Path of Exile

Pasteton

Blackwing Lair Raider
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This league is pretty fun now. I dunno I guess it’s taste dependent but if you like asshole puckering near deaths while trying to bolt out thru hordes of rare mobs with a buncha droppable exalts it’s pretty exciting. The stability is way better and the qol on the rogues is vastly improved, much less bugging out or super slow responses. Highly suggest trying it out if you haven’t since patch. Despite all the ree’ing it’s only been about two weeks since release, lots of league left. Hell it’s worth playing trade league just for the cheap exalts, if you want to get a chance at buying chase gear you could never afford before
 

Xevy

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Don't read Path of Exile Reddit.

Play the game.

You'll enjoy it 1000% more.
 
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AladainAF

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I really don't get the PoE hate. Heist atm is just fine, if anything Vinderi is now OP as fuck, and almost certain to be nerfed. Duplicating a chest that drops an ex is monsterous.

This isn't my favorite league, but it's no where near the worst. The frustrations are more around missed opportunities than the hate in general. They could have made this league much better, such as having quant apply to the chests, or giving an exp bonus if you alch the contracts. After the change last night I was saying you should still always alch your contracts but at this point, that's wrong. Just leave them white, there's no reason whatsoever to alch them. At best it lets you open 1-2 small chests extra with vinderi, and 90% of the time you're not going to get anything good out of them.

Alch grand heists might still be worth it though.

At elast they didn't make some really complex fucked up system like harvest where you had to build your seed area, etc.
 

Caeden

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I think Harvest was a good league for teaching people how to craft in general. Sure, it’s not as easy as harvest but people seem to have a hell of a lot more understanding on what to do.

that said, I’d also like to pick up gear that’s useful on the ground. That doesn’t happen.
 

Deathwing

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I think Harvest was a good league for teaching people how to craft in general. Sure, it’s not as easy as harvest but people seem to have a hell of a lot more understanding on what to do.

that said, I’d also like to pick up gear that’s useful on the ground. That doesn’t happen.
Teaching people a shitty RNG system doesn't change that it's a shitty RNG system. All Harvest did for me is further harden my resolve to never deal with their crap system.


AladainAF AladainAF Heist released ~2.5 weeks ago and is finally in a beta state. How is that not deserving of hate?
 

Xevy

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Quant does apply to the chests, but I don't roll my Blueprints/Heists either. Mostly because you get one or two bad rolls and suddenly the swarm of 5 aura'd packs will annihilate you and ruin your return trip. Just not worth it. Heists have always been worth it. The amount of loot has ALWAYS been amazing. The only reason it's more worthwhile now is Vinderi works and they shortened the run time. People saying it was just a Standard league or weren't doing it were just retarded. The should have at LEAST grinded some mercs to level 5, especially when the patch was announced. Now you have people who never did heists at lvl 24 or 58 or 68 jumping into lvl 83 heists, fucking up, and complaining. Don't do the mechanics and then complain when you do. Brilliant.

HERE'S SOME HELPFUL TIPS FOR THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW WTF THEY'RE DOING BECAUSE REDDIT IS JUST WHINING AND ITEM PICTURES:

Heists
-Don't need to roll heists. White is fine.
-Need coins? You can search contracts by their value and "precious" is the most valuable curio.
-Each Rogue can get to level 5 in ONE skill EXCEPT: Huck cannot get lvl 5 in any skill (????) and Vinderi gets lvl 5 in both Demolition and Trap Disarmament
-If you hate the level grind, which you only need once, roll a set of %exp job gain gear and swap it between mercs. Can get up to ~35% more exp per run. Lvl 5 is capped at 10k exp and a lvl 4 contract gives about 650 exp unmodified.
-Vinderi is God: Vinderi duplicates the items in the chest. We spent the last two weeks wondering wtf that means and apparently that's because it just didn't work. You open a chest, 3 chaos, 2 regals, and 1 alch drop. The game pauses a second. 3 more chaos, 2 more regals, and 1 more alch drop. Pretty powerful.
-"Monsters drop duplicate markers" on Rogue gear applies to outside of heists. Not sure how it works with rogues since they're not with you, but you'll consistently get double dropped markers.
-Run Gianna if you're just running them. Why? She gives discounted reveals for Grand Heists up to 40% discount, she generates an extra reveal from Whakanaoianaoano, and Perception missions are very easy. Two doors on the way in, no doors on the way out, and div cards with oodles of stacked decks. It'll help save your Wisdom Scroll pile.

