So I am nearing the end of the campaign on BelGoesFireSnake my Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain, and I am of mixed opinions. It is amazing to see the entire screen erupting into fire and it brings me immense joy to see a screen covered in magma like the above screenshot. The problem is that it comes with the fairly extreme price of most of your attacks not actually hitting your target. So when you are trying to fight a boss… it feels really bad against anything with sufficient heft. So for clearing entire screens… this build has you covered and does it in a very fun way but anything that is even the slightest bit tanky will feel like you are dealing negative damage.
Right now this is suffering from some of the same problems that I had with my Shield Crush Chieftain from last league. Avatar of Fire may not be worth it. Between it and the fire mastery I am converting 90% of my physical damage to Fire… at the cost of dealing ONLY fire damage. This is why I have leaned heavily into Ignite damage and elemental proliferation… which I just took out of my main five-link because I was able to craft a Fan the Flames cluster. I think I might have to go more heavily into cluster jewels just to pick up enough damage nodes on the end of the tree where I am sitting. My large cluster has Prismatic Heart and Widespread Destruction which help to scale up the Fire Damage further. I’ve also got another easy-to-reach large cluster that I could expand further, but it always feels like you are brute forcing your will upon the tree when you start using a bunch of clusters.
If I can make this stay as tanky as it currently feels… this honestly might be a fun build-down in Delve. The Volcanic Fissures do a great job of finding mobs so you could just be throwing them out while you go down the tunnel mopping up the easy stuff. In theory, I need to find myself a high-level base for a Mace and then try and craft as much physical damage on it. For the moment I am using Lavianga’s Wisdom mostly because it adds a big chunk of increased physical damage. The build that started me down this path was doing Strength stacking and using a Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler which we have not seen yet in Bel League, but I have enough strength to make that a reasonable option. Another potential is Nycta’s Lantern but I am not sure if I have ever actually seen one of those drop. While it is super cheap in trade… I am not sure I can actually find one in SSF.
I have a feeling that this character is ultimately going to be a dead-end learning experience. I think more than anything I need to spend some time down in Delve and pick up some crafting bases to get the rest of my gear fleshed out. If you are curious this is where I am build-wise.
I think I have reached the point with my Boneshatter Juggernaut where I have gotten it about as far as I can without access to the trade economy. My crafting knowledge is good enough to make a character function in a pseudo-ssf environment but not good enough to start fine-tuning my gear. At this point, I really miss being in the trade league because it would probably be straightforward to fix the awkward bits of this build and make it excel like I think it should. After spending two divines and all of my rare crafting materials yesterday trying to make a better chest piece off a defensively enchanted drop from a heist that Kodra got… I think I am done trying to craft anything complicated because I just can’t cope when those crafts ultimately fail. Mostly it just feels like I am throwing away resources that would be better spent just buying the thing I ultimately want.
Conceptually I like the idea of a private league, but I think maybe the default length of one is set to 10 days for a good reason. Now is about the time when I would prefer for the characters to just merge into the normal trade league, and we still have another 30 days left in our private league. It was a really fun way to start the league, and for the most part, I think all of us have been able to get characters “functional” but maybe not “great” as of yet. What I am seeking for gear would just be much easier to get on trade league… for example last night I spent 2 Divines, 1 Exalt, 1 Annul, and 1 Orb of Conflict attempting to craft something that I could buy for 40 Chaos. The same has been true with the copious amounts of crafting materials I have poured into trying to get a halfway decent axe… that still pales in comparison to the most basic thing I could pick up on trade for a single divine. I’ve just reached the point where I would personally be better served in the trade league.
I’ve made it fairly far on my own and am sitting at 105 of 115 maps, with the remaining ones that I need all unique. This is I think another thorn that is jabbing me right now, is because this is the point where I would just buy the maps that I am missing instead of fishing for them through Kirac. Sure Putrid Cloister is always going to be an expensive map, but it is driving me insane that I have not finished my 115 yet. I feel so far behind the curve as compared to where I would normally be at this point. Part of it is that I lost my comfy Righteous Fire playstyle, and another part of it realizing how much of the currency I was acquiring came from trades and not from raw drops. I also did not realize how much focus and purpose I derived from knowing that I was building towards being able to buy whatever thing I needed for my build. Grinding for the purpose of grinding feels hollow without those “stretch goals” that I was working towards.
So instead… I’ve begun creating alts. One of the abilities that amuses me greatly is Volcanic Fissure of Snaking. Essentially it erupts three times and has some basic seeking logic that will cause the fissures to seek out targets nearby when possible. Over the weekend I started a new Marauder with the intent of going toward Chieftain for the easy resistances and Hinekora explosions. I am sort of going towards something like this, which was a character I found on POE.Ninja seemed to be doing what I was trying to do. Essentially the idea will be to focus on Mace/Sceptre and then do whatever I can to scale up the fire damage from the fissures. I was able to switch over to the transfigured gem before the end of Act 1, and now that I am in Act 2 have have access to Shockwave it really is starting to feel great.
