Good Morning Folks. This weekend I allowed myself to get sucked back into Path of Exile. Given the disappointment for Path of Exile 1 players last night, our hero Pohx decided to take matters into his own hands and throw together a league event. When I wrote about this on Friday, it full at 9500 players… before the end of the day it had been expanded to 20,000 players and also full. Then GGG stepped in and added 10,000 additional player slots, expanding the private league past the normal limit to 30,000. Suffice to say there has been more than a little bit of interest in some sort of a league reset happening in Path of Exile. I think there have been way more players than any of us thought, for which Path of Exile II did not really land well.
As of this morning there are just shy of 28,000 players in the Pohx private league, and I figure that is probably as big as it is going to get for the time being. If you are so inclined, you can go sign up for the league here which officially lasts until April 1st. A few caveats if you have never played in a private league like this. The big thing is expect trade to be much more challenging than during a normal league reset. There are simply going to be fewer items available and this impacts pretty much everything from the currency exchange to the player to player trade site. Folks tend to be way more chill about pricing however since this is a limited time event. However fully expect to be playing at least 80% solo self found. I picked up a few upgrades over the weekend but there was not a lot available on the market, and mostly all I really did was pick up a couple of items with good resists on them.
I am playing well out of my comfort zone and running my very first Trickster ever. I opted to go for Ice Trap, with the idea of eventually shifting into Ice Trap of Hollowness once I got all of my gear in place… which admittedly might not actually happen during the course of a private league. I still feel pretty squishy but am working on a series of upgrades with the next few points that should help that out. Essentially I am going to be stacking Mind of Matter, Ghost Shroud, and Wicked Ward with my existing Eldritch Battery to hopefully resolve my survival problems by making my Energy Shield double as both Mana and a proper damage barrier. I tried running Mind of Matter too early, and really all I did was cause myself to get into situations where I could not cast anything. Wicked Ward and Ghost Shroud should in theory help to solve the energy shield regen problems while I am taking damage.
Once I get another level I am probably going to respec the start of my tree a bit to free up two points, so that I can pick up all three of those notables at once. I am leaning heavily on Polymath which gives me 3% more damage for each unique mastery I am taking which at the moment is a 24% more multiplier. I’ve not run across any of the uber lab shrines in maps, so I might go ahead and try and purchase one from the currency exchange so that I can get my fourth ascendancy point. I feel like I am dealing plenty of damage right now, it is mostly the survival and comfort of mapping that I need to resolve. This is a way squishier character than I am used to playing, and since I don’t have access to really good cheap rares due to the limited trade environment… my evasion is way lower than I would like it to be. I am honestly not really a massive fan of evasion builds to start with, but I am trying to push myself out of my comfort zone.
I am still chipping away at white maps and making pretty decent progress. For the most part once I get something frozen I can kill it extremely quickly. Normal mapping is largely just walking through the map while dropping traps behind me which ends up being a fairly safe gameplay style. Things only really get risky when I have to stop and grind through something a bit tankier. The nice thing about the traps gameplay style is that I can run reflect maps without too much issue. The only change that I need to do is to remember not to drop Frost Bombs. I should also really drop back down to a level 1 Frost Blink so that I don’t have to worry too much about that either. I would really like to pick up some additional regen, but it feels like it is hard to juggle that with everything else that I want in the build.
For the most part right now I am running syndicate, as I try and get the enchants that I need. I am going to mix in some perm Delirium in the hopes of farming up some cluster jewels. Again being in a limited trade environment means that I am going to need to craft most of my own gear if I want some very specific things. I am still hoping at some point a Replica Dragonfang amulet shows up with Ice Trap on it, but I am not holding my breath. Thusfar there are plenty of those, but none for the specific ability that I want. I am very much playing an off meta build at the moment, based on one that was designed for 3.25 that does not 100% equate to the current passive tree. Essentially I tend to follow a guide until I hit maps and then I am off the radar with making the choices needed to hopefully make the build feel good after that.
I am not entirely certain how long Pohx League is going to stay active though, because this morning GGG released a statement that they are working on an event for Path of Exile 1. Essentially they are going to break out 19 Ascendancies that have never seen the light of day before, and will be running a league where every class has totally new options. This will run for a month, and I full expect an influx of players will rush over to this league to test things out. I am hoping we get a full release of what all of the ascendancy nodes are before this drops so that folks can begin to brew a bit ahead of time. This is going to have similar energy to a Krangled league, and I full expect by the end of the first day everyone to have spreadsheets floating around to help with buildcraft.
Tomorrow I am still planning on dipping back into Diablo IV for a bit with the new Lunar New Year event. I am not sure how hard I am going to grind but I would still really like to finish out the seasons journey while the buffs are active. I am hoping that the fixes to the Ring of Mendeln land at the same time so that I potentially see a massive boost in power. Other than that… I mostly want to be able to get some rest. I’ve not been sleeping well because Gracie has taken to screaming for no apparent reason in the middle of the night. Additionally I am still fighting a bit of a respiratory thing, which I hope passes rapidly. I have to go in a few times this week for meetings, so I am mostly hoping to get through the week without too much frustration.
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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! This week we started with a single topic… and by the time we were finished ended up having to bump half of the assembled topics to next week in order to keep the runtime down. We start off with Bel talking about the bad news for Path of Exile players, and how there is no new league around the corner. He also talks a bit about getting sucked into the private league that Pohx created which has capped out at 20,000 players. From there Grace talks a bit about playing Heroes of Hammerwatch II and enjoying that. Kodra shares his thoughts about the Diablo IV Campaign thus far as he still is effectively in the first act. Grace and Ash share their experiences with Coridden a more narrative-driven action role-playing game. Finally, Kodra and Tam talk about their experiences playing Battletech and how Kodra is coming around to the idea of playing games for fun, rather than simply optimizing the strategy for winning.
