leveling

It’s Getting Better

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Good Morning Folks. Early yesterday evening, we had a 15 minute downtime for Path of Exile II which deployed patch 0.2.0e. The patch included a lot of pretty solid changes from shrinking some of the larger zones by cutting out dead ends, to slowing down specific mob types so that they could not just bum-rush you forever. There are still issues with the game, but most of those are design decisions not necessarily things that feel like they are bugs. I still feel like I am maybe not the intended target audience for this game, but given enough patches like that… it might actually get closer to that. I still feel like crafting is entirely missing from the experience and what we have instead is just praying for the RNG gods to smile upon you with a fortuitous drop. Generally speaking I can get pretty far into maps in Path of Exile 1 before I need to resort to trade… but I did not even make it through the campaign without buying a few items here.

Because of how miserable the campaign felt, I spent most of last night approaching it with fresh eyes to see how the recent round of changes impacted the experience of starting fresh. The only twink item that I threw on my character was Enfolding Dawn, which honestly causes more problems than it solves by taking away your mana gain from Intelligence for the benefit of having 100 Spirit. I mostly ended up yoloing my way through a build without following any guide, and essentially followed in the footsteps of my character from last league. All in all it was a MUCH better experience than when I had rolled this character last week and made it through the first zone. I was not necessarily exploding the entire world, but I managed to work my way through the entire first act without taking any deaths. Sure I had to dodge quite a few effects and work around when my minions died on me… but it was reasonable and I mostly found myself leaning on the combo of Raging Spirits and Arsonists like I did last time.

Mapping is also so much better now that Rares are highlighted on your map immediately. This gives you a clear direction that you should head up entering the map, and gives the entire experience a bit more purpose. The drops are still a bit on the low side, but I do have to say that their waystone changes are perfect. I’m never running into any issues where I am not getting waystone drops enough to sustain my mapping. In fact I am massively over-sustaining which is pretty nice. You get tier upgrades often enough that if you can JUST get through one map in the new tier… that you are probably going to have a bunch of waystones to run to keep progressing through that tier. I’ve yet to be in a position where I need to drop down a tier because I ran out of waystones to run.

Having fewer towers in the endgame mapping is a huge positive. I still do not love running these maps, and as such having to do fewer of them is a good thing. I feel like that does not necessarily make towers actually good though, because I don’t want to do them. I am also not super hyped on the progression system. Path of Exile 1 has this whole grid of maps where you mark them off one by one, which feels good with each new map giving you Atlas Passive points. Instead of running 10 Tier 1 maps, you now have to seek out a Nexus of Corruption and clear that… which in truth often means you are needing to run MORE than 10 maps to find the next one. I get what they are going for here… but it does not feel amazing. It still feels like I am running more maps and getting less benefit from them… which is especially bad when each individual map feels largely unrewarding.

There are however some payoff moments in the maps, and when you find one it feels good. I’ve you’ve been around the community at all you have probably seen screenshots of Ventor’s Contraption, which is a unique lockbox that takes gold to open. Each time you open it, the amount of gold goes up significantly. I only had enough on me to do three spins of the gacha box, and I feel like I got fairly decent outcomes. I know there are folks who have gotten 10 stacks of Divine Orbs from these things, or perfect jewelers orbs… so I did not get that lucky. The only problem is… not every map has anything even vaguely as exciting as the gacha box. A lot of maps are pretty boring still, and lack the chance of decent drops… so it kind of feels like you are just slogging through the objectives hoping it will improve at higher tiers.

After a major patch though, things are in a better state overall. Next week on this blog is likely going to be focused on talking about the Last Epoch Season 2 launch and trying to sell you on why you should be playing it. If anything dramatic happens in Path of Exile II however I will probably at least talk about some of that as well. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and get the loot drops you have been hoping for.

Better But Not Great

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Hey Folks. Well… I did not actually stop playing Path of Exile II. I am a deeply stubborn human being at times, and I kept pushing forward and have managed to get things into a semi-viable state. Warrior right now is probably the most functional class in the game. Until yesterday 9 of the top 10 spots on the Hardcore leader-board were playing the Smith of Kitava. Now several Lich builds have snuck into the top 10, now that the chaos dot contagion tech has become more common. Conversely there are only three Huntresses in the top 100, and the first one of those is sitting down at spot 21. Not that I play Hardcore, but you can generally use it as a gauge of the success and viability of builds more than you really can the softcore characters.

