Good Morning Folks. We are a little less than five days into the 3.28 Mirage League in Path of Exile, and I am having a hard time gauging my progress. I had a medical procedure on Friday that caused me to get a very late start on getting through the early campaign. Then that same night, we had a Tornado pass within a mile of my house, and sirens woke me up at 3:30 in the morning, making Saturday a bit of a mess. Then Sunday was, of course, the bi-annual mass hallucination that is Daylight Savings Time… meaning Sunday and Monday were also fucked. I still feel relatively out of it with my brain struggling more this year to adapt to the change than I think I can remember in any other year. I guess on one hand, I am glad that I decided to roll with another Righteous Fire Chieftain because I can do that progression in my sleep, and am already at a pretty stable point. Now, essentially everything is just tweaking and perfecting the build since I am sitting at level 87 and can probably do red maps without much issue.
I made one of my slowest times through the campaign, I think I have ever experienced, in large part because the campaign itself was way more enjoyable. One of the things about the Wish mechanic is that they force way more additional content onto your map, so that there is usually an Essence or Strongbox at minimum caught up in the Wish area, so it can be duplicated. There is a meta achievement for doing 30 Essences, and I got this done around Act 6 for reference as to how much bonus content was being added to the campaign maps. This also produced a stupid amount of gear, which meant that I was never really struggling to find anything to equip. I think this might have made ground loot more viable as well, but it is hard to tell. I do know without a doubt that I am getting way more currency than I have ever seen at any other point during the campaign. I was picking up chancing bases left and right because I was swimming in Orbs of Chance, but sadly I did not actually convert anything useful into a unique.
The bulk of my gear is stuff that I either picked up or crafted. I made the gloves with the Breach tree, and am working on an upgraded pair of boots. The sceptre and current boots are ones that I picked up off the ground, I believe from a wish area, and the helm is a cheap elder influenced base that I picked up for a few chaos and then threw Essence of Horrors at until I got something usable. I would have preferred to get Burning Damage and Concentrated Effect, but unfortunately, I did not hit that and am rolling with what I have for the time being. I am watching out for an ArchDemon Crown from Ritual, which is probably going to be my next target upgrade hat. At some point, I need to deal with my total lack of Chaos Resistance, but I will probably be devoting that to my ring slots. Maybe I should start heisting in an attempt to get a Helical ring base.
I’ve bought three items from the market: the Elder helm base from above, a reasonably well-rolled Immortal Flesh, and a Cloak of Flames. Unfortunately, right now I only have a four-link, and I need to upgrade to a six-link pretty soon. Unfortunately, Black Morrigans are over 2 Divines currently and last I checked, there were zero Omen of Connections on the market. So that likely means I will either be brute forcing a six-link, saving up 1500 fusings, or buying a corrupted six-socket and trying my hand at tainted fusings. There is one that I almost bought yesterday that had six white sockets, but I instead bought Essence of Horror to make the helm. Moving up to a proper six-link for both my helm and body would greatly improve my general clear speed, but the changes of Hinekora have honestly alleviated that stress a bit. Explosions are way more reliable, and it is rare that I do not get at least one explosion in a pack of mobs. I know this will fall off a bit as I enter red maps, but for the moment, it seems viable.
That is one thing that I am uncertain of… how I feel about the new Atlas. In theory, it is a better system because it will easily allow you to swap between maps without much fuss. However, in practice, it does not feel anywhere near as exciting since Maps are not a generic consumable resource and are not tied to specific content. Sure, once you hit t16s and had completed your Atlas previously, maps stopped being loot and became a pure commodity. However, in early progression, it was exciting to see a new drop for a map that you had yet to run. That little dopamine hit is gone because everything is effectively the same now, and instead, you are trying to force your Atlas tree to keep upgrading map tiers instead of trying to get connecting maps to drop. Similarly to the whole Path of Exile II atlas not feeling exciting… there is something missing with this new design. I know that once I finish out my Atlas progress, I will probably enjoy it more, but while leveling it feels worse.
Similarly, I feel like I am locked into a specific Atlas Tree layout because I need to keep producing higher tiers of maps. I am only now starting to add some flavor to my Atlas, and as a result, the first 30 or so points felt like they were required. Now I am optimizing the layout a bit and splashing in Niko, and will eventually start splashing in Breach, and maybe Harvest. When I get my second tree, I will be diving hard into Einhar in an attempt to get a Black Morrigan spawn and probably pairing that with Beyond and maybe Ritual to attempt to brute force an Omen of Connections. Progression is so much faster than before, because I was doing Yellow maps really quickly… but then felt like I needed to fill out all of the points that I had missed along the way. The positive, however, is that I am going to have plenty of low-level maps to dump into the bank for folks who are slower than me in progression, since they are all now generic commodities.
