Hey Folks. Yesterday was a massive reveal for Path of Exile II, and there is a lot of interesting stuff there happening in that game. I am actually excited to give it a shot once Last Epoch Season 3 (which starts today at 11 am CDT) has run its course for me. All of that said, the most exciting change that happened yesterday… did not happen in Path of Exile II but instead was thrown in as part of a Path of Exile 1 patch that added the new MTX sets. Helena has now gained the ability that Sin and Doryani have in Path of Exile II, where she will identify everything that is in your inventory. Better yet it has the same Ctl+Click shortcut that exists in Path of Exile II, so now when I finish a map my first step is to walk over and have her bulk identify everything. Unfortunately that means that Lily is no longer my vendor character and Helena just got elevated in her location in my hideout significantly. I moved Lily over to the side a bit because I still feel like the ability to buy gems is a pretty huge role.
If you have not seen the presentation I highly suggest giving it a watch because it goes in depth as to the massive design changes that are a foot in that game. The full patch notes are also available if that is more your speed and you do not feel like watching an over hour long presentation. The biggest take away that I had is it seems like they are genuinely trying to make the game feel less clunky and then highlighted a bunch of ways they are trying to achieve this. Namely things like weapon swaps no longer having an animation lock, shield charge dropping its cool-down so you can spam it, and the addition of a sprint key to speed your way across large empty chunks of map seem like they will improve the flow of game-play. More important than all of this… they are introducing the first step at an asynchronous trade system that works somewhat similar to how the brokerage system worked in Everquest II. You post items on a vendor and then people come to your hideout to buy those items, all without you needing to be online.
It is going to take a bit for the changes to really sink in, and since I am not likely to start on the 29th I will be able to know whatever is busted before rolling my character. However I think I am probably going to try and revisit something I did this league where I played a Warrior archetype with Crossbows and leaned heavily into Armor Explosion stacked on Explosive Shot and then used Blueflame Bracers to convert that damage to cold so that I could also freeze things. The biggest change will be that since I can use the same support gems on all of my abilities, I can really lean into the armor break and armor explosion mechanics, while also dipping into some of the nodes that they highlighted in the warrior starting area that do fun things with armor break and fire damage. I still think there is probably a build here, and that it should also have more survival since you can now get the ability for armor to apply to elemental damage on gear.
My tree was somewhat of a mess but once the build sites get updated for the new information I will probably sit down and plan something out so I am not winging it every time I place a point. I still feel like the two handed and armor break nodes are really key to rush towards at first, but after that I sort of lost focus and went all over the place. Since I can throw attack speed gems on every node that should improve the feel of the crossbow abilities a bit, given they already feel a bit sluggish. There is a new support gem that they previewed that shows your crossbow reloading every time you break armor, and since that is my entire focus… so that I can make things explode based on broken armor… it should have a lot of synergy with what I am trying to do. I am just hoping that this build type goes under the radar enough to still be functional by the time I start a character.
I’m actually excited to play some Path of Exile II at some point, and that is the first time since the pre-release client came out and I saw what the game played like. I’ve been pretty down on this game, and I know that is disheartening for some folks who really like the changes it made over the Path of Exile formula. I will likely always love Path of Exile more, because I have spent over 2000 hours playing the damned game at this point. However getting into Titans Quest 2 made me appreciate a slower pace, and I played some of my crossbow dude last night and it felt better than I remember it feeling. I never beat the campaign on this character, but I did get another character to 85 during the Dawn of the Hunt league. I just did not enjoy the game enough to push any further, even though I was having more fun with crossbows than I was with Twohander and Shield Smith of Kitava. I still hate the way that characters ascend and find that entire process miserable, so I am definitely going ranged for the upcoming league to make Sanctum more tolerable.
However that is not what today is about. Today is hype for Last Epoch Beneath Ancient Skies, and you can check out the full patch notes here. I am going to be rolling a Necromancer of some sort and will likely wing it through the campaign and then build something more seriously after that. The ancient area has long been my favorite part of Last Epoch, so I am pumped to explore more of it. Mostly I am trying really hard not to fall back on Warpath Sentinel that I have played so many times in the past. The Judgement build ate a bunch of nerfs so I am hoping Necromancer can reach a point where I can at least do the endgame bosses. More than anything I am looking forward to hanging out with Ace and doing some group play over the weekend. I have plans for Saturday during the day but Thursday, Friday, and Sunday I am hoping to group up and do some nonsense. More than anything I am on the hunt for the Tyrant’s Skull so I can have a TRex minion.
I hope to see you all in Last Epoch today, and then eventually in a few weeks Path of Exile II.