So how did I reach a point of viability with my build? Essentially it was the second set of ascendancy points that pushed me over the edge, and had I realized how much of a difference this would have made I probably would have chosen these as my first points. Basically I farmed a decent normal body armor from Act 3, and kept farming until I had enough socket and quality currency to attempt a corruption. I did not win the one in four, and got nothing added to my chest piece but it has still worked well enough. That 5% life generation was just enough to take the edge off my incoming damage and give me time to react with a health potion when I started taking shotgun damage. What has been frustrating however is just how much time I have spent vendor shopping for quality and socket currency. Essentially each time I ding a new level I bounce back to all of the act vendors looking for anything I can salvage… so I can hopefully set up for my next upgrade at some point.

This largely set me up to finish Act III, and in truth things were pretty easy from that point forward. That is not to say it was not tedious. Essentially my gameplay is Leap Slam and then when I land hitting Boneshatter to blow everything up. Now that I have some leech on my weapon I can sustain my mana reasonably well, and I am no longer having to survive on potions alone. That really is the point at which both Path of Exile 1 and 2 start to feel decent, is when you can automate your regeneration of life and mana to the point where you ONLY have to care about potions to deal with large hits. Potions are awful and have always felt bad, and I hate it when you are struggling and just have to keep downing one after every fight. Doryani took forever, but it was reasonably easy… so essentially my only real roadblock was Viper and once I had some regeneration I managed to push through that without much issue.

Last night I picked up a pair of Trampletoe boots off trade for one exalt, and I have been using these to pretty solid effect. Yes these were nerfed so that they do not do the massive chains that they used to. However this does not really matter because it gives me a second bit of explode so that when combined with my Herald of Ash it essentially blows up most packs. The only thing that I have to stop and fight is rare mobs, which mostly just mean I have to throw out a single perfect strike. I’ve managed to get into a pretty good rotation of leap slam/boneshatter repeated forever. The only things that I really have to watch out for are poison and chaos damage… both of which completely shred me because I have zero chaos resistance. At some point that is going to be something I focus on… hopefully with my next set of armor upgrades.

Now that I have gotten past some of the mechanical frustration… we are left with the loot frustrations. This game feels largely unrewarding. My POE1 brain gets excited when I see a rare chest in a zone… and then upon opening it all of the dopamine drains rapidly out of my system when I get two blues and 15 gold. Note… I am not filtering out any loot here. I am running Filterblade but was simply not getting enough loot that I backed off all the way down to the softest filter, which only serves to shrink the font size of items that it deems worthy of filtering out. When I killed Doryani at the end of act 3, he dropped 2 rare items, 2 magic items… and around 100 gold. The loot just feels so phenomenally throttled, that I am not sure what the heck is going on. This is why I hate magic find as a stat… because it is clear that the GGG folks are assuming that we are stacking it and throttling loot by default to make up for having this stat in the game.

At this point I am level 52 and heading off to Fight Count Geonor at the end of Act IV. I’ve been following a relatively generic boneshatter tree and at some point I will respec a bit to be able to pick up Giants Blood and go Two Handed Hammer and Shield. I am really interested in some of the build tech that OneManaLeft is using, that Carnarius also used a bit towards the end of last league. Essentially they drop Leap Slam and pick up Blink so that you can blink from pack to pack and then mace strike to explode the packs. You can check out Connor’s POB for the full version of the build. As I get more currency I am going to start shopping trying to pick up an Infernoclasp which I will eventually need to hit 90% fire resistance. If nothing else it will serve as a pretty decent belt for the time being… but as of right now the prices are all over the place.

Am I having fun yet? The jury is still out on that one… I am having less frustration than I was having so for the moment that has to count for something. I still feel like there are deep problems with the design of this game. Do I think it is as simple as Chris Wilson good Jonathan Rogers bad? No… not really. Games are not the product of a single person, and no matter how much the community points this out does not really make it true. It does feel like GGG does not understand their own game however, nor really understand what made Path of Exile so great. They are trying to build a different game, but right now… they are whiffing in empty air because this is not working. The longer the game goes on… the more it is clear that the original design is not going to be the thing people actually want to play for the long run. I fully expect that as soon as Last Epoch launches its second season… Path of Exile II is going to be a ghost town.

