Good Morning Folks! Yesterday we got full patch notes for the Legacy of Phrecia event and its changes and through this I finally decided my path going forward. If you want explanations in extreme detail then you can turn to SirGog who recorded a live stream that lasted over 3 hours of him going line by line through the patch notes. If you want the cliffs notes version, then I suggest the DreamCore video weighing in at 13 minutes. One of the more interesting aspects of this event is that every area is going to have random modifiers applied to it with a reasonable exclusionary list in an attempt to keep anything from hard bricking a build. I’ve said before that Phrecia in general was one of the most enjoyable events that I have ever participated in previously, and I am really looking forward at going into this event with the new trade system for snapping up and selling idols. Like I said yesterday I figured out my path going forward, but it is less a hard path and more a series of paths depending on how things end up performing. The reality is that Shadow has three different ascendancies that have three wildly different builds that interest me, so it feels like I am destined for the Dex/Int starting location.
One of the things that you end up doing after awhile, is figuring out your builds based on what you have seen working on POE.Ninja. I often find a build that is similar to the build that I want to play, and then use it as a bit of a template, and then make a lot of audibles while I am leveling based on what I actually need at that moment. None of these builds are going to be like following a Pohx or Zizaran guide. Each of them is an archetype that I have played before, or at least close to an archetype that I have played before, and that I largely understand what is needed for that sort of build. Right now my plans are to level as Servant of Arakaali Summon Raging Spirits, leaning heavily into the fact that I get Envy early and without reservation from that ascendancy and expecting it to hard carry me through the campaign. I like SRS builds and have played several different versions of them on Necromancer, Guardian, and Elementalist…. but never Shadow. The other huge benefit of this build is that you get to start playing it almost immediately. I will probably roll a Witch mule so that I can get some early quality of life like frostblink.
Essentially my plan is to mostly use this build from the previous Phrecia league as a bit of a template, or at least for understanding some of the early pathing.
Here is where we go into some of the potential pivot points. Summon Raging Spirits is a heck of a lot of fun, and is a pretty good all-arounder build, but is maybe not the fastest mapper. In the even that I really want to go hard into mapping, I might pivot into a Blind Prophet bow trap build using Scourge Arrow of Menace as the base for large amounts of damage that utilizes the “nimis at home” functionality of the ascendancy. Mathil played a version of this build that seems pretty easy to get up and running and since I already like the trap gameplay style, it will probably feel better for me than it did for him. Aero did a slightly higher budget version of this which also might work, but I do prefer the Sunblast gameplay from the Mathil build. The huge benefit of the Mathil build is it has a good POB that I could follow, but I also found this other POB that is slightly different that I might blend in elements from. Essentially its an option if I want to pivot and try something different that only really works during the Phrecia event without needing a very expensive Nimis ring.
Finally if ALL of these plans fall through… I go Surfcaster and build a version of my Ice Trap of Hollowness build that has recently become my go to for just a fun build with a lot of damage projection that freezes the entire damned screen. I have specific preferences in this department since I have now played a version of this build three different times, with different flavors. I found this build from the last Phrecia event that I could use as a template for some of the early pathing, but the gearing is all whack because I will not be affording a mageblood, and ralakesh boots are no longer as good as they were when this was built. Once the initial pathing is sorted and gets me into the right area of the tree, I will probably start following the template of my Elemenatalist Ice Trapper from Keepers of the Flame that I have been playing a lot recently. Essentially this is a fall back plan in case none of the other options work as well as I want them to.
That is kind of the cool thing about a Shadow start in Phrecia is that there are a bunch of compelling things going on with all three ascendancies. I can’t say the same for any of the other classes really, that I am anywhere near as interested in all three. I think Chaos SRS is going to work beautifully as Servant of Arakaali, and in truth I have never actually played a poison minion build in the past. I’ve always done Elemental because it felt like I was not having to stretch the build too hard to get it there. I might be instantly converted. I know without a doubt I will be able to get through red maps without any question, and if nothing else SRS is going to allow me to farm the gear needed to make any of the future pivots. I doubt I will be delving on any of these characters however, so that will be a bit sad. I will probably either focus on Einhar Beasts or doing Harbingers during this event, but we will have to see what good idols I end up getting. I know how a lot of different strategies work so I can pivot to whatever fate gives me.
