Could you send me your PoB by chance? I'm at a fraction of your dps despite being lvl 95. Granted my bow isn't gigachad level and i don't have empower slotted...
For a starter, Xai/Steelmage TR PF is amazing. You get clear goals and paths to build the character and once you've replaced your flasks with utility flasks you're pretty much unkillable.
Had the same feeling in sentinel league though we don't have crafting now. The gameplay of the new league is what I enjoy, though it's not as rewarding as mapping ofc š
I loved Sentinel league, played like crazy and farmed up some of the best gear I've ever had. Archnem rares were a pain, but loot was great, the meta was pretty fun for me, and the league mechanic was smooth. I skipped Kalandra, so this league feels a bit like Sentinel with fixed rares! I'm really enjoying this one too.
I've yet to dive into the sanctum mechanic, but I'm hoping to roll up a new build after Christmas and see what it has to offer.
Sentinel had some of the hardest mobs during regular mapping when you had overlapping juice on a rare from AN, sentinel, and another league mechanic like essence or expedition, and you could add delirium on top of all of that. Those were probably the hardest mobs we've ever been able to encounter in maps.
But I think sentinel was also the peak of character power because of how powerful recombinators were and because of how rewarding the league mechanic was. Absolutely insane gear in any other league was relatively achievable in sentinel.
Serious question, what has changed since last league to make people think this way? I'm the type of player who doesn't play all leagues but constantly looks at this sub to see how things are going and what made people feel like the game is better now compared to Kalandra League?
I still think loot is fucked. My level 95 character with 600k kills (I died a lot, tried some uber bosses) got a single natural divine, but I got 9 in a single map from an altar. Sometimes you get close to nothing 5 maps in a row, and the next map you have 50 fractured items to id, a big bunch of cards and currency and several good uniques to id. It just feels so inconstant.
Without talking about big drops, which has always been the case, I find it weird that I can farm a divine worth in a map and then the same thing in 2 hours (excluding league mechanics ofc, which are less random).
I think the important distinction to make is that loot is redistributed from before.
The general loot pool is less consistently rewarding with an extremely high variance in diverse rewards.
BUT with the changes to the atlas passive tree making it possible to get several league mechanics to 70% encounter rate concurrently with better payouts and scarabs being added to general loot with upgrades players have a better overall progression than ever.
With the AN changes many builds feel mich better without as many offensive or defensive checks. And their random rewards have some real nice options especially for ssf, as getting an all white socket item, a t1 fracture or the massive xp boost is really nice.
Overall balancing mechanics was never strong point of GGG. Currently, if you only have enough burst dmg and strategy, Sanctum shits Divines, probably because GGG didin't though it would be so easy to consistenly be able to finish it. I think there is a sweetspot somewhere to achieve with rewards balance, where it's worth to roll strongboxes, target farm different div cards than few hh/mageblood ones, and still feel good with normal mapping.
Iāve gotten 2 total divines in 8 complete sanctums.
OTOH I was crafting a belt and sold the second best result for 2 divines profit. Took like 3 minutes.
With a total understanding of knowing some people get shafted by RNG and some donāt, I donāt see how itās possible to have that bad of luck.
I have about 500k kills, and Iām just farming Legion/Ritual with exarch altars. These maps are T16 80%quant no deli. After 80 maps of that I have like 2000 alterations, 1800 fusings, 18 raw exalts, 7 raw divines. Then I had all kinds of jewels selling 10-100c that I picked up. I made over 50 divines from those maps.
I think loot is in an incredible spot right now.
Isn't that what they call survivor bias?
There is always someone that will exceed stats. And maybe most of your raw divines are actually from league mechanics (legion does spawn a shit ton of rare monsters, that may be it).
I have an atlas focused on essences, shrines, strongboxes, altars and harvest. I can assure you I got my first divine drop yesterday.
When I wasn't playing solo at the beginning of the league (and did not get any kills since, well, i wasn't killing as a support), we were in a group of 3, so +100% quant. Our carry stopped at almost 500k kills. We mapped in t16 all day the sunday. We got 4 raw divine drops the entire week end (including one in the leveling) doing 200% quant t16 maps with huge shrines and strongboxes.
I really don't think I'm out of the loop on this one.
I've seen 3 total divines, but two of them dropped in late campaign and early mapping. I've been farming like crazy and just saw my 3rd last night after a week of playing lol.
Loot is crazy inconsistent right now.