Grand Heists
-Don't roll these unless you're a very tanky boy. A lot of slow proj oneshots tend to happen and if you're zooming you won't get to see the wind up on abilities until you meet a magmaball face first that was launched 2 screens away.
-LOOK at each grand heist contract. The corresponding area has different reward types. For instance Laboratory always has Replicas/Experimented items. This will help immensely if you're looking to find an alt quality gem/replica yourself. Also helps getting the bases for the experimented base challenge.
-LOOK HARDER at each grand heist contract. Hold ALT over it. That's your potential reward rooms. Gotta bunch of shit? Throw Karst in as many times as you can to hit a bunch of smaller chests. Got a million Currency/Delirium? Maybe throw Vinderi in there for some big duplicate hits.
-Stacking Rogues in missions (Karst/Karst/Karst) will compound their bonus. You're looking at something like 75% reduction of alert on looting chests with that 3 Karsts. Very helpful ensuring you get as many chests as you want.
-Some rogue perks aren't worth it. Tullina finds extra curios to sell. They're shit and worth ~500 coins and take up too much inventory on juicy heists. Leave them. Vinderi is potentially very powerful, but his net yield is lower than other rogues because he has a CHANCE to duplicate and he increases the alert level by quite a bit. You might be better off just running a reduced threat Rogue instead. Personally choice. Everyone loves a gamble though, right?
-Reveal the Heists. Take it to Whakakanaoano and look at each hidden wing. Full of uniques and prophecies? Fuck it. Grand Heist is lvl 68? Fuck it. Lvl 83 and a wing of Delirium and Currency? REVEAL THAT SHIT. So on revealing hit the picture of Whakanakano on the side and it'll change to Niles or Gianna. Both have a discount on revealing wings with Niles at 10% and Gianna at up to 40%. It'll save you a lot of coins and coin prices are about to skyrocket now that retards are playing the game. All three I BELIEVE cap at 155 revelas, Whakananoano does for sure. Obviously use Gianna reveals (generated by running heists with her) for the more expensive Grand Heist reveals. Most wings I've noticed are in the 5.5k coins range before discounts.
-WHAT REVEAL? If you're doing 83's I'd almost always reveal an escape route. These guards can fuck you up, and after lockdown that's RIP loot. The smaller room reveals are big chests added on. Usually worth revealing if you've got the coinage. Solid plays are Currency/Delirium/Harbinger. Uniques are unlikely to be profitable, but you could find a Head Hunter or 6 link Inpulsas I suppose.
-This is just general heist tips but check the end rewards before blowing lockdown. I usually hit the "good" big chests up until about 75% alert, then run to the rewards at the end and scope them out. Sometimes there's nothing I want so I just try to leave some big chests/small chests near the Escape Route and make a mad dash for it. Don't forget Tibbs and Niles can open one additional chest (Tibbs can do 2 at lvl 5 I think) AFTER lockdown. So if you're running them you can leave one of the harder ones up to grab later. Overall big chests >>>>>>> small chests after the changes. Much less loot and much more of the cooler stuff like synthesis and fractured items have been moved to big chests.

