Dear GGG: Swap the Attribute Domains of Huntress and Mercenary

When I first jumped into Early Access, I thought it was strange that the Mercenary was STR/DEX hybrid class. Its a projectile-themed character that has almost no overlap with the Duelist domains established in PoE 1. The Mercenary is not themed towards melee, dual-wielding, or shields. The only justification I could think of at the time was that the Mercenary was more focused on short-range projectiles (i.e. shotgun) that distinguished it from the Ranger, and this might have been why it was hybrid.

With Dawn of the Hunt, I have been able to play the Huntress, and she has the same problem from the opposite direction. For some reason she has been situated as the alternate pure DEX class to the Ranger even though she is a melee/range hybrid. Her early progression is (currently) a nightmare for players who want to focus on melee as she enters the passive tree in a section almost completely dominated by ranged specialization. This means having to waste points traveling north to the Monk area or southwest to the Mercenary area in order to find things you can actually use.

The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious that the domains of these two classes should be switched. The projectile-themed Mercenary should be the alternative to the Ranger and should enter the passive tree in a ranged-focused area, while the skirmisher Huntress should be the Duelist alternative and enter the tree in an area dedicated to one-handed melee and shields. As a melee/range hybrid, she's literally the embodiment of a halfway point between the melee-focused STR classes and the ranged-focused DEX classes, so doesn't it make sense for her to exist in the space between them?

I know this would be a dramatic shift in design, but if there's any chance for it to happen, I figure it would be during Early Access and before full release. I fear that if left in its current state, its going to create design tensions down the road that will sabotage either or both of these classes.
Dernier bump le 28 avr. 2025 à 15:31:51

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