Should I play POE 1 or 2?

My friend is trying really hard to get me to play POE 1, saying it's been "perfected" over the years.

>>3774850 (OP)
1 is better in every respect than 2

>>3774850 (OP)
1 is the undisputed king of the ARPG genre
2 is an experimental failure whose only chance of becoming as great is to not experiment so much and use what is proven to work

I don't really understand "should I play" posts on free games.
Nibba unless your internet is metered, there is ZERO cost to trying Path of Exile 1 for yourself. Give it a try, and tell is if you hated it.

Path of Exile 2 costs money. I think it's a good game but it's very much early access, so a substantial rebalance is needed before the game will directly compete with PoE1.

>>3775219
>I don't really understand "should I play" posts
It's called shilling.

>>3775247
Sometimes people like to hear other people's opinion.

I downloaded POE 1. What character should I make?

>>3774850 (OP)
1 has 10 years of content and refining, but I'm not a big fan of spamming one button, with a second button to jump around the map
2 has great vision on paper with using multiple skills, but it needs a lot of work, lost ark did it quite well so I know it can work

>>3776577
>not a big fan of spamming one button
Explain.

>>3776580
In PoE1 you choose one skill that you'll be using over and over as your "DPS source", and stuff your remaining gem slots with auras and debuffs to make that skill do more damage.
It's not a bad thing if you like just mindlessly killing monsters, but I do prefer having more variety and cooldowns on the buttons I press in my gameplay loop.

>>3776584
Diablo 2 does take a little bit of skill, build dependent.

>>3776585
Diablo 2 is a bit different, because on the surface it sounds exactly the same, but to invest in one skill, you're investing in a few others, and as a result those others are also similarly powerful, so you can use them.
Additionally, some enemies are immune so you need ways to go around those immunities (until sunder charms, at least), while in PoE you can just reroll the map if it has immunities to your damage element of choice.

For example FoH Paladin does primarily Holy damage against undeads, but you do have lightning damage and healing tools in your main kit as back-up baked in. On top of that some FoHdins will build hybrid with Smite or Hammers for more variety.
Then there's kicksin and whatnot, where you do mix up your skills. I'm not aware of any builds like it on PoE1.

>>3776587
I'm pretty much choosing now to switch to POE from D2 because it keeps crashing on my and my buddy is pressuring me.

What is so much better about POE that people keep talking about?

>>3776588
If you like D2 you'll probably like PoE too.
I'm not a huge player of either ("only" couple hundred hours) but it has a lot more of everything. Build variety, useful uniques, itemization depth, skills to choose from, things in the world. Maybe most importantly, an endgame that actually exists.
PoE campaign is divided into two parts, five acts each. It's very much equivalent to Normal and Nightmare from D2. After that you go into maps, which is semi-randomly generated content that really tests your build, but has a ton of variety compared to running the same maps for the third time.

Also, being alive. Diablo 2 is dead. It's a timeless classic I grew up playing myself, but it was clearly unfinished. The Remaster helped a bit but it's obvious they're not giving it any more love.
I mentioned PoE1 being 10 years old by now, and they really spent that time making the game better with every bigger update.

>>3776605
>Diablo 2 is dead.
I've just been playing D2R on single player.

>>3776606
I don't mean it in a "no community" sense, it has that. I mean it in a "it's clearly dated and that's not going to change".
It used to be the best ARPG, but I can confidently say it's not anymore.