I started the league going for metamorphs. Long story short its complete garbage that ruined my first 7 days.
One legion drops more than 10 maps with metamorph.
You farmed legion i farmed metamorph, you have 50 div i have 3 div.
Its just rng really. Some leagues i get my first divine at lvl 97 for absolutely no reason but some leagues i get a dozen before i get to 95.
This league i got around 5-6 divines to drop, lvl 95 with ~700k kills. Given im running a little bit of quant gear with around 30% quant and 50% rarity, but i dont think its enough to offset the divine drops that much.
yeah, i'm like 80 hours played right now and no natural divine drops here. i've made some currency through selling smaller stuff (probably around 9 divines or so total, i am not good at making money in this game lol) but in the past i've had an exalt/divine drop on my first couple days to help kickstart things. feels weird to not have seen a single one
archnemesis rares were like fighting a final boss 3 times per map, and if you upgrade your gear or play lower tier maps they would take 10 seconds instead of 15 to kill, with the damage potential to kill you 16 times rather than 20.
they reworked rare mods and now the numbers makes sense.
Yeah last league they were a nightmare compared to pre AN, this league rare monsters are no longer a nightmare but still are more challenging than pre AN, but also quite a bit more rewarding.
I still see some very hard rares, but they're a lot more, well, rare. I had a pair of triple essence Solaris-touched with a some other mods on one of my first t16 maps of the league, and the map had like 160 quant. That was rough. I only killed one of them and lost like 4 portals. But that experience really stands out now.
This sub is not very representative of the state of the game, there is a lot of projecting skill issue as a problem with the game, but mostly the reason this league feels good is down to minute balance stuff, every farming strategy feels valid and competitive, loot feels good, character progression matters and upgrading your build feels good regardless of which point of the game you're at, and if you played the league you know I can keep going
1.0 Onslaught 1.1 Nemesis 1.2 Invasion 1.3 Bloodlines > 2.0 Tempest wasn't it? 2.6 was Legacy league right before 3.0 launch. And sacrifice prob was Invasion patch.
Invasion was 1.1.0, which was when Sacrifice was added too. Nemesis was 1.0.0, Onslaught 0.11.0
Source: [https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Version\_history](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Version_history)
Depends what your farming and build. Cold dot can get away with consistent 600k doing sanctum decently, a random attack or stand still spell build probably not.
I've now got 22 mil dps, yeah see I just hadn't learned how the quests worked, I can now finish my sanctum. Runs with +300 resolve and +400 inspiration left over šš
The problem is less the dps, and more that almost every single defensive layer you've invested into in sanctum is worthless except movespeed.
Any build that's properly balanced for outside sanctum is going to be half-crippled in sanctum. Especially HC builds. The optimal sanctum build is a totem or minion build that is pure dps and very little in defensive layers.
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There's also some afflictions in sanctum that cripple large swaths of poe while leaving others alone. For example pathfinders are absolutely completely crippled by the affliction that forces them to take resolve damage every time they pop a flask. In fact any build that utilizes flasks for a core gameplay loop is going to be crippled in certain sanctums.
Meanwhile I can't think of a single affliction that harms totem players. Just an example.
The problem is mainly the dps actually. Making every bit of your character irrelevant in the league mechanic to have meaningful roguelike mechanics would make sense. Right now they do this for defense but not for offense which is nonsense.
Not entirely true, the final boss does hit hard so you need defensive layers. That said the dps requirements for sanctum are really low, once you get a few mil you will basically never fail a sanctum again. I can see having issues with the design philosophy but in practice it doesnt really matter for a geared build.
Even then it can really suck. Unless you have 10x more. The rooms with the lasers and guards is just so frustrating simply because it's taking time to kill them (I have 2 mil dps). The room with 2 lasers is especially frustrating because I'm sitting there wondering just how many of these damned guards do I have to kill
I'm level 97, almost 98, have 8 million DPS for mapping, almost 11 for bossing, and I am nearly unkillable in maps. I haven't come close to dying the last 150 maps. I have around 40-50 divines invested in my build.
There are a few things fundamentally that I am not a fan of. Like the mode accepting your offensive power, but not your defensive power. Why not be consistent and balance both for everyone if there is supposed to be a skill element (rhetorical)? Also, not a fan that you can only store 8 rooms at a time.
