So it is pretty much in the same state as was PoE 1 couple months before the release, and it will take 1,5 years of patching till the mechanics are ironed out?
I cant understand why Sawyer decided to retool the ruleset so much. Grimoire-stuff with switchable grimoires didnt really work in practice, but I don't think they would've needed to do that big overhaul. I bet they don't even touch on the biggest flaws like the crap buff/debuff/dispel/protection spells.
The beta is better off than PoE1 before release, but it still has a long way to go all things considered. They do have a ton of work to do on the ruleset - so many rules from the first game no longer make as much sense with the new mechanics, but don't seem to have been replaced or updated yet.
I don't like the grimoire switching, and wish they would just drop it. It seems like they realized it didn't work well in PoE1, and instead of giving up on the idea just doubled down. It's too micro-managey in game that is already super heavy on mm. It also requires a lot of metaknowledge to get the most out of your spell choices. Not a fan.
Speaking of spells, there's this very weird thing about the leveling up. Not sure if it's a bug or what, but you can distribute the ability points when you level up in whichever class you want and you get extra points every few levels if you are multiclassed. Soooo, it turns out you get more abilities as a multiclass in a single class tree than a single-classed character if you want to. At least I think so, I'm not 100% sure.
Yeah, you get +1/+1 on each tree, and then an additional +1 on a tree of your choice for levels that you reach a new power level (4, 7, etc.). I'm pretty sure this was a bug introduced in the most recent patch, at least that's the sense I get from the Obisidian forums. If it's not, there is literally no reason to pick a single class character ever.
The Cat Spiritshift is ridiculous, through the roof damage + super fast attack speed + the insane maneuverability of the Rogue tree + the survivability of the other Spiritshifts makes for an almost unstoppable killing machine that blasts its way through the battlefield without worry about engagement, positioning or anything else. The Cipher/Ranger also does insane damage with only her bow, yet her spells fall a bit on the wayside because, like I said, I don't know if they are successful or not 90% of the time. My custom characters are 10x as useful as the pregenerated ones, much more damage, survivability and utility.
My Shifter would've been half as good as he is now without the Rogue levels and abilities. ESPECIALLY as a Shifter since you spend 95% of combat in forms and you can't cast anything, so going single-class Shifter is literally useless because you can't cast spells in the forms and having more of them is equally as useless. A lot of class combinations aren't very viable as a Shifter, though, because a) you can't cast spells in the forms, so no spellcasting multis and b) a lot of melee bonuses from other classes don't work in the forms, like the Monk unarmed bonus or any Fighter bonuses to weapons. You can use melee abilities in the forms, however, so the Rogue maneuverability is open to you. Viable Shifter/X are probably limited to Shifter/Paladin, /Rogue and /Barbarian.
The synergy for multiclass combinations is pretty variable - things like Paladin/Barbarian (best defenses + AoE flaming melee attack) or Fighter/Monk(+20 Accuracy + high attack speed) are stupid good, while Wizard/Priest just gets a few extra spell picks/casts and takes a hit in power level. Odd mechanics like the shifter or the Transmuter's ogre tend to not behave with synergies that you would expect them to have. I expect those will get patched, but it doesn't seem they put much thought into how some of the classes could harmonize together (or, to be kinder, that they are still catching up), and as a result some don't at all.
Spellcasting is not too slow, but I do think casting damage spells is not a good idea in big fights, it's better to cast other things. It's a combination of having enough damage already, them doing not-that-great damage and being more beneficial to cast CCs and such.
You missed the initial release where you would watch your six second cast fireball erupt, miss half of its targets (no graze), and do x0.3 damage on the rest with those fun little "No Pen" pop-ups everywhere. The most recent patch changed that. I'm also not sure if they've fixed the 1s recovery bug on all one-handed melee weapons yet (it's supposed to be something like 2s for fast weapons and 3s for normal).
The contribution from the casters might also be a consequence of playing with the BB companions - using a fully optimized party, the melee and range damage will usually end the fight before damage spells have a chance to land, at least in a way that meaningfully impacts the fight.
Some of the cc durations are not worth the casting time investment. E.g. Mental Binding - 6.0 cast + 2.0 sec recovery... Foe is paralyzed for 6.0 sec, 2.5m AoE immobilized. It's not bad, but downgrading the AoE effect from PoE1 plus the long cast time means your cipher is probably better off just auto-attacking for 2 or 3 attack rolls.
Caster are getting better and things are headed in the right direction though, so I haven't given up hope yet.
The Priest feels limited, though. I'm not entirely sure where they are going with this, but if this is an attempt to nerf Priests by not giving them access to all their OP spells, then maybe it's working, but it still incentivizes a routine every combat.
The casters need some passives in their skill trees. Just choosing spells at level up is the worst character development possible, and I don't know how Josh overlooked this, especially since there are currently only 5-7 spells at each power level for priests. It was even worse when the subclass choice locked you out of some of the spell schools, so that you were literally choosing one of three or four spells each level.
Up to the point I am now, I think you can get through the entire beta without resting once. There is just no need. The Empower mechanic is a button you use when you've totally screwed up the fight and you need a reset, it isn't something you'd routinely use if you are playing well.
Yeah, resting is basically pointless now. Unless you suck, you're rarely going to need to do it. Once they start handing out awesome food bonuses, good players may finish entire acts without ever needed to rest.
Empower is just an Awesome Button. It's basically UI masturbation - press here to feel good (disclaimer: accomplishes nothing). On half of the abilities in the game, it's not even clear that it has any meaningful consequence AT ALL.
So they fixed issues with pacing and trash mobs but instead just broke down entire system of combat instead?
Just, why? like, why?
So many problems seem to stem from changing things they didn't need to change. One aspect of BG1/BG2 that will not be true of PoE1/PoE2 is mechanics continuity.
Honestly I'm not to bothered with how combat will be on release. The class system Sawyer devised almost guarantees combat is going to be broken, but at the same time it should make for good replayability and if he has proven one thing, its that he is willing to spend time and resources on polishing the gameplay. So I think that's a price worth paying for unbalanced combat on launch.
Yeah, they proved that they can fix things with PoE 1 - I just hope it doesn't take as long this time.
I'm aware of how to avoid it, and I agree your example is one way to do that. (Another way is to make areas more individualized and touch (touch, not expound to the nth degree) on only what is relevant for that location.)
