New player on Controller

I’m in the same situation so any help would definitely be appreciated

I have started off as a monk and trying to understand builds I’m just lost lol 😂

I’m also a big Diablo fan and struggled a lot with PoE until I used a build guide. I used this lightning arrow one from fubgun and I liked how it laid it out by level for the beginning.

https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/lightning-arrow-farmer-fubgun

If you're trying to learn and want to take your time, I'd really suggest just trying to make up your own build as you go along.

The passive tree and other systems become a lot less intimidating when you actually start to interact with them yourself.

All that said, Monk is a really fun class that plays well on controller.

Some of the easier builds that scale well through campaign are ranger and sorceress. A lot of people will use lightning arrow or spark.

Highly recommend at least reading through a build guide, don’t have to use it, to understand how you build out characters. It’ll also give you an idea of which qualities on which items are most valuable to your character.

I played an entangle sorceress (disciple of varashta) and it scaled super well.

Find the biggest thing on a controller is to have no more than 3-4 skills that are necessary for the build to work, otherwise the controller gets clunky.

I love warrior shield and mace for starting you and it plays well on controller

So - just some easy stuff that isn't readily apparent from just starting without reading guides.

First - super important to get new gear often in the beginning. Armor, no matter the character (if a spell caster or whatever) is very useful in Act1. Energy Shield is also good, but not as good as armor. Evasion will seem pretty lame in the first few acts. For beginners, it's easiest to just choose armor until you can't because of gear requirements later. Checking every new level for what's at the store is good once you get some gold to spend is great.

Second - Upgrade your skills continually. Higher and higher level skill gems will drop. You'll always want to upgrade the skills you have and are using. And dump the ones you aren't anymore (pull them out of your slotted skills. Also - as long as you can afford it stat wise, use support gems to bolster your skills.

Third - since you're probably playing standard and not Hardcore as a new player - damage passives are more important in the beginning. You'd rather out damage enimies before they have a chance to do much damage, and bosses have giant lifebars. You can come later in the passive tree to pick up some defense stuff.

The only things I've found that don't play well on controller are skills with round aoes that target an enemy like grenades, or that benefit from precise positioning. Surprisingly, projectile builds like bow, crossbow, glacial lance, or ember fusillade played awesome on the controller. They become full auto-target and it feels really good! Crossbow was my overall best experience on PS5.

I would suggest warrior. Start with rolling slam and boneshatter, till you can take shield wall. I would suggest experimenting and looking at support gems to figure out how to make shield wall into a main skill.

If some mechanic doesn't make sense look it up here: https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Path_of_Exile_2_Wiki

If you want ideas on how to gear use, poe ninja's HC SSF builds to look up how other players built their character:

https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhcssf

If you just want an exact guide to the shield wall build:

https://maxroll.gg/poe2/build-guides/shield-wall-warbringer-build-guide

Especially on controller, warrior will force you to learn mechanics. After learning warrior pretty much every class is simple (from a mechanical/execution stand point). Shield wall also doesn't require expensive gear, so less need to grind. It's pretty tanky, so you are less likely to die.

I don't recommend range class at first. Especially Fubgun's Lightning Arrow build. You won't learn any mechanics. You'll also be disappointed with every other build. Fubgun's build will teach you a bunch of bad habits.

GLHF

Used Amazon bleed build from maxroll as a starting point. Customising it this season, but similar to last. Easy clear, has good defences, mobile. In D4 I played everything and the bleed build was simple enough to get my head around

PS5 player here... really anything works. I enjoyed crossbow builds and mapped my buttons to be similar to my helldivers layout. Lightning arrow builds are good. Contagion Lich will probably be the easiest for a new player. After 2 ascendancy trials, you're basically invincible until late game. Melt everything.