Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was the full reveal stream for Path of Exile 3.27, aka the Keepers of the Flame league and it looks pretty freaking awesome. This is the first time they have revisited a previous league theme, and this time Breach is getting a significant rework. The interesting thing about this, and some of the things from the patch notes… is it seems like they really want to make league mechanics distinct and their own thing. During this league they have effectively clawed back all of the other leagues that could drop breach mechanics, and are making players focus on breach specifically if they want to farm any of these resources. Similarly they clawed by the nodes for Delve that allowed players to passively generate azurite, which makes me wonder if we are seeing more of a design ethic at play. As a Delve aficionado this means that my resonators just go way more valuable and I am on board with this, since players are no longer going to be able to skip delve and passively get them.
Breach itself looks really interesting. There are effectively three versions of Breach that are going to be available. There are scenarios where the hive has already set up shop in a zone and you have to burn down their fortifications and then fight a breach lord. There is a version where it is similar to the current form, but once you have filled a bar through killing breach enemies it locks open and spawns tougher mobs in the center. I love the whole concept of it locking in place, because the fleeting nature of breach was the one thing I didn’t really like about it. I notoriously hate being on a timer. The last version is more of a breach citadel which feels like it is going to be something akin to the way Abyssal Depths feel. Rarely there will be this bonus content that spawns in that you can tackle, and I am pretty on board with this conceptually. I mostly look forward to doing Breach in every map, because Breach rings themselves have been entirely reworked to be similar to how they are in Path of Exile II. This means that we are most likely going to be getting most of our really good resist rings from Breach this league.
The borrowed power system for this league are Grafts, which will allow you to equip two new item slots that do various things. More specifically they showed off these as triggering specific cast attacks, or granting you new spells, or even just passively casting some ability over and over while you are clearing content. These seem like they are going to be really great a low levels, but might peter out as we get into the endgame. Mostly it is going to be interesting to see what all is available here, because if you can have grafts taking on some of the conditional defensive buffs like Molten Shell, it might give you more freed from socket pressure. You start off with one graft socket, but at some point you can end up with two of them. Mostly interested in seeing how these abilities augment and change the way existing builds play.
Similarly there are new ascendancies going in with this patch called Bloodline Classes. You will unlock these by beating various bosses and they will offer you an alternate progression system. Essentially you will use your normal ascendancy points but can spec into alternate abilities. There are a lot of ascendancies that have two to three really phenomenal notables, but at least one choice that you just sort of have to wing and choose the next best thing. We have only seen three of the ten revealed, and I am interested to see how these change existing specs. This feels like the sort of thing that might stick around in some permanent form going forward, because this alternate ascendancy concept is something that they have played with a few times, and tying this to clearing bosses feels like the final evolution of the concept. I also think this might be super beneficial when combined with Forbidden Flesh and Flame jewels that allow you to get back anything you might skip from your base ascendancy to get new powers.
Another really interesting system going in is the Genesis Tree which is a crafting system that allows you to “birth” uniques, itemized rares, and currency by spending points to skew the results. At first glance this looked a lot like the Weavers Tree from Last Epoch, but instead of socketing items in the tree to get improved chance of drops, you are spending points to skew the results towards generating new items. I think it is going to be interesting to see how easy it is to craft for example a really good elemental bow with this system, since we got a bunch of interesting bow attacks to play with this league. Mostly I think I am going to use this system in an attempt to fuel alternate classes later in the league, as opposed to a progression system for my main build. It seems like it is going to take a lot of investment before this actually becomes really useful. I am however wondering if there are going to be some cracked out alternate versions of Cloak of Flames available through this system, since there is a method of generating uniques with one of the attributes replaced on them with something new and different.
Probably the thing that I am looking forward to the most however is the new trade system. I was already generating most of my league wealth through the currency exchange, and I don’t really see that changing. However I am probably going to dive deeper down the rabbit hole of trying to trade things like Einhar Beasts and other incidental things like that, which always felt too cumbersome to actually trade. For buying items… it is so much nicer just to port to a hideout and buy the item off the vendor than trying to wrangle someone to actually respond. Additionally it is a really good feeling to log in after being gone for awhile and have a stack of currency waiting on you. This tends to benefit the really hardcore you can exploit markets first, and the super casual… who get very cheap items once those markets have crashed. I don’t expect to get rich though this system, but it will be less painful to pawn my shit and in turn buy the stuff that I actually need.
