Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Jason Liang]

I got Crook to chapter 7 level 57. Chapter 5 was rough (I fucking hate ass lasers, and Justicar Auric has a golden shower ass laser), but 6 and 7 have been fairly deathless.

Crook's main active skills are Herald of Purity, Consecrated Path with CwC, and Purifying Flame with Hextouch Flammability. I also have Summoning Raging Spirit on a Spell Totem since I found a Mark of the Red Covenant. The damage on SRS is still good but I think I'll eventually phase it out and put Purifying Flame or Wave of Conviction on the Spell Totem. Consecrated Path has been good at mobbing since I picked up a Serpentine Staff with 6 sockets, although it is not quite good enough as a mobility skill for dodging ass lasers. I'll probably need to pick up some better Dash skill soon. Purifying Flame has been solid, decent AoE and quite fast projectile speed, and seems to keep my summons alive. Other summons are 2 spectres with phantasm support, a Holy Relic, and a Carrion Golem. Still building up the Animate Guardian.

Skill tree-wise, nothing too exciting, mostly just Witch heading directly towards Templar picking up life and ES. So far good nodes have been Zealot's Oath, Death Attunement, Light Eater and Spiritual Aid. Not sure if I should get Divine Fury for more Physical to Fire conversion or just pick up Avatar of Fire. I'm still mulling over whether to pick up Wicked Ward and Discord Artisan. Very annoying that they moved Whispers of Doom so far to the upper right.

 

[Lone Wolf]

You can - very expensively - anoint WoD.

If I were you, and I wanted to stick to a PF/Flammability sort of build (I can't imagine you're getting much Cast When Crit procs with CP if you're still in campaign), I'd go miner. Outside of ED/C, definitely the cheapest way to break into the endgame.

But you seem to have picked Witch, is that right? If so, start using pure fire skills, not fire conversion ones. A fire slinger can get you to endgame on a tiny budget. Basically, Fireball/Firewall combo, relying on ignite damage. Did you complete the 1st or 2nd lab?

 

[Jason Liang]

Not yet on lab, since when I finished act 3 I realized that I somehow missed the Trial in Lower Prison, and I want to wait for a stable internet connection before doing a lab run. Plan is still to go Occultist since it fits the character concept and also I already have level 90+ Summoner and Elementalist mothballed in standard.

Since there is only about a week left of the league season, I don't plan on getting too far into the post-game with this character. I mostly started her to try out the new gems and also the last time I played act 4 was the last act.

Not sure how often I'm getting crits, I just wanted to try it out with the bonus from consecrated ground, and also Holy Relic only triggers off attacks.

I was looking at some uniques and Ivory Tower caught my eye. Seems pretty good, but I haven't seen it in any build. I'll probably try to get one for about 3c to play with.

 

[razvedchiki]

i fucking HATE the lab, GGG should throw it to the trash can like they did with the daily masters.

 

[Cyberarmy]

First 2 labs are really short and easy. You can complete it with your eyes closed unless you are playing without gems.

 

[Jaedar]

I like lab. Feels like a unique piece of content that you do once per character, a real goal with a tangible reward that has been destroyed by power creep. Traps are very counter-intuitive though, you're mostly best off by just trying to run as fast as possible heedless of what is going on, rather than carefully dodging stuff.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Bleed immunity (flask or jewel), speed, a life flask and a decent health pool (~1k for the first lab, ~2.5k for the second etc) will get you through the labs no problem. Izaro himself is easy to deal with for any even marginally ranged build. He has two dangerous skills: the green shotgun that he spews at you and his slam attack. Avoid both by moving laterally and behind him.

Also, look up the lab schedule and try to avoid doing the 3rd/4th labs on days where a golden door blocks your progress. The key that opens it is often behind an array of traps (usually, the single most annoying and difficult stretch of the lab).

 

[GrainWetski]

Or play a build with crazy HP regen like Righteous Fire. I just ran through the last 2 without paying attention last time I played RF. Uber Izaro couldn't kill me even when I just stood still.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Sure, but then you'd be playing a RF build while levelling, and that's not the greatest experience ever. RF these days only 'shines' (relative to the other RF options) with massive use of cluster jewels and high end helmets.

 

[Jason Liang]

So I beat Chapter 10 yesterday, on level 71, before the patch this morning that killed the game (lucky me).

Ended up figuring out that, instead of Consecrated Path (which wasn't working as a movement skill, so had to replace with Flame Dash), a wand with Purifying Flame on Gunslinger would do everything I wanted - trigger Holy Relic, cast curses, and cast the primary spell. Went with Power Siphon and the free Culling Strike.

An hour or so later, I managed to trade 15c for a 5L Ivory Tower. Seems great so far. My tree is giving me 160% life and 250% energy shield, so Ivory Tower is essentially converting 40 life * (1+1.6) = ~100 life --> 30 ES * (1+2.5) = 105 ES. I was trying to level up Arrogance last night so I could get a good screenshot. Anyway, once Crook reverts to Standard I'll be able to slap my Prism Guardian on her and drop Arrogance. In the meanwhile, once the game works again, I think I will trade for a couple of Midnight Bargains and dual wield them for 60% life reserve, +2 spectres and 140% increased damage (from Spiritual Aid). Really love the passive tree on this character, everything fits.

