Witch

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.

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.

An Unjuiced Life

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Good Morning Folks! I took quite possibly the longest break I have ever taken with my blog over the break. It was good, and honestly I should allow myself to do this a bit more often. It isn’t necessarily that I did not want to blog, but more that I did not want to have to summon forth something worth talking about. I spent a lot of the break listening to audiobooks and grinding away in Path of Exile II, which is an extremely comfortable existence for me. This morning I am going to talk about a few things that I have landed on. I’m still mostly playing my Minions Infernalist and am enjoying the largely chill methodology of mapping. I can go days without taking a death, which makes it feel pretty similar to my experiences with Righteous Fire characters in the baseline game.

Even in the baseline game I am not what you would call a “Juicer” aka someone who buys optimized maps or optimized scarabs in order to run the most content dense and optimal mapping experiences. I am instead what would be referred to as an “alch and go andy”, where I greatly prefer running whatever maps happen to roll when I throw an Alchemy Orb at a white map, and then utilize whatever scarabs happen to drop. This is also the way that I have been playing Path of Exile II, where I am relying entirely upon drops in order to keep “map sustain” going. The thing that I have learned is that in order to do this, you really need to target Boss maps, because they seem to have a much higher density of T15 map drops. Bosses seem to be guaranteed to drop two T15 maps, and then during the course of the map you will often see one or two more T15 maps meaning that a single boss map can sustain four or five other maps worth of content. I am also getting enough Precursor Tablets in order to essentially cram one of them into every single Tower that I come across.

One of the things that I loved about Path of Exile, is the Delve alternate game mode where you spent your time spelunking through the mines looking for treasure. The Path of Exile II endgame atlas borrows a lot from this concept with everything being a bit more exploration based than the traditional Atlas progression. Delve for me was a game mode about finding the best possible nodes, and more specifically chasing the three Cities and the boss fights that could spawn in them which were capable of dropping some of the specific items that came from that game mode. As such my POE2 Atlas strategy has been about trying to find the three Citadels that can spawn, each of which containing a boss fight, as well as keeping a look out for any interesting unique maps that happen to spawn along the way.

Essentially Iron Citadels contain the boss fight from Act 1, and spawn in segmented off plots of farmland. You will often see the worked fields appearing on your map and the gothic buildings well before you actually arrive at the Citadel. Weird quirk of this specific Citadel is that they often spawn in clusters where I have seen three of them within a few towers distance of each other. Stone Citadels contain the boss of Act III and seem to spawn often butting up against mountain ranges. You will usually see a number of steppe pyramids and ziggurats in the near vicinity. The Copper Citadel spawns exclusively in the desert and contains the boss of Act II, and it will be in a larger swath of desert as opposed to sandy coastal regions. In this case you will see grayish green tents surrounding the few nodes closest to the Citadel.

Why am I chasing these Citadels? Well for one they drop specific fragments that are required to summon the Uber boss. However given the current one portal state of the game, I have zero interest in attempting the boss. Instead I am using these Citadels as a way of making pretty decent spikes of currency. The Copper Citadel seems to be the rarest, which is vetted by how much more these fragments go for as compared to the others. The most common seems to be Iron Citadels in part due to the fact that they often spawn in clusters. However I am guessing that the Stone Citadel can do the same thing given its fragment is just as cheap. Essentially running around 150% Rarity, I am pulling 5 to 10 Exalts per map run and then when I find a Citadel I get a rather large payday with the bosses often dropping two fragments each given that I can run them with my Atlas tree that buffs up their level.

Essentially I am running an Atlas that adds +3 levels to every single map boss that I encounter, as well as trying to stack as much rarity from the tree. I am specifically also adding some pack size nodes and ones that cause one rare in my map to duplicate. Basically I am trying to add as many rares to the map as I can, which is why I am also dipping into the Essence nodes just a bit, which means that I usually have one of those on each map. The only things in a map that drop any loot worth mentioning are Rares and Uniques, and as such trying to stack as many of those as possible really helps out. One of the interesting things about the node that doubles one of the rares, is that it occasionally also triggers on bosses giving me two copies of the same boss to fight at once. This can get a bit dicey at times, especially for bosses like the Miller which often like to time their attacks so you are essentially having to dodge from two different things at the same time.

Other than that I have leveled up an Invoker and now have it in maps as well, which makes my third character capable of mapping. I am trying to fix some of the survival issues with this character, namely that it is so much squishier than my Infernalist. I am probably going to respec the entire tree at some point and follow one of the other build paths that I have seen. I am running the Polcirkeln ring which means I do not necessarily have to run both Heralds to make big pops happen. This allowed me to pick up another defensive aura which helped, but also… given that I am having to charge into packs of mobs there is just a higher likelihood of taking random deaths. I’ve gotten used to my fart boots on the Witch consuming corpses and effectively making me immune to on death effects. I am pretty sure that all of the deaths I have taken on the Monk thus far have probably been triggered by something happening after I exploded a pack of mobs.

