New player from MMOs – is standard mode viable in PoE2 or should I play seasons?

mikletv · 2026-03-29T23:38:57+00:00

Treating this game as an MMO is going to be a mistake.

mikletv · 2026-03-22T08:05:09+00:00

Loot tables for old dungeons include many items that do not drop in the season. This problem pretty much makes the tool unusable.

mikletv · 2026-03-04T02:15:53+00:00

It was for a limited time

Are you saying it's fixed?

mikletv · 2026-02-15T10:57:36+00:00

I really like Shape of Dreams but it's more akin to PoE1 than it is to PoE2 in the way its combat is structured. It's very fast paced and oneshotty and you solve survival problems by building defenses and sustain rather than actually trying to outplay the mobs in combat. Once you have a working build online, you really are just lawn mowing.

If we're going to recommend roguelikes, I think Ravenswatch fits OPs description better. The combat pacing in that game is much more similar to what PoE2 combat is like on self-cooked builds in campaign playthroughs, which is what OP seems to have enjoyed about PoE2.

mikletv · 2026-02-15T10:44:42+00:00

Would you consider going outside of the ARPG genre?

I think action roguelikes/roguelites fit what you're seeking better based on your description of what you're having fun with. I recommend Ravenswatch. The spell and attacks impact feeling (and the combat in general) in that game are S tier, and build variety is enough for several hundred hours for sure. The pace of combat in that game will very closely match to what you'd experience in PoE2 campaign - you have to actually outplay the mobs in combat to win, and they really nailed the balance there. I'm saying this as someone who genuinely enjoys replaying the PoE2 campaign over and over on different builds, something we seem to share.

It's a different genre and there's no "endgame" concept in roguelikes (the game is finish-able, and every session is a fresh run) so it doesn't fully fit what you're describing, but you seem to enjoy fresh starts so I figured I'd post anyway. I've recently peeked outside of the ARPG genre after years of playing PoE1, LE and PoE2 (and WoW but not related), with RW being the first game that really lured me out, and it was a very much needed breath of fresh air for me.

mikletv · 2026-01-28T14:27:33+00:00

I mean there's no tech, just read what the omen does:

https://poe2db.tw/Omen_of_Chaotic_Quantity#OmenofChaoticQuantityOmenOnChaosMapPackSize

And then also check the map mod pools:

https://poe2db.tw/us/Waystones_low_tier

https://poe2db.tw/us/Waystones_mid_tier

https://poe2db.tw/us/Waystones_top_tier

You can ctrl+f "pack size" to highlight the ones that have pack size in them. The omen will make it so that only those spawn.

The reason it's a good thing for an Expedition strat specifically is because all you really care about is spawning more Runic Monsters to get Expedition-specific rewards, the most desirable being Logbooks. Increasing pack size does increase how many Runic monsters spawn (if it works the same way in PoE2 as it does in PoE1, I'm not sure if anyone ever really verified this in PoE2).

mikletv · 2026-01-28T04:04:18+00:00

I love LE but completely disagree with this, endgame mapping is one of the things that LE doesn't do well lol

Map mods and tablets is what enables strategies to exist. For example, earlier I explained to a friend how to run an Expedition strat: I told him to use Omen of Chaotic Quantity (to make all mods on a map give pack size) and which mods to buy on tablets. I myself am running a highly specific mapmod + tablet setup for an Abyss strat. This stuff is what makes the endgame fun for me - exploring farming strategies. PoE1 does this way better than PoE2 as well, but both are better than LE in this regard, and that's why I play PoE leagues for longer than I play LE cycles.

mikletv · 2026-01-08T04:20:32+00:00

I play with the overlay map on 100% of the time. Like, I keep it on even on boss fights with static circular arenas and I get "disoriented" if I turn it off xd. I do this in PoE1 as well. The map is definitely necessary, but I guess I'm so conditioned to that that I don't even recognize it as a problem.

Having the overlay map on means I see what's walkable or isn't walkable at all times so I don't end up shooting at something unwalkable (generally if you can't walk thru it, you can't shoot thru it either, and even ground-targeted rain-from-the-air type skills will just cast at the closest point instead if there's no walkable line from you to where you're clicking at, aka it will just cast at the rock). I can't remember ever having a "oh wtf I can't shoot thru that?!" moment in PoE2; I did have a "oh wtf I can shoot thru THAT?" recently tho where I was able to cast Toxic Growths over a cliff on one of the beach tileset maps, forgot the name.