99% life reserved achieved.

Also, it seems they buffed minions? My Anime Guardian has not come close to dying, my Carrion Golem has only died once (not to Kitava), and even my Spectres only started dying after I started mapping.

 

[d1r]

Jason Liang killed the game?

 

[Baron Dupek]

There was performance released recently, for some folks game works better (more FPS, short loadings) while others suffer from witnessing T-posing characters, borked textures or they get stuck on loading screen.

 

[razvedchiki]

when does ultimatum end?

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

Should end in about a week new league starts 23rd

 

[PapaPetro]

when does ultimatum end?

Not soon enough.

 

[Baron Dupek]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3146018

• July 19 - Ultimatum League Ends at 3pm (PDT).

 

[Goldschmidt]

Lord Chris will speak in 40 minutes.

 

[Baron Dupek]

MORE STACKS
Diablo 2 Gamble system is here
More D2 flashbacks
More nerfs than usual

It's possible that announcement 1 is merely announcing announcement 2.
And it's Battle Royale

 

[Jason Liang]

Underrail Path of Exile: Expedition

 

[Baron Dupek]

People cry when GGG do rebalance/tweaks/this is a buff, now they said there will be a lot of nerfs.
I can smell incoming massive meltdown from there, somewhere...

 

[Jaedar]

Impressions:
They seem to have hit a pretty basic league structure these days. You encounter a thing on the map, where you can choose greater risk for allegedly greater rewards, then you fight, get some loot explosions/chests and move on.
"Upselling" merchant seems potentially good, but I bet in practice he'll mostly offer shit stuff, same for haggle merchant. Gamble merchant I have no idea why I'd interact with when there's 99% chance I'll get a shit rare/uncommon.
Ward seems kinda shit. Mitigating ""a lot"" (137 base damage mitigation on a level 68 base type seems like a pittance to me) of damage from a single hit every 5 seconds.
Slayer gets a nonbo gem (if you already have 20% culling strike, you're wasting a lot of 'bonus damage against low life enemies').
Explosive concoction is novel I guess, but presumably you'd need a normal skill for bosses. Forbidden rite is CI only skill gem I guess, for some reason assigned to the class that isn't best for CI, or particularily good for spells that hit.

I have 0 faith in these balance changes. Also the delusion on display is staggering: "Some games just scale monster health and damage exponentially, and we don't want to treat PoE this way" - But this is literally how maps work. "We want to return to players being able to get killed in a few seconds" - So a big nerf to monster damage then, since you now typically die in less than one second. Also lol at designing the difficulty around feedback from people who went to exilecon.
Flash rework is a nice idea, but I don't look forward to spamming the automatic currency to get my ignite flask to actually trigger on ignites. PoE is not readable enough to allow for flasking just before a hit, or flasking to counter a specific effect. 20-40% less damage in endgame is a huge nerf to zoom-zoom, but I suspect it will just mean I'll get one shot more often due to less first strike damage. I suspect the end result will just be forcing more copy pasting of builds from forums, and otherwise sticking to meta gems. Be nice if I was wrong.

 

[Jason Liang]

I'm off two minds on these announcements.

On the one hand, I've quite enjoyed revisiting this game for the past week or so. There's a lot of QoL improvements that have made the game play a lot better since I last played probably 3 years ago. I've enjoyed the new skill gems and the new options for getting stuff like Heist, Harvest and Ritual. Chapters 5-10 made progressing to mapping much smoother so that you aren't sick of the game by the time you get to maps, and Heist provides a nice "alternative" to mapping when you get bored or run dry of new maps. Hollow Point has made Dex not suck? Same with Mana? So there's been some good balancing overall.

On the other hand, a major shaking up of the game is probably due and good for it, new experiences etc... And it will be nice to see what the game will be like truer to the designers' intent.

Gamble merchant I have no idea why I'd interact with when there's 99% chance I'll get a shit rare/uncommon.

Yeah. The analogy would be Gheed, but currency is much more useful in PoE then ever was in Diablo 2. There will probably be some very good uniques to chase, and also it seems like the new currency you get from doing expeditions will only be able to be used to barter with these new merchants, so you might have more fun gambling than haggling or (whaling?).

 

[Perkel]

fuck the expedition.

Rebalance seems like to be best thing that will happen to POE in fucking years.

1. Flask spam gone
2. Triggers finally will use mana and will give them a way to fix mana.
3. Movement skills hyge nerf
4. damage support gems nerfed hard + actual downsides to them
5. rebalance of part of poe monsters with further ones in next expansions

This is huge change.

It only lacks:

- monster pack size reduction
- rework of monster prefixes/affixes
- making run speed much harder to get

and we are talking about new golden age.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well, that's one way to ready folks' anuses for the POE2 slowdown.

RIP CoC/MoM Agnostic/VD SS builds. Hello multi-skill situational builds.

 

[didntdemon]

Looking forward to the first actual gameplay change patch for a while, interesting to see what these means for build making.

At the same time, nerfing player power level means to me that playing meta builds becomes so much more attractive. Let's say if DPS decrease 20% all across the board, playing something like miners which gifts damage generously to you would feel infinitely better relative to say something like melee now they are much weaker.