Tomorrow is the start of the Legacy of Phrecia Event… which honestly at this point might as well be considered a league. It feels like we are going to have the bulk of Path of Exile players returning for this thing, which will probably create a very normal trade economy. The Pohx League event has been a blast and I enjoyed my Ice Trap Trickster, and effectively proved that I put enough effort into anything I could make it feel comfortable. Big Ice Trap explosions was really fun, but due to the limited availability of items in the Pohx league I struggled to make it feel as tanky as I would have liked. I might try it again during a proper league economy but this is essentially the place where I managed to get it.
I crave Righteous Fire Shenanigans, but we will not have the good ole reliable and super easy to build Chieftain. Instead a new path will need to be forged and I have a few options. The problem with not having Chieftain is that we will not have easy explosions for clear purposes and the ability to ONLY stack Fire Resistance to get to 90% all res without much fuss. There are a few ways to get back the explodes, namely Legacy of Fury boots and Oriath’s End Flask… both of which might be either cost prohibitive or take awhile for them to actually show up on the market. As such Pohx, the godfather of righteous fire, is looking at the Scavenger aka the Not-Scion which comes with profane bloom shenanigans and the ability to essentially double the effect of a Cloak of Flames.
The thing with the Scion path is that there isn’t a great guide to follow. Pohx has released a vague sketch of a build and I have built Righteous Fire enough times that I often leave the golden path do to my own tweaking already. I am leaning towards giving it a shot and trying to make it work. You can get through Red Maps pretty easily as any form of Righteous Fire and by then hopefully the Legacy of Fury boots and Hateful Accuser ring will fairly available. Essentially a Fire Trap build will work fine until you can get the ring and have been able to get through Uber Lab to get Zerphis’s Heart. One of the nice things about Phrecia being based out of Settlers league is that the shipments seem to favor armor bases that are pretty solid for Righteous Fire builds.
The other path that interests me is Ancestral Commander, which feels like a tankier version of the Juggernaut prior to its most recent nerfs. There are a few paths that I could go with this. I contemplated trying another Boneshatter character since I did mine in a private league and felt like I just did not have enough access to gear to really make it work. That is the problem with physical damage builds, is that you really need to have a strong high PDPS weapon in order to make them work, and I am just not good enough to craft one on my own. I also felt like the survival of the build was nowhere near as good as what I thought it should be based on the hype surrounding it. At some point I definitely want to give Boneshatter another go, just not sure if right now is that moment.
The four picks that I am interested from Ancestral Commander are purely defensive options, essentially giving you 3 extra endurance charges, a poorly rolled defiance of destiny, a cloak-of-flames-at-home, and the old juggernaut node that made you immune to freezes and slows. I could in theory also level this as Righteous Fire using the general Chieftain template that I follow. The problem there is without the explodes it is going to feel super sluggish to map and delve on. The thing about the explode procs in Delve is that they can absolutely hit things out in the darkness helping you clear faster. I would really need an Oriath’s End AND Legacy of Fury boots to make it feel even halfway decent. The boots are probably pretty reasonable, but the flask… all depends upon what the economy looks like for the Phrecia event.
I kicked around Poison Summon Raging Spirits with the Servant of Arakali Shadow ascendancy, but the more I think about it the less inclined I am to go down that path. I remembered that Minions in Path of Exile require you to deal with Spectres and the Animate Guardian. These systems are the most kludgy unfun bullshit ever… and I really do not feel like dealing with that nonsense right now. I will happily return to playing minions when they implement some quality of life for either system. Nothing feels worse than killing your Animate Guardian and having to rebuy all of those damned uniques to make another one. Only slightly less painful is playing the hideout desecrate game to get your Spectres up and running… which will likely not make it through a map without taking a death. While I love SRS, and enjoyed it greatly in Path of Exile II… I think I am just done with it as a concept in Path of Exile 1.
Who knows! I might go in a totally different direction tomorrow whenever I actually get around to starting a character. Right now I am probably leaning towards following the wisdom of Pohx. That means of course that all of the items of that build will be in demand and inflated… but I like Ritual and in theory might be able to farm my own Hateful Accuser ring. Legacy of Fury drops from normal Maven, but I hate that fight so will be hoping someone out there decides to farm them. I will probably try and snag an early Cloak of Flames with whatever chaos I manage to scrounge together during the campaign because getting at least a four-link early really helps out considerably.
Are you going to be playing the Legacy of Phrecia event? Which of the krangled classes are you going to play? Drop me a line below.
