Path of Exile

AladainAF said:

It's in an acceptable state because they nerfed it to oblivion to where it was actually EASIER than what it was before archnemesis.

AN just didn't work. At all.

Click to expand...

Zipping about some maps and seeing Shakari jump out of the dirt or Innocence start lasering you I was fine with. Every once in a while you get a mini boss with flavored loot explosions and some of the different 'splosions were a good time. The rest of it is not great. Like you said they nerfed the piss out of it and it's fine. I remember doing some baby blighted maps at the start of the league and it was just fucking stupid. After a minute or two it was all dodging bullshit. I couldn't do anything but avoid magma and chaos balls. It was really easy to run in to a mod or two that directly countered what you were doing making fights a slog. Beyond/Scourge mobs were insane to then bolt that on to. Essences were death factories. It was a mess. I died just constantly at the open.

But now it's mostly fine! I'm not going to miss it one bit. Fuck Ice Prison. Fuck Temporal Barrier. Fuck all the mods that made me do a mechanic that were bolted on to trash mobs that dropped nothing.

Penance said:

I agree. Its not so much expanding the mod pools because inherently that gives choice which is good. Its that it makes progression in its current form feel worse and worse the more they go on. And back to the having to interact with trade and the annoyances that come with it.

Would be nice if instead of just stacking the most + mobs/rares meta they could allow people to choose their end game based on what they want to farm even more so then what it is now. Want these affixes and this type of item you can do x, y, and z type of strategy on your map. With the invention of the Atlas Passives they are progressing toward that, but their distrust for deterministic progression doesn't clash well with their massive fucking item game.

Click to expand...

I agree with everything but the highlight.

It DOES NOT give choice, it deepens the pool on which you are gambling. Your "choice" is to sink more and more currency into crafting, which is already at such a high bar of entry that there are thousands of hours of guidance videos on Youtube. Edit - and, by default, lessens the average value of every piece of gear that drops because of the increased odds you are going to get shit.

Playing this game is akin to being some research scientist. Loot filter, valuation overlays, trade guides, crafting guides, build guides, an entire grassroots program created around simulating your build for min/maxing, massive external trade portals to accommodate something that should be done in-studio................brb going to finish my research paper called Is Melee Any Good In PoE?

NOT ArchNemesis (wink wink) FAQ

Edit: FUCK, didn't see it was posted with the teaser by Uriel.

I'd be on board with a monster having every single possible suffix/affix buff, if killing the mfer dropped S tier level loot. EG 6 link weapons/armor with t1-t2 rolls only. Still have to get the right ones but that'd be worthwhile

Boy can Modified Atlas Grind suck my balls.

They keep saying good things, I think they know they've been fucking up too much and have to earn back some goodwill now.

Some nerfage in there for the boss blasters who then altar farm, but I hate that shit so doesn't bother me. I do like being able to choose more specifically the altar rewards (jewels vs frags or whatever). Especially with the new unique jewel situation it could come in pretty handy. I think for most map zoomers we just picked whichever altar hurt the least and if they were equal we actually looked at rewards. Shit like the Chaos damage on pot use or the meteor shit was ALWAYS a no-go though. Some stuff like "nearby enemies" felt wasted most of the time if you were ranged and felt exceedingly dangerous in places like Incursions where 30 chaos spitters could surround you and gib you.

Not nearly the nerf bat I thought was coming. Could this be a pure gimme league? Perhaps. I'd wager there league mechanic will be very rewarding, but something tells me they're going to fuck up and have one of those league mechanics where it takes you OUT of the map you're currently in and slows down your flow and pace. People hate that shit and I could definitely see that being the big stink this league. Well, besides the 20% damage nerf to Spectral Helix or Righteous Fire or whatever people lose their minds over.

Rusty Scarabs on the global drop pool plus a basic 3 for 1 upgrade recipe with a chance for a Maven awakened support gem on any witnessed map boss? Lots of good stuff in here.

Deathwing said:

I hate stumbling on builds in poe.ninja that might have some interesting bits to glean and then you see that CWDT-Portal. I feel Wrath of the Cosmos encourages this shit.

Click to expand...

I like having a build that has enough space to use this combo, cause I hate re-running through empty stuff and am horrible at remembering to open portals for shit like syndicate bosses and such

Really would be nice if you could target the types of mobs and mob affixes you had in your map, and certain mobs/affix combos had weighted chance to drop the affixes/influence/currency you want to target. They could put most of that functionality in the already existing system of sextants.

That'll come in right around trade league which should be a few years after POE 2.

