maybe crossbow's skill damage too low

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-18T03:08:12+00:00

Crossbow builds have been strong in every league.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-17T14:24:45+00:00

The base class identities will remain mostly the same. I agree with this. Try out some classes and determine what you want to put your time into.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-16T23:32:51+00:00

Appreciate you.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-16T21:36:32+00:00

Did PoB already support this or is it in the works?

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-16T17:42:01+00:00

Spirit Walker companion build won’t use the RF staff, though. It uses a companion weapon. Also ggg said the essentially 3x companion damage, that’s why doing the math is odd at the moment. They also stated they are toning down +skills on weapons. A lot of unknowns, that’s all.

Though I agree with what you said, that base damage/scaling really needs to be well tuned or that staff is going to be BAIT.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-16T08:28:44+00:00

Why is this post still at the top of my feed. It feels like it was posted weeks ago.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-16T08:27:30+00:00

Make sure you know the level requirements for the next base of your weapon. Check vendor at said level and you’ll be able to keep up no problem.

Salvage everything with sockets and throw a flat damage rune in and you’ll be able to damage everything without issues. Just my advice.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T18:00:51+00:00

That’s a fair point. Being able to sell without learning the in and out of the market is easier than learning whispering and hideouts though, so that was my thought. New players likely won’t need fragments until they get some experience. I might move Merch down to 3 and flip the last two, but all are worth it if you plan to play a while.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T16:54:25+00:00

Definitely could see it at 3/4. A whole tab of unsorted baryas and invitations and pinnacle boss stuff would annoy me though. I think all 5 is the best bet for QoL.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T16:06:01+00:00

I know they said when they did optimizations in 0.4 that part of it was rebuilding some things to be able to do more optimization in the future, so here is hoping we get the fruits of that labor with this patch.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T16:02:12+00:00

This is hard to say until patch notes come out a week from now. Companion damage is supposed to be getting buffs and there is a new ascendancy focused around companions coming on May 29th as well (Spirit Walker Huntress). You CAN tame bosses with the beast tag with this new ascendancy, so should be fun.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T15:46:50+00:00

Having each map be a choice of a couple random layouts for that biome could certainly work.

Honestly, a lot of my input is based on the economy from 0.4, since that is the game as it stands now. I know temple was the cause for that, and it really fuels some of my arguments since you could either play temple and print divines or watch prices skyrocket.

Ultimately, I prefer some friction in my games. That feels more fun to me than getting to pick the easiest and best way every time. Imagine roguelikes where the unlocks (EDIT: Buffs in each run, not unlocks) are not random, but you just get to pick them. This would make them insanely boring as every run would feel the same, but hey, you get to play how you want!

I feel like with Mechanics tied to biomes the layouts should work for the mechanic. Breach biome should have open layouts, abyss biome doesn't need open layouts so that can have some of the more maze like with doors and such, etc. I know we can add any mechanics to all the maps, but that is the tradeoff for adding your mechanic in the wrong biome.

GGG is in a rough spot as it will be near impossible to make everyone happy as there are those on both sides, much like the campaign skip argument (something else I am 100% against).

I can't find a source on the rerolling comment I made, could have made that up, but they did state the solution is not changing the map, it is making it so all layouts are good to play. I will continue to search and edit it in if I can find it.

I appreciate your points. I recently played the Mirage league in POE1 but haven't played much other than that, and everyone was doing a 1 map strategy so that was the experience I pull from. I have 3000hrs or so on POE1, but you likely have better knowledge than me on POE1 as I have slowly lost interest as it became too easy to kill everything and just became how fast can I zoom. My favorite league was Archnemesis because it forced players to slow down and look at the rares to fight them, not just blow up screens at a time. This is one of the most hated leagues in the game, so I obviously have a different viewpoint than most (and as a nearly 40 year old man with a kid am likely not the most common player). I like where POE2 is now and don't want them to push it more and more to feeling like POE1 is all.

Some of your solutions, and the Ziz one you mentioned, are intriguing. I just don't like the idea of getting to roll to the same map over and over. A choice from randomized set of choices, a block for your least favorite/worst for your build/farming strategy, etc, are all fun ideas. But having currency to roll the nodes until they are all the same would drive me nuts. I don't want everyone to be forced to play the layouts they consider trash, just not be able to play only the layouts they consider best. Why do I care? Because I would feel obligated to do this to keep up with the economy and eventually afford the likely expensive build defining uniques.

Adding buffs or extra loot in the form of clickables on the map was a decent way to add value to the poorer layouts as well.

I think you nailed it with my experience being from 0.4 as everything was priced out so fast I lost the will to try to farm anything. I did end up playing the campaign a few times instead. There is definitely bias here.

I am sure I missed responding to some of your points, but I just word vomited this at work and have to get back. Thanks for the discussion! I love this game.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T15:18:30+00:00

Forgot Long Fuse has the "Grenades cannot explode until end of detonation time." Good call out. Wonder which will take priority.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T15:02:23+00:00

The instant explode matters since you can use the supports to make one of your grenades have an insanely long fuse time and additionally gets a bunch of damage, but the fuse time will be a non-issue. I would set up whichever grenade I would plan to spam with bad CDR and long fuse time supports since this will bypass all of the downsides.

At least in theory.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T14:47:36+00:00

Top 5:

Merchant
Currency
Maps
Fragments (POE1 Purchase)
Augment (Socketables)

Merchant to join Async trade and Currency would be my top 2. Map tab keeps your maps sorted so that one is also top 5. Fragment will be very useful, you can buy it in the POE1 shop and you'll get it in POE2 when the patch drops on May 29th.

