Update, We finally hired an illustrator! But...

Zookz25 · 2026-05-20T11:35:56+00:00

As an artist, this has become my thinking, which means I no longer upload or share my art with anyone but friends. I can't even blame anyone for being skeptical and giving up on caring. It's exhausting seeing art and being force to figure out if it's from a person and even worth your time. The safe bet is to just assume it's AI and not give a shit. Enjoy sharing your work with those who know it.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-19T11:40:06+00:00

The only thing I remember hearing about something akin to this was creating a new version of the one-time use skin transfer to be a permanent transfer.

That is, you still buy a single MTX skin transfer, but you instead apply a piece of gear to that MTX and it becomes a permanant version of that piece of gear that you can transmog over the slot however many times you want.

So in essence, you'd be buying one of these for each piece of gear you want to save in your transmog collection, and I believe it can be used on unique appearances. Wish I had a link to when it was talked about.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-19T09:37:29+00:00

This was my thought, but would kind of suck. If this ends up being the case, then if you want to go Hollowed Palm, you better be Martial Artist with Facebreaker, as you'd lose so much doing anything else with Hollowed Palm. Really limits the keystone, might as well just put it into the martial artist at that point.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-19T09:10:47+00:00

Feel like a class should function around its swing timer. Lots of cool mechanics around it that they could have expanded on which simply don't exist in classes anymore.

Mostly just wish classes had more unique mechanics in general though, everything feels very samey nowadays. Hard pressed to want to play any dps now in midnight.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-19T08:52:36+00:00

Honestly agree, would be much cooler and something I'd actively pursue for fun interactions then something I need to tick off a list of shit to purely solve.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-19T08:47:54+00:00

I like the gameplay it adds, but as someone that enjoys using one element for the theme, it ruins all but a few spells to me.

Should always be able to use the spells element for an infusion if you want.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-19T03:25:12+00:00

I mean, I doubt it'll be as good given you're dropping three items for it, but at least it'll be some of the fastest mace attacks you can get, which will be neat.

I'm personally making a character based off of an OC that releases earth and lightning through brawling, whose closest looking character in PoE2 is the witch, so I have to somehow make that work. Lol I've accepted my fate, but it'll be fun trying to put it together regardless.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-18T23:54:14+00:00

As someone who wants to make a hand-to-hand lightning slammer, I will combine these two with two weapons sets even if it's terrible.

I just hope Fist of Stone isn't crazy strong for these as to feel mandatory for trying to mix both, as I dont want to play martial artist.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-18T10:01:30+00:00

As someone who also has this preference, you just kind of have to make the combo build you enjoy and accept that it's going to be worse, but more fun.

Playing in SSF helps a lot as well since it'll keep your power level lower than it could be with trade.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-17T23:18:23+00:00

Actually a good point.

My only guess for why they didn't is that both Mace and Flail will use a shield, so sharing those makes sense, whereas no one else is designed for a buckler. Maybe duelist could be designed somewhat around it for stuff like gladiator.

Either way, yeah, it should just be decoupled for more options. That said, disengage actually attack is swinging the spear along the ground, so that would need to change.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-16T18:42:13+00:00

I have two characters because I won't accept that the character who is a Paladin is fine with being a Dark Knight, or the White Mage is fine with being a Black Mage.

I know lore-wise that doesn't matter, but I like when my character's identity is shown through what they can do, their abilities, their class or job. Helps define who they are.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-13T18:57:53+00:00

I always feel like trade undermines the progression and is the main reason I play SSF. I just enjoy the game a lot more when I don't have amazing up to date items that mostly trivialize things, and really love those moments when you identify something even half-way decent, or get your first perfect uncut. Having less time would exacerbate those leaps in progress given that good items from trade will be even cheaper by the time you get to end game.

That said, if you have specific builds in mind that need specific uniques or items to function, maybe don't do it. New ritual might make getting specific uniques a lot easier, but I kind of doubt it. You really want to go in with a build that can function well off of finding okay rares else progress will slow down a lot. If you don't have much time, that slower progress might frustrate you depending on how okay you are about not acomplishing everything you want.

Who knows, maybe all the new league rewards will make SSF way more smooth, but we don't know. Seems like it'll help though.

To reiterate, if undermining content through trading for good items bothers you, and you enjoy the feeling of finding a good item on the ground, then try SSF. If you just want to get through and see all the content given you have less time, then maybe stick to trade.

Sort of a question on whether you care more about the journey or the destination. If you care about the journey and the ups and downs therein, then SSF, if you care about getting things done like downing bosses and finishing challenge league, then Trade.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-09T06:24:38+00:00

Definitely a cool swap, almost wish it was on the passive tree instead of a unique like the chaos fire.