Still... So far some decent changes but I fear they still don't know how to handle loot and progression at a level that allows for a more casual enjoyer to enjoy build diversity. I wish they would move farther away from the meta of "starter builds/meta builds" are good because they have a progression path that isn't constricted or constrained by RNG and allow for a better SSF and progression experience.

League mechanic is up in the air and more changes to be revealed but so far its all meh to me, will probably skip this league and catch up on other games.

Penance said:

Still... So far some decent changes but I fear they still don't know how to handle loot and progression at a level that allows for a more casual enjoyer to enjoy build diversity. I wish they would move farther away from the meta of "starter builds/meta builds" are good because they have a progression path that isn't constricted or constrained by RNG and allow for a better SSF and progression experience.

Click to expand...

I've complained about this before but I'm 40/40 now for Lake of Kalandra so I'm going to complain about it again. This league put an unreasonable amount of pressure on characters to get their shit together. I got fucking railed by showing up with a "I'll figure it out as I go" attitude regarding what I was doing. It was ugly enough that I told myself I was never, ever going to play something at the open that wasn't a rock-solid league starter. In the game's current state it's fine and the changes for 3.20 all look to be in the right direction but am I really willing to risk getting skull fucked again by piloting a character that isn't tried and tested good in the fresh league environment?

A lot of people fall into the trap of "good build". Almost any skill is viable up until a point. Where that point is changes based on skills and classes. Having ONE character be tanky/clear fast/faceroll ubers is NOT a reasonable goal. My best characters excel at 2/3 of those and USUALLY sacrifice tankiness for omega DPS for mechanics that can be bypassed by DPS like Sirus or Shaper where you can just instantly go next phase.

You'll see a lot of people, streamer farmers included, have a 'starter' build because it'll do everything but ubers and 100% delirius T20 maps and shit. People say melee is dead, but if you just want to complete your main story, get your compasses, and clear all reds you can use basically any melee skill (we're not talking Chain Hook or Heavy Strike). You need something like 500k dps to clear alch and go T16's and in this day and age that just means you need a 5link, an essence weapon, and your uber lab.

It goes back to D2. There were few builds that did everything well, but a lot of builds that excelled at niches. In D2R I played a Frenzy Barb which sucked dick for cows or any density, but could run shit like Countess or named sniping faster than even most Sorcs and Enigma runners. I also had a Corpse exploder necro who could solo Cows no problem, but bone spearing bosses was a pain in the dick. A single build in PoE doing EVERYTHING WELL is just too much. Once that happens meta shift gets even worse and you go from the 15-10-10-9-9-9 type shit in PoE Ninja to go back to the days of 30-15-10-5-5-5 kind of shit. There were literally leagues where 25% of the PoE Ninja leaders were the same skill. That's fucked, but it's because that skill did EVERYTHING. The real reason this shifted was ubers. DD versus ubers is shit. Minions vs ubers are shit. A lot of the big builds are great for clearing/mapping normal bosses, but just cannot do Ubers. I think that's okay.

TL;DR PoE doesn't want ONE build to do every part of the game exceptionally well and people need to plan on making a 2nd character to do some of the harder stuff (re: ubers). The idea of starter builds turn people off, but really they're not starter builds they're just builds that take a lot longer to hit a content ceiling. Most builds can be starter builds if you have reasonable goals like clearing T16's and normal non-uber bosses.

Deathwing said:

What was different this league than others? Build planning is the game.

Click to expand...

Essences were bananas, Scourge/Beyond mobs fucked ass, Chaos resist was important more/sooner, different mods or mod combinations could fuck your shit up requiring you to be strong enough to overcome big resistances or near immunities, that kind of shit. It was just rougher all around. I had so many encounters where a mob with an aggressive AI would show up with synergizing AN mods, run up in to my grill and dps check me. Oh hey it's a Frenzied/Gargantuan Beyond gremlin. Die, die again, die again. It's a white map. Die AGAIN. Getting through lakes required me to abuse pathing/geometry to get things close enough to offscreen but far enough away or in awkward enough locations that they couldn't get to me.

It's my fault for being bad but I'm used to being able to skate through basically all of yellow maps just checking boxes as I set up my atlas and figure out what my main skill actually is.

You never forget your first Beyond Lake, with cyclone or RF. Ow

Ruthless closed Beta is off NDA now, so streamers are streaming it. If you want to know what PoE was like about 9 years ago, here's your chance. I'd recommend watching moreso than playing probably. And don't watch a HC player because they're going to omega pussy so hard you'll never see them do anything interesting except clear Act zones in 15 minutes a piece.