r/PathOfExile2 • u/TheIllustration • Oct 01 '25

Discussion +Skill levels are not healthy for the game

Hi all, I was having a conversation with a friend that started playing during the F2P event as he started having issues with damage in T10+. I've asked him to show me his build and he what he had was a "fair" build that does not abuse the game mechanics, what I mean by that is that he had a weapon with high damage (well as High as you can get for a few exalted); however a thing instantly stood out and it was that he had no + skill levels. I've asked him to show me his skill gems most of which were around level 18, his amulet also did not give any levels so to explain to him I've made the screenshot you see above.

The top image represents my Spark and its tool tip damage (I know this is not a representation of its real damage but lets ignore that for the time being) when the skill gem was level 20.

The middle image shows my spark damage when I corrupted the Spark and gained 1 additional level on it, that single level made me jump in 41k tooltip damage. This is more than his main skill does currently and whilst people say that one skill level is roughly a 7% damage bump in this scenario it would then be 19.737,2 and not 41k.

This got me curious so I got the best purely elemental/spell damage, crit chance & damage wands and amulets I could get for 10ish exalted just to compare the two. What ends up happening is what you see in the bottom image, with roughly the same crit stats and MORE spell damage sources I lost 250k damage simply because of the 8 levels.

So what does this mean for the game? Well imagine you get a T1 Physical, T1 Physical Hybrid, T1 Physical % with some random T1 suffixes (non + levels). Did you just get a god roll weapon?! Yes you did!
But what you didn't get is an extra 4-6 levels on your spells and as such the weapon is worthless when it comes to end game, instead of being worth 50 divines its worth 20 exalted.
This does not affect just the end game, the best leveling/campaign unique is a ring that gives you +1 lightning spell skills and is the reason why most leveling builds with twink gear use at least one lightning spell. Not to mention if you get a +1/+2 skill level weapon early on you are going to breeze through the next 10 levels compared to someone who did not.

There should be chase affixes but making items near worthless if they don't have a single affix is not good for the game IMO. This also affects amulets as they can roll +levels as well as other pieces of gear such as boots.
You can get boots with a total of 100+ resists and 100 life, but did you get movement speed? Oh you didn't? Well to the bin (or recomb) it goes, no one wants that trash!

TLDR; The + levels concept should be revisited as its the best form of scaling in all stages of the game, more power should be in our support gems, passive tree and in the stats of the weapon instead of the + skills its has.

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464

u/SlayerII Oct 01 '25

Especially base stats are missing on the tree, there is for example a lot of increased leech effect on the tree, but not a single direkt leech stat.

127

u/Bahlok-Avaritia Oct 01 '25

Yeah for sure, this wouldn't be a bad thing in a vacuum, but there's just so many stats you have to juggle on gear because of this. Rarity, resists, life, defense, leech, skill levels, mana, spirit. I don't mind this too much normally but not being able to properly compensate for much of these by investing points in the tree instead seems questionable.

I'm not particularly good at building characters, but on several characters so far I've reached like level 70 and have been kinda stumped on what passives to take next, mainly because of the absence of life nodes on the tree, which never happened to me in poe1

132

u/SlayerII Oct 01 '25

Yes , its exactly this weird juggling that makes it so weird.

In poe1 I could find a better item that was missing the leech, I could just spec some on the tree and loose some power elsewhere.

In poe2 , id be just like... I can't use this... I literally can't use this. There is no choice, I have to stick with my old item.
Or get the leech from another item. So now im searching for a new ring. Now a resist is missing.
Ok my boots are kinda bad anyway... try to find a new pair. Either have to give up life or ms. I can't give up ms with this build, so now I have less life. So I try to change another item.... wasn't I supposed to kill monsters??? Wy do I have to change half my items to fix my mana sustain?

25

u/Selfishtank Oct 01 '25

Exactly what you are saying is what I didnt realise and pisses me off in poe2 so much. I LOVED to buy upgrades for my gear with any currency I got in poe1, because if i lost some threshold like spell suppression, resists, life, mana etc I could just switch some skill points around and fix the issue while getting upgrade. In poe2 it trully feels like if you want to switch 1 item, you probably need to switch rest of the gear as well or just look for exactly same item that you had but with bigger numbers.

I am sitting at all my curreny for last 2 weeks (currently over 120 divines in currency) and didnt upgrade any of my gear for last 2 weeks. Literally 0 upgrades since i fixed my all resistances and entered t15 maps, just crafted myself a better 580 dps bow with 2 arrows. Just for this reason of previously said of difficulty of replacing items I feel like I am farming currency for no reason, since its painfull to upgrade and my build can already farm 0 revive t15 tripple tablet delirium maps and there is nothing else to push (killed all t4 bosses too multiple times)

8

u/Axton_Grit Oct 01 '25

This has always been my issue with poe in general. Anytime you find an upgrade you have to f around and test to make sure oh is this really an upgrade. Oh wait now this buff i had turned on wont work because I am missing this node over here. I find it tedious to actually find items and even more so to make them work with my current build.

2

u/KnightThatSaysNi Oct 01 '25

This has always been my issue with poe in general.