General tips
-If you have items and have not triggered lockdown or full alert you can zone out. Zone out into the pre-lobby area with the portal you entered and it will instantly unlock contraband and bind it to your character. Get an exalt drop 15 seconds in? Go out and lock that sucker in. Then head back in. This only works if you've not hit the curio and lockdown hasn't triggered. If either of these occur you will not be able to re-enter.
-If you die, the same rules as above apply. You'll explode into a loot pinata and be able to zone back in, run to where you died, and loot all your shit. If lockdown/full alert happened you won't be able to re-enter and it's RIP loot.
-If you haven't done Grand Heists do one that can reward trinkets. This is a BONUS GEAR SLOT with HEIST MODIFYING AFFIXES that's VERY USEFUL. When you get a trinket grand heist at the end there will be a recipe. Click it and it unlocks your trinket slot. Unfortunately you have to do this for every character. My lvl 95 Necro still doesn't have one because I'm dumb and bad. Then you'll be able to pick out a random trinket from that grand heist. They generally have modifiers like:

----In Heists Augs instead have an % chance to drop as (Alch/Chaos/Regal/Exalt)
----Monsters have %chance to drop Duplicate Rogue Markers (applies EVERYWHERE)
----In Heists chance to have Duplicate drops of _____ type (Currency/Legion/Breach/Delirium/Uniques/Etc)
----In Heists chance to receive an additonal item of X type when opening chests (Weapon/Jewel/Gem/Currency/Map/Etc)
--- In Heists items have 1% chance to drop as (Elder/Shaper) items

So for SSF this is huge. Need to grind maps? Plop on an Aug to Alch trinket and go to town. Alch it up. Crafting gear? Throw an Aug to Regal on. My friend used a 3% regal to Ex trinket for 100ish regals. Never got an Exalt. Not sure if bad luck or possibly broken. That was last week though.

-Rogue gear is good, but I personally only look at lvl 5 items now that my Rogues are all leveled. Some of the better things you can roll are %reduced alert on opening chests, %chance to raise NO ALERT on opening a chest, and job speed. The +1 level applies to the Rogues level (83 --->84) so it's mostly useless. The +level to Job skills doesn't seem to work at all. Broaches are really nice. Probably worth alch/scouring or chaos spamming a few times to get some good ones for your main people like Vinderi. Extra duplication chance can't hurt. Ideally the sweaty pros will try to match the duplication stats to the job type. So for instance you'll want div cards for Gianna and Currency for Karst. That type of deal.
-Treat every door way as death. Even ones without doors. Obviously doors on the way back have piles of enemies, but what some people don't understand is that certain mobs pre-trap the door. Blue circles on the doorway? That's bad. Either wait for a barrage and leap/TP passed it or throw some minions on it. That + the initial barrage will kill a lot of people. When you're running back often packs will pile up at doorways that aren't job doors. THIS is where people die. Just expect every large doorway to be a fucking small skirmish and you'll save yourself some deaths.
-Never stop moving. Waiting for a door to open? Serpentine, motherfucker! Some big blob 2 screens away could be heading to you to take 3/4 of your hp, but luckily it locks onto your position, not you. If you stand still, you will die. Fire and Forget or Auto Target builds like Minions/Totems are very helpful as you can constantly kill while doing your own thing.
-Save up some wisdom scrolls. Once you start running jewelry heists, you'll know. I'll go threw 25 scrolls in a single heist that takes me 3 minutes. EVERY JEWEL COULD BE A GOD JEWEL, right???
-TRAPS respawn ON IMMINENT LOCKDOWN, not on FULL ALERT. I've almost died, and some have, because you hit a chest setting off lockdown which then re-triggered the Disarmament/Engineering traps underneath you or on your path to the curio. Be aware of this. It fucking sucks and probably shouldn't happen, but it does. So try to make sure there's no suspicious looking rooms between you and the main chest if you're doing a Loot-Dash to the curio.
-You lose 3 seconds from Lockdown each chest looted. This is big. Grandma Isla helps a lot with her big lockdown bonus, but if you've got 5 small chests on the way to the curio and aren't paying attention, you can really fuck yourself over.
-LOOT SAFES AT THE END HEISTS IN THE CURIO ROOM. A LOT of people (me included) missed these for along time. They have very good loot and it's possible they're equivalent or higher rolled to small chests. There should be 2 in the rooms that do spawn them (Bunker and maybe Mansion?) That's free loot!