I have pretty good defenses for the level of gear that I currently have. At some point, I will shift to going block-based, but right now, all of the shaper shield bases that I could craft on are stupidly expensive. The cheapest ones, pure armor bases that I have found, are 50-100 chaos. I could limp by with an evasion shield if I were absolutely desperate, but I am just not sure I am willing to make that level of compromise. It is not like I have the Harvest or Delve crafting resources yet to really finish out the shield anyway. I am in that awkward phase of being strong enough, but not really having any of the core pieces that I need to push to the next level. I thought I would also post the currency that I have found so far as a reference. The big difference that I have noticed is that I have seen so many Exalted Orbs, because at this point, I might have seen one normally and have had nine drop. More important than that is that I seem to be swimming in Chaos and Alchemy orbs, which have allowed me to craft pretty much the entire way from Act 1 to plug holes in my gearing. Being able to freely craft really has made ground loot start to matter more than it ever has before.
Really, I am just in a state where I need more time devoted to the game in order to push through this awkward phase. I am slowly starting to build out Delve, but I need to invest so much more azurite into upgrades before it starts to feel comfortable. I also need to just churn through more maps so that I can get more Atlas points… which will make mapping feel more rewarding. I am really looking forward to getting my second tree, which I might be able to hit tonight, because I believe that happens normally around 50 points. I’ve unlocked Maven witness and Exarch altars, and should unlock Eater before too much longer. I’ve also been told that I largely want to focus on completing the lower left quadrant and then work my way around clockwise, with the lower right being the hardest area. Essentially, the lower left is Eater/Exarch, the upper left is Zana, the upper right is Elder/Shaper, and the lower right is Maven.
Are you playing the Mirage league? What are your thoughts so far about the Atlas changes and the Mirage mechanic? Drop me a line below.
The post A Rough Start for Mirage appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was the launch of World of Warcraft Midnight, and given that I have been talking about WoW in general for several days, it probably seems likely that I would be talking about it this morning. However, you would be wrong, because yesterday was something way more important to me. We got the full reveal stream for Path of Exile 3.28, the Mirage League, and holy crap was it a banger of a league announcement. I highly suggest you watch the 40+ minute content reveal trailer yourself, but this morning, I am going to talk about some of the highlights and lowlights. Much like last league, this is a league where we are filling some of the gaps in lore between Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. I am fully on board with this, and I feel like this is happening in part because, apparently, Kitten Cat Noodle is how working for GGG as a Narrative Designer. For those not aware of her work, she was essentially the maintainer of the best lore resources that we had for the game, as she went act by act and league mechanic by league mechanic, explaining the lore behind them.
The league mechanic itself is pretty wild. Essentially, you will be able to enter imperfect copies of sections of the current map, and in them, every single mechanic will be duplicated in one form or another. It might not be the exact same strongbox, but there will be a strongbox in the mirage. When entering, you will be asked to choose one of three wishes that will mutate the results of the miraged area and stack with the existing map modifiers that you already have in place. Some of the ones that they showed off were the ability to have it so that all wisdom and portal scrolls dropped as some other form of currency, or that you gain the Souleater buff for the entire time you are in the miraged area. This should lead to some weird and wild juicing strategies, but since I am mostly an alch and go andy… this is just going to mean I have more mechanics on my map, which will be a welcome addition for certain.
The miraged areas can drop a currency that allows you to corrupt your gems to add an additional modifier to them. This is probably the piece of the league that I am the most excited about, and honestly, part of why I am contemplating going Righteous Fire again. I am curious what having a seven-link fire trap and a seven-link righteous fire are going to feel like. That applies to pretty much anything, though. It seems like the extra support is only going to be level one, so you are going to need to make sure you get specific supports instead of just anything viable. For example, with Righteous Fire, I will probably want Efficacy support if at all possible, because that is one of those gems that levels matter less than others. The only thing that concerns me is if the list of available supports is going to be pretty limited based on the combinations that GGG thinks should go together, not necessarily what players actually use together. I am thinking about the POE2 suggestion system, for example, where a lot of the links that you want on your build are not suggested by the UI.