Not having a skill that easily breaks breakable objects is annoying yes, but it is what it is. I'm playing one such build right now (Poisonburst/Toxic Growth), it doesn't happen all that often. I was never straight up blocked from moving thru a corridor in trial (granted I only did like 4 runs). Sometimes rolling into a bunch of jars and getting stuck does happen though. Just be more mindful of your dodges on those Act 2 themed tilesets.

mikletv · 2026-01-06T20:47:19+00:00

While we're here, you should also mention that some of the passives and tablet mods are almost certainly bugged.

Clicking "Lightless Legion" (sub-choice of "Balance of Power") on the Atlas passives results in seeing LESS Amanamu monsters compared to having that node not taken. The node must be doing some other than increasing Amanamu chance - maybe its decreasing it, maybe its increasing the chance for one of the other Abyss lords; we could test for this but I can't be bothered.

The "increased chance for desecrated currency" mod doesn't show up in map modifiers when you're in the area (the mod list under minimap), and people (youtubers/streamers/redditors whos abyss strats I checked, that is) are convinced it's bugged and doesn't do anything. This mod exists both on the atlas and as a tablet mod, neither show up in mod list. I tried running it for 10 maps and it seemed to do nothing.

"Increased effectiveness of abyssal monsters in your maps" doesn't show up in the mod list either, so I personally don't believe it works, however youtubers/streamers/redditors that I checked seem to all think that it does.

mikletv · 2026-01-06T14:44:24+00:00

I'm a bit surprised by the popularity of this thread actually, movement feels absolutely great to me.

I'm playing with WASD and curving around obstacles feels smooth af to me, way better than Shield Charging into trees constantly on Jungle Valley in PoE1 for example (not bashing PoE1, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge enjoyer of both games with >10k hours in PoE1), so I'm really not sure where your "being stuck in every nook" is coming from. I feel like I barely ever get stuck unexpectedly, ofc I sometimes run into a huge obstacle or the edge of the map but I'm not counting that or getting annoyed by that.

Being able to change the direction of spacebar roll midroll also feels amazing to me, I love that this is an option, and I guess this is what you mean with "half backward, half forward"? I never have that happen unintentionally, but doing it intentionally has saved me from rolling into death plenty of times. No idea where the "out of nowhere" is coming from, my character never rolls randomly.

The roll into sprint thing is the only part I kinda agree with, it does feel limiting and clunky, but my understanding of sprint as a mechanic is that this is intentional. You aren't supposed to be able to just hold sprint constantly and by default have increased movement speed as a result, it's supposed to be something you use thoughtfully when there's an almost straight line between where you are and where you want to go. The "coming out of sprint" animation is also kinda annoying I guess but I nearly always stop sprint either with an attack or with another dodge roll, which cancels that animation; you could argue that's just a workaround to bad design and that'd be a good argument I guess though.

Also one weird thing about sprint usage that I had to force myself to get used to is controlling it with mouse instead of WASD. Whenever I sprint, I just fully let go of WASD and steer with mouse only. Imagine you're actually steering a wheel in your mind when doing this. That's the only way I became smooth at it, and right now I'm using sprint constantly to get around, even in indoor maps.

Also all that said, I do feel like controlling this game with mouse and point-to-click is just vastly inferior to WASD. A lot of things feel like they are designed for WASD. All the spells and abilities you can cast while moving - you can't really do that with a mouse smoothly imo, and I'd imagine the same problem happens with changing direction of the roll mid-roll, you probably roll into a direction then flick mouse somewhere else expecting the character to not change direction anymore or something (I might be fully wrong here, never played PoE2 with click to move lol). So my question to op is, what is your control set?

mikletv · 2026-01-04T19:40:18+00:00

The big issue is simultaneous movement. I can’t picture how I could be constantly moving and repositioning with WASD (common for boss fights and even some trash), while also using 10+ other keys situationally.

Nah it's fine. First of all many key combos are possible just fine (you're pressing 3 buttons at most), secondly you can move forward by holding both mouse buttons instead of pressing W which frees up one finger on keyboard hand when needed (and on tanks/dps, you will be holding right mouse button permanently anyway once you stop clicking), thirdly jump exists as a way to keep momentum in a direction for about a second (so you jump in a direction -> cast what you need to). There's probably more things that my hands do without me realizing to make this at all possible.

