Path of Exile

Couple dumb questions about T16.5-17 maps since this is the first league I've played since they were introduced. I've done a bunch of them but last night was the first time I ran into a couple things I hadn't seen before:

What causes the Uber Elder expanding rings to appear in 16.5's? I didn't see anything on the map affixes about them, but they were in the Toxic Sewer I ran last night anyway. Very annoying in cramped tunnels like that too, and I was pretty surprised that they were a one-shot mechanic in a random map too. Not quite as "avoid at all costs" as flask meteors, but definitely on the shitlist now.

"The Maven interferes with players" -- another extremely annoying one that I had been told to avoid just because it makes the map take forever. Last night I had a really easy (aside from Maven affix) Fortress drop so I did it anyway since I'm supposed to be immune to basically everything curse/ailment related at this point. Does Maven just ignore my 'Nearby Allies' Action Speed cannot be modified to below Base Value' effect from Garb of the Ephemeral? I was constantly getting slowed down while clearing the map even though my AG is always "nearby". I was able to ignore everything else the map threw at me as expected, but not that bullshit.

It's this suffix

Not sure about maven i feel like she hardly does anything but maybe i'm just clueless?

I think maven just snares you? Your actual abilities like flame dash etc shouldn’t be getting slowed

Pasteton said:

I think maven just snares you? Your actual abilities like flame dash etc shouldn’t be getting slowed

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She does grasping vine which dispels with teleport movement skills where as skills like shield charge etc only remove a stack or so.

Her healing can be annoying and she can definitely make the map rippier, tankier etc but most can be overcome with more dmg.

One thing I've been foregoing rolling my t17s is minus res. In a game where stacking tons of mods against you I feel like this base is the basis for so many rips in maps. It's just the single most rippiest mod.

Penance said:

She does grasping vine which dispels with teleport movement skills where as skills like shield charge etc only remove a stack or so.

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Ah, sounds like that was my problem. I don't really have much in the way of movement speed besides 20% on boots and a near-perma-uptime quicksilver flask and rely on Whirling Blades with 50% quality and faster attacks for zipping around the map. Maven's map mod really fucked with that despite not being able to be slowed below base, but I guess what you said there explains it. So if I just Frostblink right after she uses that debuff I can just go back to normal movement? I remember she shouted something distinct so it was really obvious when I was going to be snared, and she spammed it like crazy too.

The rest of her stuff didn't do anything noticeable at all compared to the other shit T17 throws at you.

Vorph said:

So if I just Frostblink right after she uses that debuff I can just go back to normal movement?

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Correct. Frost blink, flame dash, dash?, blink arrow smoke mine and probably that rewind skill.

A deadly duo I found out is drowning orbs with the action speed debuff when your perform an action. If you have a couple stacks of the ladder debuff the drowning orbs are absolutely impossible to get out of even if they spawn on you. It's frustration is compounded by doing the maps delirious and not being able to see shit.

I would really like an option in settings to have delirium just set things to grayscale and do nothing else graphically. I like the mechanic but I can't do the kind of stuff I want (combining it with blight for example) because it becomes a slideshow.

An absolute godsend to Delirium are getting Bismuth ores because it kind of does what you are suggesting in a different way. Almost worth speccing Bismuth every map strat...

My start was both good and bad. I launched with an Elementalist self-channeling Divine Ire. No campaign problems, no map completion problems, decent but not amazing interacting with the league mechanic, etc. It was obviously not a character I was ever going to take to 100 or anything but I had no complaints until the play pattern started to hurt my hand. Something about physically holding down a button to channel was causing issues and they got worse when combined with situations that were frantic or stressful. I guess I was pushing down even harder when things were tense? Whatever it was the heavy play of a league start was fucking up my hand even down to the elbow. I bailed on the character and started fucking around with my second choice - attack totem + new skill. Conflagration was a bust but Kinetic Rain of Impact was pretty sweet. Unfortunately it was screen cancer with the basic wand issue of unimpressive single target.

Despite piloting a lot of minion builds over the years I had avoided Forged Frostbearer spectres since their introduction in Crucible because I thought they were retarded. Spectres had been pretty bad and they felt like a bone throw. They're crazy and have no chance in hell of sticking around. They got reintroduced with Kalguur and I was directionless so fine. We'll tier whore. I went with an Ascendant as their last two ascendancy points slide easily in to the Catarina bloodline taking Guardian and Necromancer nodes and then a Flame/Flesh for Occultist later on.