The other alt that I have been playing with is good ole tried and true Lightning Arrow Champion. Now I played this towards the end of the last league and had a lot of fun with it. It can get by without much in the way of gear save for a handful of uniques… that I have thankfully already acquired. I’m at the tail end of Act 4 and would probably be further if I did not get distracted yesterday with starting the Lava Snake character. It is a comfy playstyle and a fun way to churn through maps, though honestly… I gotta say I am more enamored with the chieftain currently. I like the idea of trying out something that I have not played before, especially since I can only really get characters so far without better knowledge of the crafting system. I think maybe the SSF gameplay style is just not for me. While I have enjoyed dumping stuff in the bank and seeing other people use it, I feel like I am stuck in a bit of a rut currently without the ability to get upgrades.
All in all, I am still having quite a bit of fun, and I don’t mean this morning’s post to sound like I am super frustrated. I am still finding joy in what I am doing, but I’ve come to know myself a bit more I guess. I know that I miss the trade economy more than I thought I would. It really has been the factor that has kept me engaged with Path of Exile for as long as I have each league. Losing access to it and losing access to my preferred character and playstyle… has been more of an emotional hit than had hoped. Alting is a comfy space for me, so I think I am going to focus on it for a bit. I am really curious to see what this Volcanic Fissure of Snaking character feels like once I get higher levels and gear. I think it might even be a fun character down in Delve if I can get the survival high enough.
Hey Folks! This is potentially our last show of the year because the next few weeks and the holidays within them… are going to make it very hard to gather a quorum. This week we are going to be brutally honest and tell you that if you have no interest in Path of Exile, then this might be a show for your to skip. While we have a very brief conversation about Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Kodra saving the day and being the big kid rescuing a stranded party, the show is mostly diving into the “Bel League” private league thusfar. So yeah we talk about Path of Exile for an hour and a half and if that is not your thing, then that is totally cool.
Topics Discussed
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Making Memories, Saving Wiped Teams
Path of Exile
Affliction League One Week In
How Our Builds are Going
What happens when you follow a bait build
How much better the game would be with free respecs
Good Morning Folks! Sorry for never actually getting around to writing anything yesterday… I am going through a bit of a thing. Later today will mark us having the new Affliction League in Path of Exile for a week, and I thought I would spend some time this morning giving my thoughts as a whole on the changes. As of writing this, I am level 93 and can easily do T16 maps and am around the 100 to 150 range in delve farming content there. First I have to say I am very pleased with Boneshatter and this has been one of my most part one of my smoothest transitions from leveling to mapping and to the proper endgame. I still have some relatively scuffed gear, but I feel completely viable and while I am sure I would be stronger in a trade league environment it has been perfect cromulent for “solo-self-found” gameplay.
For those who care about such things, here are screenshots of my offensive and defensive screens inside of POE. I would dump a POB… but it seems like Boneshatter of Complex Trauma is not recognized yet and comes across as complete nonsense. This is one of the challenges of having such a major shift in the meta… all of the tools that we use to help us make better sense of the game are all lagging behind. What matters more than anything is that it feels good to play, but I just noticed this morning that I am inching precariously close to the accuracy cap health-wise, which means my free 40% damage multiplier will break if I cross that line by even one point. I might need to see if I can find a single point on the tree that gives me some more accuracy because I really do not want to go back to running precision if I can help it.
As far as the bit meta shake-up and changes in all of the active skill gems go… I think there is more positive here than negative. Sure it killed my favorite character archetype… the Righteous Fire Juggernaut, but RF still is alive and kicking in the form of an Inquisitor Energy Shield/Life Stacking build and the new weird Mana RF build that is starting to spring up on Hierophant. Neither is really what I want, but I am happy that mechanically the playstyle still lives on even though it no longer does for me. What we gained in return is a bunch of really interesting-looking abilities that I want to try building around like Volcanic Fisure of Snaking which sort of casts a line of snaking explosions on the ground that look something vaguely similar to an Abyss tunnel. While I don’t think most of the community has really had a chance to test out all of the new playstyles, I think we are going to see some extremely interesting builds emerge as a result.
The big mechanic for Affliction League is the Viridian Wildwoods which is a delve-like exploration mechanic where you venture forth into the mists while wisps burn away the taint of evil. Out in the mists are all manner of encounters including NPCs that will teach you one of three new ascendancy classes that you can gain on top of your normal one. Essentially they boil down to “Fun with Flasks”, “Fun with Corpses”, and “DIY Scion” each with their own chase-perfected versions of items that you can equip that are gained through completing Viridian Wildwoods in various tiers of content. The Wildwoods themselves are extremely enjoyable and when you exit them, they give you a Sentinel-like mechanic that randomly juices content in the map making them drop massive amounts of loot while also scaling the difficulty significantly.
