Good Morning Folks. The other day I talked about the build that I had been cooking up centered around the new unique staff called The Broken Elegy. When I wrote about it, I was still leveling, but having a great time doing so. Ultimately I went with Guardian, not necessarily because I thought it would be the best option, but more because it would be the most enjoyable leveling path. Essentially, once you get your Sentinel of Radiance online, aka Butter Boy, you can face roll the campaign from that point forward, and you can pick him up in the first lab. It ends up playing like a slightly delayed version of Righteous Fire, because you charge into a pack of mobs, convocate him into the middle, and his burning aura pretty much obliterates everything instantly. Technically, The Broken Elegy would probably have been better served by a Necromancer, and most definitely would be better served by the Servant of Arakaali. However, Guardian puts me in the right corner of the tree for Staff defenses, and also has its own benefits, so I rolled with it.
As is the tradition when I do something dumb… I record one of my dumb little videos. I am not doing anything terribly challenging, but essentially, as soon as I exited the campaign, I rolled straight into t16 maps. Technically, I ran a single T10 just to see how it was going, and after stomping all over that, I ripped the band-aid off. The biggest challenge that I think I am running into is simply having too many minions for any of them to be doing effective damage. You already run into this problem with just Raging Spirits sometimes, but in total, I have 43 minions… and that is before I take into account the Greater Skeletal Shrine belt that I am running. Look… I completely understand that this is a dumb idea, but I am having fun… and quite frankly, that is the most important part of any build. I have noticed that things die faster if I stop summoning Raging Spirits, but when it comes to clearing maps… having so many aggressive minions means that they just sort of spread out and lay waste to everything.
I’ve been using them to farm Legion, because I have been trying to get a bunch of the new honoured incubators so I can stockpile some of the imbuement coins. This is not really working out as I had hoped, but I am still enjoying running something like six legions per map. I have a ton of emblems, and those will ultimately come in handy when it comes to doing some of the league challenges. Maps take way too long right now with the Mirages for me to efficiently do any sort of targeted farm, because I cannot seem to bring myself to ignore mechanics. Effectively, I am sort of this worse version of SSF, where I play in trade… but still feel like I want to farm almost everything myself. I would be so much better off if I just focused on a single mechanic and then used it to make currency, which I then spent on other things. However, that does not bring me joy. Sure, I like being able to buy the items that I cannot be bothered to farm, but if I can farm it… I want to farm it.
Speaking of buying things… I am using name-brand corpses for the very first time. In the past, these have always been super freaking expensive, but for some reason this league, they are all cheap. Perfect Turtles are only around 20 Chaos right now, and in theory, I should probably buy a bunch of them to stockpile for when I eventually kill one of these and cannot get it back somehow. Perfect Forest Warriors were less than 10c, and I am running a 5c Perfect Hulking Miscreation because apparently Raging Spirits count as constructs, and it buffs those nicely. Running the Forest Warrior provides Onslaught, which is going to allow me to rework my tree a bit at some point… because I no longer need the node that gives my minions Onslaught. I might end up rolling a cluster jewel and switching over to that, because there is an entire upper branch of my tree layout that is progressively becoming less optimal.
Speaking of less than optimal, I did zero planning for this build and sort of just winged it as I went. Mostly, I typed “Minion|Life|Block” into the search bar and routed around as many of those nodes as I could make happen easily. At the suggestion of Kodra, I just now pathed down to pick up Divine Shield, and that seems to help out considerably and makes my 2000 energy shield a bit more useful. With the Guardian Turtle, I have around 9000 armor, and around 4500 without it, so I am still going to never run into problems with regenerating my entire energy shield if needed. I realistically probably have more than enough survival… but I have considered doing the terribly dumb thing of going six life masteries for the 10% life boost. I feel like I have plenty of damage for what I want to do with this build. I could stack more minion damage, and probably should… but I am not as motivated by “number goes up” as I am doing dumb things that I find enjoyable.