At some point today Zizaran is supposed to be sitting down with Jonathan Rogers for an interview about the Dawn of the Hunt league. I am going to be extremely interested to see how this shakes out, especially given that Ziz has rated this league 4 out of 10. I am hoping that GGG goes through with the interview because quite frankly, Ziz is probably the person who is going to be the most respectful towards them, and they cannot avoid the bad press if they were to cancel it. Tonight I will be wrapping up Geonor and moving on to Act 2 Cruel, so we will see if the “better” continues.

Farming the Witchtide

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the launch of Diablo IV Season 7, and last night I rolled the Necromancer that I was planning and started leveling. If anyone is wanting to play along at home, I am mostly following this guide on Maxroll because I do not want to think about anything right now. I am not really going to worry about my gear until I hit level 60 because at this point I have effortlessly gotten to 44 without really trying. I am absolutely half-assing my way through the content and it is delightful, in large part because Season of Witchcraft is effectively the spiritual successor to Season 2. The Season of Blood as Season 2 was properly referred to was essentially peak Diablo IV for me, and the rapid recurrence of the Blood Tide events made it feel great to level.

Instead of Bloodtides… we have Headhunts which I am affectionately referring to as the Witchtide. These will spawn in four places on the map and are up for 40 minutes at a time. However these appear to be staggered so that when one ends there is always going to be another one up that you can be farming. This also means that once you complete all of the Grim Favor objectives in one area, you can bounce to a new area and start the entire process over again. This is by far the smoothest leveling experience ever and even more important… taking a death does not cause you to lose your hard earned event currency like you do in a Helltide. That said… I have not taken a death yet but you are collecting resources that you then spend to unlock Witchcraft abilities.

Part of what made the Season of Blood so great was that in addition to the blood tide events… you had a borrowed power system in the form of vampire abilities. These were gained randomly in a pick one of three scenario and it often took you quite a bit of grinding to get the set that you really wanted to use. Witchcraft abilities work so much better in that you simply get currency for doing events and then can outright purchase the ability that you actually want. Within the first hour and a half of game-play I had all five of the abilities that I wanted, and then could simply focus on leveling them up instead of acquiring new abilities. I highly suggest Aura of Siphoning for your first ability because it is essentially “What if Righteous Fire Healed You”, as you deal damage to everything around you but also gain some of that as life.

I also love that it lets me run around with a giant poison dart frog. The crossover abilities from the D3 Witchdoctor are greatly appreciated. I am sure at some point I will build something around the Firebats ability if I end up running a second character. I am pretty curious how nerfed the state of the Spiritborn ends up being from what it was during the expansion launch. Diablo IV has reached the point of light popcorn fare and I am here for it. I was having a lot of fun from the moment I dropped into game and so far that seems to have no sign of stopping. I really need to run a few Nightmare Dungeons to see how they have been buffed because Ace reported that they got a stupid amount of legendaries from them.

Kind of the crux of the Witchtide events is to spawn these headless husks, which you kill to reclaim heads at least in a narrative sense for the tree of whispers. There is also a background story happening surrounding a coven of witchdoctors that do the bidding of the tree. I have to be honest… I do not care at all about the story side of this, because really it is a loose framework that allows me to keep going out and killing more monsters that are spawning unique to this season. The core mechanical loop feels extremely rewarding, and I am curious to see how this transitions as we move into the endgame. I am sure there will still be the need to farm a lot of summoned bosses for unique drops. Ace and I learned last league that the best option was for us to hold onto everything and then meet up to amplify the number of summons we were able to do in a single sitting.

Another thing that I greatly appreciate is that they have added additional functionality to the Tree of Whispers location. This is where all of the event resources are set up, but also they changed the layout a bit and added an Obols vendor and Alchemist to essentially allow us to never leave this location. I was already setting my default teleport to the Tree of Whispers for dumping Grim Favors, but now there really is no reason to use any other location other than if you are happening to farm the Pit. I still would really like to have something akin to the player hideout from Path of Exile 1 and 2 because honestly… unless I have invited them to my group I don’t really care about other players.

