Path of Exile II

Mapping in POE2 Kinda Sucks

by

Good Morning, Friends. I apologize for not blogging, but this seventh round of chemotherapy has pretty well debilitated me in both mind and body, and I am honestly barely holding in there. I got them to add an extra week to recover, so I am hoping that will make the final round doable. The main problem is that I am never fully recovering from one round before the next one starts. Anyways since I have been stuck on the couch most of this time, I have been playing a lot of both Path of Exile II due to the new 0.5 league, and more recently a lot of Path of Exile 1 due to the Phrecia event. I think I have landed on some of the reasons why mapping just has never felt as good in POE2 as it does in POE1. So we are going to go on a journey where I rant a lot, but I will try my best not to go too far off the deep end.

Too Much Ground Clutter

The biggest problem I have with POE2 maps is that they have too much bullshit on the ground that clips and blocks your model from moving. For example, the above picture is from POE1 and has plenty of ground clutter, but none of it blocks your model from moving freely. I have no clue why GGG decided to fuck this up by making the smallest of stupid items on the ground clip your model and block your progress. It feels extremely bad to keep getting hung up on terrain and not understanding which tiny object is doing it.

No Agency in Map Choice

In Path of Exile, you have complete control over the maps you run. If there is a specific layout that you enjoy, you can literally run nothing but that map for your entire league. This was even improved further more recently as they added generic maps per tier that you can just run with whatever map layout you choose. In Path of Exile II, you instead have biomes and maps associated with those biomes, and if you want to path through an area, you have no control over what maps you end up running. This feels like a massive step backwards and a universally worse experience. I feel like they were trying to go with a delve-like experience, but delve only works because it is micro bursts of activity.

Maps are Roughly Twice as Big

This is something that I have noticed coming back to POE1… the maps on POE2 are just too damned large. They are roughly twice as big as your average POE1 map, and as a result just take too long to complete. You spend so much of your time searching for those last few rares, or last mechanics, that it kind of ruins the super chill head-down mapping experience. It would be different if that extra space meant extra fun, but so much of it is just filled with generic packs that don’t do anything but block your progress.

Variable Number of Portals

This is one of those things that I personally hate, but no clue if anyone else does. In Path of Exile, you have six portals per map. It feels like about the ideal number of attempts, and honestly makes me willing to try maps at greater difficulty because I know I have a safety net to fall back on if I die. Path of Exile II, however, reduces the number of portals you have based on how juicy you have rolled your map, with each affix removing a portal. So it creates this situation where you are either playing one of the immortal builds of the league, or you are running all of your maps on blue. You can look at POE.Ninja and see that every league tends to end up with the entire player base running a specific immortal build. Right now, 23% of the player base is essentially playing the exact same martial artist build, with 15% playing the same Spiritwalker build. 12% are playing gemling legionaire in a few different spell damage configurations, and 9% are playing Fubgun’s Deadeye build. So roughly 60% of players are playing builds that are either effectively immortal or have so much damage potential that they are. I can’t say this is due to the limited portals, but it certainly is not helping. You can exist on a janky build in POE1… that is not really a thing in POE2.

Failing a Boss Wipes Your Map

Another insult-to-injury aspect of POE2 mapping is that if you do a boss rush strategy and fail to kill the map boss, all content on the map will be wiped. No more rares, no more mechanics, just a bricked map that you are likely going to have to redo. My natural path through these dumb maps is to work around the corner until I find a boss, kill said boss, and then use the guidance that gets turned on to find the rest of the content. God forbid you end up with a tanky boss that gets a lucky slam against you… Oftentimes, because you are getting hung up on bullshit ground clutter, you end up with a bricked map. It just feels awful. Mapping is supposed to be this relatively chill activity, and Path of Exile II has mostly ruined that. It is better than it was, but it still feels awful.

