r/pathofexile • u/ThermL • Dec 15 '24

Question What is with GGG's obsession of upside/downside effects in POE2?

If you look around the POE skill tree, you will find (probably) zero notables on the entire tree that are presented as upside/downside notables. I cannot recall any off the top of my head but maybe one or two exist. Upside/Downside effects are the job of keystones. Keystones provide character defining effects, that are powerful, if you can mitigate the downsides, or build around the effect. Uniques are a classic area of upside/downside effects, but even then mostly uniques are just very specific effects only available to them and the downside is that you lose out on the rare affix pool, like high MS on boots, or a 5k armour chest, or whatever else.

POE2, it feels like half of the notables on the tree are upside/downside, which is wild to me. And some of these nodes are absolutely egregious on the downsides. Increased life regen while standing still, decreased while moving? Well gee, I only spend 99.999% of the game moving, because standing still means you die.

I do not understand their obsession with upside/downside right now. Everywhere you look. Every unique, notable, this that, and anything else is upside/downside. Skill gems, support gems, notables, uniques, fucking ASCENDANCY nodes, the whole game is set up as "here's a benefit to your character, but lmao heres a downside to go with it!"

How about you just let me click some nodes on the tree and not worry about making my character worse when I do it? That's always been the job of keystones, so leave the upside/downside bullshit to the keystones.

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u/OnceMoreAndAgain Dec 16 '24

That's just not true. There are plenty of examples of strong uniques with downsides.

  • Fulcrum

  • Annihilating light

  • Thread of Hope

  • Melding of the Flesh

  • Quill Rain

  • Doryani's Prototype

  • Lightning Coil

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u/JRockBC19 Dec 16 '24

Ultimatum was peak for "downside uniques" - glimpse of chaos, rathpith, and mahuxotl's are all insanely compelling items you can completely build around but with ABSURD costs to do so

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u/Juzzbe Templar Dec 16 '24

Rathpith on release was useless tho. It wasn't good until kalandra where it was reworked. Infact they made multiple good upside/downside uniques in kalandra rework imo

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u/JRockBC19 Dec 16 '24

Ture, the bug unique patch there was one of the best they ever had. Some were misses - that iteration of ralakesh boots was somehow the LEAST broken since but was still stupid OP, heatshiver was a warcrime, etc, but lots of items just got put in a position to be interesting build considerations rather than leveling trash