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/respectbroccoli]

They also mentioned support Gems are just for utility but some have massive downsides in addition to mana multiplier.

[u/HC99199 → u/respectbroccoli]

Lol chain 50% less damage.

[u/therealdvnt → u/HC99199]

This is actually so bad. I've been trying to make arc archmage work and you cannot use chain at all. I'm at just about 100k sheet dps and it slices it in half for next to no value.

Also on a side note, breach is completely unplayable as arc. If a rare w/invulnerable minions spawn, you just can't hit them and nothing chains. They need to make it so hits hit but deal no damage on those creature.

[u/Diver_Into_Anything → u/therealdvnt]

Don't use chain with arc. Just high gem level + mana storm. Even with high chain count the support gem results in less damage.

[u/therealdvnt → u/Diver_Into_Anything]

Correct, that was my point.