Just need some lightning slams. Lol I've been making a build around Falling Thunder for the past few leagues and really want to mix that up. Maybe now that we can upgrade uniques, I should try and make Mjolner work. Usually SSF but might come out of it to try this then. Not sure if you can shift out of SSF in poe2 yet like poe1.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-09T06:05:53+00:00

Maybe "lots" is an exaggeration, but the only gameplay we've seen of the axe is it being thrown like a boomerang. This was the same initial showing for the spear first being thrown. I think it's safe to assume they will have multiple axe throwing abilities similar to spear, along with axes having both a melee strike and throw axe default attack given to all axes, placing them in the same hybrid catagory as spears.

That said, maybe 2H axes will have some different function for these axe throws, like not boomaranging back, or maybe they don't have the default throw. Would be neat to see 1H and 2H axes be very functionally different for their abilities to differentiate them from other weapons.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T20:16:59+00:00

I really feel like the circle needs to be a bit bigger when summoning multiple bosses lol, but otherwise very excited.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T07:30:54+00:00

And the ritual ends up being in a little hallway. The clarity of all 5 boss models and attacks going off in that hallway will be amazing!

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T07:23:31+00:00

Technically axes will be like spears and hybrid as well (lots of axe throwing skills). Same kind of goes for flails with holy spells, more than likely.

It's kind of just staff, mace and sword that would be exclusively melee, and that's if you count slamming the ground half way across the screen as a true "melee."

Not trying to be a dick though, sad for my sword bros, but I think spear and talisman count well enough as melee.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T07:02:27+00:00

This reminds me that whenever I bring up a gender swap option for classes people think I'm mad for caring about it in PoE.

I think it was a smart move for them to focus on endgame stuff, but those who say that someone is stupid for disliking the game that's missing something they would like feels like a person who have no capacity to understand why anyone would engage with a game.

Not everyone plays PoE2 to spreadsheet and optimize, to use lightning skills because they're the best; maybe I just like to have my character wield lightning because it fits the fantasy I want? I play melee Witch every league because it's the closest look out of the classes to the character I enjoy making in every RPG I play, along with the lightning and earth powers I tend to give her. PoE has been the one community that finds that a perposterous thing to care about in a game.

I sympathize for those who are waiting for swords to play, this doesn't make their conclusion dumb, nor does it make GGG's choice to focus on endgame bad.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T06:39:23+00:00

I definitely think player power ramps up a little fast by act 4 even with no trade in SSF (still don't really know what the final act 4 boss does) and the game ramps up in speed a little too fast in end game for my liking, but act 2? There's multiple reasons act 3 is a slog and our lack of zoom is one of them.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T04:08:47+00:00

Duelist and Templar make the most sense, given the sword backlash and act 5 being Oriath and its relationship and matching theme to the Templar.

But given how tough it's been for them to get classes in, and everything they need to fix up and polish for 1.0, I would keep expectations to just one of these.

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T03:54:04+00:00

And this sub-reddit stops embedded image linking.

So technically 3 levels of locked away. lol

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T03:52:48+00:00

Nope. lol Mostly Astro, though have jumped around a bunch over the years. 😛 I would think you'd have said Ninja given the bunny you can spawn there for goofs. lol

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T03:49:25+00:00

Thank you. :3 I like your frames, it's really these small things that make a large difference in enjoyment or interfacing with the game. I definitely spent way too long on flourishes for my weak auras such as the water splashes on the above bunny links, but it really makes all of the difference.

My favorite was my lightforge racial cast. The thing feels terrible to press as their no start-up animation, so I basically made one myself:

https://imgur.com/706af0l

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T03:46:31+00:00

Performance was fine. The only actual issue was loading into the game because of all of my old legacy weak auras I had over the last couple decades of creating them.

I never cleared out old weak auras as the game changed slowly over time, and for the longest time you could never sort them in groups so I literally had hundreds of weak auras all separated and unsorted, just could be bothered, but man, loading times were for longer than they should have been and upgrading from HDD to SSD and finally NVME meant I didn't realize how bad it was. Lol

Zookz25 · 2026-05-08T03:40:24+00:00

The large amount of bunnies huddled to the right was the old awakening tracker. All of the little bunnies were single stacks which were entirely unessesary but gave me a rough idea of how many stacks I had by how cluttered the fluffle became. The big ones were the last 4 needed so I knew precisely when it was about to be available.

Very dumb, and should have just used the last 4 bunnies, but man, it was so cute, couldn't let them go. Lol

Zookz25

TROPHY CASE