At the core… we got a bunch of interesting stuff and so far it does not feel like the builds that I cared about were nerfed. Righteous Fire did not get any buffs, other than potentially making Nebulis sceptres as a mid league option if they are cheap enough. I will still be able to play good ole predictable RF in order to fund other build ideas. The biggest things that ate nerfs were the entire concept of BAMA aka Blink Arrow Mirror Arrow. It is still possible to play it, so it did not get the nuke from orbit that Hexblast Mines did last league where they effectively said “no, we don’t want you playing those as mines anymore”. Trickster ate some nerfs, but honestly the class feels still perfectly viable. There is enough interesting stuff going on like them leaning into the Physical damage archetype for wanders, that might produce some really interesting builds.
They added a new Bow ability called Conflagration which is essentially Rain of Explosive Arrows. You can get this from playing a Ranger in Act 3 by killing Gravicius, and it looks really interesting. I think this is probably going to be my second build of the league once I have stabilized and built up a base of currency through playing Righteous Fire. I think you will self cast instead of totems, and lean hard into dealing fire damage. I do wonder what it would feel like to have a double six link setup with you self casting Conflagration with maybe Mirage Archer support, and then have a totem setup with Explosive Arrow similarly to how one plays other bow builds. I don’t think you try and do the elemental equilibrium nonsense, because I am not sure what damage you deal other than fire first. You should probably want something converting fire damage to another element though so you could run Trinity support. Anyways it is worth theorycrafting something out. I would probably play this as an Elementalist maybe to get buffs from the golems… which did eat a nerf but they are still phenomenal. Alternately you could do the Champion thing, which I think might still work.
One interesting change that SirGog pointed out in his patch notes review video, is that Hardcore is getting a bit of an upgrade. Namely when you die in Hardcore Leagues, your characters will transfer over to Softcore Leagues instead of transferring to Standard. This is pretty huge for someone who might want to start out with the challenge of Hardcore, but then convert to a Softcore character when they eventually die. Additionally if a player just gets tired of the sweaty gameplay, they can chill out in softcore with the current state of their character. As he pointed out there used to be a lot of weird stuff going on in Hardcore where the Standard players would manipulate the market to get items that were valuable in Standard then take a death and transfer items between the leagues. I think this is a net positive for players in general, but I am still not really at all interested in Hardcore anything. I did my brief Hardcore Minecraft run, and it was fun… until it wasn’t. I also participated in Gauntlet and made it to Act III, but was pretty damned happy when I finally died because I was not enjoying being that nervous all the time.
I am fully amped for this new league and am contemplating taking off next Friday so that I can play with purpose as soon as it goes live. I will likely be grinding it pretty hard throughout the weekend, and seeing if I can hit maps relatively early for my pacing. This is the benefit of having no real life, is that I can go hardcore into something like this. Earlier in the week is the drop of the new Guild Wars 2 expansion, so I am hoping I can wrap the story there before league start so I can give this my undivided attention. I will probably be juggling Guild Wars 2, Destiny Rising, and Path of Exile for awhile, and may end up talking about progression in all three. The other thing that I do find tempting is minions, especially since Spectres got a massive quality of life improvement. However in truth I am probably way more interested in Bows as my second character, but depending on how long I stay engaged I might end up rolling something minion focused as well.
Are you going to be playing Keepers of the Flame? If so what are you leaning towards as your league starter? Drop me a line in the comments.
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Good Morning Folks. I don’t have any fresh screenshots because I forgot to fire up ShareX yesterday after a system reboot, and as a result none of the times when I attempted to hit Print Screen did it actually do anything. We are currently having a maintenance downtime for Destiny Rising and the patch is buffing Estela, which seems wild to me given how powerful she already is. It is also ending the current wheel of fortune event, and bringing back the Morgran’s Hunt event, which should in theory give us another free exotic. Ace and I hung out a little bit but I was feeling out of it so we didn’t do anything particularly challenging. We ran with their spouse a few times, but unfortunately realized that you can only get credit for running with a new light… once per person. Still though it is always good to run stuff with people and it always counts towards the pack challenges for running together. We still sadly have yet to find a stronghold, so I am starting to give up on those.
Apparently Destiny Rising is getting a version of Festival of the Lost, but sadly it is a really stripped down version from what I can see. There is no trick or treating in haven, like there is trick or treat in the Destiny 2 Tower. There is going to be a seven day limited sign in event, and something that starts on the 30th where you collect a resource called amber to turn in for goodies on a storefront. It seems like the paper masks from Destiny 2 are making a comeback in some form, and at a minimum there will be a hive pumpkin mask. I am all on board more events happening, and I remember remarking the other night that I wished Festival of the Lost was a thing in Destiny Rising. It was always my favorite event in Destiny 2.
