Good Morning Folks! Sorry for never actually getting around to writing anything yesterday… I am going through a bit of a thing. Later today will mark us having the new Affliction League in Path of Exile for a week, and I thought I would spend some time this morning giving my thoughts as a whole on the changes. As of writing this, I am level 93 and can easily do T16 maps and am around the 100 to 150 range in delve farming content there. First I have to say I am very pleased with Boneshatter and this has been one of my most part one of my smoothest transitions from leveling to mapping and to the proper endgame. I still have some relatively scuffed gear, but I feel completely viable and while I am sure I would be stronger in a trade league environment it has been perfect cromulent for “solo-self-found” gameplay.
For those who care about such things, here are screenshots of my offensive and defensive screens inside of POE. I would dump a POB… but it seems like Boneshatter of Complex Trauma is not recognized yet and comes across as complete nonsense. This is one of the challenges of having such a major shift in the meta… all of the tools that we use to help us make better sense of the game are all lagging behind. What matters more than anything is that it feels good to play, but I just noticed this morning that I am inching precariously close to the accuracy cap health-wise, which means my free 40% damage multiplier will break if I cross that line by even one point. I might need to see if I can find a single point on the tree that gives me some more accuracy because I really do not want to go back to running precision if I can help it.
As far as the bit meta shake-up and changes in all of the active skill gems go… I think there is more positive here than negative. Sure it killed my favorite character archetype… the Righteous Fire Juggernaut, but RF still is alive and kicking in the form of an Inquisitor Energy Shield/Life Stacking build and the new weird Mana RF build that is starting to spring up on Hierophant. Neither is really what I want, but I am happy that mechanically the playstyle still lives on even though it no longer does for me. What we gained in return is a bunch of really interesting-looking abilities that I want to try building around like Volcanic Fisure of Snaking which sort of casts a line of snaking explosions on the ground that look something vaguely similar to an Abyss tunnel. While I don’t think most of the community has really had a chance to test out all of the new playstyles, I think we are going to see some extremely interesting builds emerge as a result.
The big mechanic for Affliction League is the Viridian Wildwoods which is a delve-like exploration mechanic where you venture forth into the mists while wisps burn away the taint of evil. Out in the mists are all manner of encounters including NPCs that will teach you one of three new ascendancy classes that you can gain on top of your normal one. Essentially they boil down to “Fun with Flasks”, “Fun with Corpses”, and “DIY Scion” each with their own chase-perfected versions of items that you can equip that are gained through completing Viridian Wildwoods in various tiers of content. The Wildwoods themselves are extremely enjoyable and when you exit them, they give you a Sentinel-like mechanic that randomly juices content in the map making them drop massive amounts of loot while also scaling the difficulty significantly.
There are videos showing the sheer nonsense that can happen when you combine the Wildwoods with existing 100% Delirium juicing strategies… but you don’t even need to really do that to feel the impact. The above screenshot was taken from a white map, after having completed the wildwoods and them doing a SINGLE ritual altar after having defeated an Essence Beast that was in range of it. This is not even showing the real scope of how much loot there was… because there were strings of loot popups that expanded past the borders of the map. This league has forced me to crank up the strictness of my loot filter because it produces way more loot than I could ever sort through. Legitimately it might be one of my favorite league mechanics they have come up with but also feel it might be a bit too strong to go into standard.
The three ascendancies are each strong in their own way but somewhat suffer from the “only three good picks” problem that Chieftain does currently. Since I am melee class, it felt like the natural synergy of tinctures was perfect for me to go with. Essentially due to my ascendancy, I have nearly 100% uptime on the flasks on either side of the tincture. It has also made me shift up my playstyle a bit for example I am using Warlord’s Mark instead of Vulnerability because it synergizes with Detect Evil which makes it so that my hits against marked targets cannot be blocked or suppressed. The problem is I am not exactly sure what I want for my 4th choice. I will likely go Wildwood Blessing as it gives me Barkskin a powerful 25% reservation defensive layer and I really don’t want to give up additional flask slots or remove gems from my gear to benefit from the other two options. What is awesome is I could shift things up and go for the Primalist ascendancy and have equally compelling options. I am definitely calling this system a massive win.