The Atlas is also being entirely reworked. I was a Sentinel League baby, since that was the first time I got through the campaign and saw maps. As a result, I have never known anything other than the current Atlas, and while I know some other things existed before… I have never played with them. Essentially, the Atlas is being divided up into quadrants and then we will be able to apply influence regions within that quadrant. Each influenced map you complete increases the juiciness of the next in the cluster, all of which seems really cool. More importantly, though, they are splitting map tiers from maps on the atlas, meaning you can run any map at any tier at any moment. This feels essentially like a much better version of the POE2 waystone situation, but instead of relying on random maps on a Delve like endless atlas… we get to run whatever maps we want. The voidstones no longer elevate tiers of the map, and instead apply buffs to the map. The voidstones themselves are changing, and it seems like you will be able to get to three pretty easily, with the fourth still being the maven grind. I will likely continue to pay for a carry there because I hate having to do that many witnessed maps when I could be running altars instead.
So let’s talk about some of the bad things… nerfs. Some of my go-to builds have been Storm Brand of Indecision, Penance Brand of Dissipation, and Ice Trap of Hollowness… and all three of those ate some pretty significant nerfs. First off, Elementalist, which is the base that I would have built around, lost its increase to the Golem buff effect, meaning that every single Golem buff is just a little bit weaker now. Next up, Storm Brand and Penance Brand ate some pretty massive top-end nerfs across the board, making them way less viable to play. My most recent Ice Trapper build was a Golem Elementalist and relied on two Foulborn uniques… both of which ate significant nerfs. Double explode Berek’s Respite rings are no longer a thing… and Foulborn Tulborn can no longer roll with +4 cold gem levels… so I am losing a single gem level there. My other go-to build is Righteous Fire, and Chieftain explodes now deals less damage but procs twice as often… which Pohx thinks is going to be a net positive. Foulborn Red Dream, however, is going to provde 25% less life gain per Fire Resistance node… but still it is probably one of the best options we can slot into the tree. The total health levels of a Chieftain, though, are going to be a bit lower as a result.
There are a whole bunch of new Holy Skills going into the game, which I honestly think is probably a beta test for the Paladin class going into Path of Exile 2. I have to admit a lot of these look really interesting, and it is highly likely that I am going to roll some form of a Guardian before the end of this league and dive deep into maybe the Holy Slam skill. Kodra, right now, is eyeing some sort of Holy Damage minions build since one of the new abilities spawns temporary minions that he can then buff, and also run Herald of Purity for more holy minions. Since it ate zero nerfs, I still feel like Poison SRS is going to be strong, but unfortunately, Servant of Arakaali did not go core as I had hoped. Per Ghazzy, Minions apparently were buffed in general, so it might be a really good league for minions. If you can get level 30 Raise Spectres, they now become level 85 instead of level 81. To get there, though, you have to rely on a bunch of probably expensive corrupts.
While I am exceptionally pumped about the league in general… I am torn as to what I want to play. A couple of the things I considered starting ate nerfs, so essentially I will either go Minions or lean back on good old familiar Righteous Fire. I honestly kind of want to see what the Hinekora procs feel like and if they really do make mapping feel better. That means I am more than likely going to roll an RF Chieftain again and then branch out from there and make a Holy Slam Guardian and maybe a Poison Minions character. Sentinel of Radiance got some significant buffs, so Fire Damage Guardian SRS might be the play as well. In theory, once you get your first lab… You will be a monster and be able to face roll the rest of the campaign. That is mighty freaking tempting, especially now that I know how to build a proper block character and make them feel really damned tanky. I am sure I will be indecisive right up until the point that I roll a character late Friday evening… at which point I will probably just make a gut choice and run with something.
Are you excited about 3.28 Mirage League? What are you looking at playing? Drop me a line below.
The post Mirage Reveal Stream appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. Today is the head start for Midnight, and it begins at roughly 5 pm CST. I find it interesting that they are specifically choosing that time frame for the start of a new expansion rather than the normal weekly reset time. Since Panda Remix, I have mostly been playing Belgraven, my Dark Iron warrior, as my main because I have always loved Dwarves… and always wanted to be able to play a Dark Iron. Blackrock Depths to this day is probably my favorite dungeon in the game because it was an entire whole-assed city down there, and it felt like a living, breathing, functional place. So while I have Belghast, my original warrior main at the level cap as well… I am choosing to move forward with a new legacy as I am this fiery Dark Iron dude. That feels a bit fitting, honestly, since I am no longer the Belghast that played World of Warcraft. I am Belghast, the blogger, podcaster, and friend to thousands, thanks to the weird fucking life that I have lived. I have a lot of baggage towards World of Warcraft because when I first left the game… I was in a really bad mental state.