Are you going to be playing the Legacy of Phrecia event under the 3.27 ruleset? What are your plans? Drop me a line below.
The post Plans for 3.27 Phrecia Event appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. Friday was the launch of the 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas/Mercenaries of Trarthus League in Path of Exile… and it was a bit rough. There was a pretty critical issue that seemed to plague folks randomly involving logging into any characters in the league. It was roughly an hour and a half before this got fixed, and it bit enough streamers that GGG essentially decided that they would be having a second league start race for anyone bit by the issue. I was impacted and essentially any time I waded through the queue I would bounce back to the login screen with the above “An unexpected disconnection occurred”. There were all manner of superstitions that sprung up about it being specific to individual regional servers, or requiring you to change your video drivers… but ultimately it was just something on the GGG side and they patched it allowing everyone to log in. There were still some pretty persistent issues on the European servers however, and Zizaran for example said that he lost 16 maps from getting disconnected in the middle and coming back in with no portals up.
The thing that likely slowed me down the most however was wanting to play with the league mechanic, and purposefully seeking Mercenaries out in every zone that I entered. I struggled with my very first merc, but once I got my hands on one of the bow mercs… they largely carried me through large chunks of content. The wiki is not terribly updated yet with mercenary types but they have quite a few of the strength based ones up now, so I can only assume they are working through the deluge of new data. I really feel like Mercenaries are a game changer for a bunch of reasons… but mostly because unlike other games with companions there is a heck of a lot of gameplay decisions involved. In Diablo III for example you just throw on specific items and they grant you permanent buffs for having one out. In this game there is an opportunity cost to hiring them, because you can’t then steal gear from them.
Most of the gear that I am wearing currently, I stole from Mercenaries. They seem to be mostly using gear with the well rolled gear tree, similar to how shipments did in Kingsmarch. This means that they are equipped with gear that makes sense for the specific type of Mercenary class that they are. A bow Mercenary for example… will probably have a pretty decent bow equipped or a Wand Mercenary a pair of well rolled wands that make sense for their elemental archetype. This also means though that as the player… we can snag pretty juicy items from the Mercenaries that we encounter in maps. Sure the big win items tend to be uniques and large stacks of currency… but I personally used them as a want to keep finding upgrades, and at this point I have not really needed to buy or craft much of anything. I am sure as I keep improving my build I will want to min-max items but for now… They have provided a really good source of gearing with everything in the above image being pulled from Mercs, including a 5-Link chest.
Right now the most impactful Mercs for me personally, seem to be the bow based ones that help with general clear speed. Right now I am running a Toxicologist which is kitted out to deal chaos damage with toxic rain and chaotic burst/shot and provides me the Malevolence aura which I do not need to run, and can focus on things that make me more tanky instead. As I keep moving up in level I will keep trying to find new copies of this same archetype which should be kitted out with pretty similar items. The Manyshots archetype is also pretty great because it is all centered around Ice damage which chills, slows, and freezes incoming packs of mobs. Thunderquiver is another pretty great Mercenary type because they are essentially the Lighting Arrow Deadeye that was so popular from a few leagues ago. Unfortunately the burning arrow Merc does not really seem to do that much damage, so while the alignment of fire damage would work since I am debuffing targets resistance due to my ascendancy… it never seem to do much and they were not providing any complimentary buffs to me.
At this point I have unlocked my fourth ascendancy because I got a goddess token down in Delve. I am slowly starting to break the mines but it is slow going. I am only about 10 maps into my Atlas because I did not actually make it to maps until yesterday evening. Between the rough start Friday, Father’s Day travel yesterday, and me just generally piddling around with the Mercenary mechanic I have been moving exceptionally slow. My hope is that tonight I will be able to make some real progress, but the changes to how Kirac missions work will probably slow that down a bit. You cannot unlock maps by running Kirac missions at lower tiers than the maps normally appear. This is going to greatly devalue putting points into Kirac on the atlas in order to speed through the 115 map unlocks.
