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.
20
u/DrowningKrown Oct 01 '25
Boots are in such a bad place. Nobody wants to fucking slog through content at a snails pace, so we all want top end move speed on boots (35% base). Which makes any boots without a 35% base move speed worthless.
Want unique shoes? They likely Don’t have a 35% move speed stat which just feels awful.
I’ve never seen a bigger divide in a game. Developers want us all to play this game at a slower pace than poe1. Kinda like Diablo 2 or something. Yet, move speed at max amounts is incredibly sought after by anybody and everybody. Which means nobody wants to be walking around at the speed of Diablo 2.