Path of Exile

Slaanesh69 said:

Remember, kids, this is what GGG is spending some of their development time and money on creating: something no one wants, no one asked for and, as pointed out, is merely a gimmick for streamers and youtubers.

When you have the single, worst league opening in game history, this is your first announcement for the future? The controversy of your launch was rooted in loot issues and you announce a hard mode with less loot?

Bitch, please.

I say all this with the caveat that I have played this league more than any since Leaguestones, with 2 builds to 90 and another to maps. Sometimes gameplay is a function of your build and less about the league itself. Recently I went into Harvest and decided to use up all my contractss and Blueprints and I still have around 100 level 83 contracts and about a dozen blueprints.

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Chris has said it's a passion project that's not taking any development time. But it's also getting alpha testing, so...someone has to set that up. IDK how to judge how much actual time this mode is taking.

I agree that they really shouldn't be talking about it. They should have dropped it unawares along side a better league launch. Kinda like Royale. No one bitched about stolen dev time for that mode, even though it's effectively dead currently.

I would like them to come up with another metric for league health. If a bunch of people that play differently than me quit the league, does that really matter to me(economic health aside)? If a bunch of people enjoy the league, buy supporter packs, but quit earlier, GGG still gets paid, does retention really matter(economic health aside)?

It's not taking any dev time because it's an extra league option with ir/iq turned down 95% and probably life/damage turned up that like 5-10 streamers are going to bash there brains into for uptoots

The whole point is to gain viewership numbers on twitch, ie - marketing - especially considering their twitch shares even at league start are tanking pretty miserably and after quin quits pretty much goes to whatever mathils dwindling viewership is.

I don't want the playerbase that came attached to twitch viewership. They can fuck off. And I think this game, financially, with a few perhaps short term painful decisions, can tell them to fuck off too.

I'll admit, there's a lot of "feels" in this response. I don't have hard data to back it up.

I think the playerbase that came from Twitch are the same people that have incessantly complained about loot this league. Their streamer said it was a problem, so now it's a problem for them too, even if it really wasn't. Or it was, tons of people brazenly complaining about the game and admitting they haven't played in weeks/months/years(!). Not to say that there isn't anything to complain about, even regarding loot specifically, just tired of hearing about it.

Essentially, I want players beholden to the long term health of the game, not their Twitch streamer tribe.

I have a few nebulous ideas on best path forward, not sure how to put them into words yet. Not even sure it's worth it because they all center around removing the need for player retention. I think player retention is a dumb metric but necessary for how they've designed high end item acquisition. That's why I said it's perhaps not even worth putting into words, I doubt they'll ever remove the crutch that is trade.

But from a high level view, player retention and supporter packs do not directly mesh. Players buy supporter packs when you launch a good league. Very few people have the wherewithall to wait the whole league and then reward(or not) GGG for their performance. The hype and press release cycle is already based around this, why is the game itself not?

I wish there were more pure phys spells so I could abuse Hrimsorrow and Heatshiver more. Exsanguinate is great but that life cost can get you killed sometimes. Kinda sucks that the next best alternative(EK) is 33% less damage.

Cold Exsanguinate Mines is pretty good. Cold Shockwave Totems can go fuck itself. Another Mathil makes this look good special. Totem activation time(NOT placement speed) and fragility will lead to frustration and death. Also, they dum.

Also, Marohi Erqi + Battlemage gets an honorable mention. Probably great for some league start stuff in the above type builds. Couldn't figure out why in the Shockwave Totems, it was better than 1H+Shield, but in Exsanguinate, 1H+Shield is better. Whatever, would rather have 1H+Shield anyway because survivability and eventually Aegis.

Arbitrary said:

Shit, really?

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Yep. If it looks interesting to you, I still suggest you try it. For all you know, I'm just some dumbass that plays differently than you. It is cheap to start, I can give you an astral projector. Unless you plan on stealing Pursuit of Faith, can't help you there, already sold mine.

But just in case, let me elucidate on my points.

I've yet to find a totem build where totem activation time wasn't at least annoying. You can kinda work around it by placing totems ahead of you in expectation of monsters. I'm not a huge fan of that, I'm much more of a "see shit, kill shit" player. There's a feelsbadman to frequently placing totems in what winds up being empty space. But even then, there will be times where you need to kill shit right away, so you place totems, and they kill your totems before they get a shot off. So you run away like a bitch.

The build felt squishy despite Inquisitor regen and 20k+ armor. I know that's not enough for high end these days, but I also wasn't throwing it at that. I was getting one shot by Fairgraves in Mao Kun. EB-Mom is a really appealing way to solve mana but I think it ends up being defensive negative. I have no math to prove this. It also looks like Mathil ended up speccing out of it too(maybe he never did?). You don't really need EB-MoM as Heirophant, but I wasn't sold on Heiro overall. The class looks kinda lackluster since they kneecapped mana stackers.

The totems are dumb. You get little bits here and there where they fire at the wrong shit. This is similar to minion gameplay. It doesn't happen as much, but I know to look for it having tried and been disappointed by most minion builds.

Their damage was underwhelming when PoB said the exact opposite. Versus tough shit like Expedition, they were falling behind explosions and getting killed. Maybe I was dumb and consistently enabled a "cannot be frozen, cannot be chilled" remnant, thus negating Heatshiver. But Cold Exsanguinate Mines came through where Shockwave didn't. I think they just plain weren't doing enough damage to freeze. Harvest mobs were another place where they would fall behind the stages of spawns.

Maybe Marohi Erqi + Hrimsorrow + Heatshiver was spreading the build too thin. However, I found too much distasteful about core of the build. I really wish totem activation time was scalable. And why is the major totem survivability node at the bottom?

What do you have left? Could throw you some mats. I made 38, don't really have plans for 40. Just fucking around cuz there's only so many bloons or heathstone I can take. Gotta find a new game...

Cortex, Shaper, and Exarch can all be portal rushed with enough dps. Eater and Uber Uber Elder too, but I'd say the dps requirement is higher. Sirus really fucks with portal rushing. Maven...fuck memory game.

It's a real shame how much of the Uber fights are not just "if only I was better at this" but also "if only I had more dps".


Perfect ascension is easy unless your build is allergic to Lab. 1 hour if you buy the mats, a couple hours of grinding maps for them if you spec them on the atlas. I got the expensive one sitting in my stash if you want.