As far as uniques go, I’ve pulled a couple of Immortal Flesh off Mercenaries, including the one that I show above. I have a Cloak of Flame that I am trying to five link, and after wasting so many fusings on it… I have a feeling I am just going to be better off waiting until I have the recipe to do it. I also picked up a Rise of the Phoenix which should be a good item until I make the switch over to a Shaper shield, and drop purity of elements. We are dealing with an inflation league so fair warning, because normally I can pick up all of these items for a few chaos… and I had to give 50c for both the Shield and the Chestpiece. Everything seems to be more expensive, because Mercenaries are a fairly reliably source of Chaos. More than that however I seem to be getting more currency drops than I would normally during a league. This could be just a side effect of the loot bonus of running with a Mercenary, or there could have been some fundamental changes in the way drops occur that were not well documented.
I’ve also unlocked Kingsmarch, but since you have to have 50,000 value to send a shipment… that means I am going to be sending WAY fewer shipments and not needing to micromanage it quite as much. The fully built out town is much nicer, and all of the hired hands seem to cap out at tier 5. So in theory it should be easier to fully kit out your town and get it up and running. I did notice that they seemed to have improved the gold drops down in Delve significantly so I am hoping that I will not be quite as starved for gold in this league. Mostly I am in that awkward phase where I just need a lot more time to progress my way through both Delve and Atlas and keep improving my character. Once I can equip the Cloak of Flames without giving up anything… it should wildly improve my survival. There are a few items that I am looking out for that would benefit equipping on the merc, but I am in no real rush.
How was your league start? Were you bit by the disconnection bug? How are you liking the Mercenaries so far? Drop me a line below and let me know.
The post A Rough Start 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.
Hey Folks! Apologies for the bit of a break that I took towards the tail end of last week. I have to admit it was a bit of a shit week, and some things happened at work that have pushed my morale into about the tenth-floor sub-basement. However, starting on Friday I mostly poured all of my attention into the launch of the Path of Exile Affliction league and all of the shenanigans that come along with that. This league is fairly unique in that it is the first time we are doing a private league giving us a semi-solo-self-found style playstyle as we either have to acquire something ourselves or it has to come from one of the other folks playing in the league. I have never really done a true SSF playstyle other than the random events that take place… I admit it is a bit weird not having access to the trade economy to fix my mistakes. I think I will be able to arrive at the same place as a normal league, but it will just take much longer.
There are a bunch of interesting things that come with playing a private league… not the least of which is the fact that we seemed to be immune to the game-crashing bugs that most of the other players experienced while going into a town. Additionally, we have our own copy of the ladder, so unfortunately I spent most of the weekend spamming the guild as I entered new zones. I was leading the “level race” until I went to bed Friday night, and then for a while, Kodra leapfrogged me until I could catch up Saturday morning. At this point, I think I have pulled far enough ahead that I will be here for a while at least until I hit level 95 and things start to slow down significantly. We also have our own copy of the trade website, which has allowed me to post a bunch of interesting things I find in dump tabs that I have priced for 1 Scroll of Wisdom instead of constantly clogging the guild bank.
As far as my league starter goes… I am largely enjoying myself. Since Affliction League essentially killed Righteous Fire, I had it suggested to me that I check out Boneshatter Juggernaut instead. That it should in theory be a similar playstyle and in large part,` I would agree. Instead of shield charging around and burning things up with my fire aura and then dropping fire traps when I encounter anything harder… the equivalent for Boneshatter is leap slamming and tapping my attack watching entire packs explode… and then dropping totems when I encounter anything that takes a bit. The biggest challenge is that I had three leagues to learn what Righteous Fire could and could not take… and I am having to rapidly reach a point of understanding what I can take and what I need to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid.