Atlas Passive Tree Still Bad

One of the big changes that came with 0.5.0 is updates to the Atlas Passive tree, and I admit it is a massive improvement over the Passive Twigs that we had previously. The problem I have, though, is that it fails at being an Atlas Passive Tree and mostly only allows you to impact things that don’t really matter. In Path of Exile 1, we have three Atlas Passive Trees, and each of them more or less allows you to force three league mechanics onto every single map that you run. This is phenomenal for your average alch and go player, and allows them to target specific clusters of league mechanics that work well together. The equivalent of this in POE2 is tablets… which end up being ridiculously expensive. So the general investment required to run specific league mechanics goes through the roof. Who cares how many lockboxes or spirits you can force onto your map when you cannot reliably force a league mechanic through the passive skill tree?

All of these are reasons why mapping feels worse in Path of Exile II. Do I think this post will change anything? Not at all. There is a clear design space that they are working on at GGG for POE2, and I think it just isn’t what I wanted. I just hope they continue to support the original game, because really, it is the one that I enjoy. POE2 is generally something I mess around with when I am bored more than anything else. It just isn’t as good of a game as the original.

Tequatl and Phrecia

by

I am still playing a heck of a lot of Guild Wars 2. Last night I spent my evening doing sibling time with Ace, and I feel bad for how not into GW2 they are…. yet I continue to talk about it. I managed to catch Tequatl last night, which always makes me happy. This is, without a doubt, my favorite event in the game. I think it was legitimately one of the first events that I stumbled onto on my own, and I have loved it ever since. I have also had better-than-average luck at getting ascended gear. In fact, I have a few coffers in the bank waiting to be used by someone. At some point, I need to start properly working on legendary armor sets.

I, of course, had to set loose the Pineapple Choya. These are, without a doubt, the best parts of the Castoria housing, and I have to set them free anytime I am in housing collecting my harvest nodes. Basically, right now I am only playing Belgraves, my hunter, for dailies and assorted reset collection. I have my housing, then three guild halls to collect resources from. Additionally, I have a bunch of characters parked at various chests around the world. These are mostly for collecting rare resources that can only be gotten daily. The level of detail in this game and the systems within systems is one of the things that attracts me. However, in talking with Ace, one of the biggest problems is how far behind you feel when you are just starting out.

I’ve been spending most of my time on Belglorian, my spearbender guardian. At this point, I have completed four of the Human zones, four of the Norn zones, and last night I spent the majority of my time doing world completion. I am currently working on the final Norn zone, and at some point will return to the Human lands and pick up the final zone there. This is still the chillest activity in any game, I swear. There is just something relaxing about following the marker to all of the objectives that I have not completed. I think I am over halfway through the zone I am working on.

Over in Path of Exile II, I have now made it far enough to collect the free passive skill that comes from a player having sacrificed their level 100 character to the void. I really think this concept is cool, that one player in each league can sacrifice themselves to give everyone an extra passive. I have been grinding away on my Raven RF Witch, trying to get it to level 90 and knock out one of the achievements. The build works well enough, but is nowhere near as broken as some of the other popular builds in this league. I had to drop one of my minions, which was a bit of a bummer, but I picked up Morior Invictus to greatly increase my survivability. It is unfortunate that this one chest piece is better than pretty much anything else in the game.

All of this said, I am very likely dropping POE2 entirely tomorrow when the Trial of the Ancestors Returns event happens in Path of Exile. The big thing about this event is that we get back Trial of the Ancestors, but with the Phrecia ascendancies. The big thing about it is that we are getting these alternate ascendancies without the bullshit that is the Gauntlet, and without the Idol-based Atlas passives. I played a Poison SRS build on the Servant of Arakali build during the gauntlet and had a lot more fun, but would have had way more fun if I could have just played it in a normal league. As a result, I am resurrecting BelLovesArakaali and seeing how far I can take it without all of the restrictions. The event starts at 5 pm CDT, and I am hoping I can get back from chemo, take a nap, and be ready for the launch.