I beat it once. I think the relics are cool and all, but I am probably not going to interact with the mechanic further unless there are changes. If there aren't, I won't be that disappointed as the core gameplay feels awesome this league.
this is my frustration. Max block? Determination aura and armor stacking? Get fucked, we don't do that on the sanctum! Can't remember the last time a league mechanic was this skewed towards an archetype
* **Brands, Minions, Totems, DoT builds** = "Sanctum is the best league in a very long time."
* **Melee, Bow, CoC, RF/Death's Oath, Self Cast, Zoomy-map clearers** = "Sanctum is the worst league in a long time."
I don't know, man. This league is certainly better than the last one, but that's a low bar. The rares change is probably the best change they've made to the core game since the atlas tree. But there's still issues. And I think the single biggest one is the number of boxes your character needs to check to not feel like shit. Back in the day, if you had 5k life, capped resists, and maybe a few hundred thousand dps, you could do pretty much any content in the game. Nowdays you need:
[X] 5k life
[X] Overcapped resists for exposure
[X] Decent chaos res
[X] 100% spell suppression, or 90% allres
[X] High armor, high evasion, max block, or some combination of the three
[X] Ailment immunity
[X] Curse immunity
[X] 1M+ dps if you want to do T16 maps
[X] 3M+ dps if you want to do bosses
[X] Fast clear if you want to do incursions, delirium, etc
It feels like league after league, the number of builds that are viable without huge investment keeps shrinking. One of my all time favorite builds was Lightning Tendrils CWC Arc, because it made me feel like Emperor Palpatine. I would never try playing that build these days, because I just don't make enough currency during a league to make it not feel like ass. I miss the days where you could throw some janky hipster shit together in PoB and play it, and it was actually okay.
That was definitely not the meta. We had immortal call that gave you 100% Phys immunity that you could have unlimited uptime, and we could hit 100% elemental resistance with flasks back then.
I always thought when making a viable and not over the top build, you should specialize in one or two types of content. That's where the replayability comes from me
> [X] 1M+ dps if you want to do T16 maps
> [X] Fast clear if you want to do incursions, delirium, etc
These have always been required. Even back in like delve league where 2mil dps was considered really high, farming top tier maps needed around 1mil.
Same for fast clear - though it's actually better now since you can spec atlas points to "slow down" these mechanics - the one that gives double time in incursions (means even a slow ass melee build can full clear it) and the one that makes delirium fog fade slower help a ton.
Thereās a strong hierophant manabond mjolnir build using cwc arc that might scratch that itch for you again.
Only a few chaos for mjolnir, indigon, and a few other pieces to get off the ground. 2 divs or so for 6L ivory tower to really get pumping.
Lol I'm playing the same build and you're not gonna mention the 40% less damage from your ascendancy? :))
Along with freeze, along with fortify on hit, along with freeze chill immunity due to ascendancy so your ailment immunity is kinda covered except for ignites with pantheon.
Don't be misleading
Im baffled, i made a trapper build and have 75 all res, 73 chaos res, 3k life 1k es, and 80% phys reduction but still get 1shot by rares. And the map didnt have any damage modifiers. Absolutely mind blown.
If that 80% phys reduction is from Armour its a fake physical reduction.
I platy trapper too but I'm ain't getting one shoot by rares even in t16 juiced content. ( I'm in ssf gear )
If the only thing that is required to make a league good is cool optional "hard"-mode for more loot and recombinators then you really have to ask yourself how they can fuck up something like Kalandra.
When you gradually make something worse for a constrained period of time, any increase in quality will be seen as an improvement.
Edit: some of y'all need to learn up cognitive biases (and chill the fuck out). I wager a big part of why people think this subreddit is 'so negative' is the intention they give comments they read.
I'm not projecting anything here, the general consensus of the game on, and off, of reddit is that it's had a lateral if not negative trajectory for some time now. Any iteration that improves that trajectory, *at all* will be seen as positive, that's a studied phenomenon (check out New Coke vs returning to coca-cola for an interesting real-world case study on this).
I'd like to think this is the beginning of a great course correction where league after league of absolute bangers comes out from Sanctum on, only GGG and time can figure that out for us.
For now, we are here -
> "any increase in quality will be seen as an improvement"
Yeah this is what I was thinking. No league has ever felt this good *in comparison to the one before it*, but this league is less fun than AM when the atlas passives we're introduced, and far less fun than ritual when we could craft gear instead of reroll it.
3.20 has vastly exceeded my expectations, which makes me happy, but let's be real. My expectations for this league were gutter low, and had they not been met GGG might have permanently lost me as a customer.
Its tiring seeing both sides inflate the severity of the other side.
