D3 is a casual players ARPG with barely any challenge and bosses that might as well be normal rares. There is no guardians, shapers, or any semblance of a challenge once you’ve spent hundreds or even thousands of hours like my brother and I spent in D3. There’s no Uber Atziri to work tweaking your build and gear for to farm your gauntlets or axe as one example. To me PoE feels more like an MMO where I’m invested in my character and have an end goal of killing shaper with my build. Mathil as much shit as he takes from people aims to do shaper and all content and does it with whatever he enjoys. He just killed Uber Atziri and Shaper with Spark, not Vaal Spark just plain old spark. Path of Exile might have a meta where certain items or skills are OP for multiple leagues but their balancing lets you make custom builds for what you enjoy that might not be #1 but they still do the same raids.
The downside to PoE is if you don’t neckbeard / no life the first 48 hours then you are going to be pretty broke. Much like most MMOs this game rewards the people who no life and push into higher end content ASAP and control the market.
The one thing I don’t see them changing or that they haven’t announced is Uber Lab. That’s where the majority of people in my guild get to the 100+ exalt range on week 1 en masse. That method of getting rich relies on running Uber lab nonstop while farming max keys and making Izaro as difficult as possible for those keys. People then enchant white Hubris helms and sell them for 10c – 20ex (ie: discharge doesn’t consume charges).