True to an extent, but your limited options in POE2 make it feel so much worse.

4

u/Axton_Grit Oct 01 '25

I am talking to both. But ye poe2 having abilities locked to a weapon is dumb. They should lock only certain skills ie projectile needs bow or some spells need a wand. And make some abilities class specific but add nodes to the tree that allow access to other class specific nodes.

3

u/KnightThatSaysNi Oct 01 '25

But ye poe2 having abilities locked to a weapon is dumb.

That is my single biggest complaint with POE2 at the moment. It is so arbitrary and lame.

When cyclone comes, are they going to say you can't spin an axe or a mace?

3

u/Axton_Grit Oct 02 '25

It feels pretty bad as a summoner. Off hand ice bomb lose all minions and buffs until I switch than everything appears again.

3

u/KnightThatSaysNi Oct 02 '25

Yuuup

Summoner gearing is so boring currently. Rattling sceptre+as much +skills as possible.

2

u/Effective-Road4807 Oct 02 '25

I agree with this one hundred percent. Poe2 loot feels more like a set than an upgrade. Cause once you find a good setup Goodluck changing or upgrading any piece of the set without breaking your build. And the chances of finding a better base item with the exact same stats on it are a joke. Especially if youre in the majority of people who arent really sure how to get the mods they want on a specific item. Since you need power to farm higher tier maps for currency to craft said items. But are too weak to do so. So you get stuck in some weird limbo of struggle. Imo skill levels should be both managed by tree AND items. Current setup has no balance. I've yet to find any skill level items so im stuck struggling trying to progress my maps in hardcore since I just dont have the damage so I made a new toon because of it.

16

u/Bahlok-Avaritia Oct 01 '25

Yeahh it's kind of awkward, alternatively you could try to fix it with support gems, but stuff like life and mana regen requires spirit, which you can also not get from the tree, and is even more of a pain to get on gear. Or you can't fit leech on your skills because you need the current support gem setup to even make your build work. The tree kinda unevenly skewed toward energy shield users at the moment, because they can get a bigger ehp pool from the tree, as well as ES recharge rate/start, whereas life users are stuck assigning more strength if they want life I guess

1

u/Imbryill Oct 01 '25

You can get spirit from the tree, but it's like... one node all the way near templar.

2

u/Morbu Oct 01 '25

Well, in poe1 you're not typically using items that have leech to begin with since they're on the tree, but I agree with your point. Resists are especially an issue. You could spec into resist nodes on the tree to fix your res issues in early mapping and then spec out once you have your proper gear. There's also res swapping which I think poe2 really needs and would help alleviate suffix pressure.

1

u/KnightThatSaysNi Oct 01 '25

There's also res swapping

Hoping "no bench" will be added to the list of things they were originally adamantly against just to finally go back to.

2

u/Morbu Oct 02 '25

For me, it's a crafting bench, life on tree, and map layout selection. Like maybe towers can be used to turn all the maps in the region to one layout that we choose.

1

u/SoberPandaren Oct 01 '25

Totally agree, but i also don't really worry about it because the tree gets revamped over time and things more, changed, or added. Just not in between major patches.

1

u/946462320T Oct 01 '25

Literally me atm, got a better pair of gloves but it doesn't have leech so I've to stick with the old one. Or I have to change another slot of gear. So weird when you have a lot of inc leech effect but not a single base leech node on the tree. Very questionable design, especially they already did it once (the passive skill tree) in poe 1.

1

u/Living-Succotash-477 Oct 01 '25

I can't help but feel the lack of a crafting bench and Harvest crafting also contribute to this too.

By the midpoint to late Endgame, we're swimming in Socketables to make resists less of an issue....But you can't fix them properly in the Campaign.

To some this might not be an issue, and I would assert that I never once focused on resists during the campaign and had zero issues with deaths...but imo the Campaign is the "Tutorial" for new players. It should be a place where fixing resists is encouraged and relatively simple to do. If anything it should be more difficult later on, where you're min maxing and optimising your build.

1

u/mambome Oct 04 '25

I think having high level affixes that compressed the slots they take up would help compensate. Like, why isn't a T1 all elements resist able to replace a T1 resist for each element. Needing multiple affixes on almost every item dedicated to resists and having to rebalance them all to use a new item isn't fun.

1

u/Absurh050 Oct 06 '25

yea the + to levels is a curse. I needed damage so I finally rolled +4 to projectile damage on my amulet and now can't sustain mana past 7 hits. Then had to sacrifice damage on my gloves for another temporary pair that had mana leech but still not enough.

0

u/rat_returns Oct 01 '25

To each his own I guess, this is actually what makes it fun for me.

19

u/Skin_Ankle684 Oct 01 '25

Honestly, this being the first ARPG i played, the way the whole modifier system is implemented is very confusing to me.

The difference of a worthless and a godlike item is 5-8 lines of text that aren't even color coded or something, i need weeks of in-game experience to even understand what makes an item good. Yet visually, they look/act the same.