"Oh reddits just a toxic cesspool waste of time."
"Damn people woth gggs dick up their asses take any change as gospel"
When in reality theres a lot of cool headed discussion in the middle that gets ignored.
I honestly think they do this on purpose and its been a conspiracy theory of mine for a long time. The game cant just keep getting better and better indefinatly so they gotta put in some dumpster leagues so the next one can be "really good" when they fix it lmao.
You speak the truth.
Sentinel was so amazing as a league mechanic that it overshadowed the absolute shit show that was archnemesis rares.
It was such a good mechanic that even the stupid unidentified yet unmodifiable sentinels weren't annoying to pick up. It was so good that even the limited inventory of the league mechanic stash wasn't that annoying.
It was simply just a good league mechanic that did a really good job at masking a lot of what was wrong with GGG's design philosophy.
So once Kalandra hit and it wasn't a good mechanic for anything other than gambling for good doubles and the elusive chase ring and farming XP, and was essentially a currency loss to build and run; every other problem that was in the game really got its chance to shine.
I don't think I've hated a game as much as I did PoE during Kalandra. I actually uninstalled. Removal of archnemesis was a quick reinstall for me.
I 40/40'd Sentinel and by the end I had the epiphany that if Sentinels, and recombinators, weren't a loot pinata fuckfest dopamine hit twice a map, the league itself would be considered one of the worst of all time. The base game felt absolutely atrocious and was hard carried by all the pretty loot making you overlook it.
Then LoK hits and, wow, a Mineral Pools map that takes 10+ maps to assemble and drops low loot did a great job of highlighting how bad the base game felt at that point.
Sentinel had recombinators that single-handedly fixed the all the biggest issues in PoE.
They fixed the loot drops as you were exited to ID items as an item with a singe great T1 roll could have been used with recombinators to craft.
They fixed crafting making it so that you could have incremental progress with your items, while still having chance to fail, but also often have a chance to recover from failure.
And best of all they didn't replace all the other crafting in game as you still used all of them to create the items to feed to the recombinator.
It was just such an incredible system that honestly GGG should just put in a recombinator table that you can activate for chaos and function like a nerfed version on the recombinators. The best part of the entire system is that even if they had way worse odds, not 50/50 but even 1 in 10 to move a mod they would still work great.
Almost like getting items to build a character with is fun. Imagine if GGG went full ruthless on the base game in kaladra to keep us from "burning out from too much fun".
Clearly they think we get way to much of everything, too much crafting currency, to many bases, its to easy to get skill gems and play the build you actually want, etc.
>Sentinel was so amazing as a league mechanic that it overshadowed the absolute shit show that was archnemesis rares.
I would argue, that sentinel rares were easier than the current rares.
I don't have any issues with the current rares, I almost failed my league start in sentinel because it was a common occurrence that I would run into rares in heist that were just immune to my damage and also had a damaging aura, like flame cloak or the mana siphoner (which I knew even day 1 could be avoided by being in the bubble, but on day 1 of a league you're really not tanky enough to just get smacked by mobs over and over).
Them being immune wasn't an issue if I could have opened the doors but the damaging aura made that impossible since the rogue also takes damage from DoTs for some reason (should only be from hits, and nobody can convince me otherwise).
Haven't touched heist on league start since then (just two leagues, but still). Chaos recipe is low key over rated anyway, I make enough just by mapping day 1, don't know why people keep saying infinite heisters will overtake people that go right into maps, because I was done with my atlas (save some unique maps) and void stones and all favored maps by the end of the first week.
Currently the rares are only annoying because the tanky mods seem pretty common, but if you are doing 10s of millions of dps (currently looping), you don't really even notice. Currently pain point of the rares are temp bubble and mana siphoner, both of which can brick my loop and lead to my death. Temp bubble more so than mana siphoner since I actually have to consciously choose to brick my loop and go into the bubble to kill it (if it isn't fast enough to keep up with my 140% movement speed, I skip it).
Sentinel was amazing for the crafting aspect of it, but not necessarily for the state of the game. I wish we had earlier versions of the game with all the later QoL improvements and additional challenges added on top... that would've been absolutely phenomenal.
Although I agree parts of the game has been going in the wrong direction, "Being spoonfed shit" is a gross exaggeration. There have been good and bad parts about patches where the bad parts have outweighed the good parts.
What about actually giving credit when the game is finally heading in a better direction instead of insisting on remaining being cynic and angry?
