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Difficulty is a Weird Kink

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Good Morning Folks. Last Thursday was the launch of the Phrecia 2.0 event, and last Saturday during the podcast I finished the campaign and got to maps. I had so many issues early not… not the least of which was the fact that I was using a level 1 Summon Raging Spirits until 34. However there are a lot of annoyances with the current state of the game because we are not only playing Phrecia which comes with alternate classes, but also playing under the Gauntlet ruleset which adds increased difficulty to the game in general. I kind of hate it. What I think most people wanted was a vanilla Phrecia league built on top of Keepers of the Flame, and that would have been pretty amazing. Instead we got Gauntlet plus the permanent mod that causes everything unique to enrage and rip your faces off. Grinding Gear Games has this weird kink about difficulty in games, and I really wish they would leave that shit for the hardcore game modes and leave us poor softcore players out of their player death goonfest. I get the point of the Gauntlet ruleset in that it was supposed to test the mettle of players in a hardcore single death ruleset… but on softcore it just feels annoying as you throw your body against the dumb shit until you eventually brute force your way through it.

I might be just salty because I made an attempt at my 4th labyrinth this morning and an enraged Izaro took me from 4400 health to zero in less than a second, so much so that I have no clue what even hit me. Izaro was not even standing anywhere near me. I have a second Goddess token so I will give another attempt at this over lunch probably, but it still annoys the shit out of me. Phrecia should be about the fun of building around new ascendancies, not some uber deathmatch scenario. It just annoys me that GGG constantly keeps adding their kink into places where it is not wanted. This is not the first time that they have snuck the Gauntlet ruleset into an event league, and it will likely not be the last. On some level I curse Zizaran for suggesting that this nonsense be created. Having Hillock witnessed by The Maven is novel exactly one time, but it overstays its welcome and the thought of grinding up another character to try some other build becomes thoroughly unappealing. Sure I can just keep rezzing my way through fights, but it rapidly feels like tedium.

I will be brutally honest, at this point I have a partially functional character. As of this morning I am wearing pretty much a bunch of gear that I got from the tree, including the six link that I am currently using. I have seven empty sockets, have zero spectres, and no animate guardian. I could improve immediately by doing those things, but I have been able to progress well enough through early maps that I have not felt the drive to do so. I did however get a pretty lucky Gruthkul’s Pelt drop so I could probably cobble together an Animate Guardian set reasonably since that tends to be the most expensive part. When I do this thing I think I am probably going to go with Temp Chains on hit gloves, since I do not believe that Despair on hit exists. I figure Temp Chains + Aspect of Spider is going to make things a lot more cozy overall. I suppose it is well past times to actually finish sorting out my build and gear before I make that second attempt at labyrinth four.

Defensively I am doing pretty okay with overcapped elemental resistances across the board, 4400 life, almost 700 regen, and 76% attack block and 41% spell block. I really want to pick up a life gain on block shield at some point and maybe trying to cap my spell block as well. At some point i will have to deal with the process of capping chaos resistance, but at least for early mapping it is generally fine to be in the negatives here. Pretty much all of my gear right now is complete crap and should be replaced. I am trying to decide if I want to stack Armor and Energy shield, or if I want to try Evasion and Energy Shield and then picking up an extra defensive layer in the form of Spell Suppression. In truth Armor + Energy Shield + Block + Regen + Life Gain on Block should be more than enough to feel comfortable, especially once I gain some additional damage reduction from the fourth ascendancy point. I’ve run around with less defensive layers on minion builds before at least.

So this is the point where I tell you about another critical flaw in my run so far. As I got to the end of the campaign on Saturday it seemed really fucking weird that I had not seen a single map drop. I was level 75 as I went into acts 9 and 10, and normally by this point I would have started seeing the occasional T1 map drop so that by the time I hit maps I had a stash of them to run. This was not the case, and even weirder… as I started running maps… I was not seeing any drop. At first I chalked this up to the Gauntlet ruleset, but had not been seeing anyone else complain about this. Then it dawned on me… this is the Keepers League, and during the tail end of Keepers I modified my Neversink filter to up the strictness of my filter and turn off any map drop that was not t16 or t17. Sure enough I had just been hiding every single map that dropped and gleefully running past them. I had been farming Kirac in order to get early unlocks, and lord knows how much progress I sacrificed by this stupid move.