So that is essentially three wins in a row… so let’s talk about a massive “L”. Let’s start off first by stating… that I did not play the Ultimatum league and as a result, I had no nostalgia for it… and that I also enjoyed Metamorph quite a bit and regularly mixed it into my Altas tree. So far Ultimatum seems like a shitty replacement for Metamorph. The rewards are just not great and feel like a greatest hits collection of the shittiest loot you ever got from the corrupted strongbox atlas node with the occasional small stack of currency of catalysts. The thing is… the negative effects can be rather rippy and you can see in the above screenshot what it looks like when you complete all 10 rounds and get a stack of your loot. Nothing in that pile was really worth the time it took me to complete the encounter. I would like to see some data collected from folks who went all in on the Ultimatum atlas tree options, but with zero investment it really isn’t even worth my time.
The other big change for me personally has been the advent of “Bel League” where I gathered together with some close friends and started a private Path of Exile trade league. This has given us a mostly SSF gameplay experience with the ability to share some really good items when we find them. I would say this has been a massive win because it allowed us to bypass a lot of the day-one weirdness as we were limiting ourselves to a very small pool of players. It has also been a lot of fun as random loot we might not be interested in, could be useful for someone else out there playing a wildly different build. I’ve had a lot of fun earmarking assorted loot for my friends and also churning out raw currency for crafting. It is making me realize just how much of the “wealth” I generated last league came from the trade economy because I have rather anemic stacks of chaos and only a single divine orb thus far.
This has also caused me to shift up my Atlas strategy a bit and am actually mixing in Essence and Harvest for the raw crafting potential that each provides. I’ve also just picked up some assorted nodes to increase the drop chance of adjacent maps since I cannot buy my way out of issues when it comes to mapping. I am going to have to find all of my maps the old-fashioned way… which is running maps that connect to the empty slot and hoping for some good luck. I am more than over-sustaining the total number of maps that I am getting and have filled the guild bank with fodder for those coming up the rungs and just starting to enter the endgame. So in total, this has given me a bit different looking Atlas than I normally would have at this point but I am enjoying myself. Once I complete all of the normal maps I will be popping back through and pruning some of the branches a bit to most likely go into either a Red or Blue Altar strategy.
As far as Atlas progress goes I have slowed down considerably because the nodes that I need are a bit harder to find as drops. I need most of the unique maps and quite a few of the higher tier red maps to complete out my 115 of 115 as I currently sit at 95. I did complete my first two “easy” voidstones yesterday, and I am not sure if I will mess around too much with going beyond that. I don’t really like bossing in Path of Exile and it does not bring me the joy that it seems to for Kodra, so I am not sure if I will feel like the grind that is required to get even an attempt at Maven or Uber Elder. Were I in the trade environment I would probably just buy a carry. Honestly, I am not even sure how much I care about getting all maps dropping at t16 for the purpose of this league. It has been pretty chill to grab a yellow map and run the league mechanic on it, without it really escalating the difficulty too highly.
I think that is my rundown of Affliction League so far. I would say that overwhelmingly this is a good league. I will forever miss my Righteous Fire Juggernaut shenanigans but I am pretty happy with where I am in Boneshatter land. It isn’t anywhere near as immortal, but also kills things much faster…. without feeling like a squishy mess so I will call that a net positive. I am certain it could feel much better if I were able to upgrade some of my gear to add spell suppressions as a more reliable defensive layer. Similarly, I would probably try and slide in some “damage taken as X” mechanics to smooth things out a bit. I would also really like to have way more health but for being sub 4000, it still feels pretty great.
So essentially… I am really pleased with both the experiment of “Bel League” and the Affliction league as a whole and especially how much progress I have made in a little less than a week.