Last Tip

GO FAST. If you're fast, you're not going to die. You'll also be able to hit more chests during lockdown. Raiders and Assassins are very good for this. Make sure you've got a good quicksilver, high movement speed boots, and especially a GOOD movement skill. Dash may not cut it until it's Second Wind + 20% qual. Same goes for Flame Dash.
 
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Thregin

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Nice writeup. I'll just add that what i've noticed is that the door camper mobs don't seem to lock on to you and i've never had any issues if i teleport into the group because their first attack is still aimed at the door opening basically.

Alltough i made my cold dot occultist be a bit more of a tank than normal just to survive heists and i do, even when i alch every heist.
In the end though i think a BV phys explode chest assassin is probably a better build for it.
 

Kiroy

Marine Biologist
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I really don't get the PoE hate. Heist atm is just fine, if anything Vinderi is now OP as fuck, and almost certain to be nerfed. Duplicating a chest that drops an ex is monsterous.

This isn't my favorite league, but it's no where near the worst. The frustrations are more around missed opportunities than the hate in general. They could have made this league much better, such as having quant apply to the chests, or giving an exp bonus if you alch the contracts. After the change last night I was saying you should still always alch your contracts but at this point, that's wrong. Just leave them white, there's no reason whatsoever to alch them. At best it lets you open 1-2 small chests extra with vinderi, and 90% of the time you're not going to get anything good out of them.

Alch grand heists might still be worth it though.

At elast they didn't make some really complex fucked up system like harvest where you had to build your seed area, etc.

the idea is great but to not criticize the implantation and testing is just silly
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
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This exact crash killed me some like... mayhem league when I opened a plain strong box.
 

Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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11,988


This exact crash killed me some like... mayhem league when I opened a plain strong box.

Hit me twice yesterday. Also my old ass hates playing with the map up. Inefficient but there’s so much shit going on already. It just makes it worse for me.
 

Evernothing

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Can this drop when I add Jun missions to map? Or only from Catarina in Mastermind Lair?

1602084250163.png
 

AladainAF

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the idea is great but to not criticize the implantation and testing is just silly

The testing is always a problem. Remember legion? That bad ass league? It was buggy as fuck at the start. Some legions never unlocked. Some legions crashed people constantly. My personal favorite was the legion that appeared that covered the entire map and never unlocked. The implementation sucked too, it got a lot of shit because of its dependence on HH for the domain, and it was most profitable even in the end to just alch and go tier 2 maps.

I get what you're saying, but every league is generally implemented lacklusterly and rife with bugs. To me, that's a completely seperate issue on whether or not a league is good or not. Of course Heist is buggy as shit, and it's implementation needed some overhauls. But it's not a lot different tahn any other league including leagues considered to be really good.
 

Deathwing

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That's not a testing problem, that's a time to deal with problem testing finds. Admittedly a nitpick and since you've worked in QA, I'm certain you meant the latter. But it's still important to differentiate because a problem with testing means there's some problem with their development that they can fix _without_ more time. Which, I don't think is the case anymore. Sure, any process can be iteratively refined, but the major gain is more time.

I would bet that they released with more than 75% of the major issues known and documented.

Saying other leagues were buggy is whataboutism.

I don't see how you can say implementation is orthogonal to quality. If bugs prevent you from experiencing league content, or explicitly telegraphed overhauls heavily incentivize you to hoard contracts and blueprints, thus effectively preventing you from experiencing league content, how is that not a shitty league?
 

