path of exile

Crucible League Start

by

Good Morning Friends! This weekend was the launch of the new Crucible League in Path of Exile. I had Friday off and as a result, I opted to hop in and attempt to play when it officially launched a 3 pm my time. In the grand scheme of things it honestly went pretty smoothly. At the time I took a screenshot, there were just shy of 68,000 players waiting in the queue, and based on the numbers Grinding Gear Games released they had a new peak concurrent players of 321,180 over the weekend. As far as stability goes, but the time I managed to chew through the queue things seemed pretty solid. I created a Witch and ran her up to level 4 to get some spells, and then started my soon-to-be Righteous Fire Marauder. When I did the character swap there was another very short queue but from that point forward I was able to stay connected and level without any issues.

As stated before I am largely following the tree that Pohx has come up with that you can find over on his website. This meant starting out with the meatball again… aka rolling magma and then rapidly transitioning into a combination of Holy Fire totem with Phantasmal Support and Flame Wall. In theory, I could have continued to use Rolling Magma until I transitioned into Righteous Fire, but honestly, I prefer the albeit slower totem/firewall gameplay. I grossly over-leveled the content so I failed to get access to Armageddon Brand before I could actually convert over to Righteous Fire. That is honestly the wild thing about the changes made to the tree, is that I was able to be running RF before leaving Act 2. Admittedly all that it really took was me getting access to the spell, which I found from a Vaal area which means I am running Vaal RF for now and at some point will swap out to the normal version.

Being able to run Righteous Fire and some semblance of the actual build early, made this quite possibly the most chill leveling experience I have had in Path of Exile. Until I got Firetrap up and running I kept Righteous Fire going while dropping Flame Wall and Holy Fire Totem, and technically still have Flame Wall currently for added damage. As is a habit, here is my very first Chaos Orb drop of the season, found in a level 16 area in Act 2. At that moment I was still running Pohx’s loot filter, which is based on the World of Warcraft coloring scheme. I’ve now swapped back to the standard issue Neversink, but Pohx’s did help a bit to specifically call out some drops that were the ideal gem socket colors for the build early on.

The crucible league mechanic is fairly interesting, but also fairly dangerous. Right now you channel an ability to add experience to the item you are forging. The longer you channel, the harder in theory the mechanics become. The problem is there is no clear way of determining just how hard you are making the encounter because all of the affixes applied to the mobs are obfuscated. This means there are times when I can channel all the way up with impunity, and other times that the encounter will one-shot me, without a clear understanding of why. My hope is that we see some rapid reworks of this system to maybe expose some of the mechanics of what say 20%, 40%, 60%, and 100% would do to the encounter with an ability to just pick a percentage. The nice thing is that these are not one attempt and you fail… you can effectively zerg the encounter until you have killed everything in order to collect your item. Mapping will of course limit you to the six gates problem, but I would imagine that most of the hardcore players are staying the hell away from this league mechanic in general, as it is way too unpredictable.

The other problem with the crucible is it has a way of bricking items. For example, if you are doing some sort of Elemental Equilibrium build and cannot have a specific damage time on your bow… getting that type from a crucible tree means there is little you can do to fix it. The above video shows a process of re-rolling your crucible trees but it seems extremely painful. I could see this as part of some extremely expensive crafting process where you find a good base item… then try and get the perfect crucible tree and THEN craft on the item to try and make the perfect rare item. I mean if you are willing to throw 100 Divines at crafting an item, then in theory you are probably willing to go through this amount of tedium and pain in order to get a sweet crucible tree on it. I figure all of the mirror items in this league will be crucible crafted as well as have the perfect rare stats on them.

I had deep concerns about the sweeping mastery changes and what they would do to the Righteous Fire build, and at least on the surface level it seems to have made things stronger. I guess I was not fully expecting the new fire mastery of “Regenerate 1 life per second for each 1% Uncapped Fire Resistance” to be quite as strong as it actually is. Admittedly this is prior to taking the second resistance hit from Act 10 Kitava, but right now this one node is giving me 305 life regeneration per second. This ends up making Fire Resistance a dump stat that adds a ton of survival with it and also makes it so I can hopefully better survive those map affixes that lower my resists. At this point, I am still in Act 8 and taking things extremely slowly. I spent a bit of time farming Blood Aqueducts trying to get a six link to drop. I have a perfectly colored corrupted six-socket chest but would need to get some tainted bindings in order to make an attempt at linking them.

