Path of Exile 2

The Idol Based Atlas

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Good Morning Folks. As of this afternoon we will have had access to the Legacy of Phrecia event for a week. At this point I am level 94 and have mostly reached a point of stability with my build. Sure I would like to craft a new sceptre and am on the look out for a few specific jewels, but all in all Scavenger RF works pretty well. However I am not going to talk about any of that this morning, and am instead going to share my thoughts about the new Idol Based Atlas system. This entire event was touted as ideas that were left on the cutting room floor, and this idol concept was originally something that was abandoned in favor of the current Atlas tree system… which admittedly is damned near perfection. The first few days I was pretty hype for the idols, but now I have reached a point where I absolutely see the limitations and understand why this did not see the light of day.

The good about this system though, is that early maps feel amazing. You get a large number of Idols which allows you to cobble together something that mostly works. During White and Yellow progression I was essentially getting Delirium, Harvest, Niko, Essences, and Strongboxes every map… and Ritual, Expedition, and Betrayal pretty freaking often. This is way more content than you would normally have access to during early maps when you don’t really have that many Atlas points to spend. This makes the early game feel amazing… but you eventually reach a point where it starts to taper off.

By the time you are in yellow or red maps, you have quite a few points to spend on the tree which means that you have pretty much every node available for at least one league mechanic, making that single mechanic extremely juicy. In truth I tend to build trees that synergize with different abilities that are all on the same side of the tree. For example I might have a Ritual, Einhar, and Beyond tree as they all exist within a few nodes of each other so that by the time you near the end of your Atlas you have 100% chance for all of those mechanics and have a bunch of nodes that buff them so that they produce better stuff. I tend to be an “Alch and Go Andy” when it comes to mapping strategies, and I juice to extreme levels with the most expensive scarabs and most carefully rolled maps. I drop a map in the atlas, hit go, and then run with whatever content the device gives me.

For the heaviest juicers however… the Idol system is probably much better. For example Life Without Pants is a YouTuber that I enjoy watching content from, and he talks a bit about his strategy that centers around Harbingers. Essentially through the use of the Idols he can force something like six harbingers on a single map, always convert them to harbinger bosses, cause them to drop whole currency instead of shards, and then cause their cool down to be much shorter so you can complete each individual harbinger encounter much faster. Similarly Fubgun is running a strategy where he forces 36 Rogue Exiles onto his map and then uses Scarabs to juice that up considerably so that he can produce Affliction league levels of drops when you combine that with Ritual.

The problem that I have with the Idol system however is that it essentially forces you to go “all in” on a single strategy. Either you can cobble together something like I am running where it ups the chances of a bunch of different league mechanics to spawn, or you carefully craft a single mechanic and then juice it to levels that have never been possible before. The existing Atlas Tree lets you do a handful of of complementary mechanics really well, and I think makes the entire experience feel a bit better as a result. As someone who cannot bring themselves to skip mechanics when they appear on the map… it feels bad to do a bunch of mechanics with zero investment in them. Nodes that I thought might be good on their own like Crop Rotation, actually feel awful when you don’t have the rest of the points in the tree to buff it.

I think part of what makes the Idol system feel extremely bad is the fact that you are almost required to deal with massive amounts of very small specific trades in order to get an individual strategy working. Everything I am running I have cobbled together from the dregs of my bank. If you were wanting to run a hyper specific strategy though, you would need to trade for a bunch of specific rolls on idols… and then deal with the frustration of not getting answers from most of the traders because 1 Chaos trades are not worth stopping mapping for. If you want to bump things up to the next level, you are also probably going to be spending time deleting idols through the recombinator as you try and get a single item with four usable stats on it. This is graveyard crafting levels of tedium… which is again why I am mostly just yoloing my way through the system and trying to make something that feels halfway decent. This is yet another league that proves Path of Exile needs a fucking auction house already.

As glad as I am that the Idol system was left on the cutting room floor and we have our beloved Atlas tree instead… I have to admit that given the choice I would take this immediately over the systems in Path of Exile II. Everything about the Atlas tree in that game is awful, and it is entirely too focused on bossing. Bossing is just a subset of the Path of Exile 1 endgame, and most people… are not really focusing on it. Idols would go a long way towards patching the problems with that game’s system and forcing specific mechanics onto every map instead of the poorly designed precursor tablet system. Conceptually I like the exploration system because I enjoy it in Delve, but it just does not really work as a replacement for mapping. Part of the payoff of leveling and fully unlocking your atlas tree… is the agency to focus on only the mechanics that you want to focus on. You never really reach any of that payoff or any of that agency in Path of Exile II… which feels like the team missed that core tenet of the first game.

