Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Perkel]

Diablo - we're giving you a new character for $20.
PoE - we're trippling the size of the game, for free.

 

[Saark]

Yeah, its amazing to see how the previously added content is incorporated into the game. The beacon was for example introduced in Atlas of Worlds as a high tier map. The Shavronne Tower zone is a Tower low tier map.

Another thing I loved was fetid pools being green again since we cleared the necromancer there! (Yeah, sure we did, right? :D)

The new ledge was basically plateau, fetid pool 2.0 looked a lot like oasis, only with more green.

Info on the 2.6 legacy league:
The Legacy Challenge League celebrates the history of Path of Exile, giving you access to the 17 previous challenge leagues and old items that have long been unavailable. You’ll collect League Stones in the regular game, and each stone will have a specific league tied to it. Using a special screen within the game, you can set up to 3 of these stones active. The League Stones will also have unique stats tied to them. For instance, you could receive a Breach Challenge League Stone that will allow you to find extra breaches. As per usual, these League Stones can be traded with other players.

Invasion/Beyond/Breach, here I come.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Yeah, its amazing to see how the previously added content is incorporated into the game. The beacon was for example introduced in Atlas of Worlds as a high tier map. The Shavronne Tower zone is a Tower low tier map.

Another thing I loved was fetid pools being green again since we cleared the necromancer there! (Yeah, sure we did, right? :D)

The new ledge was basically plateau, fetid pool 2.0 looked a lot like oasis, only with more green.

Info on the 2.6 legacy league:
The Legacy Challenge League celebrates the history of Path of Exile, giving you access to the 17 previous challenge leagues and old items that have long been unavailable. You’ll collect League Stones in the regular game, and each stone will have a specific league tied to it. Using a special screen within the game, you can set up to 3 of these stones active. The League Stones will also have unique stats tied to them. For instance, you could receive a Breach Challenge League Stone that will allow you to find extra breaches. As per usual, these League Stones can be traded with other players.

Invasion/Beyond/Breach, here I come.

Maybe I will be able to finally get a HH! And there is so much potential for crazy mod combos for fun. Like breach, Beyond and Rampage for extreme breach clearing.

 

[Saark]

Wondering whether tempest/warbands are unavailable for this, might be troublesome... Corrupting tempest in a breach.... With beyond... Hnnngg.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ArchAngel]

This is beyond awesome! Looks like this summer is reserved for POE :D

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I'm going to miss Dried Lake.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

This is a promise completion update by the sound of it.

The original promise from BETA was that the game would eventually have 10 acts and they promised to keep the site going until that was completed.

The Self-Found league is also superb news, people have been nagging for that for years and years, lets just hope when Havoc wins the league people don't start bitching about 'are these drops really random' again :D

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm going to miss Dried Lake.

I am not :D

 

[Zdzisiu]

This is a promise completion update by the sound of it.

The original promise from BETA was that the game would eventually have 10 acts and they promised to keep the site going until that was completed.

The Self-Found league is also superb news, people have been nagging for that for years and years, lets just hope when Havoc wins the league people don't start bitching about 'are these drops really random' again :D

Btw, Chris replied on reddit to the question of "GGG promised to give us 10 acts in PoE as their end goal, what will they be doing now?"

"Oh there's plenty more content coming in the future. We just accelerated the schedule of this major story arc "

 

[Hyperion]

They stole more than just Wheel Skeletons from Dark Souls. The bundles of corpses stacked inside a cage are monsters now as well, hah.

 

[Ismaul]

Good god I wasn't sure I was gonna come back to the game after this league.

They got me good.

 

[T. Reich]

Well, they got me, too. Fucking smug bastards, doing crazy shit. I'm gushing like a fanboy here.

Uh, not so sure about the new league just yet. Will wait untill the full announcement first.

DID YOU NOTICE THAT THE LIFE & MANA ORB GIRLS ARE BACK? INCLINE! Apparently, they are representations of Solaris (life) and Lunaris (mana).

Hmm, that's cool and all, but honestly it wasn't the trip to mapping that put me off PoE. It was the mapping being boring because of the clearspeed meta.

I used to hate on clearspeed meta, too, until I realied that it's just that - "meta" - it's all in your head. Unless you absolutely must play PoE in parties most of the time (why?), there's absolutely nothing forcing you to prioritise clearspeed above everything else. You can play the game as slow as you want to.

Look at act4 difficulty. For most new players, act4 is pretty damn hard to get through, and even experienced ones die there more often than in the other 3 acts (at least from my experience during new leagues on HC).