Have you made a return to Guild Wars 2? Are you still playing Path of Exile II? Are you going to try the upcoming Phrecia event tomorrow? Drop me a line below.

How To Buy a Carry

by

Good Morning, Folks! Today I turned 50, and it is all sorts of surreal to be that age. The 40s did not seem too bad, but the 50s… that is starting to sound a little old. I swear internally, I do not feel older than maybe my thirties. I have been juggling back and forth between Path of Exile II, and Guild Wars 2 and enjoying both. Last night after knocking out my dailies and a few weeklies in Guild Wars 2, I rolled over on my Spiritimaster in Path of Exile II. One of the things that fascinates me about Path of Exile II, is that everything is for sale in the very thriving economy. There are all sorts of niches that players can take up to make currency. For example, in POE1, I tend to spend most of my time in delve and sell the unique items that come from that game mode. If you are really good at taking down bosses or trials… There is always the option of selling carries.

I have played an exceptional amount of both games, and there is certain content that I do not want to do. For example, I hate the Maven fight. I have done it several times successfully, but when it comes to unlocking my atlas, I would just rather pay someone else for a carry so I don’t have to stress about it. Similarly, I hate both of the trial options for ascending past the 3rd and 4th ascendancy. The Labyrinth was not my favorite content, but I did not mind it because it was quick and to the point. Trial of Sekhamas and the Trial of Chaos both blow massive chunks, and while I have no problem doing the first one of both… I cannot ever see myself doing 4 floors of “suck my ass” as the community refers to it, or 3 rounds of Chaos. As a result, I would far rather gather the currency and pay for a carry that gets me my 3rd and 4th ascendancy in one go. I had a friend who had never done a carry, and it made me realize that maybe I should create a guide for it.

Most carries start with a trip to a discord known as The Forbidden Trove. This discord has been a bit controversial in the past because the originator was a bit of a mess. However, recently, the Discord changed hands and is under new management, and it seems to be way more focused on facilitating the provision of services. Ultimately, if you are looking for carry services, you are going to scroll down to the league that you are playing in and then click on the carry channel that matches what you are looking for. For example, I am looking for a trial carry, and as such, I clicked on that channel. Essentially, every few minutes, someone will advertise a carry. There are always way more buyers than sellers, and seemingly it operates 24/7.

Every seller has some sort of message that they want you to send them. This will be part of the post in the carry channel, and you simply copy that and then paste it into the game and message the seller. If you do not get an immediate response, then the seller is likely full, and you need to try a different one. You essentially wait in your hideout until someone invites you to a group, and then use the teleport to player button to teleport to wherever they are currently sitting. Do not move from the teleport. Sellers have this down to an art form and will direct you on what to do.

For example, there is a ready room for the 4th trial that will give you credit for completion without actually being in the fight. This will not be the case for every carry service. There will be times when you are told to zone into the fight in the final phase, and once again, you should not move because you are given invulnerability until you move. The seller will give you clear directions as to what you need to do and when to do it, so make sure you are watching chat.

When it is clear to zone in and collect your ascendancy points or whatever you are getting from the boss, you will be given a message from the seller. Once inside, interact with whatever you need to interact with and wait. The seller will open a trade window with you, and it is your job now to pay the fee that was originally requested. For example, this morning I paid 3 Divines for a 4th trial carry, which is a little bit more expensive than when I paid this on my necromancer character. However, I was looking to get it done and did not want to wait around for a player selling it for 2 Divines. All in total, it took maybe 5 minutes from the initial message to completion. The part of the community that sells boss carries is extremely efficient because they are trying to keep up that Divines per hour mark. The last step is to join the vouch channel and then post a message vouching for the seller.