Forged Frostbearers are dumb. Real dumb. The only hiccup I had was not being sure how much I needed to invest in keeping them alive versus damage. Once I had that sorted it was the smoothest and fastest 99 to 100 I've ever done, smoothest ubers, general mapping, all of it. I'm pretty sure a good 20% of the character is misbuilt but none of that matters running around with solid recovery on 13000 to 16500 ES (depending how many temporary spectres I'm maintaining) plus CI, decent block and decent evasion. I've piloted some real trashcans to 40/40 challenges before and as someone that is fine with hobbling over the finish line on a jalopy this shit was crazy. For people that always play good characters doing good things this may be the norm but it sure isn't for me.

Arbitrary said:

but Kinetic Rain of Impact was pretty sweet. Unfortunately it was screen cancer with the basic wand issue of unimpressive single target.

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Kinetic Rain is an awesome league starter, and I'll probably keep using it on most INT-based builds just because of how smooth the early game feels. But man, does it fall off a cliff later. Once you push into T16s, Ubers, or any real endgame, the flaws become unbearable. The visual clutter is obnoxious, the cone-shaped targeting is awkward, and the skill practically refuses to hit anything that's right on top of you.

Kirun said:

Kinetic Rain is an awesome league starter, and I'll probably keep using it on most INT-based builds just because of how smooth the early game feels. But man, does it fall off a cliff later. Once you push into T16s, Ubers, or any real endgame, the flaws become unbearable. The visual clutter is obnoxious, the cone-shaped targeting is awkward, and the skill practically refuses to hit anything that's right on top of you.

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With the tree printing high tier items I want to revisit a few of the things I was trying backed with a big weapon. The last time regular items were this cheap was Necropolis and I didn't try enough builds during it.

I actually miss my LS Slayer, but doing fairly decent with the Ele Hit Deadeye this league. Made it to 97 and around 3mil dps plus a bit more when mapping due to rage generation.

Just wish I was better at planning out upgrades because looking at Fubguns pob that he updates every league, there is a TON of damage boosts I need to get there; But I have absolutely no idea how to prioritize considering I'm starved for str / int, and if I take Hyrrs Truth amulet or whatever I dont even have the mana to run precision.

Will try and post my POB either later tonight or tomorrow, but bear in mind I think I have a total of 30 divs left and that includes selling some valdos / scarabs to get there.

I've been having a blast with Jugg Boneshatter. For melee, it hits a decent sweet spot between survivability and damage. It's clear is, obviously, not the best, but I am impressed with the effortlessness of getting decent dps while being nigh on killable (although I always find a way). Who woulda thunk I would enjoy a melee build again!

Probably a longshot, but anyone out there who quit the league with a Svalinn? I've been chasing the damn thing all league but every time I get remotely close the price jumps another 10-15 div and despite running Settlers on my Atlas I've only even seen the Black Knight once. With PoE2 coming up I'm likely only going to play for another week, so at this point I just want to see if it was even worth the aggravation compared to the Foulborn Surrender I was using since day 2.

I bought one the other day when I swapped from shrapnel ballista to kboc, but it's not going great so far. I just sold one of my str rings while I was at work today for the last divs I need to get a real mageblood and not a 2flask of sadness, so going to spend tomorrow trying to figure out what i'm missing vs the poeninja's i've seen. Assuming I can't get it to a state I want with the svalinn then I could let you have it either free or for a reasonable price (will have to see what i'd need to replace it with if I got rid of it to go for a non-svalinn version of the build).

Making this would not be fun, nice belt though

One of the worst retention leagues ever. Hope ggg doesn’t attribute this to the async trade, if anything that stopped it from being by far the worst. This just turned out to be such a garbage boring mechanic. The tree is cool and it’s nice getting loot dumps but the mechanic in maps is just being skipped by everyone. I’ve used my giga brain analysis of all previous leagues and their success and have come to this conclusion for ggg -

1) if you tie good loot directly to a mechanic, people enjoy it more than when it’s the same amount of loot but indirectly (ie the genesis tree in this case)

2) number 1 especially applies when it’s a ‘stop and do this shit’ mechanic like this league. (If it was something like sulphite then nobody would be upset)

Do they release retention numbers or is this just correlation to Steam/Twitch numbers? Preferably I like a league mechanic I can skip. It's extremely useful in the start of the league and now the only thing I roll is grafts for GG divines. The only one I do is the actual breach though. I skip the other two even though the fortress seems to be kinda worth on rewards. I do think the one that isn't Breach/Fortress is god awful though.

Preferably my favorite leagues are the ones that you don't notice from going fast or ones you can save up relatively passively. I think this one would've been fine if they didn't have the protect the president variation and just had the fortress/breach. And maybe make the hive invitations more rare and more loot explosiony.