I did the thing that I often do this morning and recorded some gameplay of doing a Tier 8 map. You can see what I call the “Spiral of Death” take place as I stand in Voll’s slam and then can’t quite recover. In theory, I should leap out to safety to allow my recovery to solve my problems. My instinct from Righteous Fire is to just pop a potion and muscle through it, but Boneshatter seems to need some “quiet time” as I bounce away from the fight, let my life stabilize, and then leap back into the battle. It might even be a scenario where stopping attacking for a second might have given me enough time to bounce back from the slam. Essentially I am in this phase of trying to learn how to pilot this new ship when I had multiple hundreds of hours of experience with the previous one.
I have some fairly solid defensive layers, but I am using the crutch that is Purity of Elements to resolve my resistances. That will change as I craft better gear, but I need either an influx of essences, harvest juice, fossils, or just sheer dumb luck to pull myself out of that hole. Where I am currently is that I have a good deal of armor, decent enough regen especially when combined with my boneshatter recovery, and fairly decent damage. What I need the most at the moment however is a better axe, and I have been pouring yellow harvest juice into trying to craft one. At some point, I will have gathered up enough fossils to hopefully be able to at least attempt a 600 Physical DPS axe. Again this would be a trivial problem to solve if I had access to the trade economy, but instead, I have to sort this all out myself. As such I am currently running nothing higher than a four-link.
This is where I am progress-wise for three days. Essentially by the time we were recording the podcast on Saturday night, I was progressing my Atlas and mapping at the end of day two. On day three I focused on knocking out more maps and starting to progress my Delve seriously. While I ran out of sulphite, I was sitting just shy of depth 100, which is my target farming depth for the time being. My goal is to live in that 100-150 range and start hunting out Delve cities. Most of my atlas strategy has been focused on getting delve online, but now I am pivoting a bit into Harvest for crafting gear once I get some better bases. Essence spamming would also be an option, but since I am not playing a “map blaster” I can’t say that Essences are the best option. I mean I can take down Essence monsters extremely well, but I am not sure I can run enough maps efficiently to make it worth my time.
All told I am pretty damned happy with where I am gear-wise and progress-wise for the beginning of the fourth day. Unfortunately, I seem to be ignoring the league mechanic. Doing it just seems to make the maps way less predictable. For farming purposes, I have been going back to the campaign and running Desecrated Chamber. Normally league mechanics stop spawning when a zone is 10 levels under your current level, but because of the way that the forest works… the portal still exists even when a zone stops rewarding experience. So you can pop over into a campaign mission, run the forest, and then reset the zone giving you a new forest. I plan on doing this a bit today in order to complete my “kill all the treants” mission and get the next set of ascendancy points.
Since I am melee and hit-based… I ended up going with Warden of the Magi and Tinctures. While I had some fun shouting at corpses for loot… having a utility flask that I can change up seems to be more useful. I cannot reasonably work Culling Strike into my build as it stands, but having access to it at the cost of giving up a flask seems like something I can live with. I am not sure what all can roll on the Oakbranch Tincture but I figure I will keep perfecting this one as I go. For now, the one I have works pretty well for my purposes. I might switch over to Wildwood Primalist at some point if I get enough charms to make something interesting happen. The least interesting of the three seems to be Warlock of the Mists but that is probably because I am not using spectres currently.
All in all, though I am pretty damned happy with where I am sitting currently in a semi-SSF environment. I am hoping some other options will begin to come online as more folks get up to better content. For the moment Kodra and I are leading the Vanguard which means we are not really getting to benefit from having access to other players finding interesting things. The highlight of my weekend though was getting a six-link bow that then allowed Ace to build into that for their character or finding the weapon that Kodra was looking for that became build-defining. At some point, I hope to find a better axe and maybe a viable six-link chest. If not… I still seem to be shockingly viable for nothing more than four-links.
Are you playing Affliction league? How has your league start gone? Drop me a line below.
The post Fourth Day of Affliction appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
