power, they provide a baseline of consistency. It's a balancing act, in terms of power. And it's a hard one to balance.

4. i agree that uniques do feel underwhelming

Surprise, I actually don't like the balance of 'most' uniques in POE1. Mainly, weapons. If a rare is pretty much always going to be best in slot, then what is the purpose of a unique weapon (beyond chase items)? I was hoping this answer would be solved by weapon swapping - where offhand gear could provide niche purposes without competing with a rare's juiced damage output... But I've yet to be impressed. Time will tell!

I'd actually love to see a currency orb that can upgrade the base of a weapon, uniques included.

Maybe one to make it advanced, another to make it expert. Have them be very rare.

I think that would go a long way to make some of these uniques more desired.

Uniques are never meant to be op, they're meme to augment your build at the sacrifice of stats. Which then makes rare items infinitely more valuable. It's a much better system than Diablo but much worse than last epoch.

A pair of boots that I had initially written off as mid are turning out to be the BiS for my build, because I'm summoning shield walls and overkilling them.

Part of it is that we don't know the best use cases for everything. Part of it is that we most likely only have 1/9th of the uniques in the game because the mid and upper tier of base types aren't in the game yet as well a 2/3rds of the item types (advanced, expert etc are likely placeholders.)

Uniques aren't made to be powerful. They are made to be unique. Most of them have unique effects that have the potential to break the meta when people discover how or correct meta comes along.

Some of these 1 exalt uniques will be worth divines when new classes, ascendencies, and skills comes out

Agree with the beautiful part. I equip the Feathered Fortress in my second weapon slot just because it looks so nice.

My main gripe is that all caster weapons had level requirements that is bind to the item level of the item which is very stupid. They need to do a dynamic level of spells like ascendancy skills work.

This is uniques in path of exile. Each unique is suppose to be worse than useless to most builds.

In my opinion, one of the only uniques GGG dropped the ball with was hand of action, it’s too broadly useful.

I honestly prefer uniques NOT being meta defining. It’s cool that uniques are actually weird and “unique”, most of the time not having an obvious use case. Because eventually, with future content and better understanding of the games systems, these “pointless” uniques will find their place as really strange awesome builds. I don’t need these things to be immediately useful, it’s on me to find a use for them if I want to.

And there are still high end uniques that are godly and most builds want, and those are locked behind challenging content so that it’s actually a cool reward.

This is true and was true in POE1. They have a very different approach than other arpgs with their unique designs. The good ones tend to be build enabling. An exception is something like Terminus Est or Bino's kitchen Knife which serve as a decently high dps weapon in the case you get unlucky with rares.

This game doesn't seem to have any decently high dps weapon uniques that are good. The exceptions being stat stacking bullshit like pillar and death's harp with stat stacking.

During POE1s development they overhauled the uniques because so many of them were shit tier. I think they would benefit greatly from doing that before this game launches

I'm kind of bemused by this one unique shield I found
Saffell's Frame
Gives some middling elemental resistances and makes it so you can't block ... it's very clear about that second part... "You cannot block. No chance to block." it says
Anyway, it *also* has "Modifiers to maximum block chance instead apply to maximum resistances"
Which seemed really cool ... except ... modifiers to maximum block chance are not a stat that currently exists in the game, as far as I can tell.
So yeah. Things are unfinished.

I think most mid-high level uniques are missing due to being on base types from acts 4-6 or being om bases like swords/spears/flails, so I'm cautiously optimistic

It’s basically the same in poe1, I have a unique tab full of uniques that are all worth nothing.

Like in PoE1 most uniques will be vendor food.

Ugh and some of them are so low leveled they’re SO bad wtf is ggg even thinking like level 5 for some uniques? Cmon

Agreed. Blood thorn looks so cool but even if you make a bleed build at max level it's still absolute shit

Most of them are trash because they're put on low level bases. Most wand/staves could be fine due to their attack scaling

I use lifeprig till the end of act 6

When they are good people (not using it) want it nerfed i.e caged god, howa, etc. xD

My lifesprig required lv 75 to use...

Unless it is Ghostwrithe. Trash in POE1, it is the latest trend in POE2 and everyone is running in it.

I also got a ring that converts lightning to cold damage. On my cold sorc I used it so I could replace wanky slow running frost ball with much more convenient and stronger Arc. Much better damage, much better freezing capacity and it chains across multiple foes.

i'm also not seeing glowing and special effects on none of them as they said in exilecon 2023 during item design talk.

Garbage uniques is kinda PoE thing. It was like this since forever and it seems they love it this way for whatever reason. Sure there are few chase items and some uniques are ok for leveling, but overall it's just an unusable and unsellable junk. Which is a shameful waste. I don't understand it and I don't like it. I'd love for every unique to have some place in the endgame.

Maybe uniques should have several tiers with different stats, requirements and drop rates. So the one you find during leveling could be good for leveling, but the same unique found in the endgame could actually have decent stats to be used in the endgame.

GGG is just terrible at designing uniques. Even after 10+ years of poe, they haven't learned much.

Enjoy the free chance shards. Wish they were better to be honest.

99% of the uniques in this game are garbage that dont do anything useful.

Agreed. It might be my single biggest complaint about this game.

I don't want builds to solely depend on bis uniques for all pieces, but I like have 2 to 3 uniques per build. It's fun to chase them.

First time? :D

They’re not underwhelming your expectation of them is way too much, this happened so much and ARPG‘s everybody thinks every unique needs to have a purpose or be used in endgame.