Speaking of not caring about other players… I am guessing the community got the memo that running World Bosses is not really worth the effort. I killed Ashava this morning and it was just me and a Barbarian… and thankfully we managed to take down the boss without much issue. I don’t feel like I am probably too far ahead of the curve… and more that it is just a case that no one seems to care about world bosses. I said this last league, that the older content like World Bosses, Nightmare Dungeons, and Legion Events really do not feel like they are worth doing right now. Sure you can get some drops, but the amount of drops pale in comparison to just farming literally anything else. I mostly wanted to kill the world boss because I am certain that somewhere in the seasons journey there is a requirement for doing so.

By farming effectively nothing but the Witchtide, I am actually progressing pretty quickly through the Coven’s Favor track… aka the event faction for this league. Mostly this serves as a way of unlocking the various quests associated with the league which I am sure will gate some things behind them… so might as well grind it out as quickly as possible. Once I get into the endgame I am probably going to be farming content that is not the Witchtide, so it would probably be beneficial to get the faction now while I am not having to go out of my way to farm it.

All in all I feel like this is a pretty solid outing for Diablo IV. The game will still have its critics, and that is fine… I just wish they were coming from a place of legitimate gripes and not largely piling on the campaign of streamers. The raw game is in a pretty decent state at this point, and I am having quite a bit of fun. It will never be a technical experience like Path of Exile, but for big dumb fun it is pretty spectacular. I am sure I will bore of it quickly once I have finished the season journey… but not everything has to be a forever game. While I can appreciate Citizen Kane… I also really like movies where they have cool CGI and big explosions. Diablo IV is a big explosions type game, and if you can appreciate it for what it is… there is fun to be had here.

Chill Edgelord

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Morning Folks! I popped into the game for a bit this morning before sitting down to write this blog post about nothing and dinged 89 on Dark Knight. That means I am very easily going to polish off that job today probably by doing a set of Hippo Dailies and a MSQ Roulette. Then I plan on shifting my focus to Gunbreaker so that I can potentially get all of my tanks to 90 prior to the expansion and clear out even more gear. I like the concept of Dark Knight more than I actually like playing it. After level 80 it is a pretty fun class to play, but prior to about level 70… it just does not feel like I have nearly enough tools to make the process enjoyable. So this means things like MSQ Roulette are less than enjoyable because I don’t have for example a charge ability… and have very limited mitigation “oh shit” buttons.

Yesterday my friend Ace reinstalled the game, but I mostly left them alone because coming back… is “a lot”. I know each time I have returned to the game after time away… it takes me a few days of futzing before I finally get back into the rhythm of what I actually need to do. I am kinda hoping by tonight however they have sorted things out and have some modicum of goals in mind, and I can help be pocket-tank to rocket them through the Post-MSQ. Not that I intend to rush them or anything, just trying to be helpful… without also being fucking annoying about it. I know I personally hit a “give a fuck” wall when I encountered the first trial fight, and it took me half a year to get back around to engaging with it again. My goal is to help ease some of those barriers.

I warned you at the top of this post that I did not have much to talk about this morning, and I am delivering in spades. I have a problem… and that problem is constantly searching for the ultimate controller. There is part of my brain that thinks that if I ever find the ideal controller for my mammoth hands… I will finally prefer that style of play over a mouse and keyboard. I know this is a fallacy but I have ordered yet another well-reviewed controller… this time the Gulikit King Kong 3 Pro. Because I was in no rush I popped over to AliExpress to grab it and save ten bucks roughly over the Amazon price. Generally speaking, this is a thing I at least check when I buy a controller or one of my emulator consoles because they are all coming from China anyway… might as well pay the least amount for said item.

What interests me about this controller is that it is roughly the same form factor as a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller… which I dig, but comes with Hall Effect sticks that are interchangeable similar to that of an Xbox Pro controller. I also dig the Gameboy-esc color palate. China has retro nonsense on lock honestly. Of course, at some point after I have played around with it, I will report my thoughts. I linked one of the many review videos on this controller which at least piqued my interest enough to try it. One of these days though… I am going to have a massive controller sale or something because I have sooooo many.

Anyways! For a week where I worked two days… I am exhausted and looking forward to the weekend. I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend and I will see you again when I post the AggroChat episode on Sunday. Then again I might see you sooner if you are on either Bluesky or Mastodon because I have been more active lately.