You’ve succinctly described 99% of PoE. :)
I’m having too much fun exploring Genshin Impact to dump any time into the early days of the league this time around. I may check it out in a couple weeks once they’ve done the inevitable first big re-balance patch.
Probably a good move @ineffablebob as I have heard the Reaper skill is pretty underwhelming. It’s a 0.95 second cast on a 4 second cooldown. Also it seems the Spectre has no elemental resists, which is… an interesting choice.
Last league I didn’t make it more than a day because it just wasn’t attractive and I wasn’t up for making a starter char before going all in on a ‘real’ char as the mechanics were not for me. This time I didn’t make it past the patch notes. This continued direction is only making me wish for Diablo II and IV to come out faster.
Reaper’s working pretty well for me while levelling but I’m only up to Act 7. I only use the Shade’s manual cooldown attack once per tough rare or boss anyway, so it hasn’t been a real issue thus far. I’m using it with Absolution+Phantasms, Herald of Purity, plus zombies and a carrion golem. (I’ll probably try dropping the zombies and carrion golem for skeletons at some point.)
Here is a short video from Kay (who does a lot of minion builds) talking about the endgame viability of reaper. TLDR: not very good.
Bateau
5432
I’m quite happy that the devs finally decided to reign in the power creep, it was long overdue.
On a side note, this league is my first time playing with war cries (Berserker) and I love the mechanic. Absolutely demolishing the campaign at lvl 55 and I’m still using a level 27 unique (Geofri’s).
Update on Spectre build. Pure physical seems ok.
Looks like progress is being made toward the first rebalance.
My favorite bit is the goat nerf, but the most important point is probably the upcoming mana multiplier reduction.
So…I re-installed this yet again, and of course have about 10 new builds. Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in… There are a number of builds I’ve been trying that are pretty good, but the one that is hands down redonkulous is the spectral shield throw build. Great defense, great offense, no mana usage, it’s pretty much the perfect POE build. So far it trivializes the game pretty badly, but in a fun way.
Spectral Shield Throw roflcopter build.
That’s the pastebin for path of building, which if you don’t have, you really should get, it’s awesome. Just import the URL to a new path of building character and away you go. Has all of the leveling curves, gear, copious notes, etc.
Path Of Building link
The single most ridiculous thing I’ve ever played in this game. This is just massively fun, and I’m sure will be nerfed at some point. Play this with an occultist chaos dot build, where you can put 4 hexes on a target at once. The bane in this setup casts ALL of these at once…it’s just silly, it reduces bosses to nothing.
Here’s the build I’m currently playing with it, by far the easiest, and most fun time I’ve had, especially with bosses. Zero deaths to the stuff that usually owns me.
Chaos hex/curse build
Thinking of jumping back in after a long layoff. The current league started about a month ago didn’t it?
Yah about that I think. I’ve been having a lot of fun this league, I think I’ve played more viable builds than I ever have this time.
Is it just me, or have they waaaay over-tuned Act 1. I’ve a veteran, know what I am doing and Act 1 is waaay harder than it was last time I played a few leagues ago.
They reworked and nerfed a lot of stuff, the game is definitely harder than it was.
They have started revamping the game to make it harder. The only part they have adjusted so far is Act 1. So it is not your imagination to act one is more different.
Don’t ask me why they didn’t start at the end and work their way towards act one. I’ve always thought atct one should be a lot easier since you usually have terrible gear, low resists, and not a lot of skills. No, they hit you with a cold resist fight right off the bat, and the end of act one is another cold resist fight. I’ve always thought that was stupid.
stusser
5442
Sure, it’s the well-known theory of game design “kick new players in the nuts right when they start and they’ll stick around forever”.
Before Dark Souls, I would have been kidding.
I’ve got hundreds of hours in PoE but they kept changing so much stuff and making the game less and less fun for me and I finally dropped it. Over the past few years I think they’ve made bad decision after bad decision.
OK, just ran into that cold resist fight and died about 4 times in a matter of minutes. I’ve seen enough.
It’s easy to craft cold resist early on, even if it’s a first character. Cold resist is the only thing that really matters much in the first act. I’ve always disliked the overly spikey nature of POE damage, and they seem to just keep doubling down on it, it does make the game pretty frustrating at some point.
My point wasn’t that getting cold resist is difficult. My point is that it is a dumb idea to have a fight that involves specialized resistances in the introductory area of the game. You want to draw new players in, not frustrate them and/or drive them away.