The post One Week of Affliction League appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
As we get closer to Friday, I think I have finally come to terms with the fact that I will be going Boneshatter for the league start. After sifting through many different guides and POBs, I think I honestly prefer the one that Zizaran released for 3.22. This is mostly because the gear seems pretty straightforward and craftable and it features some of the things that I knew that I wanted to lean into like double-dipping evasion for armor with Iron Reflexes. We have a Trello for all of the folks doing league starts in the private league we are running and I have highlighted some of the uniques that I am looking out for, but in theory, this should be able to be done with nothing but rares at least for a while. If this can get me down into Delve at around 150 depth I will be very happy.
Additionally, since yesterday was the official stop of the Trial of the Ancestors league, it meant that they opened up the ability to create private leagues for Affliction. So we now officially have the “Bel League Affliction” set up and running and most of the participants have joined. Ash and Kodra helped split the cost of the league three ways with us each chipping in 100 coins, with more folks willing to chip in if we decide to expand it past the initial 40 days. I figure at the 40-day mark we will either allow the characters to drop down into the trade league or if folks are still going hot and heavy, expand it out by another 30 days.
The other big thing that I did in Path of Exile last night was to get both my personal and the guild’s stash set up in standard the way I want it to look in Affliction. Essentially the state of your standard stash is what gets imported into the next league, and for the guild, I mostly wanted to get the tabs named and affinities set properly so that hopefully I don’t have to do this on the first day of the new league. Similarly, I did a bunch of rearranging things in my personal stash to go ahead and set up some of the common folders that I used in Ancestor League. As far as all of those “Remove-Only” tabs I tend to shove them into a folder named after the league they were created during. Not that I spend much time in Standard, but I figure this will make this a bit easier at a later date when I might be looking for something.
In other news, I have been playing a not-insignificant amount of Guild Wars 2 lately. I’ve talked about this a bit, but I have been popping in at least once each day to chip away at my “wizard chores” which is a humorous term that I picked up from my friend Ace regarding World of Warcraft Dailies. Given that I am actually doing them for a tower full of wizards… and the reward system is called the Wizard’s Vault… it is finally the perfect term for what I am doing. Doing various daily, weekly, and period objectives gives you a currency called Astral Acclaim which can then be used to buy all manner of things from cosmetics, to pieces of usable gear… to probably the most valuable item which amounts to a massive boost in crafting your choice of a legendary from four different options.
Astral Acclaim stacks to 1300 points, and I was nearing the cap where I could not earn anymore and needed to spend down some of it. So I opted to pick up the Legendary Weapon Starter Kit – Set 2. This gave me access to shortcutting the crafting process for Bolt, The Moot, Quip, or The Predator. Since I use Sword on a few of my characters and am looking forward to playing around with Sword on my Necromancer soonish… I opted to go with Bolt. I don’t really love the appearance of any of these weapons, but the other one I was considering for a bit was Quip just to give me access to a pistol as that seems to be a weapon archetype I also enjoy. What this box does is give you the precursor weapon, the “gift of” for the specific weapon shortcutting the need to level a profession to 400, and either a Gift of Magic or Gift of Might. This then requires you to supply your own Gift of Mastery and the Gift of Magic/Might that you did not receive, along with 77 Mystic Clovers, and 250 Globs of Ecotoplasm to craft a Gift of Fortune.
I had already been chipping away at some of the legendary weapon requirements because I have been working towards Twilight… which I stalled out on when it came to crafting the precursor. I should have just sucked it up and bought the precursor and would have likely already completed that weapon before now had I done so. This however meant that I had already done the legwork to craft a Gift of Mastery, and had been stockpiling resources that got me at least part of the way towards the missing Gift of Magic since my package gave me Might instead. I took the easy way out and spent roughly 200 gold to finish gathering the Tier 6 materials needed to craft the Gift of Fortune and then threw all of the expensive bits in the mystical commode to get my very first Legendary weapon in Guild Wars 2.
