GGG, you want more interesting builds and combo gameplay? Listen to this

I really don't like this talking point that PoE1 doesn't have meaningful impactful combat. I actually think PoE1 capitalizes more on meaningful buttons over rotational combat, and I love it for that. Movement skills, defensives, curses are all examples of meaningful inputs. To me, PoE2 lacks meaningful inputs. To me rotational combat makes me care more about what my character is doing then what the boss I'm fighting is doing. I like focusing on the boss, not my character.

I agree and I like these suggestions. I was under the impression that there WOULD be more of this type of skill combination during some of their reveals. Perhaps there is the vision down the road to make it more complex, but yeah, cross pollinating interactions across skills would be drive more diversity. I would love to be able to use slam skills on an ice locus skill and then it expands the explosion 5x vs base explosion or solar orb gets bigger and bigger if incinerate crosses its path.. or if ice nova hits the bone spike wall, it transforms to a spikey ice wall that then shatters vs pins with added cold damage.

I have the same kind of expectations than in the video. To make synergies happend more, the synergy should read in the original skill, not the one using it. Flame wall is a great example, because it works with every projectile. But to be fair, Whirlwing Slash does have a lot of synergies in of itself, just not with most other melee skills. Its usability is a niche, where it takes effort to be effective.

They will not listen to reddit. And game is done for now.

Lord I would love some level of interaction or usability with my wind skills as a monk. They feel totally useless.

I think the biggest issue is the upside/downside support gems.

I have played caustic arrow every league poe1 and played both gas arrow and poisonburst arrow in poe2 between 4 characters with different set ups

The change to poison in poe2 is one thing but just looking at the skills/supports, the magnitude of poison is based off your physical/chaos damage the hit does. So there should be scaling support gems to benefit this.

Brutality is more physical damage but no ele/chaos, this makes it so the skill can’t even poison so no dice there (actually bricked my lvl21 gas arrow, it just stopped showing up as a skill lmao, heft is a decent physical support gem)

Chaos infusion is more chaos less physical/ele, maybe on chonk it could be useful but it feels like crap on PF because of the lack of chaos scaling on that side of the tree, plus cultist bows being super weak

Deadly Venom is more magnitude less hit damage which feels okay but when you compare it to vicious projectiles from poe1 (an act 2 poe 1 support) which gives you more chaos dot, more physical dot, and more phys projectile damage, with a 10% less proj speed, you automatically see the issue with the upside downside gems.

Then we have unbound ailments (act 1 support poe1) which is more duration/ailment damage with no downsides once again much better then these upside/downside gems

So all in all it just feels really rough to scale chaos/phys damage together because of a lack of synergy and the ailment support gems just suck to put all your damage in that basket (going crit phys poison feels good but its a lot of investment imo)

If you go elemental poison you get access to primal armaments and elemental focus for 25% more ele damage x2, you are just forced to use the plaguefinger gloves but at least you get two support gems with no downsides.

I think if would be really cool if every skill came with its own support gems that affect things that it creates. for example, imagine that there was a support gem that is tied to the whirlwind burst skill, and if you put that support gem on any other skill if would cause the tornados to return towards you. in the example you gave in the vid, that support gem could be put on whirling assault so that the combo would be generate cyclone -> burst cyclone into tornados -> use whirling assault (with the tornado skill gem) to call the tornados back towards you and to damage again.

Well i actually kind of like the idea of combo gameplay, but for example i play as witchhunter, so my boss dmg combo is: mark on boss, shoot galvanic shards untill lightning exposure, switch to shockburst rounds and deal a lot of dmg. So its a simple combo but evet that sometimes hard to perform because, no matter how much i invest into my fat, i can barely survive 1 hit from boss. 1 button builds are most popular simply because they are the most effective.

More synergy between weapon types.

SOME skills being shared with weapons. (If they want to keep the weapon identity as it is now, give us leeway, heck even some skills act differently, like perfect strike with swords do..something idk, theres potential there)

Remove arbitrary weapon swap speed stat, and make it baseline slightly faster. As far as I remember there's like one node near the bottom of the passive tree, why. it's the same as how we had light radius in poe1, we had like one node on the templar side.

With more skills and supports and eventual power creep, I do understand and welcome "you get this damage multiplier if you do this". But..... Give us that incentive, feedback wise and of course power wise.