What I am really pumped for however is the Path of Exile 3.27 reveal stream which is happening at 12 pm PDT today on Twitch. If you watch for 45 minutes you will get this hiveborn themed spider pet. Throughout the week they have been dropping some significant quality of life buffs. Not only does it appear as though the asynchronous trade from Path of Exile 2 is arriving in Path of Exile 1, but we are also getting free identification. Previously they had patched this in later in 3.27 but it still took Scrolls from your bank. This new version is going to cost nothing, which is great. There are a bunch of little things to like the fact that Rog in our hideouts will allow us access to the disenchanting interface which was 90% of the reason why I ever went to Kingsmarch last league. Another huge one from yesterday is that you can now itemize Beasts without having to buy the Bestiary Orbs. This is pretty huge because I usually have a tree running Einhar just to try and farm up Black Morrigans to six link gear.
The thing that came out over night is that the Assassin’s tree was reworked, and features the ruthless style node for poisoning which was actually way more effective than the normal mode. SirGog released a video going into the changes more in depth, and I highly suggest checking that out if you are interested. I do wonder if we will get any weird builds like poison tornado shot from this ascendancy rework. It is on my least favorite side of the tree, so it is unlikely that I am rolling anything with Assassin. However I am hoping we see some cool builds with it because in the current trade league, only 0.5% of players on the ladder rolled something on the Assassin ascendancy, and it has been that way for several leagues. So something needed to change, and I am hoping this breathes new life into the class for buildcrafters.
The thing that does concern me however is that we have gotten a bunch of really great quality of life improvements, and part of me thinks that this is just to brace us for the massive nerfs that are incoming. So long as Righteous Fire and Chieftain are viable, I am probably going to roll that again because I love the play style. I had a lot of fun with my Storm Brand of Indecision Golemancer, but that build was entirely being propped up by the fact that I could have a Doryani mercenary following me around and debuffing targets by -200% lighting resistance. I would love to see some other brand build thrive with whatever changes are coming. Additionally I am really interested to see what the spectre rework is going to look like, and how it impacts Summon Raging Spirits. There has been some talk of making thorns actually a viable build in Path of Exile 1, so it will be interesting to see if that happens. Whatever the changes are coming… I am here for it.
I had a really great Mercenaries league to be honest. I got a bunch of good drops, ran a ton of maps, and knocked out enough achievements to get a fancy totem pole and a set of cosmetic gear. That is really all I can hope for. I created to characters that were extremely powerful and fun to play. When this league starts next Friday, I am looking forward to doing it all over again. Expect this blog to swap from mainly being about Destiny Rising to mainly being about Path of Exile again for awhile. I still plan on doing dailies in Destiny Rising, and meeting up with Ace at least once a week to knock out some of the harder content that is fun to group together doing. I am trying to coax them back into Path of Exile, but I am not sure that will actually take.
Are you going to be playing Path of Exile 3.27? What are you looking forward to from the things that we have seen so far? Drop me a line below.
The post Festival of the Lost and Impending POE Reveals appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks. I’m still on my Destiny Rising bullshit, I think in large part because I don’t really have another game to obsess about. That is going to change a bit towards the end of this month because I will have the first part of the latest Guild Wars 2 expansion to play (28th), and then a brand new Path of Exile league following closely after that (31st). I will likely be ping ponging between those games, while still doing my dailies in Destiny Rising from that point forward. That probably means that I will let the second account that I rolled up to create the guild lapse a bit, because I won’t be mainlining the game quite so hard. I did however give them some more money and bought the Crow outfit for Helhest because I still think it is badass.
The biggest news since yesterday is that I managed to push Helhest up to gold rank which unlocked another significant boost to exotic mod drop rates. That really is the piece that I need to focus on farming right now. I have decent artifacts for most of my champions, but have next to nothing in the exotic mod department. I did manage to get a single pierce exotic mod that would work for Hellhest’s linear fusion rifle, and that was the thing that pushed me over the light cap for gold. The champion that I am probably going to work on next is either pushing Umeko up to Gold, or spending some time focusing on Ning Fei because after getting him on my second account… I’ve come to realize that I actually really like playing him. Umeko is probably my favorite pure sniper though, because of the self healing benefits. However if I need to take a precision champion somewhere… I am probably going to be playing Helhest for the broader versatility.
