Path of Exile

I didn’t get any emails but my account got flagged for suspicious activity when I checked the main PoE website today so I changed my password, just in case. I can’t believe they still don’t have 2FA.

Watched most of ZiggyD’s video. I like how they’re mixing it up, but I’m still not sold on the whole design of the league. And the one part that stood out at me was “you might even get an assassination attempt in the middle of a boss fight!”

That sounds suspiciously not fun to me. But I’m willing to wait and see how it works out.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the patch notes, stat sticks are no longer. If you are dual wielding, the skill you are using must be usable by both weapons.

I remain, as ever, in awe of GGG’s ability to focus on keeping the game fun and fresh. That’s a hell of a patch, and I muttered “aw, yes!” to myself probably a dozen times while reading through the notes. Looking forward to the new league!

This is coming out on the 7th still?

The countdown says yep.

Goddamn that’s a good change. I hate gimmicky shit like this. Next step is to nerf the global mods on weapons and make them local.

I expect they decided not to do anything like that until the results of this change were fully observed and understood. There are certainly still going to be powerful dual wield builds (e.g. 2x grelwood projectile melee builds).

Ironically, if they removed global mods I think Self Cast would get hit the hardest (probably followed by conversion builds, although a lot of those use a potential 6l weapon anyway, thinking of all the bow stuff).

You know what I’m not going to miss at all? God damn Vorici missions.

Amen, brother! And basically everything that went into redoing your hideout in every new league.

To expand on this, spells in general have no offensive stats on items at all which are local, they’re all global and always have been. Changing it would require a complete redesign of caster itemization. I doubt they’ll ever go effectively fully item-local for spell damage like Diablo 3 did.

Vorici deserves most of the flak, no question, for all of his utter bullshit. “Open this chest and don’t kill anything. . . so kite everything halfway across the map I guess? Oh and don’t waste those flask charges doing that”. “Kill the target but leave one of those paper mache cutouts alive. . . lol you do aoe damage”.

But a few other masters had some serious bullshit going on as well. The Eleron soul circle was never large enough. Or his bullshit untimed mission that just dragged forever for no reason. Or Vagan acting like he was actually going to score a target dummy kill and then ending his 31-0 loss with “that was well fought!”. Good riddance to all of it.

Stuff like inc % spell damage or % inc fire/ice/lightning damage is fine, it’s the ‘adds % of physical damage’ that’s the problem with some spells. Power creep is already through the roof, there really wasn’t any need to shove even more MORE multipliers into the game.

It doesn’t entirely solve the problem, but they are also halving the ‘% of physical damage’ mods in Friday’s patch.

I just made an attempt to get into the new league. Servers getting hammered and are down. Long queue for when they come back up.

Yeah, I got kicked out twice this afternoon and now huge queues. The login screen message claims they’re getting huge numbers, 50% more than last league.

I got as far as Act 2 with my Shattering Steel ranger. Seems low on single target damage but it’s early yet, and I might switch to Lancing Steel when I get high enough.

In other news, they still haven’t fixed the goddamn issue with Charter Internet routing, so I’m stuck using my VPN again to route around it. Pain in my ass and a hit to my ping numbers.

Molten Strike is great fun, my goodness. Closing in on end of act2. Need me a weapon refresh, though. Might just buy a 3L base and essence it here shortly.

I may be a dumbass. Iron Grip probably doesn’t work with Molten Strike the way I want it to.

Iron Grip is good on the secondary projectiles for Molten Strike, but not the initial strike. It’s good especially as you get more projectiles later on.

Cool, thanks.

Next question: How does “damage with weapons penetrates X% Elemental Resistance” interact with the MS projectiles? e.g. the Lava Lash notable.

Anyone tried the Brands yet? I’m gonna spec into Hiero and can’t decide if I want to go totems or brands, both seem like good options. Hard to beat the efficiency of arc (on totems or traps) though…

Also, the new feature that shows which active skills a support gem is compatible with is amazing.