There is an addon that has been cycling around the “social medias” called Account Played that visualizes all of the time you have spent playing World of Warcraft and groups it by class. All that is required is installing the addon and then logging in every character on your account, and now that the Warband makes this so much easier because you can see every character from the login screen… I decided to take the plunge and try it. I knew this was going to be a scary proposition, and this does not take into account the fact that I have a second account… nor any of the time I have spent on beta realms and in World of Warcraft Classic. So when I say I have spent two years of my life playing World of Warcraft, all of those extra realms account for the missing days. No wonder this game has such a fundamental effect on me, and why I have so many deep emotions tied to it. There are people that I met through this game who have become some of my closest adult friends. World of Warcraft feels like a high school reunion whenever I play it… and it has all of the same complicated emotions that go along with that. It was a place and a time in my life that felt as fundamental as going to college, and that might seem odd to people who are not steeped in this world, but as I age, it feels less and less weird to me.
As far as the time break-out goes… I am not shocked by that in the least. Since the Warband gives me easy access to see every single character on my account. I have Eight Warriors, Eight Hunters, Five Deathknights, and Three Paladins. Warrior was the very first character that I rolled when I got into beta testing, and it was a Tauren. If I am going to play a random character in a World of Warcraft Event league… I am going to play a Warrior. What would even be wilder is if this could somehow track the amount of time played per spec, because I imagine I have spent way more time in Protection Spec as a Warrior and Paladin than any other spec. I could have absolutely called Mage as my least-played class, and Priest, I knew, would have been pretty low as well. What I was not expecting was Demon Hunter to be as low as it is, given that I mained it for an expansion. However, it also has not been out that long in the grand scheme of things compared to Warrior. I think I have as many Deathknights as I do, largely because it allowed me to rapidly create a functional character on a server, given it started at I think level 25ish? Levels do not mean much after all of the squishing that has happened.
I am looking forward to giving Midnight a spin tonight whenever it launches, and I expect to largely drop all of the quests that I have on Belgraven like a hot rock and move on with my life. I have contemplated dropping Blacksmithing as my profession and going for pure harvesting as I go into the new content. I think maybe herbalism is a good call, because there will always be demand for flower pickers in the world. Especially since I have reached a point of largely wanting to sell whatever I happen to be finding… double harvesting seems like a good call. The other option would be to mirror Belghast proper and go with Enchanting, because there is always a need for enchanting resources as well. I will probably continue to run old content on OG Bel for that precise reason because I can convert all of those purples into shards and sell them on the open market. I’ve never been one to accumulate much wealth in World of Warcraft, and I am going to see if I can change that, especially given that I have enjoyed being a vendor so much in Path of Exile.
Speaking of Path of Exile, today is also the drop of the Mirage League live stream, and with it comes a Twitch drop that works in both Path of Exile and Path of Exile II. This is where my next few weeks are going to get weird because I fully expect to be mainlining POE, and then playing Midnight, Dune, and Enshrouded as a bit of a palate cleanser. It is really hard to gauge what I am going to end up playing in this league until I have seen the trailer and, more importantly, the patch notes. Since I believe I have convinced Ace to take the plunge, I feel like I am not sure I want to go with Righteous Fire in this league as my starter. I might revisit the Golem Elementalist character and either play it with Ice Trap or try to turn it into some sort of Minion character. There is some thought that maybe some of the Phrecia classes might be going core, and if so, I will absolutely be playing Servant of Arakaali minions, because it was too damned much fun during Phrecia 2.0.
As far as a wish list for this league. I would really like to see some version of Mercenaries go core. GGG said that they would like to bring it core, but it would need some sort of rebalance to make it viable. I liked gearing out Mercenaries and really loved that aspect of Diablo III, because you could use the Merc to balance out the weaknesses of your build. I hope the Breach tree is just as powerful as it was during the last league, because it was amazing for crafting early gear. I would love to see Kingsmarch simplified, because the process of building it out still seems like a massive hassle and one that you feel obligated to do since it is effectively free currency. I would really love it if they unbound the spell choices during the acts from your class so that I did not feel required to mule a witch every now and then when I need some of those early abilities. Other than that, I would really love to see a further separation between bossing content and mapping content, and make it so that you do not have to kill Maven and Uber Elder to get your third and fourth keystone… either that or make quest versions of those encounters because it takes too freaking long to gather up the resources for those fights.
I am sure tomorrow I will be talking mostly about the Mirage League reveals. What do you want most from this new league? Are you going to be playing Midnight today? Drop me a line below.
The post Two Years of My Life appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