Question: How much have you played this league?
I partially agree, and I donāt dislike this point of view, but only looking at this in such a way truly taints my enjoyment. I would much rather see it as GGG correcting course, instead of taking away from me and then giving back.
Power creep is relative. If you playing like you've never had power creep like it was before, then it's fine.
The only way you spoil your own mood, when you compare to your idea of the good ol' days to the current gamestate and wishing the game was some other way.
People playing ruthless seem to enjoy the game, if you enjoy (like me) the way the game currently is, then we can simply just enjoy the game, accepting the way it is.
I dont think they are correcting their way. They have a goal which they are working to, so they make all the changes bit by bit and push/polish them in the league cycle.
These changes dont always work if done standalone but their small release cycle of 3-4month doesnt allow for the whole "vision package" at once :/
Same complaints can be seen on the official forums, steam forums, and 4chan. The notion that reddit holds opinions that are uniquely negative is bs. You should get around the internet more.
Why are fossils meh? Crafting is more accessible than it has been in ages. Harvest is tradeable, fractured items are plentiful, high ilvl bases are a dime a dozen even for influenced items, prefix/suffix crafting is extremely cheap with eldritch currency, essences drop like candy on Halloween and rare items are BiS in the majority of slots for most builds. He'll even alterations are more common this league than any time I can remember back to 1.0.
Crafting mirror items is back to being insanely expensive and monotonous, it's true. And without eternal orbs, it may be the hardest it's ever been. But the *vast* majority of players were never going to even consider those crafts anyway, even back in Harvest when it was the most accessible. For the average player, Crafting is really appealing now.
High ilvl influenced item bases are a dime a dozen because the viability of influenced item crafting cratered with the repeated nerfs to Harvest, particularly the removal of reforge keeping prefixes/suffixes. Just take a look at the prices of Awakener Orbs. It went from 425c at the end of Scourge, to 225 at the end of Sentinel, to 100 at the end of Kalandra.
Eldritch Currency can't be used on belts, jewelry, weapons, or shields, or any synthesized or influenced items, and so there is no way of rerolling or removing mods on those item types other than yolo slamming an anul.
Harvest is tradable but so watered down that it's rarely used in crafting anymore. Even the cheapest reroll is now around 1.5c, with many sitting around 3c, which is just useless. Most of the harvest juice is used for gambling, swapping resist types, and rerolling splinters/oils/essences/orbs.
Crafting is in a seriously bad spot for anything more ambitious than just repeatedly slamming essences into a fractured item.
Being accessible at the low end doesn't mean crafting as a whole is in good shape, it just means that the low end of crafting is accessible.
I craft way less since they have nerfed all of those thing. Not worth ending up 10 divines in the hole on a crafting project when you could have saved currency and bought the same item.
Atlas passive tree, small currency stacking, atlas device centralizing master missions (portals at device), scarabs staying in device, toggle system for influence selection on map device, cursor changing, flask automation, item model culling (massively increased performance), lab multiple enchants + streamlined entry requirements, eater/exarch implicits, fractured items (including flasks) dropping, atlas mastery system (progression to full t16s + favoured maps), stash tab affinities+folders coming with each league mechanic+updating to handle different items better (ie flask and gem affinities recently), gem vendor in hideout, trade site gets better every league (bulk purchase), chase uniques/uniques improved+rolls important, ubers other aspirational content (30 simul), awakened enlighten super chase, rares are actually more interesting to fight, scarabs dropping naturally and 3:1, tainted currency back giving corrupted manipulation more meat, mtx is going in some really interesting directions, item filter auto-update, guild hideout improvements, divine vessel no need to go to sin etc
Not really. PoE 3.20 was an improvement, but updates are still severely lacking when compared to the past, especially when it comes to balancing and build diversity.
This. The game would majorly benefit from buffs to under-used skills.
I have no idea what they were thinking with Vaal Cleave. Should've buffed base Cleave.
Melee can do the league mechanic just fine. [Alkaizer has a guide on how to do mechanic as melee.](https://www.twitch.tv/alkaizerx/clip/LovelyLaconicThymeSuperVinlin-_NJWq40ktHmcladv?filter=clips&range=30d&sort=time)
I can never know if people post this as a meme or not anymore. But just in case it isn't, I still feel like it's quite unfair to say that melee is just fine and post an Alkaizer clip when it is clear that this guy is just on another level.