Suffice to say I am not super far into progression at the moment with only 21 of 115 maps finished. I’ve been having to farm other maps that I have already gotten credit for in the hopes of getting maps that I need to unlock progress. White maps have been perfectly fine for progressing so far, and while I do take the random death here or there to enrages… I am able to them down in six portals without much issue. Mostly I am trying to build up enough currency to be able to buy what I need to improve my build. My next big target is a six link Covenant, and the prices on those are coming down steadily. I’ve contemplated trying to mix in some Delve since resonators tend to sell well enough because someone out there is always looking to craft something. I don’t have anything resembling a cohessive strategy on my idols, so I am slowly trying to work on that as well. I would not mind doing Vaal temple generation again, but I need a bunch of incursion idols to really make that work, and some initial capital to buy the required scarabs. Harbingers is apparently printing currency, but I am sure those idols are already priced out of existence for me.

I got my first Divine Orb from the tree but it is unfortunately not the windfall that I would have hoped. Normally at this point in the league I would try and sell a divine orb in order to get some much needed chaos for other things. However right now it is only 114 chaos to the divine orb, so I am probably better off holding onto this for the moment and then trying to get a few more so I can pick up a linked covenant. Ultimately I just need to spend more time playing and more time grinding, but I have been all over the place lately. So much shit has been going on in my life that I have lacked the will to really push forward here. Today is going to be exceptionally stressful, and tonight is probably going to be sibling time in Destiny Rising, so it might be a few days before I actually grind again. Tomorrow I have a very early doctors appointment so it is unlikely that I will blog tomorrow morning to add to the litany of things going on. My life feels like it has been turned upside down, and I am going to need some things to click into place before I can right it again. Too many things out of my control and game progress is just one of the things that has suffered as a result.

Anyways. I hope you are having a wonderful week. We are thawing out finally and the snow is almost entirely gone. I hope the same is true for you. If I don’t see you tomorrow, I will be back on Thursday.

AggroChat #555 – MMOs and PSOLikes

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Featuring: Ace, Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Thalen

Good Morning Folks! We are down a Tam this week and had some topics that were sitting on our list for a bit.  We start off talking about the official end of Anthem and the Mark Darrah video that effectively provides an autopsy for the game.  Loosely related, we talk about the impending death of New World in January 2027.  This forces us down the path of talking about what the heck even makes an MMO anymore, and how we largely agree that it requires random interaction with other players to count.  We decided that the lobby-based games are PSOLikes since the first game we can remember that was that way was Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast.  From there, we talk a bit about Shape of Dream,s another Roguelike that Ash and Kodra have been playing.  Bel shares his thoughts on Legacy of Phrecia 2.0 in Path of Exile, and Kodra shares his endgame thoughts about Path of Exile II. We wrap the show up talking about the impending patch in Guild Wars 2 that is going to add quickplay for raids and the new Fashion Plates adjacent system.

Topics Discussed:

  • Anthem is Offline
  • New World will soon Die
  • What Makes an MMORPG
  • PSOLikes
  • Shape of Dreams
  • Path of Exile Legacy of Phrecia 2.0
  • Path of Exile 2 – Endgame Thoughts
  • Guild Wars 2 Fashion Plates

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Gated by Dumb

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the start of the Legacy of Phrecia 2.0 event in Path of Exile, and I got a bit of a late start… because my dentist called and told me that my night guard was ready for pickup. I expected to bop over and they would have it waiting on me at the desk. Instead I had to wait for a room to clear so they could do a fitting. Positive is it fits fine and I used it for the first time last night, and so far it is mostly okay. I was able to sleep fine with it in and it only really started to annoy me when I woke up around 2:30 in the morning, but was mostly able to turn over and fall back to sleep until the alarm went off. For the Phrecia event I was playing a class that is not supposed to be using minions… so as a result much like with Righteous Fire I spent the first part of the event creating a Witch Mule so that I could get abilities not accessible to the Shadow until the Library in Act 3. My problems started here… but we will talk about that in a bit.

