Path of Exile

Gotta know when you can and can't using the skill before actually pressing it. Shield Charge has significantly more places where it can get stuck than Whirling Blades. Or, at least, that's my memory of the skills and I've tried both this league. Whirling Blades is unusable in vaal maps.

Going forward, "can use leap slam" will be a QoL point for a build. Faster leap slam, even better. Who would have expected such in these times. Truly up is down.

Give me 1s CD, 3-charge Dash back though. That shit was worth 159 dex on a build that needed 50. I don't know why GGG is ok with their wide array of movement skills boiling down to "least gay". Just like mana, the pieces you're given to solve the "puzzle" all suck.

Toss this on the "nerfed next league" pile.


It doesn't look terribly interesting in terms of playstyle or build planning. But if you're looking to literally delete some endgame bosses on the cheap, this is probably the best build out there. Best of all, it's quite modular, so you can fit it into just about any bow build.

What else is on that aforementioned list?

• SST
  • Should get a numerical adjustment, will get nuked instead because of poe.ninja warriors. Tiny hitbox will remain.
• FR totems
  • No personal investment, don't like totems
• General's Cry
  • But won't be because who plays that?
• Rage Vortex
  • But won't be because who plays that?
• Brittle ailment
  • You get this through either Leadership's Price neck or Secrets of Suffering keystone. If you enjoy building a character in PoB, I highly suggest trying a build with Brittle. When's the last time you built around a non-damaging ailment? Let alone one that is caused by crit but then gives you 100% crit. It's a very fun balancing act but it's too powerful. Might slip by another league due to lack of popularity.

are TTS voice-overs some new trend I'm too normal to understand? They've been popping up more and more lately and they are annoying as hell

The difference is focused ballista support. The totems no longer need a target in order to spawn clones, allowing you to spawn them before a fight and/or while a boss in monologuing.

Rage Vortex might be a skill, some day. It's like Lancing Steel: absolute bonkers dps kneecapped by shitty QoL. In fact, it's actually better than Lancing Steel, that skill requires to stand and deliver your dps. Rage Vortex lets you just fuck around and dodge, creating a new one every ~4s.

It's so frustrating to see the vortex travel TOO fast, leaving damaged stragglers juxtaposed by it not traveling fast enough as you leap slam ahead of it. It gets stuck on the smallest shit, though not as bad Lightning Strike. Chasing adds around occlusions.

Is the skill even playable without a Redblade Banner or Chainbreaker? I think I heard someone say they were supplementing Blade Storm with it. Imagine you're a Berserker and you're generating rage like crazy with chain hook, ascendency, and rage support. Even at that point, you maybe can use it every 3-4 packs? What's the point of this skill, by itself? As it exists now, it doesn't function without some rage on kill mechanic, which then breaks Berserk.


Gonna give cold SST Raider a try to finish out the league. My *second* cold conversion watcher's eye dropped, so maybe the game is telling me something...


Exsanguinate <something> has been the highlight of the league start. Slap it on something that cheats the cast time. Traps, mines, spellslinger, whatever, and have a great league start. Accuracy Stacking Molten Strike Jugg is second. Not cheap though, and still melee in spite of ridiculous life sustain.

Fuck no, you have no way to pay the rage costs if it is your only DPS skill.

Max block sure. Bleed, I don't see how that could work. The skill is heavily focused on attack speed.

I was wrong about SST. But so were most other people. It's getting deserved meta status for numbers alone, on a defensive-oriented Raider, you still pump out very good single target DPS on a budget setup.

More than once, I've griped about the clear of the skill. It's inconsistent, based on how the main shield decides to bounce. And the shards lack penetration. On meatier endgame packs, you have to toss multiple shields, but not always. Very frustrating to get a rhythm down.

Enter projectile speed! Now, you won't outrun your shield and the shards will pierce through a whole pack. I would love to fit in some sort of pops as it can still leave stragglers, but haven't figured that one out yet. I've been playing with Longshot, Faster Proj support, and Anomalous Blood and Sand for ~110% increased proj speed and I'd say more wouldn't hurt, but likely at diminishing returns. Probably eventually going to drop faster proj support as gem swapping is gay.

I've tried block builds and dodge/evasion builds. I'll take "let's you move while DPSing" builds over those any day. Block/evasion/dodge will fail, and it will feel like shit because it means you can't progress your character's level anymore while doing whatever else you were doing.

They can nerf player power all they want as long as they give us the tools(clear signaling is a tool) to stand and dps.

Might try conc path totems next league despite how horrid the mapping looks. Is there something zoomier that still maintains a very good boss dps? Maybe archmage brands?

Finished up with the league, got my 36. Thought I would be done early, but when I checked the league start date(July 23rd), I was close to my typical 2 months again. Not a good 2 months though, this time. Lots of frustration, being given puzzles and shitty pieces.

Curses, ailments(to a lesser degree), flasks, mana, and movement skills are all in a shitty place currently. Some classes can easily solve/ignore these problems but almost none of them do it in a fun way. Movement skills are probably the biggest issue. It wasn't until I was doing endgame content for achievements that I realized how much I relied on Dash for smooth dodging. Even with Raider, Leap Slam is not a good way to dodge lethal shit. I'm quite glad I didn't need to do any of the tougher Maven invitations this league. I'm pretty sure some keyboards would have been broken trying to relearn the feared on an attack based movement skill. This is why I'm looking towards a "move while DPSing" build next league. Of all the shit GGG has walked back or even vaguely promised will walk back in the future, I don't believe movement skills is one of them.

Overall, Expedition was ok. Map content was "don't select these!", which is what Ultimatum was but without the handy instant recognition icons. Logbooks were fun, but I think for the wrong reason. They were stupidly rewarding, but I never felt like building my explosion chain was worthwhile. Just pick up currency icons, unground lairs, removable barriers, and bosses. And again, don't select the bricks.

Non-league 3.15 was meh. I understand and mostly agree with GGG's intent, their execution sucks. 3.15 had a "patch to live" feel. Texture streaming still hasn't been fixed, considering the worldwide GPU fun times, they should seriously ruminate on removing it. New just this patch, I can't do Delirium without frequent hitching. If my current GPU calls it quits, I'm not buying a new GPU just for PoE. The way they've treated performance and visual clarity in this game is not deserving of a $1k video card. This little tangent is to demonstrate that objectively shitty decisions do not get quickly fixed. Expect some of the willful game changes in 3.15 to stick around.