I am really interested to see what happens this week as GGG comes back into the office. I fully expect there to be some significant patches happening. We are essentially interesting a period of time which is the battle for the soul of the game. Either they are going to claw back the power that players have found dragging the game back down into its Ruthless roots, or they are going to lean into the play style that players seem to want. Ruthless is the least played game mode for a reason, and I for one am hoping that we see significant buffs to the under-performing classes and only the lightest of nerfs to the classes and abilities that are performing well. If they nerf my minions character, I am probably done with the game because quite honestly… nothing else feels good enough to keep me around.

Infernalist vs Titan POE2 Mapping

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Hey Folks! I decided to do something a little bit different… or at least different from what I have done recently. Occasionally I record videos of gameplay to illustrate a point, and this morning I spent time recording myself running a map on my Infernalist Minions character as well as running a map on my Titan Stampede character to contrast the different in how they feel. I’ve effectively completely abandoned the Titan other than occasionally running t10 or so level maps on it to clear some of those out. I should in theory try and figure out how to fix that character and make it more enjoyable. It still largely works, but armor is way less effective of a defensive layer right now as energy shield is.

In the first video I run a T16 map, which is a t15 map that has been buffed in monster level with irradiate up to what folks are calling Tier 16. Similarly a T17 would be a map that both has corruption aka beyond monsters buffing up its monster level as well as being irradiated. The thing is I can happily do those while having a half specced boss atlas also buffing up monster level of those encounters. I’m using a combination of life converted to energy shield, a small amount of armor, and 68% block chance which all together make the character feel relatively tanky. I can clear content so fast at least compared to the Titan, but nowhere near as zoomy as some of the builds like Sorcs and Rangers are able to do.

Then you have my Titan which I was running a T11 map and had to hit my health pot several times during rare encounters to stay topped off. Essentially the playstyle is that I stampeded across the map, trying to explode the majority of the packs and then when I encounter a rare or a boss I pop infernal cry, and then hammer of the gods… and throw up active block while waiting on the hammer to land and effectively delete the target. This is great… unless the mob moves out of the Hammer of the Gods target area or I have to fight two tanky things back to back. At that point I have to rely on Perfect Strike which has a long windup in order to take out the extra monsters. There is a point in the video where I get pushed out of Hammer of the Gods by a Rare so you can see this happen in realtime.

The other big problem with the game right now is how important rarity is as a stat. I currently have 79% magic find on my Infernalist and I did not see a single Divine Orb drop until I had at least 50% and I did not se any Greater Jeweler’s Orbs until I bumped up to 79% getting my first ones while recording the podcast on Saturday. More than that I am seeing way more Exalted Orbs dropping at a given time as well as seeing some of the better options in things like Ritual. I’ve picked up two of the Vaal Omens that sell for roughly a Divine on the currency exchange. It feels really bad that a piece of gear is not good, until it has rarity on it. On the flipside, however you can sell so pretty whack items so long as they have high rarity on them.

The biggest problem that I still have with Path of Exile II however, is the one portal problem. This is not that big of a deal for me personally because I can go an entire day doing back to back maps without taking a death. However there still are the random deaths that come out of nowhere… and it makes it feel even worse when you are not used to barely limping by. My friends who should be joining me in mapping bliss… are having trouble getting started due to repeated deaths and losing maps… and now having a ton of map sustain to keep throwing maps at the problem. Map sustain is definitely an issue, but for me it is mostly lack of getting T15 maps to drop. I never see them unless they come from a rare or a boss, and most rares… don’t seem to drop them. Essentially when I am getting low I do a lap around the map looking for bosses which have a pretty high likelihood to drop two at a time so that I can restock a bit.

I found an Untainted Paradise, which is the only unique map that I have seen so far. I ran it because might as well, but was disappointed at how little experience I actually got from it at 90. Among our friend group I think I am the only one who is actually having fun with this game. Almost everyone else has stalled out significantly and is just not making significant progress. Essentially there is a group of folks who managed to get to maps, and then struggled. There is another group of folks who hit Act II Normal and had trouble pushing through that. Right now the current state of Path of Exile II is not great, and is potentially more difficult to make progress in than the first game was. This gives the game a feeling of potentially being even more elitist than the first game, because it requires a lot of prior understanding and willingness to engage heavily in trade to really make significant progress.

Anyways! Are you still playing? How far have you managed to make it? I am curious among my readers who is actually still engaged and having fun, and who has checked out waiting for future patches? Drop me a line below.