tl;dr: my most played league by far; Mageblood makes the game 2-3 times more fun; Sanctum -> mapping -> TotA rotation keeps the game fresh and enables juiced mapping strats with Sextants and Unmakings galore even in SSF; new Atlas Keystones make the endgame more varied
Played a metric fuckton this league despite having to spend time with gf multiple times (can't play for days when I'm over there), Balders Gay 3, Cyberpunk, Dave the Diver, Disgaea 7, Teamfight Tactics and Everspace 2 stealing my playtime. Much more than in any previous league to date so I wanted to cap it all off with a smol review on the chars and mapping strats I played. Also played way more characters than I usually do.
Having so many different characters made me collect way more gear and made my play sessions feel more rewarding because of it. IMO this is the optimal way to play a League. Get one or two characters that you try to really min-max and 4+ characters as side projects which you passively collect all the gear for.
Kjaska_Disgarfge
https://pobb.in/3Z5m469Hu-DD The notorious Discharge build abusing the bugged interaction with the disabled Ralakesh boots and weapon swap. Loved playing this in maps, Special Uber Lab and Lab Trials, Sanctum, Heist and doing Ubers on it. Uber Sirus felt like regular on this. Playstyle is less clunky than you might think since weapon swap can be done while moving, so it's a 1.5 button build instead of a 2 button build, realistically. With tattoos and alt quality Temporal Rift my CD on Discharge was 1,4s and that felt like exactly good enough (it comes off CD right when Beyond monsters are damageable after killing the pack that spawns them for example). It has good max hit and good recovery, making it decently tanky and very comfy to play in 99% of situations. It also runs very fast, making the game just that much more fun. Added bonus is the ability to use Mirror charges orbiting planets MTX. Negatives of the build are: can't level gems in the 2nd weapon set; can't use Berserk; can't magic find on it; have to keep weapon swapping for the recovery to work; RF drains your ES despite leech, making you much more vulnerable (I only used it for Sanctum battle and boss rooms); Power Charge rings and corruption implicits are tedious to farm in SSF. Even if GGG somehow lets the buggy interaction of the Ralakesh boots live next patch, without the CDR from tattoos this build will be substantially weaker and clunkier to play. I'm glad I got to play it at least once and am going to miss it next League.
Kjaska_Garf
https://pobb.in/gKL3k5dhgkRy The classic Tornado Shot zoomer supercharged by projectile tattoos and Magablood. Excellent character capable of doing basically any content, including heavy magic finding. My bow isn't great, so I didn't even try Ubers on it. Didn't feel like farming Harbies to improve the bow either. It's very fast, tanky enough for most regular content and comfy to play. Allowed me to farm a lot of things this league and farm them quickly. What would have felt out of reach in previous leagues felt doable this time (like getting Fulcrum). Chances are high that Deadeye/Tornado Shot/Bows get a nerf this patch, despite the removal of tattoos already being a big nerf. If by some miracle no nerfs happen, I'll be doing this as my starter (Lightning Arrow first, then transition into Tornado Shot with good gear).
Kjaska_Garfblaster
https://pobb.in/LK18s1Ikvxmr The Hexblast Miner Life Stacker Sabooty. Powerful build. Uses a lot of Uniques that are very farmable in SSF (for now). Strong for bossing and Sanctum. Can run very fast with Berserk and Withering Step. Decently tanky, but Dots absolutely rape it. Wouldn't call it "comfy", but definitely better than many other builds out there. Big minus is that you really want 2x Split Personalities to max this character out and farming those is a giant pain in SSF. I might still roll this next League to farm Sanctum and Ubers, if no better build is discovered.
Kjaska_Garfling: a trash Ice Spear Totems attempt that I couldn't stomach playing because it was just not tanky and fast enough. If you ever want to feel cucked, play this.
Kjaska_ImpendingGarf: Classic Impending Doom Pathfinder. Despite having an Awakened Spell Cascade didn't feel great. Clear speed is okay, but single target is very lacking. This was probably much better before the nerfs to Poison. Wouldn't recommend it unless the overlapping interaction of Vixen's is kept intact AND there are buffs to poison somehow.
Kjaska_LileanGarf
https://pobb.in/Z9mXSdzpi7Fr The Fulcrum Self Iginite Chieftain. A very strange, but satisfying build to play. The big plus of this build is that you don't even have to press any buttons to play it, it clears via RF and the pseudo RF giga Ignite that you proliferate onto the enemies after the first pack clear. It's really only good in high density environments. Not a great character by any means, but it was fun to try it out. Looks very cool with the new Sulphur Flask MTX.
Kjaska_Tutel: A Molten Strike Slayer with the Rakiata sword. It has damage, but it's melee and the clear just feels inadequate after playing a Tornado Shot character. Definitely worth a play for anyone who likes Melee and doesn't want to play Boneshatter, but ultimately not worth the time investment when stronger options are available.
Kjaska_XXIII:
https://pobb.in/sgcNmEfWnfkU Started out as Cold Dot Elementalist (don't recommend as a starter anymore, it felt like garbo) but transitioned it into the Void Sphere cheese character for TotA. Very specialized and unique character. Basically unplayable anywhere else except TotA. Makes TotA essentially free content. Comfy to play, interesting to upgrade and tinker with. Glad to have been able to use some obscure skills and items like the Gorgon's Gaze helmet. Went from 85 to 100 by just doing TotA.
Speaking of TotA: the rewards at rank 2000 were great. I found a lot useful things that are otherwise hard to come by in SSF like Empower/Enlighten/Enhance, Unmakings/Sextants, rare div cards, not to mention all the TotA specific loot like Omens and Tattoos. The gameplay however was everything other than good. I was really pissed off at first at the scaling, but with the cheese character I was able to mitigate the retarded damage output from the monsters. I can see this type of content be more suited towards PoE2 combat, but it's still channeling wood instead of killing monsters and that's never a good trade. I'll miss the ability to play such an unorthodox character and the rewards from it, but I'm already dreadful of PoE2's League content, if TotA is an glimpse of things to come.
Some thoughts on Sanctum: if you have a strong character for it, it's pretty good for enabling mapping strategies with the amount of Sextants and Unmakings it provides. It also helps with Divines, although I never really crafted that much this League because my builds tended to run mostly Uniques instead of rares. It can still be very tilting if you get raped by the layout. It's very aids content for basically any build that isn't Tornado Shot, Shockwave Totem, Hexblast Miner or Discharge. If they make it even harder next patch, I'm gonna rage.
Some thoughts on Meticulous Appraiser Keystone: massive buff for SSF. With the virtually infinite Sextants from Sanctum, the reasonable access to Winged Reliquary Scarabs from Jun + Harvest swaps, the Endless Nightmare Keystone for permanent Delirium you can reliably farm most global drop Uniques in the game on a tier6 map now. The strategy involves stacking as much IIQ/IIR as you can and hunting ghosted rare and unique mobs. This was even more fun than magic finding back in the t3 Tower days of Scourge League. It also made some alternative magic finding gear more viable this patch, since you're looking for maximum rarity instead of quantity. I hope they don't nerf the Keystone so quickly after implementing it. If it's kept intact, I'll try to find a Mageblood this way next League.