After rushing around the last league… I think I am going to take things pretty languidly because I figure the longer I wait the cheaper items will get. I did manage to pick up a single decent item for 1c and am now just gathering my resources so I can afford a viable six-link as I start early maps. My goal as always is to knock out my third lab before beating the campaign and taking another resist hit. The first two labs were easy as pie however so I expect the third won’t be too awful either. Having a heck of a lot of fun even if the league mechanic is sort of suspect. I enjoy the forging process itself, but it is way too dangerous to spend a lot of effort on it right now.

The Heart Wants

by

It is weird to me how I have gone from thinking I would give the Crucible League a hard pass… to be extremely excited for the league start tomorrow. It reminds me quite a bit of back when no matter my mental state… the mere existence of BlizzCon and the news feed that would come from it would stir up a desire to log back in. I seem to have been inoculated from BlizzCon Madness over the last several years, and even though I was playing the Alpha for Dragonflight I had no real interest in playing the game at launch. That said I am still extremely susceptible to Diablo III Seasonitis, and it brought me back to the game to play with the Altar mechanics in Season 28. It seems that maybe with Sanctum, Path of Exile finally burrowed its way deep into my core and I am going to be just as vulnerable to the League Virus as well.

I’ve had people ask me before why I participate in Seasons and Leagues… when in truth you are just playing the same game over again but taking away any advantage you might have earned in the past. This is so much the case that I rarely if ever touch my “Standard” characters that largely just end up being a storehouse of materials that will never be used. For me personally, it has nothing to do with the challenge, but more that it is like this microcosm of a game launch. I love the launch of a new MMORPG and the excitement as folks scurry around trying to adapt to the game systems and the almost crushing amount of content flowing forth about the game. That same environment exists around the launch of a new season or league as everyone gets excited about the start, and then gibbers excitedly about what new lessons they have learned and exciting drops they might have found. It is all of the excitement of an MMORPG launch… crammed into a few weeks to a month every three or four months repeating like clockwork… and once you engage with it fully it can be addictive as fuck.

The unfortunate truth however is your “Standard” characters often feel like cleaning up after one hell of a party. Path of Exile has maybe the best method for dealing with the cleanup. Essentially you get a tab added to your standard inventory that is marked as “remove-only” and then you can withdraw things from it at your leisure. This is far better than the Diablo III norm of just mailing you all of your items. In a season or league, you end up just collecting a bunch of nonsense. For example, I apparently gathered up almost 9000 Chaos Orbs, that I never took the time to convert to Divine Orbs for easier storage. I spent some time yesterday straightening up my standard inventory in prep for the launch of the new league, which meant painstakingly withdrawing items from one tab and depositing them into another. I should have waited until AFTER the league patch dropped because the stack size is being increased from 10 to 20… and it would have literally taken half the time.

I am certain that I will be starting out the league as a Marauder and moving towards Juggernaut and Righteous Fire because it is just too good of a general build not to have at my disposal. During the last league, I ended up leveling and gearing a whole slew of characters. Other than the RF Jugg I had my SRS Necromancer, Seismic Saboteur, and two attempts at a Toxic Rain build that I liked in both Trickster and Pathfinder variants. Primarily I say this because I absolutely expect to have more than one character. Righteous Fire is an amazing build for Delve, Heist, and burning through the early maps but at some point, I want something that is more “Bossing” friendly. I only ended up getting two void stones last league, because quite honestly… I do not enjoy the bossing game nearly as much as I enjoy the rest of the game. However, I might want to change that and try and knock out the last two void stones so I can have T16 maps for everything. For those curious, the above video is Pohx simulating a run of all 10 acts as Righteous Fire.

If I was not starting Righteous Fire, I would probably try out this build from Ghazzy which is more of a traditional ARPG minion build. I don’t think it will probably be as good of a bosser as my SRS build was last league, but it looks like a pretty chill option. The only annoying thing is using Hungry Loop to essentially give you a 5 link for Animate Guardian. I do not love Animate Guardian, so if I did try this out I would probably run it largely ignoring that. The spell is cool in design but the fact that you erase uniques to equip it… and then lose them all if it ever dies… just feels bad. We will have to see how bad the Poison SRS variant is currency-wise, because I might try building this league as my “bosser” since I enjoyed my Fire variant in Sanctum.