To be fair… I said “sorta” in the title because it doesn’t feel like I really put in all of the effort required to craft a Legendary weapon. I would probably feel more accomplished had I done so, but given that gathering Legendary gear is the true endgame of Guild Wars 2, it does seem a bit brilliant to give players an onramp to demystify the process a bit. According to GW2 Efficiency, the price right now to craft a Bolt from scratch would require about 1300 gold. This is greatly shortcutting that process giving you the Gift of Bolt (~200 Gold), Gift of Might (~150 Gold), and the precursor (~70 Gold) all for the low price of a month’s worth of dailies. It also encourages players to complete that Gift of Mastery on their own which requires getting full Tyria exploration completion and farming up a Gift of Battle. The more players engage with Legendary crafting, the more they become entwined into the flow of the game… and likely the longer they will stick around. While this essentially handed me 450 Gold… it did so in a way that meant I had to have poured a good deal of my time into the project to make anything of it.
The only annoyance is that I will have to craft a second legendary sword at some point for the characters that would want to dual-wield them. Now that I have broken the seal on this system, however… I sorta want to focus some time on wrapping up Twilight and getting a Greatsword for all of my alts to use as well. I see what you did there Wizard Vault…
The post Bolt Crafted Sorta appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Friends… I am essentially giving up on Righteous Fire for the time being. I was holding out some hope that maybe an alt-quality version of the gem would be released that works more or less like the previous version. Yesterday we got a dump of 39 transfigured gems, and given that Righteous Fire has caused more strife than probably any other change… if they were going to let us down easily yesterday would have been the ideal time to do it. It is somewhat sad, given that I went so far as to get my Righteous Fire Juggernaut drawn by Ammo and included in my site header. It won’t be the first time that a dead character ends up in the banner, and I still love the look of this character and will remember my three different RF Juggernauts fondly. I could migrate over to playing the Inquisitor version that Pohx has been cooking up… but honestly, I did not really like the feel of an Inquisitor. It was too squishy for my tastes.
What seems to be happening instead is that Ash and Kodra have come very close to talking me into trying out Boneshatter Juggernaut as a league starter. I like Juggernaut and being unkillable and apparently this build fits those requirements. It is unfortunately not a shield charge build… which will feel a bit bad given how much I enjoy zooming around with my shield. The only problem is… there are a lot of versions of Boneshatter requiring some wildly different levels of investment. Jorgen for example has shown off several different variants including one designed for fairly deep levels of delving that uses a shield and an axe. I am probably instead going to follow a more standard league starter two-handed axe variant and then pivot from there into some of the other build options.
I did see a version of Boneshatter that piqued my interest this morning. Smokie is a YouTuber/Streamer that I stumbled onto when I was looking at Chieftain RF builds and honestly… I dig their vibe. This version seems to pivot into Iron Reflexes and instead of going with a Glorious Plate, going with a high Evasion/Armor chest which abuses the order of operations to double the converted evasion in addition to the armor. The only challenge is… I don’t know that I want to follow this POB entirely because they value defense far less than I do. So if I am going to go down this path… I guess I need to spend the next few days trying to whittle down the various versions into a build that I actually want to follow. I always felt that Boneshatter was way too fiddly, but I guess without the Divergent version it will be less so.
In another league I might spend the next couple of days doing a test run… but instead, I am spending my evenings in Baldur’s Gate III, trying to wrap up a play-through before I dive into Affliction league. So at this point… I am legitimately considering going Boneshatter, but I could of course make an audible at the last moment and shift to Explosive Arrow Champion, or if there DOES end up being an alt-quality viable Righteous Fire going back to good ole comfy main. What is stressing me out more than ALL of this however is the fact that they have yet to open up private league signups for the new affliction league. Everything feels like it is really underprepared for this league, and I don’t know how much of it is the sheer number of changes they decided to take on, or the loss of their veteran community manager. Whatever the case… Affliction is going to be by the seat of our pants.
The post Maybe Boneshatter appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are down basically the front half of the alphabet for this show, but the remaining four of us end up recording a deceptively long episode. Path of Exile revealed the details of the Affliction League and we had an awful lot to say about that. We talk through one of the biggest meta-shakeups in the game’s history. Bel also picks a fight with Kodra apparently when he called Guild Wars 2 more of an ARPG than an MMO. It all resolves peacefully however as we realize those judgments are based on different points of reference. We close out the show with Tam talking about some of the interesting choices being forced in Star Citizen.
