What GGG got extremely right and wrong with item balance.

After playing a lot of POE2 and having played since POE1 since Beta, I just wanted to give some thoughts on early item balance in POE2. Overall I think they've done a great job lowering the power in items from POE1 but a few items seem to be living in that power-crept world still unfortunately. Some other item types have actually improved from POE1, in particular jewels.

Jewels

The decision to add modifiers with a much larger range of rolls on rare jewels has made them feel much better and better for longterm balance. Previously, in POE1 you didn't have to worry about the rolls on jewels as much because of the lack of range. Once you found your mods you were set, now you can have all the mods you want butbwith poor rolls the jewel can be quite poor.

Belts

The decision to have Ingenuity in the game from Early Access has had a really detrimental impact on the game in my opinion. As much as I love using the item and think it's interesting game design, it is too generic and simply better than any other option available. This isn't helped by the current mod pool available on belts being quite underpowered and not providing significant upsides as Flasks and Charms are nowhere near as powerful as flasks in POE1. I'd be remiss to not talk about Headhunter too, which is similar to Ingenuity, in that it's generic and powerful rather than filling a niche in the itemisation space.

Gloves

Similarly to the Belt situation, HOWA are simply best in slot for too many builds that even picking up rare gloves is a waste of time, as they can't compete at this point with HOWA. I think they are the most likely item to get a performance at some point in the future, just because of how much power they bring. The fact that there are poison builds which use HOWA over either Plaguefinger or Snakebite should tell you how overtuned this item is at this stage.