I have zero doubt that proper minion players will be turning their noses up at what I am doing, and that is okay. I do think at some point, someone terribly more clever than I am… will build around The Broken Elegy and make it really strong. It seems like a crazy item, especially if you could figure out a way to make the minions that it spawns a little more reliable. I believe they are inheriting everything that I am currently doing to buff my Raging Spirits, which should mean they are pretty potent already. I should probably actually drop the whole imbue thing that I am trying and just go with a 21/20 Raging Spirits gem instead. I am not that certain that Imbues have turned out to be as much power as I was hoping they would be. They are also really freaking painful to try and land something useful on, because I am building this graveyard of bricked gems that makes me more than a little sad inside. I know I will be taking a break this week to play the new Last Epoch season, but at some point, once that has run its cours,e I will be returning to grind out more challenges here and having fun doing so.
The post Way Too Many Minions 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.
If you have read this blog for any length of time, you probably are expecting this post. I talked yesterday about wanting to try out Absolution… so last night I started a brand new Witch and got it through the start of Act 8. I decided to go with a Necromancer in spite of Guardian actually representing over 70% of the folks running Absolution or Vaal Absolution in this league. Guardian is really powerful as evidenced by how easy of a time I had with no real gear during the Toucan League. However, I opted to go back to the minion-loving roots of a Witch, largely because at this point I had already leveled 2 Guardians and an Inquisitor in this league and was a bit tired of the old man in a diaper that is the Templar. I can’t necessarily call mine a Necromancer because in spite of being over level 60… I’ve yet to take the time to do my first Labyrinth and actually ascend.
While technically this is a minion build… it feels absolutely nothing like MOST minion builds. Essentially you run around nuking things with a giant orbital strike of lightning damage and that then spawns up to three Sentinels of Absolution that also cast the same big lightning strike attack. More specifically I am using the Vaal version and thanks to Trade League I picked up a dirt cheap level 1 version with 20% quality on it so when finished I will have a 20/20 Vaal gem which is a bit of a challenge to actually get. Added to the mix are Spectres and Zombies with Feeding Frenzy support and Herald of Purity summoning up four Sentinels of Purity. Because everything seems to lag behind, I end up casting Convocation quite a bit to keep them grouped up on whatever target I want them to attack. The mix of me casting a giant nuke, and then having a swarm of minions… feels supremely odd and I am not entirely certain what I think about it yet.
I am following a guide, but at the moment it feels like my tree is spread out all over the freaking place. At some point, I am certain I will apply a measure of my own personal touch to this build, in order to make it a bit more tanky. This is going for Eldritch Battery, which means I am entirely losing my Energy Shield as a defensive layer. I should then in theory probably stack armor bases for various slots, but given that I mostly need blue sockets… that becomes its own nightmare to get colored correctly. What worries me at the moment is just how low my health currently is. Part of this is because I have been leveling with a 5-Link Thousand Ribbons and a handful of other uniques that made the early game a breeze… but have largely outlived their usefulness.
Almost 50% of players running Absolution are running a specific unique chest piece called Doryani’s Prototype, and I am really not sure if I want to go down that rabbit hole. Essentially the tech behind this body armor relies on you getting your Lightning Resistance as low as possible… for the best builds out there it can be as low as -200%. Then when you attack mobs they have the same lightning resistance as you do… allowing your lightning attacks to do outrageous damage against them. In order to keep from dying, you need to stack as much armor as humanly possible because the chest piece also allows you to soak lightning damage from hits as armor, but this makes you extremely vulnerable to any lightning damage over time attacks. I just do not feel like I want to play this game nonsense game of trying to juggle resistances and make sure one is bottomed out, while the others are high enough to matter.
At least for the time being… I am not going to do this nonsense. Instead, I am going to utilize the fact that we have a truly ridiculous number of six-links in the guild bank. I hand-picked a crusader chainmail that I was able to get 5 Blue/1 Red on pretty quickly through spamming chromatics. I am going to buck the popular advice and just build some measure of normal guild for the moment. I don’t really want to spend much currency on this build especially considering I am not even sure I am going to like how it feels. The only thing so far that I have bought is a Replica Dragonfang with Absolution on it which itself was less than 100 Chaos, so something I can make back rapidly just by selling off some delve stuff. Tonight I am certain that I will wrap up the campaign and start poking my head into early maps to see how this all feels.
I will probably try and knock out the first two Labyrinths over lunch so I can officially call myself a Necromancer. Probably the biggest expenditure I will have is buying a bunch of botched 20/20 corrupted gems in order to jump-start myself to a baseline of power rather than waiting to level them all.
The post Lightning Struck Friends appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