This is what my early pathing looked like, and I have modified it slightly to drop some nodes and pick up some others. The early pathing is a bit of double edged sword, because you are not getting any power… but you are getting a bunch of much needed stats, namely intelligence. I did not really start to gain any real power until eleven points in. Suffice to say this was a bit of a rough start, which is only multiplied by the fact that we are playing under the Gauntlet ruleset. This means there is a bunch of general fuckery going on with boss fights. When you encounter Hillock on the beach, he is being witnessed by Maven, and when you take out Brutus you get a fake version to fight first… and then have to fight the real thing while the water canons from Hydra are attacking in patterns. On top of these every so has a modifier applied to it, so the base maps themselves are much more difficult they than would normally be. Combine this with the fact that Breach can be a bit rippy early on… and not playing a class designed for minions… it was a very rough start.

This was only multiplied by the fact that I was a complete and total fucking idiot, and I did not realize this until this morning at level 34. Essentially prior to that I had been using a level 1 Summon Raging Spirits, Flame Wall, and Holy Flame Totem. out of absolute paranoia of leveling them, and then screwing over the Shadow when I switched off the Witch Mule, I right clicked all of the abilities to keep them from leveling up. Problem is that this now applies globally when you move the gems to your main character. So for 34 levels… I have been using level 1 gems, and quite honestly just brute forcing my way through the content. This is so outrageously dumb, and it is no wonder that pretty much every boss fight was a massive pain in the ass to get through. Since all of my power comes from this one gem… I was essentially smashing my face against everything with the equivalent of a level one character. Sure I was a bit more sturdy and had some gear that was giving me some additional power… but not enough to make up for the fact that my minions were pure shit.

I am hoping that since I have now righted that wrong… the rest of the campaign will go much more smoothly. It will take a bit for Raging Spirits to catch up gem levels, but they should gain a lot of power in a quick burst. I am just about to the first lab, and at that point I get another massive boost of power in the form of a level 15 Envy buff that has no reservation. At that point I should be able to ride that as an express elevator through the rest of the content. Sadly I only made it to Act 3 last night before giving up for the evening. I did not do my normal Thursday thing but I did hang out on voice with everyone. Ace joined in the shenanigans this week so that was pretty delightful, and we had Ashgar until he had to bug out for Pathfinder. I laugh so much on Thursday nights, and they are truly good for my soul. Even if I am not playing the same game it is generally a good time to spend the time with my friends.

All in all the event seems to be pretty freaking popular. I have no clue what the actual numbers look like, but we did encounter some failures for instances loading, which means the instance servers were completely swamped early on. This is not exactly the same as a normal league launch, but it definitely seems like everyone is in and the game is hopping again. I kind of hate that this is a limited three week event. I am hoping they extend it until the next league drop, because ultimately this is going to be the league that everyone plays out if given the choice until 3.28. I am rocking the King in the Mists outfit with this character because it seemed fitting, and I am also using the Shadow Ravens mtx for SRS. I gave my Witch mule a proper name just in case I decided I wanted to roll a second character for the league. The thing is even though it has been brutal due to my own stupidity, I have been having fun. Tonight I am probably going to hang out downstairs, and attempt to coax some kitty cuddles while listening to an audio book.

Are you playing Legacy of Phrecia? If so what did you end up rolling? Drop me a line below.