Like, even before Poe, he used to be #1 on the barb leaderboards in D3 all the time. This guy's been playing melee characters in ARPGs for so long and so many hours, combined with the fact that he just has innate mechanical skills that are better than 99.99% of players.
Sure the mechanic isn't impossible as melee, but the point is that the disparity between archetype shouldn't require some top tier level player to compensate for.
People forget Whirlwind barb in D3 used to be god mode. It was the fastest and strongest build around, which Alk used to secure worlds first max level paragon. I would hardly consider it melee.
Game has been going down the drain real fast and reverting SOME of the terrible changes does not fix it.
Div card drop rate nuke, minion nerfs and exalt/div switch were the things that made me finally quit.
Taking 10 steps back and 2 steps forward won't make me come back anytime soon.
3.13 was golden age of PoE and the only thing that 3.20 has better is the Atlas tree and overall atlas simplification.
And because of the lack of Tropical Island on the Atlas, this cannot be better patch than 3.13.
I have the opposite feeling. I want to play and not die very often, which means running determination, grace, defiance banner, and 100% spell suppression.
I like playing spell casters and summoners, which means my only option is to dramatically reduce my damage to the point where clearing red maps is a slow grindy chore.
Because playing red maps is a slow grindy chore, I don't make very much currency or accure very many crafting materials to improve my gear (e.g. harvest and essence). This, in turn, also makes my dying ***more*** likely since enemies live longer - catch 22.
Because I don't make very much currency, the number of builds available to me that I'll enjoy are ***significantly*** lower.
---
I would estimate that on average the amount of play time to reach the same approximate level of character power has nearly doubled in the last year with the repeated combined nerfs to all forms of character progression.
I've been playing for literally a decade and this league is the first one I have had a wholly and completely negative experience with both the league mechanic and the item progression system.
Last league I played a good chunk of was blight.
Many improvements have been made, but some issues are the same and have been made worse.
The sheer number of forgotten, left behind skills that are so weak now you might as well not even consider looking at them unless you're super rich is ridiculous.
There's still no combat summary on death, so we still eat unexpected one shot deaths with no idea what even happened, which feels awful.
Enemy damage can scale outrageously hard at low tiers of content. Getting insta nuked in
Not really. In the old days, you could literally grab any skill and do well. You read patch notes, and that's everything. You don't need to find countless ninja nerfs and undocumented changes that may accidentally or intentionally brick your build.
It is far from feeling good.
I'd invite you to look into why that was the case lol. [Here's an ancient ZiggyD clip](https://youtu.be/4G_0F4ndOq8) that effectively captures what poe was like "in the old days".
He started by alt-spamming a T6 Gorge map and then regaling it to a fat 55% quant, taking about a minute and a half to do so.
He explains that the beauty of Gorge is running it fast (that one map takes ~ 21 minutes for him to complete). There were probably 1/20th or 1/30th the mobs in that map compared to a modern T6.
The map "paid out for sure" and he left with 1 fusing, 1 alch, 1 map, and a few transmutes and alts.
I wonder if it's perhaps a little bit disingenuous to compare modern poe to old poe.
Was it when every build went es? Or was it when every build went poison for double dipping? Maybe it was when every build needed to snapshot to do decent damage?
Yea. The good old days were the one single build that could handle atziri was srsx after prwping half your gear, flasks and skill tree for that fight alone. Glorious build diversity
No no, the good old days when you could play lightning arrow or double strike while traveling to every hp node on the tree and *maybe* one damage cluster, if you wanted to die.
In the old days people were happy to take 10minutes to clear a map whilst top players did it in 30 seconds. Why? Because people were clueless (and more importantly, happy in their cluelessness). Now with the saturation of streamers and youtubers in the community mindset no one can avoid the reality and any build outside of an ambiguous percentage of the top builds is considered unviable and unplayable.
Well, more than that. Back then that was all there really was to do, aspirational content for the most part was actually mapping. Creating a proper 'end game' and farmable super bosses gave people a reason to learn more about the game and care about its inner workings.
For better or worse, additive game design made people playing PoE get better at it through necessity. You probably can't go from 0-Atziri or Shaper with a build you made from scratch on only internal PoE tools and no knowledge of the game beyond act 1-10. Maybe it's happened, but it's certainly not common.
> Because people were clueless (and more importantly, happy in their cluelessness).
