Just killed Kitava with my Dominating Blow character (at level 68). It wasn’t too difficult but I learned I really should have had a burning flask equipped. Leveling to endgame was a breeze. Doing the third labyrinth before the Kitava fight would have helped too I’m sure.
I transitioned to claw and shield in the mid 60s and I am using one of those claws that leeches both Mana and Health; even with that and a low-ish level Clarity (level 5?) I still have to quaff a mana potion every now and then.
I also started using the offensive warcry In the 60s but in retrospect maybe I should switch back to the defensive one; the times I get in trouble it’s when I leap into a pack and get beaten down before my guys catch up. I also need to equip Convocation, which would help avoid those issues.
I used zombies all the way to the end on a three link, with minion damage and speed. I guess I need to bite the bullet and drop them, which would free up three sockets. Plus I have desecrate slotted for the rare times I need to get my specters back. I guess I could just hold it around in my inventory. I have no idea how much damage the zombies do but I’m going to feel naked at the start of a zone when all I’ve got is specters, skitterbots, and the one Herald.
Overall it’s a very fun build and I has been a lot of fun. Feels very powerful. I think my priorities now are going to be shoring up my defense and Getting better resistances. I helped Alira for the bandit quest and I want to spec out of that soon, so my resistances will need much beefing up. One of the downsides of this build is that it was so smooth to level that my gear has not needed much updating so It’s pretty out of date.
Not enjoying the planting stuff too much. I saw someone on Reddit posted a picture of how they set up their fields with the colors organized so that you can grow the higher level seats. It looks way too much like work! Also, why can’t we pick up seeds automatically when they drop? I loved how they did that for harbinger.
That burning flask is something I always forget. I got lucky this time and was able to avoid the fire because he didn’t cover the entire bottom-left of the screen.
I’ve had a similar experience with the Dominating Blow build I’m using, smooth sailing into the epilogue. I did die once in the third Lab because of dumb, but that’s not the build’s fault! Using Smite until the 50s was important, though. If I’d switched to Dominating blow right at 28, the next 20-ish levels would have been tough as I didn’t have the mana or proper gem links to use it right.
I wasn’t happy with the lack of permanent minions, either. Especially with this league being focused on those garden harvests, when you’re expected to fight a bunch of stuff spawning all at once on you. Walk in there with just a golem and a holy relic? No thanks.
So I’ve added zombies and an animated guardian to the build, dropping a couple of support gems. More total minions, less damage on the sentinels. Slightly less overall DPS, probably, although I’d have to crunch numbers in PoB to be sure. It won’t matter until red maps anyway, as min-maxing the DPS isn’t a big concern until then. The important thing is that it’s a whole lot easier to kill those first few mobs to get the sentinel train rolling.
Edit: I’ve also dropped the Rallying Cry. The extra damage is based on your weapon, which in my case is terrible since I only care about the attack speed. Better uses for that slot.
That’s one thing I’ve had no issues with this time around. That new Anointed Flesh node helps a lot, as does the Radiant Crusade ascendancy.
I’ve only really screwed with the level one and two seeds so far. It’s pretty easy to set up one of each field and put out a dispenser for each. I’m sure it’ll get more complicated with the higher level seeds, but I’ve only had a couple drop so far and I’m in no rush to figure it out. The seed pickup doesn’t bother me, since they drop in packets of 2-5 that you pick up with one click. I’d be much less happy it I was picking up 15 individual seeds, but 3-4 packets is no problem.
The lack of “dump all shit into relevant stash tab where applicable” functionality is going to be a huge pain point for me going forward, unfortunately.
I saw the latest Internet outrage over these tabs being added but I didn’t look into it because it sounded like a boring thing. However, I would definitely pay for a “dump stuff into the tab it’s supposed to go into “ functionality. Heck, they could sell that with a quad and say anything that doesn’t have a specialized tab just gets thrown here.
Well, the only way they make money is by selling cosmetics and stash tabs, so I’m fine with them coming up with whatever wonky stuff they see fit, as long as the game is still playable (albeit fairly casually) without that stuff. I mean, yeah, I have purchased stash tabs because that currency tab alone is worth the price of admission.
I can’t get upset at whatever they offer for sale because the game has provided so much content and gaming for me for basically free. They have generated a ton of goodwill from me.
Speaking of which… I am not sure why but I got a bit tired of my Dominating Blow build (nothing wrong with it that I can think of, I just wanted a change of pace). I’ve been trying a Spellslinger build (arc/ball lightning/wave of conviction, transitions into desecrate dead/volatile dead at some point) and Spellslinger is crazy powerful. It feels overpowered, which means is a crapload of fun to level using it! It’s a Necromancer and the build is the one that Zizaran has talked about if anyone wants to know the specifics.