There are videos showing the sheer nonsense that can happen when you combine the Wildwoods with existing 100% Delirium juicing strategies… but you don’t even need to really do that to feel the impact. The above screenshot was taken from a white map, after having completed the wildwoods and them doing a SINGLE ritual altar after having defeated an Essence Beast that was in range of it. This is not even showing the real scope of how much loot there was… because there were strings of loot popups that expanded past the borders of the map. This league has forced me to crank up the strictness of my loot filter because it produces way more loot than I could ever sort through. Legitimately it might be one of my favorite league mechanics they have come up with but also feel it might be a bit too strong to go into standard.
The three ascendancies are each strong in their own way but somewhat suffer from the “only three good picks” problem that Chieftain does currently. Since I am melee class, it felt like the natural synergy of tinctures was perfect for me to go with. Essentially due to my ascendancy, I have nearly 100% uptime on the flasks on either side of the tincture. It has also made me shift up my playstyle a bit for example I am using Warlord’s Mark instead of Vulnerability because it synergizes with Detect Evil which makes it so that my hits against marked targets cannot be blocked or suppressed. The problem is I am not exactly sure what I want for my 4th choice. I will likely go Wildwood Blessing as it gives me Barkskin a powerful 25% reservation defensive layer and I really don’t want to give up additional flask slots or remove gems from my gear to benefit from the other two options. What is awesome is I could shift things up and go for the Primalist ascendancy and have equally compelling options. I am definitely calling this system a massive win.
So that is essentially three wins in a row… so let’s talk about a massive “L”. Let’s start off first by stating… that I did not play the Ultimatum league and as a result, I had no nostalgia for it… and that I also enjoyed Metamorph quite a bit and regularly mixed it into my Altas tree. So far Ultimatum seems like a shitty replacement for Metamorph. The rewards are just not great and feel like a greatest hits collection of the shittiest loot you ever got from the corrupted strongbox atlas node with the occasional small stack of currency of catalysts. The thing is… the negative effects can be rather rippy and you can see in the above screenshot what it looks like when you complete all 10 rounds and get a stack of your loot. Nothing in that pile was really worth the time it took me to complete the encounter. I would like to see some data collected from folks who went all in on the Ultimatum atlas tree options, but with zero investment it really isn’t even worth my time.
The other big change for me personally has been the advent of “Bel League” where I gathered together with some close friends and started a private Path of Exile trade league. This has given us a mostly SSF gameplay experience with the ability to share some really good items when we find them. I would say this has been a massive win because it allowed us to bypass a lot of the day-one weirdness as we were limiting ourselves to a very small pool of players. It has also been a lot of fun as random loot we might not be interested in, could be useful for someone else out there playing a wildly different build. I’ve had a lot of fun earmarking assorted loot for my friends and also churning out raw currency for crafting. It is making me realize just how much of the “wealth” I generated last league came from the trade economy because I have rather anemic stacks of chaos and only a single divine orb thus far.
This has also caused me to shift up my Atlas strategy a bit and am actually mixing in Essence and Harvest for the raw crafting potential that each provides. I’ve also just picked up some assorted nodes to increase the drop chance of adjacent maps since I cannot buy my way out of issues when it comes to mapping. I am going to have to find all of my maps the old-fashioned way… which is running maps that connect to the empty slot and hoping for some good luck. I am more than over-sustaining the total number of maps that I am getting and have filled the guild bank with fodder for those coming up the rungs and just starting to enter the endgame. So in total, this has given me a bit different looking Atlas than I normally would have at this point but I am enjoying myself. Once I complete all of the normal maps I will be popping back through and pruning some of the branches a bit to most likely go into either a Red or Blue Altar strategy.
As far as Atlas progress goes I have slowed down considerably because the nodes that I need are a bit harder to find as drops. I need most of the unique maps and quite a few of the higher tier red maps to complete out my 115 of 115 as I currently sit at 95. I did complete my first two “easy” voidstones yesterday, and I am not sure if I will mess around too much with going beyond that. I don’t really like bossing in Path of Exile and it does not bring me the joy that it seems to for Kodra, so I am not sure if I will feel like the grind that is required to get even an attempt at Maven or Uber Elder. Were I in the trade environment I would probably just buy a carry. Honestly, I am not even sure how much I care about getting all maps dropping at t16 for the purpose of this league. It has been pretty chill to grab a yellow map and run the league mechanic on it, without it really escalating the difficulty too highly.
I think that is my rundown of Affliction League so far. I would say that overwhelmingly this is a good league. I will forever miss my Righteous Fire Juggernaut shenanigans but I am pretty happy with where I am in Boneshatter land. It isn’t anywhere near as immortal, but also kills things much faster…. without feeling like a squishy mess so I will call that a net positive. I am certain it could feel much better if I were able to upgrade some of my gear to add spell suppressions as a more reliable defensive layer. Similarly, I would probably try and slide in some “damage taken as X” mechanics to smooth things out a bit. I would also really like to have way more health but for being sub 4000, it still feels pretty great.
So essentially… I am really pleased with both the experiment of “Bel League” and the Affliction league as a whole and especially how much progress I have made in a little less than a week.