Experienced players don't play act 4. They farm dried lake and gran an easy skill book. And they don't go further - no Kaom or Daresso, and definitely no Malachai.
Unless there's a league challenge, then they level to 90+ first and then come back to faceroll everything.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I used to hate on clearspeed meta, too, until I realied that it's just that - "meta" - it's all in your head. Unless you absolutely must play PoE in parties most of the time (why?), there's absolutely nothing forcing you to prioritise clearspeed above everything else. You can play the game as slow as you want to.

The problem is the game is balanced around it. I would love to slowly, carefully clear a high tier map with actual difficulty and real risk of death, then get a fair reward for it. But instead I'll get like a 5% better reward than clearing a map I can do with my eyes closed in one tenth the time. I can't sink 50 hours a week into the game to get a SSF character into the endgame content before the league ends, so my options are to stay in the kiddie pool farming it slowly with crap gear, or run something that spends more time picking up loot than killing things. Because if you're not spending more time picking up (and trading) loot than killing things, you're going to takes hundreds of hours to hit T15 maps. The other side of the problem is that a slow clearing character is just arbitrarily making things difficult for yourself. The game is set up to make it easier to kill something from offscreen than survive it being onscreen for 5 seconds. If you have X amount of loot, you can either make a character that can take 15 seconds of a beating from a level 60 boss and kill it in 30 seconds or a character that will die to that boss in 3 seconds but kills it before it can ever attack. The second character isn't just faster, it's safer too.

 

[T. Reich]

Excuses, excuses.

But, most importantly, you got things laughably wrong on the fundamental level.

"Clear speed meta":
1) above all other options, you MUST focus on clear speed. Main measurements of success: # of maps done per hour, exp/hour.
2) slower clear speed builds = cancer, even if they are just as endgame-capable as your clear speed cookie cutter build.
3) it's not about being able to do all content or map mods - it's about being able to do things the fastest.
4) consciously limit yousrelf to running the most clear speed friendly layouts and content. If you can't run through a map in a straight line - it's shit.
5) movement speed is king.
6) very strict looting routine.
Paragons of clear speed meta: coc/cospri builds, vaal spark. Can't do all content, or multi-stage top-tier endgame bosses, or uber lab/atziri, but they sure can clean those gorges/shaped strands real good.

What you're talking about is entirely different.

 

[paintinggrey]

Def hype. I have to admit GGG do know how to handle PR better than most companies. Xbox one announcement, everyone loses their shit and GGG are major DECLINE. One month later FAll of Oriath announcement, GGG have ascended to divine INCLINE. I will wait to see how they balance all this stuff.

Also LEgacy League, how is it going to work? If you can add parandus will it destroy the trade againand i am sure everyone is adding Nemesis. So...two months later, WTS Headhunter 4ex.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What you're talking about is entirely different.

Ok, so what am I talking about then? A game that changed from having 5-10 minute long fights with act bosses to having them die before they can attack, and lesser bosses dying from offscreen before you knew where they were. A game that used to be about smartly managing healing flasks to endure through a fight that is now about having 5 utility flasks up 100% of the time because you're killing 5 enemies a second. A game where now the best survival option is to leech enough health to recover your entire pool in a single second because that's far easier to acquire than enough mitigation to actually survive being hit long enough to chew through 30 seconds of healing flasks. A game where a blue map that has literally no effects on you at all gives 90% of the rewards of a rare map you can't possibly survive in, let alone finish.

The meta isn't something you choose to be apart of, it's the state of the game, where going fast through easy shit is rewarded far more (like ten or twenty times more loot and xp) than going slowly through dangerous shit.

 

[Saark]