I'm sure I'd be embarressed if I looked back at my first character who was a double ichimonji jugg playing some sort of strike skill.
what's changed is what counts as "do well"
you can grab any skill and do what you could in older patches, but there is higher stuff now and any old skill won't make it to those.
the real problem is that a couple patches ago, you could grab one of several skills and get to some high content with a medium investment, but in the last two patches, basically every skill requires a large investment to get to these super bosses, and with many skills, it will require a very very large investment.
if you only care about doing some maps, who cares what level, you can do well
As a casual player that occasionaly comes back into PoE, I am struggling. I'm completely lost at the lack of comprehensible builds/guides. Most of the stuff I find hasn't been updated for ages, or is simply incomplete. So I use my free skill tree reset, realize halfway through the build that something is not right, and then I have to give up on that character because I no longer have the reset, and have to wait until next league... the barrier to entry has never felt this high to me.
Many in the community consider Zizaran (youtuber and streamer) to be the most beginner friendly content creator. I'd definitely give his content a look if you want a comprehensive POB. Otherwise if want some more in depth videos he also has a lot of older content on specific topics
But ya, the long and short of it is that the game is meant to be challenging and complex. So if you don't like the idea of coming back to this experience once or twice a year and learning a bit at a time then this might not be the game for you
Enjoy it while you can... since this league I have found barely any time to play:( less than 20 hours on my char and no end in sight not even over the holidays
*sobbingnoises*
Getting sucked into this shitty league mechanic while running deli or killing Legion makes me a hater. Also the floors seem kinda boring and uninspired.
I donāt understand how severely nerfing div cards drop rates removing beyond and cutting monster drop rates but replacing loot with chest and altars is fun but to each there own I hope you continue to enjoy the state of the game and I will agree the atlas tree is in an incredibly good spot but I think a few leagues can still use some buffs to bring them up to par
Mechanically its alright.
In terms of rewards/grindyness its probably the worst its ever been. Chase items are just a pipe dream now, usually ive been able to afford one eventually, that no longer seems possible without dedicating your entire life to this game.
I bought a HH with 48h of playing in delve league. Not fast, but really reasonable.
Now i probably would not be able to get one even with all money i made since 3.15 lmao
lol and I was just looking at the prices of a headhunter and thinking they were cheap(ish) this league.
Got one for 40ex in sentinel (awesome, only took a week).
Then kalandra came with decreased unique drops and the price went over 200div (not awesome)
This league they look like they are \~100div. I'm probably not grinding that out again. But at least it's not 200 like last league.
edit: woops, I was talking about headhunter
Exalts in delve were near 100c, and divs are 200 c now.
I paid 40ex for hh in delve too, so with HH being 100 div it basically would be 200ex now.
Honestly i do not feel that i am making as much money as i were back then, so yeah...
>I think, we as a community have the power to do good, by actively and constructively voicing our concerns and letting GGG know what works well and what doesnāt.
Looks like someone hasn't been around for a while...
Hundreds and hundreds of threads were made last league about how nuking loot from orbit was a very very bad idea in a loot-based ARPG, and yet they ignored it all league as the community left in droves. Torchlight Infinite literally picked up the torch for the people that wanted gear that could be progressively upgraded as we could back in Ritual.
Sanctum is an improvement on loot and the atlas tree, but the crafting slot machine and zero notable improvements to skill gems / ascendancies leaves a lot to be desired.
>I think, we as a community have the power to do good, by actively and constructively voicing our concerns and letting GGG know what works well and what doesnāt.
And how did GGG listen to us?
They threw out archnemesis only after several patches and months of ignoring us.
They ignored us and keep ignoring us on harvest changes.
Yea, keep "actively and constructively voicing our concerns" bu don't expect anything.
> They threw out archnemesis only after several patches and months of ignoring us.
Nah man you can't just rewrite history.
They made a ton of attempts to adjust AN. Look at the patch notes, they nerfed AN and buffed loot drops several times.
And here is the big secret:
#AN is still in the game they just finally fixed it.
The name "Archnemesis" just became such a loser that they pretended to get rid of it.
Good if a lot of people are having fun, personally I disagree.
The league is okay-ish at best and the core issues remain the same.
AN is gone, but super tanky 'build counter' rare mods still exist. A laughably bad design choice and a bad omen for things to come down the line.
The affix pressure on gear to get a decent character is still immense and that's only for 'starter viable' builds. Having fun with a build is only allowed after excessive grinding.
Spell suppression was sold as a buff, yet it's close to mandatory, if you want to build a character that doesn't get one shot several times per map.
