Spear Huntress Feedback

Hello,

I think the devs really did a good job on the spear huntress gameplay. It might be my favorite gameplay right now. I dash in with autoattack, jump back, throw some spears, dash in again, evade, blind enemies with tornadoes, get close to ranged enemies and parry projectiles, circle around swarms to bleed them out strategically.

It's great. I think this is the most fun I've had in any ARPG until now. The gameplay is top notch and I didn't think PoE 2 would be this good, to be honest. Especially how you aquire frenzy charges and how that makes you play in a certain way, alternating between ranged and melee, as well as how the passive skill tree nodes are structured to support this. I also like that my parry stuns the bosses and there is a node that makes me deal more damage with projectiles when enemies are heavy stunned ^^. The end result is a beautiful, very tactical gameplay and it makes me feel involved.

I especially like how the devs made the choice of ranged spear throws forking and thus you having to position yourself correctly, in order to kill groups of mobs efficiently.

Well, but I'm a noob of course. I'm sure there's someone out there just using lightning spear making the whole screen explode with one button.

Sounds like a really fun playstyle you are describing.
How do you fork ranged spears? Via passive tree after parry or something else? On which skills do you use it? The weapon ranged spear attack or something else?

It makes your spear projectile attacks fork. I use it on the ranged spear attack, the normal one, because I play Ritualist and have a node that gives me +20% physical damage. There are nodes in the passive skill tree which make your projectile attacks fork. Also a unique, which I am not using right now. But in most cases you need to melee attack for your spear projectile attacks to fork.

I like that you aren't playing the one-button lightning spear build. I rolle done as an alt and I just don't want to play it. It's dull as dishwater because it's too overpowered and unbalanced. I'm happy you are playing it right.

The greatest thing about this build or how the devs developed this is in my opinion that you don't even get into the common traps of feeling like you have to do a preprogrammed sequence of steps, like parry, disengage, throw spear (which you will do of course), rinse and repeat. It feels more like there are so many elements to the build, like melee attacks pinning (which I did so I'd get frenzy charges), tornadoes blinding that go in all directions for when you are surrounded by ranged enemies, ranged attacks forking and doing aoe damage with frenzy charges, parrying stunning more and giving frenzy charges via disengage and also extra damage to the parried mob, as well as the other skills I am using, that it feels like you're just playing and the part where you're awesome and doing nice stuff seems to happen automatically at some point.

I don't know how they did it, but it feels like it's very rare for a video game to achieve that or give me this feeling of flow. I don't know if you know what I mean.

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Elena#1466 a écrit :

Sounds like a really fun playstyle you are describing.
How do you fork ranged spears? Via passive tree after parry or something else? On which skills do you use it? The weapon ranged spear attack or something else?

There's a freezefork support gem. Spear skills have ways to freeze an enemy, other weapons also have freeze options. Alternatively, there's a gambleshot support gem. Could even do Tornado Shot (bow) then throw a spear into that to split it.

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Naharez#3496 a écrit :

a preprogrammed sequence of steps, like parry, disengage, throw spear (which you will do of course)

That's a tutorial sequence. Once you start getting tier 2 support gems, you do whatever you want. I have a monk doing parry -> ice strike (quarterstaff) to get frenzy charges (retort support gem) - yes he travelled the passive tree to get weapon swap speed. You can disengage without a parry just to move backwards faster than a dodge roll, plus start healing (holy descent support gem). You can spearfield (with knockback support gem) instead of throw spear to buy even more time for whatever you want to do at range.

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Naharez#3496 a écrit :

I don't know how they did it, but it feels like it's very rare for a video game to achieve that or give me this feeling of flow. I don't know if you know what I mean.

It's the key differentiator between players who are having fun and those who aren't: are they having fun with the combat system itself? If there was zero loot in the game, zero progression, just the combat, would they enjoy the gameplay? If loot is the only reason you play PoE 2, you're not happy right now.

As for how they achieve it, the 4 conditions to reach Flow:
1. Clear objective
2. Clear method
3. Perception of Skill
4. Instant Feedback

For many players, step 2 isn't there. This is not a simple game. A lot is explained in-game, a lot isn't (PoE 1 mechanics intuition helps a lot). Not all players want to read (in-game and outside) and think to discover the methods.