Act bosses never took 5-10min unless you're talking about people who experience those fights for the first time. Actbosses also aren't endgame, so having to slog through multiple 5minute fights would be rather boring during the levelling process. Neither Maelstrom of Chaos during Beta nor the first incarnation of the map-system had fights that took nearly as long as you describe, unless you're talking about shitbuilds. Those never have been able to kill bosses fast, and they don't do it today either.
Healing Flasks also never had to be used smartly, you usually just rolled 3 seethings with a bubbling here and there and you were good to go. Back then the only flasks available all needed 10 charges to recharge once and every single non-map Boss already had a steady supply of minions to kill for those. Flasks never were an issue, especially with builds being able to permastun/freeze bosses anyway. Is CI+VP+GR stupidly strong? Certainly. Is it the only way to get through the hardest of contents? No. Being able to leech through stuff like Shaper Beam, Mino Caveins or other stuff has a huge gear-dependancy that comes with it, something that Life doesn't have to worry about. Get 6k+ Effective Health on HC, get a second defense layer through evasion/block/dodge, get 2 seethings and you're good to go up until and including Shaper.
High enough leech always has been the strongest defensive option unless you can perma-control enemies. Smiters did it in Uber Tristram, Freeze-Mine Prolif/Ground Slammers did it a couple of years back in PoE vs bosses, and you almost always had a Freezepulser for non-bosses in your party aswell. Dying back then was harder than it is now because stuff like this got nerfed. And so will double-dipping/perma-leech - eventually.
I would also like to remind you that leech, and by extension CI, were in a pretty rough spot after the leech changes about a year and a half ago. It's only been able to revive thanks to stuff like Vinktars providing enormous amounts of leech, ToH/Basalts providing high mitigation even with 0 armor (remember when every CI player wanted a T1 armor roll on their belt for just a couple of percent of mitigation), and CoH/Blasphemy+Warlords Mark providing both leech aswell as additional mitigation that you previously lacked. I remember when I had to stand still and enduring cry every 10seconds for 4 charges. We basically got automated things that used to make CI unattractive for the majority of people. Back then people complained about life being the "only" way to play, which then got most life-nodes nerfed and CI received the 3 nodes behind it).

The game and meta constantly change, always have, but it has indeed gotten a bit stale. GGG used to be rather quick with nerfing stuff, but people constantly whining about getting nerfed in the middle of a league managed to put them on the defensive which is why we only get major change to mechanics once every 6-12 months now, when a new expansion hits. It is also a lot harder to balance properly and not just bandaid-fix stuff once your game has gotten to the size PoE has grown to today, which is probably why nerfing/buffing certain skills is no longer a top-priority. And as many people will tell you, the game is far from unplayable unless you conform to the meta (and therefore validate it).

The meta is exactly that: Something that develops over time due to the way the majority of the community views the core-mechanics of the game. The more complex the game, the more options you have. Can the game nudge you in one direction? Sure, look at LoL. Can multiple completely different metas evolve without the game changing at all? Sure, look at DotA. People only perceive what they see in front of them, and since the majority of what is visible is people crying about "the clearspeed meta" it is nowhere close to being as bad as the vocal majority might make you believe. Once you realize this fact and simply don't conform to it, you will realize just how unimportant a lot of the issues are. That's not to say that some of the criticism isn't valid or at least holds a grain of truth, but having played HC since Nemesis I can tell you that none of the complaints really mattered in the grand scheme of things, ever. You can still have fun in red-tier maps even if you don't breeze through them in a matter of seconds, you can still enjoy the game without perma-leeching through shaper beams and most importantly: You can still play the game in whatever way you want. As long as you actually know the mechanics and core of the game you can do any content that isn't inherently supposed to withstand your build (like being unable to kill Uber Atziri with a build that solely relies on ignite).

The whole thing about blue maps providing close to the rewards a hard rare map does is utter bullshit btw. If you cannot handle the IIQ-improving affixes on a map, your statement holds true. Do people run high-tier maps and skip bosses when its -max/added ele or shitty curses that fuck you over? Yes. Is it about 3times as profitable as running a perfectly rolled blue one? Yes.

Just as an anecdote: I have been playing AW summoners for the past 4 leagues. It has become a "meta" build due to severed in sleep/united in dream, but I can tell you that the build didn't really feel different at all. What was decried as a "shit skill" has always been used by people who were less intent on bitching, and instead enjoying the game. And it always was able to clear the highest and toughest of content, even without all the "gamebreaking" uniques. There certainly are skills that need a buff to become viable, but there are way more options to play the game than most threads that discuss the clearspeed meta/double dipping may want you to believe, and those options are oftentimes only slightly worse than those top-tier skills, and in some occasions are actually better, people just don't believe it until someone shows them.

 

[Doktor Best]

Hmm, that's cool and all, but honestly it wasn't the trip to mapping that put me off PoE. It was the mapping being boring because of the clearspeed meta.

I used to hate on clearspeed meta, too, until I realied that it's just that - "meta" - it's all in your head. Unless you absolutely must play PoE in parties most of the time (why?), there's absolutely nothing forcing you to prioritise clearspeed above everything else. You can play the game as slow as you want to.

Sorry man but thats a really shitty argument. After all POE is a hack and slash. What are hack and slash games about in the endgame? About optimization, about grinding the gears of your character until you have the perfect killing machine that creates as much loot/exp/currency as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Those games are like giant gory fun-to-play slot machines. They must create interesting forms of RNG and incentivice you to roll it as often as possible.

Now if you balance the game such that insane clearspeed is as easy to achieve as in POE and therefor becomes as comon as in POE, simply "playing slow" wont do the trick, because then you miss the point of the game.