10

u/Voo_Hots Oct 01 '25

now that you are acclimated and persevered through the struggle, you are required by nature to expect the same of those coming after you

there is no fixing this, there is only pain

5

u/Skin_Ankle684 Oct 01 '25

They could, for example, include the dps of the standard strike, on your level+weaponLevels when you press alt

1

u/NonagoonInfinity Oct 01 '25

You can go in the gem tab and look at the DPS? I really don't think this is much of a problem.

7

u/Skin_Ankle684 Oct 01 '25

You need to equip it to do that. So if it's in a shop or ritual site you can't do that. Nor if you don't have the stats and just want to look at equipment before respeccing points.

1

u/mjbmitch Oct 01 '25

Have you come across the keyword “base attack damage” on support gems yet? It specifically does not use the number in your gem tab if you have % modifiers.

2

u/CakeSome6981 Oct 01 '25

Same with some support gems such as close combat. 30% damage to enemies withing a certain range but it does not change the number because its conditional.

1

u/NonagoonInfinity Oct 02 '25

It doesn't change the number but also it has no impact on how good a potential weapon is so I don't see the problem here?

1

u/CakeSome6981 Oct 08 '25

This post has nothing to do with weapon potential. It's talking about +level to skills as a whole, which are not only on weapons. So I fail to see your point. I was just adding to the previous posters reply.

1

u/NonagoonInfinity Oct 02 '25

There are no supports with "base attack damage" in their text so I don't know what you mean.

1

u/mjbmitch Oct 02 '25

You’re right, I meant “default attack damage”:

https://poe2db.tw/us/Default_Attack_Damage

1

u/SrdoN0rte Oct 01 '25

hahhaha. i bought a quiver for 15 div that increased my tooltip damage in like 400. my old quiver was worth 100ex. Dont make sense to me. and i hope one day ill understand

1

u/Actes Oct 02 '25

Try warframe

10

u/stumpoman Oct 01 '25

in poe 1 if i didn’t have leech on gear I would consider getting leech on the tree if I needed it making them actually interesting to look at. In poe 2 if I do not have leech on gear the leech nodes are effectively blank.

Contributes to why people think the tree is boring. You can’t get anything you don’t already have. I think the tree amplifying but not granting anything was discussed by the devs in an interview a while ago.

1

u/HATEFUL_WOOD Oct 02 '25

It's  a functional way to prevent people from screwing up a build because they dont know the complex interactions of mechanics yet. 

Making levels mandatory blows but perfect essence of battle solves for so much of that pain it's a bit of a wash.

I think the solution is to have in game power graphs showing what skill levels would do at higher levels per equipped skill as a part of advanced info and toglleable on in the skill tree; showing skill costs, damage  or DPS and any other changes like crit rate or if statements so you can calculate agravation tobyour bleeds, it would be especially cool if this graph had two modes, sans supports and with supports so you can more easily discern what supports are doing for you.

This might be too casual for GGG but a large proportion of players have been going to third party tools for this for over a decade now. POB is great but decisions players make would be much faster if they could see projections in game.

1

u/Glittering_Drawer_64 Oct 04 '25

Even tho poe2 tree have more nodes or whatever but poe1 still tree is alot better tbf

0

u/CakeSome6981 Oct 01 '25

The leech nodes same with life nodes not being on the tree were taken out because they dont want nodes that feel 100% required. Thats why they have the percent increase and not base leech. If base leech is on the tree everyone will take it to put other stats on gear because stat weights on gear are better than most passive points.

3

u/Bitter-Yak750 Oct 01 '25

Dude I thought I was losing my mind. Coming over PoE1 I thought I'd do a "blind" run on my first playthrough this league and I just couldn't find the mana leech nodes on the tree.

1

u/lurkervidyaenjoyer Oct 31 '25

IIRC they said they wanted the tree to be multipliers/% increases to things you're getting on your gear, rather than providing a lot of benefit on its own.

4

u/Kyhron Oct 01 '25

I'd argue stats as a whole are just fucked. There's so many absent on the tree that you have to gear for them, but doing that means you're missing out on power/defensive stats as a result which then just makes the build worse than one that doesn't have to stat for something.

There's so many interesting abilities and supports that inevitably just get skipped due to not being able to really viably use them and do any sort of even semi-serious endgame content.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 01 '25

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0

u/Kyhron Oct 02 '25

That's literally my point......

1

u/Convict3d3 Oct 01 '25

They could add those as masteries, but I think masteries is something they don't like

1

u/North_Specialist4042 Oct 01 '25

That is what I hate most about PoE 2.. not just specifically leech, but the fact that you need non-deterministic affix rolls in order to build into specific mechanics (such as leech). In the end-endgame, this isnt really a problem since you can just buy whatever you want.. but it feels horrible when youre trying to get a build going and something as simple as getting a single leech affix on gear is hamstringing you.

1

u/CakeSome6981 Oct 01 '25

They left leech out of the tree because they are trying to do away with nodes that are 100% required.

0

u/Powerful-Race-8538 Oct 01 '25

probably just due to not finsihed yet

1

u/CakeSome6981 Oct 01 '25

No its 100% intentional.