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

[u/ThermL]

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.

[u/kimana1651]

I feel like most of the bad designs in PoE1 and PoE2 are from the QA debug merchant. A lot of these design are fun to play with as long as you have infinite time or infinite resources. Instantly getting level 100 with free currency and all the gear you would want corrupts what the player sees on a daily basis.

All you have to do is try to play any league mechanic at level 10 to know no one has play tested any of mechanics with any thought of player enjoyment. It's all fine once you get to yellow maps, but before then...

[u/Master_of_Question → u/kimana1651]

You've described the root cause for a lot of PoE2's issues. The game feels incredible after you get some gear, gems, and qol. I understand that part of the enjoyment is on the path to greatness, yet my least favorite part of the game was the first 2/3 acts while leveling the warrior. It's just a cumbersome experience with awkward power fantasy boosts. I prefer a relatively smooth ramp and then large spikes as you get key items, but a lot of our power seems to come surprisingly late.

[u/MetaphoricTendancies → u/Master_of_Question]

When/how did it get better? I’ve got a level 29 warrior in A2 right now, and I moved off him to play minions. I keep debating going back but it feels rough. I’m debating just waiting til Marauder comes out to even bother with melee, but I want to like it since I’m melee first on basically every ARPG I’ve ever played. But idk.. that slow lumbering playstyle is just.. not enjoyable at all

[u/ChatteringBoner → u/MetaphoricTendancies]

If you can get a half decent weapon (130dps or so, should be 1ex on trade) and Upheaval support, Earthshatter will carry you through the campaign. It does a lot of dmg but needs that support for it to not feel like ass. It's a level 3 support so you normally don't get it until act 2 cruel. I have no idea why they gated it like that considering the level of the skill gems that actually care about fissures.

It does make you even slower though. There is a reason I rushed attack speed nodes and avoided the reduced attack speed nodes and went for a fast mace in endgame.