Its like if i make a racing game and give every car a maxspeed of 1000mp/h. It would not be enjoyable, yes people could simply drive slowly by only driving on first gear or something, but that would suck.


I dont want to disqualify your opinion, but its apologetic stuff like this that keeps GGG from facing the problem their game has and changing the game to the ultimate perfect game it could be.

 

[T. Reich]

Ok, so what am I talking about then? A game that changed from having 5-10 minute long fights with act bosses to having them die before they can attack, and lesser bosses dying from offscreen before you knew where they were. A game that used to be about smartly managing healing flasks to endure through a fight that is now about having 5 utility flasks up 100% of the time because you're killing 5 enemies a second. A game where now the best survival option is to leech enough health to recover your entire pool in a single second because that's far easier to acquire than enough mitigation to actually survive being hit long enough to chew through 30 seconds of healing flasks. A game where a blue map that has literally no effects on you at all gives 90% of the rewards of a rare map you can't possibly survive in, let alone finish.

You were definitely playing a very different game than I did.
> "5-10 minute long fights with act bosses" - only Malachai ever qualified for that, and the very early pre-nerf Dominus. And even then, only for super-noobs who had no clue how to use the game mechanics to scale damage properly.
> "about smartly managing healing flasks to endure through a fight" - lol, when was that? Outside of maps, all your "smart flask management" boiled down to using town portal scrolls now and then. In maps, before 1.3.0 you simply slapped on pre-nerf powerful life leech and that was enough. Post-1.3.0, you just scaled damage instead thanks to ever-increasing power creep.
And - you don't "endure" through the fight, you fight to kill stuff. If you don't have the means to sustain your life, you're fucked either way.
> "now about having 5 utility flasks up 100% of the time" - because people at large have finally realised how strong utility flasks are.
> "blue map that has literally no effects on you at all gives 90% of the rewards of a rare map you can't possibly survive in, let alone finish" - blatant lies. Well, OK, it's true for t1-5 maps, but after that running maps blue = fucking yourself over because you don't get consistent map drops and don't go up in map tiers nearly as fast as someone who alcs theirs. In fact, good fucking luck getting anywhere beyond t8 with that "strategy", let alone sustaining red-tier maps.
Also - if you can't do an averagely-rolled (4 mods) rare map, your build sucks, plain and simple. It's your fault, not the game's.

The meta isn't something you choose to be apart of.

snip

This dude knows what's up.

 

[T. Reich]

Sorry man but thats a really shitty argument. After all POE is a hack and slash. What are hack and slash games about in the endgame?

The point of the games is to have fun. Fun is relative. What you describe is your reason for playing. It's not mine. And it's not for a lot of other people.

So, sorry man, but yours a really shitty argument.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

The point of the games is to have fun.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You guys are either full of shit or never played back in the closed beta. Shit was different.

And yeah, there's no point in even running T15 maps because you can just sell them for more than they'll pay out. If you're sustaining high yellow/low red maps, there's no point in doing anything remotely difficult. You already have like 40% IIQ/pack from the mods that do nothing to you. You're trying to tell me you get triple the payout from that extra 20% having half regen/temp chains/etc. on the map? Get real. The dangerous mods don't even give IIQ anyways, they give rarity. Good luck with a +300% damage map. It'll give you like maybe 10% more loot than one that has none of that, and it'll take forever to clear and won't even sustain itself because you needed currency and chisels and shit to roll it to begin with and then you'll die and lose xp. Meanwhile I can clear a 3 mod map that does basically nothing to me by holding down flicker strike and listening for loot gongs. I'll make 20x as much currency and xp with no risk.

"now about having 5 utility flasks up 100% of the time" - because people at large have finally realised how strong utility flasks are.

No, you fucking retard, it's because you can sustain flasks when you kill 5 mobs a second forever, which you couldn't do originally, and you can't do in dangerous maps. It's actually safer at this point to blast through with flickerstrike and piano key your flasks than it is to play something that might have to go without flasks being up for 5 seconds.

Experienced players don't play act 4. They farm dried lake and gran an easy skill book. And they don't go further - no Kaom or Daresso, and definitely no Malachai.
Unless there's a league challenge, then they level to 90+ first and then come back to faceroll everything.

Sums up everything I hate about this game perfectly. I play games to take on challenges, not to avoid them at all costs so I can watch tv at the same time.

 

[T. Reich]

Oh, you sad, poor creature.

Welp, enjoy your not enjoying PoE for entirely stupid made-up reasons. I'll just keep having a blast.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Enjoy running easy maps for 2 hours to get 1 5 minute attempt at a difficult map.