Phrecia has been a really interesting experimental league, and it was announced today that it is being extended by a month. I really like chaos pop righteous fire, and I would absolutely play something like this again in the future. Which admittedly makes me wonder what it would be like to play one of the witch based righteous fire builds at some point in the future. I do think that a lot of the ideas behind the Idol system in this league event could benefit Path of Exile II. Right now the endgame does not really work and feels way too far removed from the near perfect loop of game play that exists within Path of Exile’s endgame. All of POE’s problems center around on-boarding the player and gear acquisition for non-traders and non-crafters but the virtuous loop of the endgame was not something that should have been abandoned. Path of Exile II feels a lot like Destiny 2 did at launch… where it feels like they forgot all of the lessons that the previous game had learned. I am onboard for trying out quirky ideas in event leagues until they figure out how to make Path of Exile II feel a bit better though.

Minion State of Mind

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Good morning folks. I am still playing quite a bit of Path of Exile II while also alternating between it and Last Epoch. I am playing Minions builds in both games currently, and seem to be going through a phase where that just seems to be what I want to do. There are few things more satisfying in an ARPG than running around with a giant mob of NPCs that do your bidding. The Necromancer was one of my favorite characters in Diablo II for this reason, and when that character was launched in Diablo III I had a few seasons where I played it there as well. Biggest happening of the extended weekend is that I spent nine divines on a new sceptre. Essentially I wanted something with at least level 19 Skeletal Warriors on it, because to the best of my knowledge there are none available with level 20 on them. I am not sure if this is even a thing that can roll, but upgrading from 18 to 19 should still be a significant boost.

When I started running a Storm Mage I had to drop one of my Arsonists to make it work, and while this worked great for Rares and tankier packs… I noticed it negatively impacted my overall map clear. As such another benefit of the sceptre swap was that it gave me enough spirit to pick back up another Arsonist. Additionally I had enough left over spirit to add a second cleric, which seems to greatly improve the sustain of my minions. My poor little cleric worked overtime healing up my minions and having a second one just spreads out the total healing. Basically everything seems to just have an easier time staying alive which is good, especially given that my infernal hound is eating a portion of damage dealt to me.

Today however is the launch of Season 7 in Diablo IV and I plan on popping in tonight and giving it a shot. Raxx released his tier list for characters and right now has Necromancer as number one. Generally speaking his tier lists are fairly accurate or at least present relatively sane early data. The thing is I was already leaning heavily towards playing a Blood Wave Necromancer during this league since I appear to be in minion mode right now. The fact that they look like they are going to be in a good place is only really gravy on top.

I’ve MOSTLY played Barbarians in Diablo IV, because generally speaking I prefer to play tanky characters or big bonk characters when given my druthers. However Barbarians have been in a bit of a mess this entire time and they feel kind of awful to level. I’ve always been partial to Necromancers, but to the best of my knowledge have never actually played one through the endgame. A bunch of mine got pushed up to level 50 when the expansion dropped, but I am not certain I have ever actually organically taken one of my characters to paragon levels as a Necro. I figure this is a good opportunity to give it a shot. I’ve also never really played a Rogue either and at some point want to play some sort of a bow build.

I’ve had more than a few complaints about Diablo IV since its launch. That said I have never understood the false dichotomy of needing to hate Diablo IV to love and appreciate Path of Exile. D4 has been in a bit of a mess but by the time the expansion launched it was in a pretty decent state. Is it a brilliant game? No. Is it a fun game? Yes, within specific parameters and for a shortish period of time. I’m kind of ready to be playing something other than Path of Exile II, because there are also a lot of things about that game that I do not like. Unfortunately 3.26 is nowhere in sight, so that means I am more than happy to hop on the next train that leaves the station… which means Diablo IV Season 7. If I can get a few weeks out of it before this particular brand of gum loses its flavor, then I will honestly be extremely happy.

Minions For Days

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Last Epoch – Many Dead Friends

Hey Folks. This is an extended weekend for me due to MLK Jr day here in the United States and as such I am getting a much later start at sitting down to write words. Additionally it also happens to be inauguration day, but we are not going to talk about that part. I’m still very much spending my time playing ARPGs and have reached that point with Last Epoch where I am not quite powerful enough to push my way into empowered monoliths with zero friction. I essentially am slowly working my way through objectives and can’t roll over the top of maps in quite the same way as I was up until this point. Everything is great… until I start losing minions… at which point it becomes a battle of attrition as I attempt to keep summoning minions and hope I can distract the baddies long enough for them to be killed before they notice me standing in the background.