Like I said, buying a carry is an extremely efficient way to get past content that you just don’t want to mess with. I will probably never fail to buy my 4th ascendancy, because I hate the trial options. Maybe when Trial of the Ancestors goes in, it might not be that bad. I seriously doubt it because the design ethic of trials in POE2 feels like complete bullshit. If you get really good at bossing, you can make a ton of currency as a seller. I’ve sold a few bosses, namely Aul down in Delve, and it went smoothly. Mostly, I wanted to lay out a straightforward guide to ease some of the fears players might have about engaging in the service economy.

Raven RF Mostly Works

by

Good Morning, Folks! I am still mostly playing Path of Exile II with brief flurries of Spirit Crossing. This weekend brought a bunch of changes in my build, and I will catalog them shortly. On the personal side, Sunday is generally the low point in my recovery, and from this point forward, everything should be slight improvements. All of my friends seem to want me to get magically better, but unfortunately, the recovery from chemo does not work that way. It is slight incremental improvements until I am actually feeling pretty great by the time I arrive at Chemo for the next round. It seems deeply unfortunate that it works out to be that way, where I feel my best right before I get poisoned again. I am hoping to have a burst of energy tomorrow because it is our primary election, and I definitely want to vote.

The biggest change of the weekend is that I finally hit the point where I could equip Raven’s Flock staff, letting me finally have a Righteous Fire style aura that deals chaos damage to monsters in range of me. The big problem with this change is that, unlike actual Righteous Fire, my minion character is not terribly tanky. The gameplay that makes it so fun is the fact that I can shield charge and frost blink my way around the map, killing everything in my wake. Minion RF, on the other hand, still requires me to maintain my minion army, and I still cannot tank that many hits. I had been using the infernalist ascendancy, which reserves half of my health to give me more spirit and energy shield, and it made me feel exceptionally squishy.

The other major change in my build is that I have swapped over to the Lich ascendancy to improve my survival. This does a lot of really important things. First, it solves my mana problem by making my mana regeneration based on 6% of my total health. It also gives me chaos pops when I kill cursed enemies, which I am admittedly bad at actually doing. It also gives me and my minions Unholy Might, which increases the chaos damage being dealt. None of this screws with my life or energy shield, which means I have full access to all of this, giving me around 3500 shield/life and 500 runic ward. I feel so much more tanky than I did previously, so all in all, this seems to be a massive improvement.

That said, I need to run some actual hard maps to see how well I do. Right now, I have been farming t8 maps just to move around the atlas and look for new areas to farm. I am looking for a Ritual Area, because that is really what I want to be farming, and I want some of the passive points for that mechanic. I’ve farmed a lot of Abyss and Breach, and the passives both improve them greatly. Right now, I seem to MOSTLY be finding expedition areas, aka coastal regions. I should also probably farm some more delirium to earn more passive points. That is the only problem that I have with this current endgame: I feel like I am drawn in too many different directions and never actually make complete progress in any of them.

I am not sure what I have done with the normal atlas passives, but I seem to have triggered this weird event happening constantly. Essentially, I will kill a boss and then a bajillion two affix rares drop, and they are all identified as well. This is honestly kind of cool because it allows my filters to sift through them, but it has made me bump up to strict so that I can only deal with the well-rolled items. I have been able to pick up a lot of these and throw them in my shop and sell them for around 20 exalts each. It is not going to make me rich, but it is some nice passive income. I am seeing more Divines drop from maps as well, which are nice. That said, I did spend down some of my war chest when I bought an upgraded version of the Raven staff.

I did manage to find a runic doodad that dropped 3 Divine Orbs, which was pretty nice. If I feel up to it, I might record a video of this build in progress, because I feel like it doesn’t really make sense until you see it in action. So far, I am enjoying myself, but it also doesn’t really scratch that RF itch. Pohx said as much, and I believed him at the time. I am hoping we get proper RF in this game, but I fear they might fuck it up as they did with Raging Spirits. The general design ethic of POE2 just is not my jam, and I will probably always prefer the first game. It is fun, and I can reach a point where I enjoy myself, but it feels like it is a massive battle to get there.