I don’t get at all why I am caught up on this emotional rollercoaster of the league start when I am legitimately enjoying myself playing Last Epoch. The heart wants what the heart wants, unfortunately. I did get my primalist/beastmaster up to the second monolith last night however and am still enjoying that gameplay. Right now without going into totems like the build I was loosely following suggests, it feels quite a bit like a HotA Barb from Diablo III. It also seems to have just a ton of survival and feels way tankier than my Necromancer does. I’m technically working on the Monolith that has a higher than reasonable chance of dropping the Herald of the Scurry helm that I will ultimately need, but unfortunately, I think the level is too low yet and I will have to farm it once I get to empowered monoliths.

I’ve also been back to logging into BelginnersLuck shown in the first screenshot of the post and trying to get a unique to drop from Hillock. If nothing else… I am definitely much faster at pathing through that first map in a league and much better at fighting that first obstacle. Tomorrow I will be rolling a brand new character and diving into the league. I don’t necessarily expect any of my friends to really join me in this madness, because I know it literally is that now… madness. I enjoy myself though so that I guess is the part that matters the most. If you plan on diving into the Crucible league drop me a line and say hey.

Starting Righteous Fire for Crucible

by

Friends… I have to admit that I was contemplating just sitting out of the Crucible League. I am still not entirely certain if I am going to go all in Path of Exile this time, but that itch in the back of my head… has returned. I still have some deep concerns about Crucible and the direction of the game, but also… I had a heck of a lot of fun in Sanctum League even though I was one of the few AggroChat folks who really got into it. I really loved the rhythm that I fell into of having a mapping/bossing character and then having my Righteous Fire Juggernaut do super chill Heist and Delve runs on. I have no clue what my plans are for the OP bossing character… but I am pretty sure I am starting the league with Righteous Fire at this point.

Pohx released his Righteous Fire video for 3.21 and an updated Path of Building guide over on his website. The main reason why I am interested in doing Righteous Fire again is that it is ultimately a playstyle that I enjoy greatly. Something that I have learned about myself is that I really like three types of builds:

  • Screen Clear Ranged Builds
  • Minions do the Work Builds
  • Super Tanky Damage Feedback Builds

My two favorite Diablo III builds sort of fall into the Tanky/Feedback builds with Whirlwind involving you spinning through packs of mobs and letting them break themselves on your whirling blades, and Invoker Crusader being a mega thorns build that causes them to essentially explode with damage if they touch you. Righteous Fire definitely falls into that sort of category where you are lighting yourself on fire and then running around and watching things burn up as they attempt to get to you. I’ve yet to really find a version of the Demon Hunter Multishot builds in Path of Exile that I really enjoy playing past about the midpoint in leveling.

The other reason why for a Righteous Fire start is because it does a good job of being an all-around character for doing a lot of different mechanics. More specifically it is good at the mechanics that I personally enjoy doing like Delve and Heist which each offer early access to a bunch of interesting types of loot that are much harder to get otherwise. To quote Jorgen, “Delve Provides” and with the Crucible mechanic focused around weapons… I have a feeling that Delve Crafting will be just as strong as ever as folks try and get that perfect Rare item with the perfect weapon tree on it. In Sanctum as soon as I had filled up on a decent amount of resonators I could pretty much liquidate them instantly which allowed me to funnel resources into shopping trips to fully equip builds.

The other benefit of just choosing to run up Righteous Fire which is a tried and true build… is it gives me some time to see how the other builds in the league shake out. I enjoyed Summon Raging Spirits last go-round, and I went with a fire-based build which was not nearly as strong as the poison variant but still good for doing Metamorph bosses. One of the things I contemplated last league was trying to build some sort of minion instability build turning the raging spirits into bombs. The above video talks about this sort of setup and honestly, I might consider that as my second build of the league.

I’ve never gone Boneshatter so I am contemplating playing around with one of those as well. I know this is one of traditionally the stronger league starts. I’ve also tried to play around with a Poison Rain build several times but never really got it playing in a manner that I enjoyed it. I think my problem with so many bow builds is that they tend to focus on ballistas doing the damage rather than hits doing the damage. I still want to find a fun and chill screen clear hit build that doesn’t cost 100 divines… but I have yet to really land on that. I figure in the next few days we are going to be flooded with builds but really we won’t know entirely what works until a week or so in.