Last night I started a Shadow/Trickster and leveled to 28-ish using Caustic Arrow/Toxic Rain (which is when you switch over to Spellslinger). That build switched to Essence Drain/Contagion and that one felt crazy strong too. But I felt the Zizaran build had a bit more direction to it and I always feel like I need a bit of hand-holding in my builds!
I resemble this remark! Same thing for me, so I created a ice trapper. Having played him for a few days, I’m now alternating back and forth between the two. Some leagues I’ll feel like I can do the same thing the whole time, but for most I need a couple of different characters to feel like I’m doing different things.
I’ve been playing a plain vanilla starter build, Enki’s Arc Witch, and liking it. I’m about to go into the Belly of the Beast or whatever after Malachai, and so far it’s been a pretty solid build. As the notes for it say, it isn’t the best boss build, as it cannot exactly face tank, but with some adept flask and ability use, and some luck, it works ok most of the time. Of course, I fumble the controls half the time, but eh.
I generally agree with you. As long as they continue to improve things and do improve the UI for it, I’m fine with these MTXs. I much prefer this over the random lootboxes.
One other thing that I’m looking forward to is that they are hoping to do a ‘loot reduction’ patch sometime this year (if COVID-19 didn’t delay it too much.) The intention is to have less loot drop overall, but for it to be ‘more impactful’ on average.
I don’t think we’ll get loot 2.0 all at once (they’ve called it that before), or necessarily before 2.0 proper. As Chris talked about before this league, it’s the first time in a million years that there would be a noticable decrease in rare drops in any part of the game (mitigated in part by the drops from harvest packs, but It’s not clear to me what the overall numbers were), and they feel players liked it more when they bumped it a little bit with a new league mechanic.
I see it linked to, in part, significant crafting overhaul of which Harvest is a first pass at an opening move in that direction. And they do like to relesae and start working on mechanics tweaks and sort of iterating on them.
I wish they’d just cull all the league content that accumulated over the last two years. I skipped a few leagues and I honestly don’t feel like looking up what’s worthwhile to keep and what isn’t. I want to focus on one league content at the time, not 10. This time was exactly the same as the last 3 leagues for me, I hit maps, ran a few, came across so many new mechanics, lost interest immediately, uninstalled.
Mentsl overload is definitely a thing when you come back to playing this after a short break. But nothing says you have to take part in the new mechanics in a map. You can just run the map and kill the boss and be done with it. Although I guess if you have not played since they revamped the atlas that would be a thing.
I had some weirdness going on this morning for me. I tried doing a couple of delves and it was very they didn’t work at all… I was going down the main path, vertical one in the center of the screen. I went to the next spot, but no mobs spawned and there was no interaction available when the cart came to a stop. So it’s just sitting there and I can’t go any further and nothings happened. Had to relog to get out. I tried it twice and the same thing happened both times. I then tried a side path and everything seemed OK. So I’m not sure if it’s a momentary glitch or what.
My biggest issue with this game is the clicking. I have pretty bad carpal tunnel (still trying to get the surgery and stuff arranged) and playing this game fatigues me to no end. There are so many clicks that have to happen, and usually with split-second timing. The lack of the simple ability to, say, map the space bar to “move” like you can in Diablo is by itself one of the main culprits, but the way the overall control scheme is clunky and pales in comparison to the best ARPG schemes, IMO. The game is stellar in many ways, but there are a lot of QOL fixes I’d love to see.
You can remap pretty much any key so I don’t know why you couldn’t map a move function to space bar. Barring that you could use another action bar slot for move. There are also a second set of key binds (hold down the Ctrl key so show them). You can map actions to those heys and pressing the appropriate key will fire off the action even if it’s not visible. So you have lots of options there.
There is a streamer by the name of cute dog who plays long hours and has made a video or two about preventing carpal tunnel. He maps actions to his left hand and right hand also so he can fire off an action by pressing with his left hand or by pressing with his right. He then takes turns alternating which hand he uses every so often so he doesn’t get RSI.
I feel exactly the opposite. One of the best parts of the game for me is running across all the different play experiences. Most of them can be ignored if you don’t like them. Don’t like Delerium? Avoid the mirror. Don’t like the fungus? Leave Cassia alone. There’s room for improvement, of course, most notably providing alternate ways to get crafting abilities so you’re not forced into an experience you hate just to unlock something. But on the whole, I think they’ve done an admirable job of providing a varied play experience. Considering that’s one of the things that I complained about way back in 2014, I’m pretty happy that they’ve addressed it!
Yes, then you give up slot five. I’m talking about mapping it independently of the keys you need to actually play your character. Diablo has a specific key binding for movement that is totally separate from the keys you use to cast abilities and stuff. It’s PoE’s forcing me to choose one less ability slot or carpal tunnel that annoys me. Not enough to keep me from playing, but yeah.