Speaking of the second account, over lunch I tried to run a bunch of gauntlet ops, and ran into some friction. This is the first time in the community I have been kicked from a group… seemingly because I had low light levels. It happened twice while trying the run the Gauntlet Break In part of the raid. The irony behind this is that in the teams that I managed to get into… I dusted them hard, and was one of the key players doing the mechanics. More so I ran a strike with Ning Fei and was less than half the light level of the other players… but did 71% of the damage. Please for the love of god.. do not judge players for being new lights, because sure everyone wants an easy run… but there are a ton of folks running second accounts in this game and you can never tell when that new light might be a ringer. Additionally it is just a dick move to try and be exclusionary like that.
Part of what has made my alt Ning Fei so powerful so quickly, is that I managed to get the exotic crossbow to drop as well. That account is shaping up to be pretty freaking strong with both Jolder and Ning Fei. Hopefully I can pull a Helhest while this event is still going on. It sucks that it will be a long time before it has access to Gwynn or Estela since those banners are over. I am guessing when the new content goes in early next year hinted in that trailer, that Gwynn and Estela might be joining the permanent banner at that point. I am still having a lot of fun with Destiny Rising, even though I know I am probably switching gears especially when the Path of Exile and Guild Wars 2 expansions drop.
Speaking of which we have a name for the expansion, a theme for the expansion, and a reveal date of the 23rd. Keepers of the Flame seems like maybe this is going to relate to the Acolyte of Chayula from Path of Exile II. Then the theme of the expansion feels like it is going to be Breach focused, and maybe a significant upgrade to the way that it works. The hand jump scare, specially looks like the hand shaped “wings” on the back of Xesht who serves as the boss of Breach in Path of Exile II. I think essentially, we are seeing more content that knits the storyline between the two games together a bit, and maybe serves as a gap closer between the events and organizations that appear in the 20 year gap. It That Fled, one of the Betrayal NPCs specifically talks about the Hive, so yeah…. it feels like we are getting a Breach upgrade league. It does make me wonder how sweeping of a change it is going to end up being.
Additionally there are going to be some sweeping changes coming to Diablo IV. It feels like we JUST started Season 10, and that it is way too soon to begin talking about Season 11… but apparently they are just about to start up the PTR on October 21st. Due to this they dropped some big patch notes, and Raxx also released a video talking about them. I am seeing some things that will probably be really good for the game, namely changes to how Masterworking and Tempering functions to be a bit more deterministic. They are however talking about making combat harder… which worries me because really the point of a Diablo game is getting to a place where you can blow up entire screens. The game itself is not mechanically enjoyable enough to really lean into the soulslike direction like Path of Exile II did. However that said… I am not even sure what sort of unique niche this game can carve out. It will always be a shallower version of better games like Path of Exile or Last Epoch, because it is not growing over time.
Don’t get me wrong. Diablo IV is a pretty good game. It is fun in small doses, but there just isn’t really a lot going on… and they are squandering the seasonal model to keep creating thoroughly disposable content. Each season comes with a new borrowed power system, and a new faction to grind… which gives you rewards that will all be washed away the next time a season rolls out. Last Epoch and Path of Exile 1/2 create permanent changes to the game that grow the depth and complexity each time a season/league happens. Not everything goes “core”, but enough does that it makes the game feel like it is growing and changing in interesting ways. Diablo IV more or less feels the same today as it did at the launch of its DLC… because there is nothing really new to do that did not go in with that DLC. Sure they have moved the chess pieces around on the board, by shifting this or that balance…. but at the end of the day you still have to grind the same endgame that existed a year ago when Vessel of Hatred launched. We are about to be eleven seasons deep into this franchise and have very little to show for it. I think more than anything… the game disappoints me, because it could be a better game than it is now.
The other thing that I am playing that I have not really talked much about is Bravely Default, on my Switch 2 hooked to my new television downstairs. This is a super chill activity that I often do when I am winding down for the night, and at the moment I am largely in Act 2 and grinding levels right in front of Ancheim. At some point I am going to swap up the jobs of everyone so that they can learn a second trait line. Currently I have Edea as Knight, Tiz as Monk, Agnes as White Mage, and Ringabel as Black Mage… and I am going to swap my two martial fighters and my two magic users so they are cross trained. I find grinding levels in turn based JRPGs deeply relaxing, and especially since this one has an auto mode where you can set up a set of attacks and just have them follow them over and over. I am not really sure what level I am going to call “good enough” to move forward, but right now I am mostly farming until I have enough gold to buy all of the upgrades available in town. I like overpowering content, and do not really want to have to think about it.
Anyways. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. It is supposed to be cooler again, so I will likely be working on the south half of the garage. Once I have finished with everything I will probably post before and after photos. It was a complete mess, and it is becoming less of one, every time I go out there and work.
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