Lovingly Rendered Backpack

by

Good Morning Friends! This weekend I played an exceptional amount of Last Epoch because at the moment that seems to be the game I am most engaged with. A few months back Eleventh Hour Games announced that everyone who had purchased the game before the launch of the 0.9 Multiplayer update would be getting a gift. Yesterday I noticed a post on the official discord stating that it was now live and in-game, and as a result, I have this really beautiful backpack with a ton of small details to roam around on a character that moves through content so fast that it is impossible to focus in on any small details. I mean it is really freaking cool honestly and I am happy to wear it and have it as an “I was here early” type thing, but it really does require you to zoom in to see anything.

Right now there are a number of microtransactions in the game, but most of them are limited to pets. For example, that amazing floating Runed Primordial Turtle means I was an Alpha backer of the game. If you backed the Kickstarter there were a number of Sylpine and Chronowyrm pets that you got. Currently the available supporter backs include weird anthropomorphic armadillo-badger sort of things called Skullen as pets. So far Eleventh Hour Games has been very clear that there will never be a way in the future to obtain any of these items, and while I think the Skullen looks sorta dumb, I am very happy to have my pet turtle and backpack… even though neither actually does anything. My hope is at some point pets might possibly work like they do in Diablo III and zoom around gathering gold for me.

As far as endgame progressions go, I am now officially in Empowered Monoliths, and boy do they occasionally just kick your ass. I need to focus on building out the rest of my kit before going too crazy with corruption. At the moment I am short on a couple of resists and when I encounter anything that really exploits those… I do not last terribly long. I think it is pretty cool that at any point you can flip between the Normal and Legendary versions of the Monoliths. This only supports my case for Monolith progression being account wide instead of tied to a specific character. That way if you want to run lower-level monoliths on your brand-new characters, you can do so at will by just choosing the normal versions.

I finished the first of the Empowered Monoliths and defeated its boss, and now am target farming Ending of the Storm which has nodes apparently that can drop unique or set gloves. Essentially I am trying to farm up Ravens’ Rise a unique set of gloves that blends nicely with my Necromancer build. In theory, I need to farm the Reign of Dragons timeline as well to try and get Dragonflame Edict the weapon that I am supposed to be using that drops from the boss. Out on Last Epoch Tools, there is a handy filter in the Item Database that lets you look at each timeline and what items come from it for farming purposes. If I did not already have Aaron’s Will, I would be trying to farm the Blood, Frost, and Death timeline as it drops chest pieces.

I personally cannot handle non-stop progression content, so I spent a chunk of the weekend working on a few different primalists. Right now I am leaning heavily towards Belgloam my Beastmaster because I am just having more fun with it than Belgraves my Druid. The idea with each of them is to go Squirrel build on the Beastmaster, and Swarm Queen on the Druid. However, for the moment I am enjoying the gameplay of beastmaster quite a bit more as I run around using upheaval with my pack of four wolves. I do not have Herald of the Scurry which changes my Wolves into Squirrels, but I will probably try and target farm that on the Necromancer. I can only imagine cackling with joy as my army of squirrel friends decimate my foes.

In the column of assorted dumb things I did this weekend, I recorded a series of videos. Essentially I have talked at length about the things I did not enjoy in Diablo IV, but I never really talked about or showcased the things that I love doing in ARPGs. So as a result I recorded a series of four videos… one in Last Epoch doing a Monolith Echo, and Three in Path of Exile doing an Atlas Map, a Delve, and a Heist. So if you have any interest in listening to me ramble on while I play through some content, here is your chance. I’ve also sort of come to the realization that I have been doing my “Bel Bungles” series all wrong. I should have just had a single video series given that I swap around games relatively often. I think at some point I might renumber all of my “Bel Bungles” videos and put them in a playlist.

I will admit recording the videos, and the announcement of the 3.21 Crucible League… caused a bit of a relapse this weekend. There is nothing in any ARPG that I enjoy quite as much as Delve. There is just something about the endless nature of crawling from node to node seeking out the treasure that soothes me. My hope is with the Crucible league that I can build up a Righteous Fire character again and then use it to fund other types of characters as I did in the Sanctum league. I know without a doubt I will be heading into Delve as soon as possible.

Anyways! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that the coming week is at a bare minimum tolerable. I will likely be here continuing to do my nonsense.