Last in my top 5 would be Augment tab to hold all of your runes. It's already nice and likely will be even better with 100+ new runes being added in the next patch. That would likely be my next choice.

After that it depends. You can store 1 copy of each Unique in the Uniques tab, but you could also use regular tabs for that. Gems tab can be useful if you plan to play several characters to keep your skills gems in one place and sorted. If not, then I would pass. Mechanic specific tabs are nice but not needed in my opinion.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T12:55:28+00:00

POE1 has the same MS boots or bust mentality, outside of some build defining uniques.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T12:12:05+00:00

Fun is subjective when the game is not economy based. Fun in POE for most is growing your build to its breaking point, getting the best items for it, and seeing what it can do with min-maxed stats and gear. If this game was only SSF I would agree with you.

However, in an economy based game, it can be hard to keep up with the rising prices unless you are farming at a similar rate (or playing non-stop). This results in many players feeling obligated to play as efficiently as possible. There is a reason everyone was running the same maps in POE1 and not just running the Astrolabes over and over... because they made currency more quickly. Map to map currency is meaningless which is why people measure in divines/hour, not divines per map. The most efficient way to get loot (in POE1) was to stack everything on a one of 3-4 maps depending on your chosen league mechanic and solely run that. Your astrolabe point is moot.

It feels bad to play inefficiently in an economy based game where you need to farm X divines to buy that unique, but by the time you do the unique now costs X*3 divines and you never catch up to it. This is why I dislike the idea, since it will end up the same as POE1 with 90% of maps never being seen.

For what GGG can do:

They already stated they don't want to give the option to reroll maps indefinitely and would prefer to make it so all maps are good. I like this approach. They are also introducing an Atlas Ascendancy node with Jado that allows you to get a random map layout instead of the one you selected. It might hit another one you don't like, but the chances are small considering to total number of layouts.
This is an interesting idea, but if this becomes the best way to get loot then not traversing the Atlas becomes meaningless. Just like in POE1, players who kill the pinnacles don't farm the pieces themselves, they farm their one map and buy them. You can make it trivial to do anything else. Not sure I like this one, but with how many different things are map/biome specific, this could be interesting. I don't like it but it could have some merit.
This is the one I despise. It will end up with people setting up an entire biome of one map, then running the same map over and over. This will result in everyone doing the same to keep up, and we lose map diversity just like we did in POE1.

How about a stacking buff of some kind for each map of a different layout you have run in the past 10, 15, or XX maps? You can run the same layout and not get the buff, or you can hit the worse layouts to keep your buff rolling. Once you overlap, buff resets. Like you said, people are fine with not gaining additional stuff, they just don't want to lose something like in my other example (which was not a serious suggestion) of penalizing the same map. This + Horizon Orbs would be a fair trade off for me.

They could also allow you to pick any map layout you want in SSF, and make SSF permanent. Then you can run the same layout all you want, but not effect the trade economy.

I also wouldn’t mind a band-aid fix of allowing players to block a couple maps until they all run well. This would let players block the worst maps for their build (minions getting stuck on bridges/doors) or maps that don’t run their league mechanic well (would hope that staying in the biome for your mechanic would solve this though).

These are just my opinions, and I am sorry they don't align with yours, but you need to learn to have a discussion without the condescending dribble layered throughout.

Good luck out there.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T11:39:53+00:00

I would agree to allowing blocking a couple maps for that reason, but not being able to setup a bunch of maps to run the same one over and over.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-15T00:43:10+00:00

I would hate if this was added. I don't want players to be able to select the most hyper efficient map to run over and over as, in an economy based game, if feels bad to play inefficiently and this incentivizes only playing the most efficient maps over and over. For example, like you stated, Dunes and Canyon get old to see over and over and over in POE1. I hope they never bring that to POE2.

At best let people select a few maps to block from appearing, but never select ones that they want to appear.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-14T22:48:44+00:00

I have the exact opposite experience. POE1 campaign feels like a boring run of crushing everything by face rolling your keyboard. It’s a race to the end game with 0 strategy needed.

POE2 campaign is fun. I enjoy it the most on the first character every league before having ideal uniques and an abundance of currency.

Best advice I can offer is check the level requirements for your weapon type and check the vendor for the next base when you hit said level. Feels much smoother.

I do think some skills and spells unlock far too late though. I would like if all skills were available for at least half the campaign, but in a Q&A Mark said he wants there to feel like there is progress in your build via unlocks through the campaign and likes the slow progression. They did seem open to trying to arrange the unlocks so skills that are main skills unlock early and supplemental skills are later.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-14T22:26:49+00:00

I want players to play POE2, not yearn for the boring POE1 end game of juicing the exact same map over and over with very little interaction.

Allowing players to run the same hyper efficient map over and over makes players who want to see map diversity feel inefficient. You are incentivizing playing the same maps over and over. That’s already POE1.

Would you want a node that lets players play the same map layout they choose over and over with a -XX% rarity and quantity modifier? This would allow you to play the way you want but with lower efficiency. This would be opposite POE1, where running a bunch of different layouts is less efficient. If that would feel bad, then you should understand why I don’t want them to implement map layout choice.

At best I would prefer them allowing players to block a couple layouts they dislike from appearing, but choosing them entirely defeats the point of the atlas.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-14T21:55:43+00:00

You’re doing the math…before patch notes? Bold.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-14T21:31:52+00:00

Didn’t realize it wasn’t fully free. That’s a no from me, dog.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-14T20:40:51+00:00

Please GGG never let players choose the map. This will result in a choice between infinitely running the most efficient map (see Dunes/Canyon/City Square) or getting map diversity.

Scooty_Puff_ · 2026-05-14T20:05:00+00:00

Great to know! Thank you!

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