AladainAF

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That's not a testing problem, that's a time to deal with problem testing finds. Admittedly a nitpick and since you've worked in QA, I'm certain you meant the latter. But it's still important to differentiate because a problem with testing means there's some problem with their development that they can fix _without_ more time. Which, I don't think is the case anymore. Sure, any process can be iteratively refined, but the major gain is more time.

I would bet that they released with more than 75% of the major issues known and documented.

Saying other leagues were buggy is whataboutism.

I don't see how you can say implementation is orthogonal to quality. If bugs prevent you from experiencing league content, or explicitly telegraphed overhauls heavily incentivize you to hoard contracts and blueprints, thus effectively preventing you from experiencing league content, how is that not a shitty league?

Yes, I meant the latter. Though I'm also sure their QA team is far from robust, but many of these bugs were very glaring bugs and most likely caught in the process. Any bug can be fixed with more time, but there's a point where more time is no longer allotted. GGG has stuck firm to their 3 month schedule, and it's easy for people to say "Do 4 month leagues!" or whatnot, but the fact of the matter is their income and funds come from their 3 month release schedule. If they did 4 month leagues, 5 month leagues, or 6 month leagues, the game will be dead half that time, and the income coming in will dry up substantially. There's absolutely business reasons to do what they are doing, the same reason why many software companies release buggy shit that clears up after a few patches. I would agree that 75% is probably a good number, sure.

Saying other leagues are buggy is absolutely not a whataboutism. It's completely relevant to the discussion at hand. We should expect every league to be buggy and implemented poorly. Abyss, Beastiary, Harvest, Heist, Synthesis, Betrayal, Legion, etc have all been extremely unbalanced and buggy at the start, and most of those had and STILL have poor implementations. Does anyone seriously think Betrayal with the extreme amount of unveils is a good implementation of anything? How NOT EVER running Catarina is the best way to play Betrayal? How some people can play thousands of hours in a league and never get rank 3 eleron rings through any kind of natural progression? What? Do you not enjoy throwing nets at low health, exile?

It's relevant because that is what we should expect. And.. people do. How many people here wait 1-2 weeks before starting a league so "the bugs get worked out"? It happens all the time. GGG has made it very clear they are sticking to the 3 month cycle, so we should expect buggy, poorly implemented leagues that are fun 2-3 weeks after release. The side issues around "should we hoard" are only here in this league because this is the first league that I can remember where the base content of the league is gated through items (contracts). People hoard for the changes, because they can.
 

Deathwing

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I don't disagree with what you're saying, thanks for clarifying. I think perhaps where we disagree is what a consumer/player is supposed to do with that information. I can expect one thing, but if they want my money, I feel like we deserve better. Obviously, GGG is free to set the price point at whatever they want. This is why they need competition. Fucking Blizzard, what isn't their fault?

So, since that's not an option, what's left besides bombastic criticism on Xevy's favorite place to hangout?

Perhaps directly related:
8sIX7i6.jpg
 
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Xevy

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I hope GGG just lets it all burn. People don't deserve the content amount they put out at this rate. Any other games give you free DLCs every 3 months? Nope? K.

The rest can play Diablo 4.

I'm sure it'll be plenty beta tested when it comes out in 4 years.
 
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AladainAF

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I don't disagree with what you're saying, thanks for clarifying. I think perhaps where we disagree is what a consumer/player is supposed to do with that information. I can expect one thing, but if they want my money, I feel like we deserve better. Obviously, GGG is free to set the price point at whatever they want. This is why they need competition. Fucking Blizzard, what isn't their fault?

So, since that's not an option, what's left besides bombastic criticism on Xevy's favorite place to hangout?

Perhaps directly related:
8sIX7i6.jpg

Like everything else, value is what people are willing to pay. And so long as GGG has incoming money because they release alpha leagues, they are going to release alpha leagues. When they change someday, then we'll know the reason is because people are less willing to pay for it. This is an age old argument, like why do people keep buying Madden even though its been the same shit for 15 years? Well, because people keep buying it, why change?