Path of Exile

[Jaybar]

So, this seems interesting. Should I try the first game? Used to play the hell out of the Diablo games...

Path of Exile 2 is not going to be out this year, and we would be optimistic to believe it would come out in 2022. PoE 1 is a great successor to Diablo, so if you enjoyed those games you'll love this. The only issue is that the game does not hold your hand and you almost need a doctorate to really understand everything about the game. I highly recommend checking out some starter build guides for your first playthrough (Enki's Arc Witch is the best and goes into good length about early game and end game content).

[Kachiko]

I like where the changes are going, and last league's Atlas changes were baller, but if the game still runs like dogshit, who cares? I'd like to come back but until that's addressed, and it may never be, I won't touch it.

[Jaybar]

Agreed that was the worst roll out by far, and doing anything with high mob content was unplayable. I'm curious to see how the game plays on my upgraded rig, though.

[Greedouw]

Welp, only played a few hours of POE and now I'm hooked.

[synistar]

Good you're enjoying it now. There's an uproar over Harvest crafting getting nerfed because it made it easier crafting mirror tier gear. Live in the ignorance of that fact and enjoy the game.

[Jaybar]

I really enjoyed having a crafting system that didn't rely on close-my-eyes slamming. The nerfed system will still allow most of those aspects but removing the influenced crafts really kills my jam. I won't have as much time this league to play like I did in Ritual, either.

[Zzsark]

Anyone played a tanky max-block build in recent leagues? I've been playing squishy dodge builds for a while and want to mix things up. There seem to be lots of gladiator bleed variants, but not really sure what's good and scales well from league start.

[Jaybar]

I played Blade Blast Blade Fall chieftain last league which got me to red maps pretty easily but I couldn't get the gear for max block and other QoL survivability, so I dropped off hard. It was hella fun and great single target and decent clear (except it's a two button build).

[Jaybar]

Balance manifesto is out and its a sweeping slew of nerfs. I really wanted to try a Blade Vortex poison build to see what the hype was about, but that doesn't seem feasible anymore. Looks like a physical damage gladiator may be the league starter for me. Guess we will find out more with patch notes tomorrow, then its off to PoB to figure out a build (assuming a community fork is available).

[Kachiko]

I really don't know what their goal for a character is supposed to be. I was doing A9 content on my last low life Carion Golemancer, but never got higher than 95 due to consistent deaths. This was with some 70+ EX gear build, and a full time job, I played pretty much every night and weekend for a bout two months to hit 36 challenges. Now they want it to be harder?

Pass.

[synistar]

Bleed Gladiator nerfed because of the Elder weapon mod change to Bleed and Poison double damage mods being removed/changed for something questionable.

Bow casters are no more with the quiver changes.

[Zzsark]

Part of me wants to buy into the hype of some of the new skills, but then the other part of me knows they will be trash again on release and I really hate having to swap builds early in league.

[Jaybar]

I did a detonate dead necro last league which was hella fun to burst down bosses with Harvest specters, but now they are bringing harvest monster HP to match other monsters, literally kneecapping the build. It should still be viable, but I had pretty big issues with some bosses like Sirius because the specter pool was hot garbage with very low HP corpses. So my 10min Sirius runs will turn into 15min+ runs with probably a few deaths.

I'm definitely jumping into a super tank this league if anything is viable. Nothing I hate more than nearly leveling up and dying 3x to stupid mechanics or one-shots only to lose my xp progress from the day.

[Prothescar]

Really boils my piss that they indirectly yet directly nerfed melee builds by shitting on Flesh and Stone. Should've just made adjustments to it to make it less effective for the 1% of ranged builds that abused it instead of making the already harder to build and use builds even more difficult.

Also hilarious to me that they demolished Headhunter.

[Jaybar]

To me it seems GGG watched how the top tier 1% and streamers abused a lot of mechanics so they went after those to bring them on par with some of the mediocre builds. To be fair this game has gotten extremely DPS heavy over the years and I guess it's a rollback to the way they want the game played: mash keys and pray you don't get 1-shot because defensive layers have been gutted once again (bye bye Vigil jewel and vigilant strike, wonder what the new up time will be now).

[Zzsark]

Also hilarious to me that they demolished Headhunter.

What happened to HH?

[Zeb]

What happened to HH?

Modifiers that allow your Hexes to affect Hexproof Enemies (such as the Cospri's Will unique Body Armour) no longer allow your Hexes to affect yourself while you have Hexproof (as you are not your own Enemy).

So you can't temp chains yourself to make HH buffs last super long.

[Aragan]

customization system seems better honestly than any dungeon crawler/arpg that I've played. Even if most of it was straight stolen from FF games

[Prothescar]

Modifiers that allow your Hexes to affect Hexproof Enemies (such as the Cospri's Will unique Body Armour) no longer allow your Hexes to affect yourself while you have Hexproof (as you are not your own Enemy).

So you can't temp chains yourself to make HH buffs last super long.

Not only this but they are changing how it drops. It will no longer only come from Nemesis maps, but the drop rate is being lowered significantly (was already hilariously low) so less people than ever will have one.

[Zeb]

Not only this but they are changing how it drops. It will no longer only come from Nemesis maps, but the drop rate is being lowered significantly (was already hilariously low) so less people than ever will have one.

Majority of them came from cards and brown orbs. I doubt they'll be noticeably rarer on the trade site.