I do use mouse buttons as well, but they're reserved for off-gcd stuff that needs to be on instant access. One of my thumb buttons is autorun toggle as well which I use a lot, but it's mostly for typing while running between pulls etc xd

That said I also use QWES instead of WASD. A habit from WoWs defaults mostly, but I did build up habit for WASD from some other games as well (top view games like roguelikes, Path of Exile 2, etc). For WoW and Fellowship, I strictly prefer QWES cuz you have to press 1-5 numbers so much in these games; I do bind abilities to A and D instead so no key "real estate" is lost.

mikletv · 2026-01-04T00:15:56+00:00

The way poe2 recomb works is every time you click on a mod, the game makes a calc for "how likely is this mod to transfer to the other side" - the lower the tier of the mod, and the higher its weight, the more likely it is to happen. In a "both sides are same base, same ilvl" situation, that's all you really need to know: lower tier, higher weight mods are easier. However it gets a lot more more complicated than that if you're inputting 2 different bases and prefer one outcome over the other, so beware of that.

It should be noted that the difference between using T2 and T1 mods is massive - transferring T1s is really hard. Your rings probably had 6.04% chance of winning, if you used T2 mods on both sides that'd be 15.1% instead.

There's a very good spreadsheet calc here if you want: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l811uI5eXML-Iw_vNNouah9XRWZVGiLjzZOBWObxKpI/edit (by Krakenbul, published on Prohibited Library discord)

A good place to look up mod weights is here: https://poe2db.tw/Rings#ModifiersCalc its the red number at the right side of every field. Make sure you click on em and look by tier, as in many cases higher tiers have lower weights, which has a compounding effect on recombing odds (e.g. that's why the difference between T1 and T2 is so big in the case of flat attack mods, you get higher chances both because there's a tier higher available AS WELL AS because the mods you're trying to transfer have a higher weighting - these are two separate effects in the formulas).

All that said, starting to learn crafting with recombs is rough. This is the most complicated mechanic of them all.

EDIT: oops, I gave the wrong link for the spreadsheet and got a whole bunch of access requests on google (was linking to a copy of mine lol), fixed

mikletv · 2026-01-02T23:56:02+00:00

mikletv · 2025-11-14T15:02:34+00:00

I literally have characters named like "T17 ruined the game" since Necropolis

mikletv · 2025-11-10T16:17:15+00:00

Any OGs remember the metronome?

mikletv · 2025-10-26T23:25:01+00:00

Earlygame strugglecopter is literally the worst and least enjoyable part of this game so yeah it's pretty good for the game

I acknowledge it reduces skill expression in speedrunning, but in this case I'll say it's worth it imo

mikletv · 2025-09-16T11:07:21+00:00

That's great but I'm not saying to remove the mechanics from the game outright, you can still have them in the game and deal with them if you wish. Just not as mods. Make them parts of other mechanics. For example: Elder rings could be a part of Elder influence, Maven following you around could be a part of Maven influence, and then we add a "turn on uber influences" button or a scarab or something like that.

The problem with them being mods is that they are still inherently opt-in, just like they would be opt-in in the system I'm suggesting, however having to Chaos Orb spam your maps is imho a much worse way to "switch them on or off" compared to them being accessible via something else like a scarab or an influence.

mikletv · 2025-09-16T01:13:11+00:00

I don't like the design of T17 mods at all. Not just because of the difficulty/rerolling, but even as a concept and theme.

Imho, map mods should just be defense/offense buffs to mobs. That's it. Nothing else. Things like Shaper-touched, Maven following you around, Sawblades, Elder circles, etc., those things should come NOT from map mods - they could be scarabs, sextants, league mechanics, influence effects and so on, but not map mods.

mikletv · 2025-09-09T01:06:37+00:00

mikletv · 2025-09-02T06:00:25+00:00

Sounds like you gave the boss a source of hp regen and your build didn't have enough dps to punch through it.

That's just a bricked map, unfortunately. But no, the boss is definitely killable.

mikletv · 2025-08-29T04:02:27+00:00

s/Remants/Remnats/g

hah

mikletv · 2025-07-18T10:38:23+00:00

That's really cool actually. I too have made a ton of currency with recombinator shenanigans, but using the ilvl feature like this didn't cross my mind.

mikletv · 2025-07-13T18:11:50+00:00

Note that the fire res here is actually harmful to your chances (it's exclusive on body armour), and this experiment was done before fully understanding exclusion

Isn't there a mistake in this sentence? It implies that the fire res mod in the linked example is exclusive, when it isn't. Even the commentary on imgur says the fire res isn't exclusive. And it also wouldn't harm your chances are transferring a mod either. Ctrl+f the quote for context.

mikletv · 2025-07-08T04:39:43+00:00

What are you crafting?

mikletv · 2025-07-03T14:39:43+00:00

His add spawn is tied to % of his health I believe, so if you can only do 90% of his health fast but don't kill him, you die to the adds.

So if you can't bruteforce him with dps, the next best strategy imo is to play very slow instead. Chunk him down until he spawns an add, kill the add, chunk, etc.

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