I have a feeling one of the duelists ascendancy will focus on weapon swap. I hope that isn't required to make swapping good, but give us an incentive for swapping at all. (Like more damage or action speed if you swap trees with at least a 20 point difference or some shit) Rewarding going different damage types/utility with your sword attacks. Doesn't have to be swords, there can be a whole passive line for actually switching weapon types as opposed to having a passive tree node difference minimum if you find a let's say dagger and sword syngergy

Poe2 is a prime example of fixing what was never broken to begin with.

Combo =/= interaction

Surely GGG intends to implement more cross-class synergy. It's just too juicy and everyone wants it.

Everyone would like combo gameplay if we were rewarded for it and we weren't sequestered into a few options. But we have a lot more classes and weapons coming still

Devs don't want people using very different weapons.
Biggest proof is that they killed this possibility on Witch hunter by locking weapon passive points to not cross over the jewel sockets that separate weapon types on the spassive skill tree.

Brother I just want realistic mana costs.

When Kitava smith came out. I was hoping you could Drop the Hammer of Gods on the Anvil animation and it would interact. Maybe Ancestral Boost... end animation early and immediately add all buff stacks, double the buff stacks or have it last a duration instead, or cause all buff stacks to hit at once in the AOE of the hammer of gods. Add percentage Extra as fire damage.

Theres a lot out there that can be possible.

I always thought that the main way you should be getting damage is through the Skill synergies and skill combos/setups should always give way more than one buttons. Like Way way more.

ultimately it could be a time constraint thing, and they are thinking of this they just dont have time. I love the combo system, and what this guy is talking about is exactly what i always envisioned when this game is fully released. I believe that "The Vision" this is what GGG is going for at full release, and that they just need time to implement the millions of changes.

I understand the reasoning behind locking skills to weapons, with having to create more animations for each weapon and whatnot, but I find that it severely limits build variety, especially since stuff like whirling assault would look fine with a spear and would even make sense thematically. The endgame just devolves in every weapon being required to use the same 2 skills for clear and same 2 for single target. I'm not saying there shouldn't be weapon locked skills, but there should at least be better categorization to allow for cross weapon skills.

if ggg listens to every video that says listen to this we wouldnt have had poe2 today and im glad they didnt

Its not even synergy i care about, its animations.

Leap slam>boneshatter is a great synergy, but having ur character pause after the Leap slam to return to the default position then bone shatter feels extremely clunky and unsatisfying, if there were transitional animations it'd feel amazing to combo

Very cool suggestion of skills interaction, hope GGG can see this!

before implementing combos, you need to make sure Swinging your weapon is good on its own

nobody hates combos or skill interactions

people hate when combos and skill interactions is built on top of boring skills and boring weapons to swing

elden ring has shit ton of sikills and yet if you want to stick to R1 bonking, you can, and the game still rewards you for it

PoE 2 should embrace that, let people enjoy the game the way they want

"1 button build" doesn't mean dumb game, if your encounters are dumb, then that's what makes your game dumb

he mentions the firewall interaction, and he mentions mixin staff and spear

where is the role play in that? where is the class fantasy?

just let me use my weapon and make every skills feel good to use, if i want to stick to that skill i like, embrace it, make that skill interesting to use

so my "1 button build" becomes a rich and varied skill, make it have innate combo

cycle animation A, B, C on subsequent press

and make it a different skill animation when you hold the button to mimic a charged heavy attack

i am again gonna get dowvoted to oblivion, poe 2 combat system is flayed anyways, because they reward projectiles more than anything, hence why in that video he throw bunch of different skills to annihilate the screen, there is no cohesion between skills, it's a color vomit too

again, back to basics, make swinging your weapon fun before expecting people to do combos

rake is a prime example of by not making it good on its own, you push people towards lightning spear and twister instead

there is no combo and skill synergies if you end up spamming everything all the time

combo & synergy should mean deliberate use on specific occasion

I agree. Having synergy will create so much combos. Know what? I'd say fuck it. Why limit the skills to weapons too. Let them use flickerstrike with spears, or swords, or daggers.

I always enjoy this guy's perspective and ideas. I think his feedback is top-notch. This has always been GGG's/Jonathan's vision for POE2. In every interview before the game launched in Early Access, he discussed how skills interact and synergize with each other. He's so passionate about that aspect. Is everyone on board with it? Absolutely not. I know I am.

Many players want one-button builds, but I want more interactions with skills and weapons without the weapon switch delay. I'd like to see Combos and Synergies galore.

I know they can't stop one-button builds, but I'm perplexed that so many players jump on the bandwagon to follow and copy that build to enjoy the game.

i like how ggg with poe 2 solved riggering problems when creating new skills in poe1 and just created a new one which is making every skill they had interact with every skills that already exists to make sense.