Last Epoch – Empowered Monolith

To be fair, this feels like something every build goes through in that level 80-90 range where you have completed Normal Monoliths but are still below the optimal level for level 100 Empowered Monoliths. I am sure I could fine tune my build to make this go a bit more smoothly, but for the moment I am using five minions and zero support spells. I am also struggling with mana issues which I need to figure out a way to solve because I cannot really spam my exploding zombies. I am generating quite a bit of ward and I wish I had access to something like Eldritch Battery in this game. Overall I feel much sturdier than my average version of this build thanks to the additional ward. I am not super great at bossing however because the minions just can’t grind them down as fast as I would like. I am also missing a bunch of uniques from the bog standard minions build… namely I have burned through around 60 Runes of Ascendance in an attempt to get an Aaron’s Will with zero luck.

Path of Exile II – Fourth Ascendancy

I’ve also been playing quite a bit of Path of Exile II, even though I largely thought I was finished with it. Yesterday I managed to complete my Fourth Ascendancy, so I am pretty happy with that. I ran a Trial of Chaos and after the nerfing of the Tornado boss it seems pretty reasonable. I did buy the 3 tokens required to fight the Trialmaster off the currency exchange, because I did not really feel like grinding level 80 Trials in order to collect all three parts. Everything went smoothly… until my cat walked in front of my keyboard and then I realized that I could not pause the game during a boss fight. So I rapidly shooed Gracie out of the way in time to dodge a boss attack. Overall though it seemed very doable.

Path of Exile II – Arbiter of Ash

What was NOT doable… was the Arbiter of Ash fight. I assumed this would be just as free as Xesht was on zero difficulty. That was not the case and all of the attacks were very much oneshot mechanics. I feel like I either lack the dps to phase the boss fast enough, or lack the movement speed to be able to complete the encounter. There is this phase where you have to run between safe bubbles that are very much like the meteor attack from FFXIV, and I simply was not fast enough to hit them all. Similarly there is a diagonal attack that you have to find the safe spot in, and I was just not fast enough to be able to move between these if I got one on the far edge of the screen and then the next one on the opposite far edge. Basically I wasted three tokens trying this fight and will now just sell them on the market like I was previously… especially since the price of all three tokens has gone up significantly.

Path of Exile II – Lucky Raw Divine Orb drop

I’ve respecced my character a bit gaining way more life and energy shield… dropping a few points of block and then mixing in a Skeletal Storm Mage to debuff everything with shock. I had to sacrifice one Arsonist but the mix seems to work really well as everything appears to be dying much faster now. The biggest difference is on Rares where my boots are poisoning them, the storm mages are shocking them, and then I am keeping them ignited with flame wall… which keeps the shock from dropping. I am curious how this feels for bossing as I have not really done many since the swap over this morning. I also need to start shopping for a Sceptre upgrade because I would really like to at least get my skeletal warriors up to 19 instead of the 18 version that I am currently using. Additionally it would be really nice to get some more spirit in that slot.

Diablo IV – Season of Witchcraft

For the moment I am having a pretty good time alternating back and forth between Last Epoch and Path of Exile II, and I know tomorrow I will be spending time leveling something in Diablo IV as the new seasons starts. Overall the Season of Witchcraft seems to be a partial reboot of the Vampire season which was quite possibly the best season so far. Leveling through the “bloodtide” was a heck of a lot of fun, and as such I fully expect to level almost entirely through the new witchcraft map mechanics. I am not sure if I will be playing a Spiritborn again or returning to my old standby of Barbarian. Since I am seemingly in a minions state of mind, I might try running up a Necromancer and giving that a proper shot. Whatever the case I fully expect this to distract me for awhile, or at least until we get another Path of Exile II patch.

Contrary to popular belief, Diablo IV is in a pretty good state these days. It took over a year and a major expansion to get there, but it is pretty fun for a week or so. It essentially is a more modern version of Diablo III at this point, and I am on board with that.

Path of Exile II After Patch 0.1.1

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Good Morning Folks! I talked about Path of Exile II Patch 0.1.1 on Monday after its reveal over the weekend, but yesterday afternoon/evening it finally dropped. So of course last night I had to dip my head back into the game and check out what it felt like after the patch had landed. First I have to say the improved zoom level on the Atlas is pretty massive. This is only going to really be something for players who have reached maps, but being able to see more of the procedurally generated Atlas is pretty big. Additionally it seems like they have improved some of the general bugs. In the patch notes they specifically called out better load times which is true, but it seems like the rings of effect surrounding towers is rendering more reliably than it was previously.

