In Path of Exile, I think GGG should decrease the gap between two-handed weapons and dual wielding, this is something most of us are aware of by now, but I really feel like GGG should put a lot of priority on balancing gearing options along with their skill reworks.
With the advent of broken shaper stat stick offhands, the plight of 2-H weapons is becoming more dire. Personally, I love the hard-hitting style that a lot of 2-H weapons feel like they should bring, but the numbers just aren’t there. I think that poe currency purchase is important.
It’s a shame that dual wielding offers more mobility, defenses, and more damage than 2-handers. While I know that a large portion of the playerbase prefers to attack fast, please consider the fact that many players are choosing not to use 2-handers because they are simply worse rather than because they lack the flavor the players desire.
The following are some players opinions:
A lot of these things could be systematically addressed if GGG were so inclined.
1. Add a 15-20% More Damage effectiveness multiplier for all melee skills (and spells, to encourage staves) when using a 2h weapon.
2. 25% intrinsic AoE increase when using a 2h weapon (again, excluding bows).
3. Increase the melee damage bonus of Str from 2% per 10 points to 3% when using 2h weapon (small boost, but will contribute).
4. Add a 7th affix slot to rare 2h melee weapons that can be either a Prefix or a Suffix.
5. Despite what you say, stat sticks do need at least a partial nerf. Reducing the number of “Add X% physical as extra Y element” bonuses that can be stacked on a single item might be enough. Make the single element affixes mutually exclusive. Move the the “added elemental as chaos” affix to the suffix slot, and make it mutually exclusive with the random element added affix.
Crit scaling being too good is also another thing that they think should be addressed, but more in a sense that non-crit playstyles need buffs to be interesting/strong enough to compete. Crit should always come out on top with heavy investment at the highest levels, but they should be more comparable for anything below that.