Plans for 3.27 Phrecia Event

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday we got full patch notes for the Legacy of Phrecia event and its changes and through this I finally decided my path going forward. If you want explanations in extreme detail then you can turn to SirGog who recorded a live stream that lasted over 3 hours of him going line by line through the patch notes. If you want the cliffs notes version, then I suggest the DreamCore video weighing in at 13 minutes. One of the more interesting aspects of this event is that every area is going to have random modifiers applied to it with a reasonable exclusionary list in an attempt to keep anything from hard bricking a build. I’ve said before that Phrecia in general was one of the most enjoyable events that I have ever participated in previously, and I am really looking forward at going into this event with the new trade system for snapping up and selling idols. Like I said yesterday I figured out my path going forward, but it is less a hard path and more a series of paths depending on how things end up performing. The reality is that Shadow has three different ascendancies that have three wildly different builds that interest me, so it feels like I am destined for the Dex/Int starting location.

One of the things that you end up doing after awhile, is figuring out your builds based on what you have seen working on POE.Ninja. I often find a build that is similar to the build that I want to play, and then use it as a bit of a template, and then make a lot of audibles while I am leveling based on what I actually need at that moment. None of these builds are going to be like following a Pohx or Zizaran guide. Each of them is an archetype that I have played before, or at least close to an archetype that I have played before, and that I largely understand what is needed for that sort of build. Right now my plans are to level as Servant of Arakaali Summon Raging Spirits, leaning heavily into the fact that I get Envy early and without reservation from that ascendancy and expecting it to hard carry me through the campaign. I like SRS builds and have played several different versions of them on Necromancer, Guardian, and Elementalist…. but never Shadow. The other huge benefit of this build is that you get to start playing it almost immediately. I will probably roll a Witch mule so that I can get some early quality of life like frostblink.

Essentially my plan is to mostly use this build from the previous Phrecia league as a bit of a template, or at least for understanding some of the early pathing.

Here is where we go into some of the potential pivot points. Summon Raging Spirits is a heck of a lot of fun, and is a pretty good all-arounder build, but is maybe not the fastest mapper. In the even that I really want to go hard into mapping, I might pivot into a Blind Prophet bow trap build using Scourge Arrow of Menace as the base for large amounts of damage that utilizes the “nimis at home” functionality of the ascendancy. Mathil played a version of this build that seems pretty easy to get up and running and since I already like the trap gameplay style, it will probably feel better for me than it did for him. Aero did a slightly higher budget version of this which also might work, but I do prefer the Sunblast gameplay from the Mathil build. The huge benefit of the Mathil build is it has a good POB that I could follow, but I also found this other POB that is slightly different that I might blend in elements from. Essentially its an option if I want to pivot and try something different that only really works during the Phrecia event without needing a very expensive Nimis ring.

Finally if ALL of these plans fall through… I go Surfcaster and build a version of my Ice Trap of Hollowness build that has recently become my go to for just a fun build with a lot of damage projection that freezes the entire damned screen. I have specific preferences in this department since I have now played a version of this build three different times, with different flavors. I found this build from the last Phrecia event that I could use as a template for some of the early pathing, but the gearing is all whack because I will not be affording a mageblood, and ralakesh boots are no longer as good as they were when this was built. Once the initial pathing is sorted and gets me into the right area of the tree, I will probably start following the template of my Elemenatalist Ice Trapper from Keepers of the Flame that I have been playing a lot recently. Essentially this is a fall back plan in case none of the other options work as well as I want them to.

That is kind of the cool thing about a Shadow start in Phrecia is that there are a bunch of compelling things going on with all three ascendancies. I can’t say the same for any of the other classes really, that I am anywhere near as interested in all three. I think Chaos SRS is going to work beautifully as Servant of Arakaali, and in truth I have never actually played a poison minion build in the past. I’ve always done Elemental because it felt like I was not having to stretch the build too hard to get it there. I might be instantly converted. I know without a doubt I will be able to get through red maps without any question, and if nothing else SRS is going to allow me to farm the gear needed to make any of the future pivots. I doubt I will be delving on any of these characters however, so that will be a bit sad. I will probably either focus on Einhar Beasts or doing Harbingers during this event, but we will have to see what good idols I end up getting. I know how a lot of different strategies work so I can pivot to whatever fate gives me.

Are you going to be playing the Legacy of Phrecia event under the 3.27 ruleset? What are your plans? Drop me a line below.