Comparison of PoE vs PoE2

[Blades of Vanatar]

So I have been playing this game for several years. Loved every minute of it, limited minutes they may be with family, work, blah blah blah getting in the way.

Bought PoE2 after release but my pc was borderline not meeting the minimum standards to run the game and trying to play it was frustrating. So I stopped until I would have a chance to upgrade my rig. 
 

Life has finally seen fit to allow me to concentrate on building a new desktop. I have ordered the parts and am waiting on the video card and monitor to deliver this week. Yay! New system should be valid for several years for gaming (Hopefully!).

So, reading now I see PoE2 changed the combat system a bit and added a penetration piece to the formula. 
 

Can someone explain briefly - dissertation not required - the major differences? 

[Boeroer]

Not possible to do it briefly, sorry.

What changed: instead of having random afflictions and other CC effects you'll have a rationalized system of inspirations (buffs) and afflictions (debuffs, including CC). They counter each other. So if you become smart (+5 INT inspiration) and then get hit by confusion (-5 INT, friendly fire) both go *pouf*. They all come in three tiers per attribute. So every attribute has three tiers of an affliction as well of three inspirations. INT has smart, acute and brilliant as well as confused, charmed and dominated. Each of those cancel each other out, tier doesn't matter. There are also resistances which you can have. A resistance lowers the affliction you get hit with by 1 tier. Resistance to INT affliction would mean that if a charm hits you you only become confused and so on.

Penetration is important. You will have a PEN value for all your damage-dealing attacks. If you can't meet the armor value of your opponent (let's say 8 PEN vs. 8 AR) you will suffer severe dmg loss. Math "behind the curtain" is different when it comes to dmg maluses. Without going into detail a -25% dmg loss goes through some facy operations and "in reality" is much more severe than the number suggests. So avoid underpenetration (-25%, -50%, 75% dmg if PEN is 1,2 or 3 points below AR) at all costs. Same with Grazes. If you meet the enemies' AR then their armor does nothing. So it's not a very granular system but more like "top vs. flop". If you overpenetrate like crazy you can get a 30% dmg bonus. Crits do PEN * 1.5. so a Crit can often lead to overpenetration which will give you overpenetration dmg as well as crit dmg increase.

You can multiclass. Or better: dual class. The rules are very straightforward and easy enough to grasp. You basically mix two classes and get all the goodies but they progress more slowly and can't reach the final power levels of single classes which means their abilites can't scale as high and they can't get the last two tiers of abilities. It's pretty balanced. Multiclasses tend to be more front-loaded which makes them fun to play right from the start while single classes shine at high levels and progress faster.

in Deadfire classes don't have x/encounter abilities like for example the Rogue or Fighter had in PoE. Instead, they all have resource pools now like the Monk or Cipher had in PoE. Difference is that they can't usually refill that pool. So instead of getting 2 Crippling Strikes per encounter a Rogue gets a pool named "Guile" and he pays his Crippling Strikes with Guile (in this case 1 point per Strike). 

spellcasters get 2 spell uses per encounter for each spell tier. So no per-rest anymore. 

you can empower abilities. It's 1/encounter and x/rest. It means you are adding a lot of Power Levels to a spell/attack/whatever active ability. You can also use empower points to refill your resource pool a bit. You get more used per rest with more levels.

Low level abilities scale with Power Level (different from char level, but is connected). That means that low level attacks etc. stay being useful throughout the game. Often those are even the best picks since they tend to be cheap but scale beautifully (see said Crippling Strike or Flames of Devotion - payed for with 1 Zeal). 

Crits only do 25% increased dmg now, not 50%. But as I said they tend to result in overpenetration so there's that. 

INT's impact on AoE size changed: it now doesn't increase radius but instead increases the actual area. The value per point is increased but still this means that it grows a lot more slowly - and not quadratically like in PoE.

Stacking rules are different: active abilities don't stack their effects, passives always stack (they are visually separated in the ability tree). Passive effects on items always stack (unlike PoE). So a ring +1 INT and a helmet with +2 INT will stack. 

The most important things to grasp: Inspirations/Afflictions, PEN/AR, Stacking, Resource pools/spell uses and Power Levels. And multiclassing of course.

Edited November 27, 2019 by Boeroer

[asnjas]

Read the whole thing. Needs a tldr whats the difference between poe1 and 2.

[Blades of Vanatar]

Thanks, appreciate the input. I’ll give it a go . 

On 11/27/2019 at 1:20 AM, Boeroer said:

[Boeroer]

5 hours ago, asnjas said:

Read the whole thing. Needs a tldr whats the difference between poe1 and 2.

tl;dr: