Good Morning, Folks. For the last few weeks, my default gaming activity has been playing Diablo 4. More specifically, playing a Thorns Paladin at first and then switching it over to a Hammer/Arbiter Paladin to push a little further. I felt I hit a wall with Thorns around Torment IV, and that was what prompted me to the build that Raxx had been promoting to see if I could make it further. I could a bit, and now can pretty comfortably do Torment VIII Content, but tend to run Torment VII because it goes much faster. The big problem is that this build was supposed to be something that I could cakewalk Torment XII with, and so far, it has not been that. My time to kill, especially in the pit, is abysmal. I’ve technically unlocked Torment IX, but just barely by the skin of my teeth. I think I am just getting tired of pushing the build, and in theory, need to scrutinize and probably recraft every single piece of my gear to get further, since I cannot seem to get any Mythic Uniques to actually drop.
What I had been grinding so damned hard for was an Ancestral copy of Judgment of Auriel. I finally got that to drop off Lord Zir, and the difference that it made in the build was negligible. Maybe Torment VIII got a bit more comfortable, but nothing really to write home about. I thought maybe there was some hidden multiplier that I was not getting for not having a full set of Ancestral gear equipped, but that does not appear to be the case. The problem is that Ancestral drops still feel extremely rare events, especially from uniques at Torment VIII. It took me probably 60 kills before Lord Zir finally dropped the item I was after, and it took me farming the mercenary favors to get those boss summoning keys. It feels like I have a much harder time getting the keys for the low-level bosses than I do the grand keys for the bigger bosses. Something is not right here, and I hope they sort it out in the coming seasons.
I’ve also had zero luck with Echo of Lilith. I can get her down to around 20% life and then something oneshots me, so I guess I need to spend some time studying videos on this fight. I honestly hate shit like that, when bosses have oneshot mechanics. ARPGs for me are about gaining enough stats to steamroll over the top of content. This is why I hate Maven so much in Path of Exile, because there is no way I can cheese that fight. Bossing in general is not my jam, because I do not want to barely win. I want to crush the monsters and take away tasty loot as a result. At least in Path of Exile, I have done almost all of the fights; I just dislike them. I know Ace, and I have taken down Lilith as a team before, so I just need to figure out where I need to stand during that oneshot phase because it wasn’t really clearly telegraphed. It is also weird that I have to specifically do it on Torment VIII since many of the previous ranks required things way lower than that, and it feels like this one jumped several torment levels at once.
I had mostly been focused on grinding out tokens for the armor sets, because I have completed all of the other reliquaries, but not this one. I’ve gotten the shield and three of the armor sets, but I just do not know if I have it in me to keep grinding. These tokens come pretty slowly through doing content, and I am just not sure I have it in me to grind it out. The last one I picked up was for Spiritborn, which I did mostly because I lack a lot of armor sets that I really like for that class. I have plenty of armor sets for Barbarian, so that will probably be my last if I manage to grind these out. I did manage to grind out the limited-time World of Warcraft reliquary, but now there is nothing left to do with the tokens that I am generating through gameplay. I spent a bit of time playing Path of Exile, and doing maps… and I have to be honest, the moment-to-moment gameplay in that game just feels better. In truth, Diablo IV is at the bottom of the ARPG pecking list for me. If there is a Path of Exile, Last Epoch, or Path of Exile II league in that pecking order… I will choose those before playing Diablo IV. I might even choose fresh Titan Quest II content over Diablo IV, and that is not to say that D4 is a bad game… just that the others are giving me more of what I want.
There is also the problem that we are now roughly eleven days out from a new Path of Exile II league. Return of the Ancients looks wild, and I am here for everything that it is doing. I just have to figure out a class that will be both fun to level and powerful in the endgame. Since I am very much interested in Raven Righteous Fire, I am contemplating going Lich or Infernalist and a traditional Summon Raging Spirits start. I like spamming temporary minions because it feels like I am doing something other than just dragging around an army. I also know the leveling for this sort of build is pretty chill, and I like chill leveling. I am really curious how fast I can get through the campaign with the most recent round of updates to make signposting of content a bit easier to find. More than anything, though, I am somewhat excited to see the updated versions of various leagues and am wondering how much of that will trickle down into Path of Exile, the game I care about the most.
Anyways. I think I am out of things to talk about for this Monday morning. I hope you all have a wonderful week, and as always, feel free to drop me a line if you want to contest anything that I have said.
The post Winding Down Diablo appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends. The Settlers of Kalguur league is finally over… and I have never been so happy to see a league go. Don’t get me wrong… I loved the Settlers league, but also did not expect it to last over 300 days. It also had some really hype league events like the Phrecia league, which honestly should have been its own thing. During this one league I competed in two different Pohx leagues, a Sir Gog league, and the Phrecia league… so when I just attempted to wrangle my stash it was pure madness. I did the traditional thing of just shoving all of those remove-only tabs into a tab labelled “Settlers” but even that felt insufficient given that there were four different event leagues that got lumped into that same banner. I’ve been out of Path of Exile just long enough… to now be feening to get back into it and tackle a brand new league when it launches on Friday.
The new league looks amazing, and while it is very much focused on additional pinnacle content… there is more than enough other things going on that someone like myself who is traditionally not bossing motivated can enjoy. I will miss Atlas Memories a bit, but honestly… unless I needed a specific resource I never ran them. My favorite one was the one that made Alva spawn adds in the map instead of forcing you to dip into her incursions. I’ve always wished that was an Atlas keystone, that then just caused Alva to drop random temples. Traditionally I skip that mechanic entirely in most leagues because I hate the time pressure aspect of having to dip into the temples. What we are getting instead looks even more interesting and hopefully the new gear that comes with it will be worth the effort. Let’s not get it twisted however… I am more than likely going to be running Delve like normal, and the fact that we no longer need Betrayal to get crafts means I can start with a comfortable crafting Niko and Harvest Atlas.
There has been enough of a shake up in the meta that I am interested in looking at some other builds. I am doubtful I will actually league start anything but my beloved Righteous Fire… but I do feel like this is probably going to be a league where I have a bunch of alternate builds. The first one that seems interesting is Explosive Trap Trickster. During the first Pohx League I started an Ice Trap of Hollowness Trickster and had a heck of a lot of fun with it. In truth it was a damned good build and while the Trickster ate some minor nerfs it should be just fine. It did however make me interested in exploring some of the other Traps on Trickster concepts and Explosive Trap is already fun on its own. The original Ice Trap Trickster build was from Aero and if you are interested in it I suggest checking out his video. This is where I ended up with my POB on that build if you are curious.
Wintertide Brand got some buffs with the patch notes, and it has once again made me consider playing something around that skill. I love the Brand gameplay and Wintertide is probably my favorite of all of the available options. Storm Brand of Indecision is pretty fun, but there is nothing more comfortable than the chill and freeze lifestyle. This morning I saw the above build concept float across my feed on bluesky, and it seems like a reasonable option for a Wintertide start. The concept here is to use the new major buffs to golems and Elementalist node to pick up some survival and damage output for cold dot. I am not really sure if this is the sort of thing that I would want to league start, but I can absolutely see myself trying to make something around Wintertide brand work during this league as an alt build.
Champion got some massive buffs and I have been trying to sort out what I would want to play with it. There are a few options floating about, but this one from Woolie is basically just a true Cyclone build… not a cast on channeling Cyclone. I’ve never actually played Cyclone in any form, and I have always loved spin to win builds in other games… specifically Whirlwind in Diablo III and Warpath in Last Epoch. On some level I feel like I might owe it to myself to go down this rabbit hole and see what it feels like. Champion is already an ascendancy that I have built many different characters on over the years and they switched it away from generic damage to focused more on banners and melee hit damage… so with Lightning Strike eating a massive nerf you have to figure out a better vehicle for that. This is probably the closest thing to getting me to start something other than Righteous Fire. The only thing keeping me from doing it… is this is not a resolute technique build and I hate fucking around with accuracy bullshit.
Another thing that I am really interested in is some of the reworks for Saboteur. Essentially they can now get an ascendancy node that is effectively a weakened version of the Nimis Ring. Shrapnel Specialist causes projectiles to have a 50% chance to return to you, and projectiles to be fired in random directions. So essentially you need a mine or a trap that throws out projectiles… but that you would not care about them firing in unpredictable directions. From the Trap side of things I am thinking Lightning Trap might work well. From the mine side I am thinking either Rolling Magma converted to a mine as seen above or potentially Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage. This is a little too fringe for me to ever consider starting it, because quite honestly… I want to be able to look at POE.Ninja and see how well this is working and what sort of concoctions folks end up doing with it. It is still an interesting concept that I can’t seem to dislodge from my brain. The biggest problem that I have is that I have never really liked the Mines play style.
Being perfectly honest with myself… I am 99.9% likely to just start Righteous Fire again because it is comfortable and reliable. I’ve done it in trade and in an SSF environment and can pretty much get up and running without any issues and be capable of doing around 200 depth in Delve quickly. The main thing that I will be doing differently is that I hate muling a witch to get Rolling Magma as Pohx suggests, and am just going to do slams until I can turn on Righteous Fire in Act 2. During the SirGog Gauntlet league I went with a strength stacking slam character and my early tree was almost indistinguishable from the general RF tree up until the point you can take it. It felt way more comfortable to slam and shield charge my way around the zones than trying to get perfect bounces from rolling magma and fire wall. So instead I will do Ground Slam to Sunder and then use Crushing Fist with retaliation procs for single target damage. I will have to be on the look out for the correct colors on bases for the swap to Righteous Fire in early Act 2, but that should not really be much of an issue. My first pick ups will be an Cloak of Flame and Immortal Flesh and then hopefully I get some good fire resistance drops to see me cruising into maps and delve depths.
I am soooo ready to be back in Path of Exile and excited for a new league. I’ve missed this and I am pretty amped if Grinding Gear Games can really hit the target schedule that they have planned. Essentially every four months a Path of Exile league and the between months… will be a new Path of Exile II league. Hopefully given enough time POE2 will turn into something that I actually enjoy. Right now it just isn’t there for me, but given enough time cooking there might be an enjoyable game there. I think the challenge for me is that I am a mapper and delver… and just do not care about boss fights. POE2 is a game for people who care about boss fights. I like playing near immortal characters that can steam roll content and collect the shiny loot. I will always optimize the difficulty out of whatever games I play… and I am hoping that at some point there is a path for me in that game. For now though… I am looking forward to getting back into Path of Exile and grinding.
I have a whole slew of audiobooks lined up to listen to while I grind. Are you going to be checking out Path of Exile 3.26? If so what are you looking towards playing? Drop me a line below. Kodra if you are reading this… I really think you need to go down the projectile mines path with Saboteur so I can see how that works.
The post 3.26 Build Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Â Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Nephsys and Tamrielo
This week we went a little off course from our normal show.  In truth we are all largely playing the same games we have been playing for the last few weeks.  Instead Ashgar proposed a topic where we discussed what makes a grind work in a game.  This eventually devolves into a discussion of mostly Monster Hunter World because it seems to have a really great grind mechanic.  We also discuss traditional JRPG grinding, MMO grinding, and a bit about why the Destiny 2 grind isn’t really working out.  Tune in and grind your faces off!
Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Tam talk games that are particularly good at grinding… and those that aren’t at all
Tonight we welcome back Grace to the fold as she has returned safely from her trips out into the hinterlands. Â Additionally it was a little close but we actually got Tam this week who finished his Infinity Tournament in crazy record time. Â As a result we talk a little bit about the new Infinity Tournament scoring system and his experiences. Â Then we delve into a length discussion about crafting systems…. but more importantly the way Warframe seems to make a mad amount of grinding seem completely reasonable. Â Then I finally manage to understand why people are so enthralled with Dragon Age Inquisition…. because I absolutely hit my click point. Â We also get into a long discussion about when grinds feel bad, talking about Limited Time Chase items in MMOs that stop dropping after a period of time. Â Finally we get into a discussion about Sleeping Dogs as Tam revisits it on his backlog list.