Probably the biggest change is the ability to see the various Citadel maps through the fog of war. Sure enough I was close to way more of these spawns than I thought even though I had actually found several already. One undocumented change is that each of the beacons has a unique color so not only can you see the Citadel, you can actually see which one it is going to be with Iron being a Blueish Gray color, Copper Orangish Yellow, and Stone being traditional Vaal Red. I think this is going to go a long ways to normalizing the prices of the various tokens because now you will be able to clear towards whichever Citadel you are lacking. I need to do another Copper so that I have the tablets needed to make an attempt at the pinnacle boss so that I can hopefully clear the encounter and get my last two boss passives.

Another thing that I was surprised by was that all of the towers on the map that had not been completed, were effectively re-rolled. I thought I would not start seeing new towers until I reached portions of the map that had not been generated yet by removing the fog of war. Instead it seems as though all of the towers were randomized among the new maps, and quite honestly… this is a pretty massive improvement. All of the new layouts are so much better than the original tower save for the Vaal themed one… which suffers from the general “tight corridors” problem that all Vaal maps do. Even the old tower map has been improved significantly by moving it to the more open top of spires layout. This combined with the fact that minions instantly respawn when you get out of range now, cleared up a lot of the problems I had with tighter map designs.

More important than just improving the layout, it feels as though Towers in general are way more rewarding. I’ve gotten significant drops from pretty much all of them that I have completed so far. They seem to have better density of rares and surprise map mechanics like essences and strongboxes. So these might have gone from something you wanted to throw a trash map into just to get past them… to something you actually want to save good maps for. I ran a bunch of them with T15 maps as I am also now seeming to sustain them way better than I was previously. I’ve noticed a lower instance of low level maps dropping and a much higher drop chance of t12 and higher maps, with quite a few t15s each map that I run.

Augury is still Augury… and I think GGG missed part of the memo on this one. You can in fact now interrupt the levers.. but they still take three seconds to pull. Being able to dodge out of a bad encounter while you are pulling the lever is great and all… but maybe make them instant. Additionally at the end of the map it is super annoying that you have to wait for the doors to the central area to unlock. Maybe speed up the Vaal energy surge so that it moves faster than the player so that by the time they reach the door it is already clickable? Better yet…. just make flipping the third switch open the doors automagically. I get that GGG seems to be hung up on this whole immersion nonsense… but clearly we play the game differently than they do. I feel like we need to pay off someone within GGG to make it so that Jonathan and Mark ONLY get Augury maps while they are playing the game so this will get improved.

Another nice benefit is that maps now have checkpoints just like the campaign. This is pretty great for when you path all of the way to the end and notice that you missed a rare at the very beginning. This still feels like a bandaid though, and if they are going to stick to having rares as the map objective… maybe just highlight the rares from the moment you zone into the map? I feel like there are a lot of things that should just be on permanently on your map instead of having to get into range with them. When rituals, breach hands, strongboxes, and essences are all things that should be flagged on the mini map permanently so that you don’t have to worry if you have missed anything. By the time you get to maps the game is not about immersion but instead about efficiency… and maybe it should have different rules than the campaign does.

I am not exactly the best judge of this next point, but it FEELS like the game got a bit easier. It might just be that due to all of the map layouts improving and I am no longer having to fight with terrain collision near as much… I can just move around more freely and am less susceptible by getting stuck on some rock or tree. I took a single death last night, and honestly it was my own damned fault. I was trying to remove the ability on my left click and set it to punch… not realizing that it would swap away from my weapons if I ever used that. Sceptres do not have a default melee attack… and it flipped to gear set two which did not have any weapons equipped… desummoning all of my minions and I did not realize this until I was toe to toe with a monster… dealing zero damage… and getting wrecked. Other than that mishap I have felt pretty immortal even now that I have started putting layers of delirium on all of my maps for funsies.

Was this enough of a patch to make me dig back in for another three hundred hours? Probably not. I didn’t even make it the full evening without flipping back to playing my Necromancer in Last Epoch. The improvements are significant but I think I am probably tapering off my POE2 time until the next league reset. I will likely poke my head back in each time there is a patch, but for now I am in a holding pattern probably until Path of Exile 3.26 and will be playing some Last Epoch for a bit, and then diving into the next Diablo 4 league after that.