Good Morning Folks. I did not do a blog post on Friday because I just was not feeling it. I hoped maybe the new Path of Exile II league that launched that afternoon/evening would pull me out of my funk. In truth it did… but it replaced sadness with rage. When the game launched I wrote at length about what I considered to be the problems with that game, and I remember Zizaran specifically stating in one of his videos at the launch of the game that what we were playing, was the worst state the game would ever be in. At the time it helped me put some of my own feelings into perspective and I thought sure… it can only go up from here. I chose a more meta build and then honestly had quite a bit of fun getting through maps and farming quite a bit in the endgame. I only got to level 94 on my Minion Infernalist, but that seemed reasonable enough and mostly I just got bored of the very limited state of the end game.
I thought the first release of the game needed some work. Essentially there were four builds that were viable, and I expected those to eat the nerf bat, but hopefully others would be buffed up to reach a point where we had a dozen or so viable builds instead. This is something that they absolutely know how to do… because builds like Penance Brand of Dissipation have eaten massive nerfs… but still remained completely viable choices if someone just happened to enjoy that particular play style. Hell my own love of Righteous Fire and the number of drastic changes in the way it is built over just the few years I Have been playing… is proof positive that balance changes in Path of Exile 1 have mostly been about pruning the outliers. In theory if we had more viable builds and more endgame variety… this league could have been a banger or at least something that I would enjoy to tide me over until Last Epoch.
The day before the patch was set to launch we got a post outlining the changes… and it was nothing but wall to wall nerfs. So much so that it did not just bring builds in line… but absolutely decimated almost every even vaguely halfway viable build from the first league. Warrior was probably the least impacted, but a lot of the things that made them powerful boss hunters were destroyed. Hammer of the Gods now requires you to build up a resource rather than just having a cool down. So we thought it was bad, and admittedly we were warned by Jonathan that it was going to involve a lot of nerfs. What we were not prepared for… was this was only the tip of the iceberg. The nerfs went so much deeper, to the point of builds that seemed viable from these patch notes were themselves untenable when the game actually released.
Were this just a me thing… it would be one thing. However every streamer has effectively come out and talked about how this is the worst update they have ever played. Wudijo seems to be enjoying himself, but he is so damned good-natured that he could not even muster venom over the worst Diablo IV patches, so that checks out. The core POE streamers are all various shades of miserable. Steelmage is generally a super chill dude, but in an impromptu podcast with Zizaran he talked about how generally miserable he has been. Empyrean has just bailed on the league entirely, and others appear to simply be playing because it is financially beneficial for them given that there are twitch drops active. I watched a friend of mine yesterday who seemed to be in good spirits… but watched her and her partner spend 30 minutes dying over and over to the Dreadnought in act II.
I am currently playing what is apparently the strongest and most meta build out there… a generic bone shatter warrior that I have ascended into Smith of Kitava. My damage output is reasonable, but it feels like I am wearing tissue paper for gear… when I have just shy of 1000 health, 1500 armor, and capped elemental resistances at 75/75/75 at level 45. I get interrupted constantly when trying to attack and the only thing that seems to feel halfway decent is Leap Slam to Bone Shatter… with Perfect Strike for harder mobs. However I effectively have to wait until I have stunned something to actually get one of the Perfect Strikes off successfully because otherwise I keep getting stunned out of the channel. White mobs in Path of Exile II, feel like bosses in Path of Exile I in the amount of damage that they are dealing.
There have been numerous points where I have rage quit out over the weekend. The first was dying over and over to these stupid chests in Act 1 at level 5. Why in the hell these things are so murdery at such a low level is beyond me. I suffered through Act 1 on Friday and took out Count Geonor and started on Act 2 before getting frustrated and playing some Path of Exile 1 instead. On Saturday morning I started off with succeeding at the Trial of the Sehkemas and ascending and then chipping away at Act 2, eventually beating it before the end of the night. Once again I had to go play something else because Act 3 was annoying me. Doing anything in the game just feels cumbersome. It isn’t so much that it is challenging, because that denotes it is something that learning from mistakes would improve. Instead it just feels like I am being bludgeoned by a thousand little cuts, each one sapping more joy from me.
Last night’s rage quit moment was Viper Napuatzi, a boss I have never had trouble with in any previous incarnation of this game. Essentially I was getting ripped to shreds by the poison, and my perfect strikes were doing nothing. I seemed like I was able to get her down to around half health and then there health bar would stall out and never dip any lower. I tried this fight a half dozen times before logging out and playing some Last Epoch. I had to do something that felt good for awhile to dull the annoyance and frustration of Path of Exile II. At this point you are probably asking yourself.. “Bel why the fuck are you still playing?”, and in truth I do not have a good answer for you. I would say I am doing it for the content… but that would be a lie. I am doing it because I hate the concept that this fucking game ground me down into the ground, when even as much as I did not enjoy it at times previously… I still pushed through it and figured out a way to have fun. I keep thinking that if I beat my head against this wall hard enough, I will eventually grow numb to the rage.
This morning before sitting down to write this I managed to complete the Trial of Chaos and got my second set of ascendancy points. So much about this stupid Trial seems to be getting a good batch of RNG and getting one option out of three that does not completely fuck over your build. More than that for my build, it also requires that I do not get the Chimera as the final boss… because that fight ends up being a comedy of errors as you have to traverse this gigantic fucking map with the hope of it sticking around long enough in one location to actually get a hit off before it flies off again. Now I need to spend a lot of time farming materials so that I can outfit a reasonable white chest-piece… socket it, get it to 20% quality, and then attempt to corrupt it for a third socket so I can assign those ascendancy points.
This morning they released a “What We’re Working On” post… but honestly I think I am too bitter to read it at this point. To me it just reads like them attempting to justify the decisions that they made which have led us to this point. There have been enough negative Steam reviews to have flipped the game into mixed rating… with 66% of recent reviews being negative. As frustrating as the campaign has been… I am now seeing statements from streamers that the endgame is even worse. Kripparian talks about running a six mod rare map with stacked rarity on gear and on the keystone… and not seeing a single rare item drop in the entire map. It has felt like both experience gain and loot has been nerfed in the campaign, and I have never before felt like I needed to go farm previous areas just to get levels, but I have been actively doing that in this play through. Unless something significant changes during the course of this league, it will probably be the last that I play for Path of Exile II. There are just better ARPGs out there and I am frankly having more fun still in the Legacy of Phrecia temporary event than this mess.
Right now I am giving it until the start of Act IV before I truly give up. That is of course if I can figure out a way to beat Viper in Act III and move on to Doryani. If not… or if the game does not improve in the cruel difficulties like it did previously… I guess I will just be playing around in Phrecia until Last Epoch drops on the 14th. My level 100 Righteous Fire Scavenger has reached a point where I am pretty easily farm T17 maps and was able to faceroll my way through Sirius over the weekend. It seems like a lot of players are back in Phrecia because the sheer volume of trades that I was getting pinged about was extreme. Mostly I chuck every jewel I get into a 20c tab and it is effectively a constant ping of players wanting this gem or that. Legacy of Phrecia legitimately has the most diversity of builds that I have ever seen in a Path of Exile league. Unironically this temp event that they just threw together… is maybe one of the best leagues they have ever created.
Anyways… did you try and play Path of Exile II this weekend? What were your thoughts? Am I completely off base in my rage and it seems fine to you? Drop me a line below.
The post The Worst Path of Exile League So Far appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