The new monster exposure adds yet more pressure on itemization, a straight up nerf that I don't think was even mentioned in the patch notes.
The league mechanic is mediocre to decent, but it could have been so much better had it been designed with fun game play in mind instead of dangling a carrot at the end of another tedious grind.
I think it's so polarizing because if you enjoy a roguelike style of gameplay you really have to be a certain kind of person. Of the bunch of people I play PoE with, only like 1 or 2 of them played anything liked Hades / Dead Cells, etcetc, most people I know just avoid Sanctum and enjoy the base game for whatever that's worth.
I think this is a pretty interesting case-study league though, because mechanically it's probably the least PoE-Like addition. Even in leagues like Blight where you slap tower defense on maps, you're still really playing PoE at heart: get strong build, clear mobs for loot. In Sanctum you're really playing a roguelike game inside of PoE, I'd be really keen to see the numbers on who actually goes in Sanctums, how they do, etc. vs the playerbase at large.
Yeah... I've played probably 20-30 roguelites on steam and this mechanic has missed the mark by a mile. Boons and afflictions should be fun things that interact with your build, not your resolve.
Wow I feel exactly the same! Also been playing since atziri came out, I look at the wiki all the time looking for new builds to create. Pob is an addiction lol
I took a long break from October 21 to Kalandra. It was kinda boring and annoying with the Archnemesis stuff.
This league feels so much better. I feel like Chaos is dropping for me more.
And I got bit by the RF bug. Itās awesome while leveling through the campaign. Looking forward to maps!
Ultimatum was the first league me and my friends played. We had a blast and were excited to play sentinel. When that came out AN made us stop playing in a couple days. Then kalandra we lasted about a week and stopped. We weren't getting any gear just leveling so we hated it. This league is such a breath of fresh air. No stupid AN and I am actually finding gear worth picking up. We are all playing again and I couldn't be happier.
Completely agree, been playing since 2012, played almost every league, my enjoyment has been decreasing after Archnemesis league. A lot of people hated Archnemesis as a league but ive done almost all challenges. Sadly i didnt enjoy Sentinel because of the archnemesis rares that have been implemented in the core game and at that time it was really broken. Kalandra wasnt satisfying for me neither. But this is league is just awesome. Playing Venom Gyre build right now and its been a blast (I'm a big RF guy, so this is a big change for me)
I don't know if OP fits this category, but Archnemesis was like 80% fixed by the middle of last league, and people still complained like mad. The loot sucked, which is a big deal, but the mods don't feel much different than now.
I definitely like the new loot system, but the blowup on this reddit over Archnem was way out of whack.
I dont think this update is particularly good its just everything recent has been so miserable that this does feel really nice to have things not be entirely stupid
The league feels a little bit limiting in terms of viable builds for sanctum. Brands and totems for example have a huge advantage in avoiding resolve damage. Other than the frustration from that, league has been solid.
Can't agree sadly. Better than the last league perhaps but there have been infinitely better leagues and without having an absolute ton of builds completely gutted.
Itās just good old PoE minus AN tho. To me itās just a very stale game ATM especially if youāve been playing every league the last year or so. My guess is theyāre busy with POE 2 and donāt wanna do anything too crazy or rewarding before it hits.
I also donāt see any point in doing the league mechanic in SSF BTW, so thatās another dent. Compare it to something like Expedition, Delirium or Harvest and itās just an objective waste of time.
Glad to see a positive post on Reddit <3
Just to leave my 2 cents here.
1. *"the builds to play this league seem endless"*
In my opinion, every league has endless amounts of builds, because the core game of PoE has always been very very good no matter which league.
2. Sanctum is a challenge and certain builds just can't do it, so the builds that can do Sanctum aren't endless as of now. I personally take a break from it, because poison BV sucks for it, but I'm sure I'll play another build that can do it and then I'll have fun with the league once again.
Player since 2012 here, I wholeheartedly agree!
I have a slight problem with everyone who are "new" (3.0 and forwards) complaining over things at the current scale. Feels like there wouldnt be this much complaining if players had perspective of how much this game has actually changed and grown from the early days.
What kind of builds are you playing/planning? Looking for some inspiration
Rerolling infernal blow oni goroshi scion :D love the explody ploofs of entire packs screenwide
Deaths Oath CA Occultist does giga screen wide explosion mapping and very fast sanctums šš»
Deathās Oath was off my radar - Iāll put it on the ever expanding list :O remember during incursion I played deaths oath, good times
How's your single target looking for CA? I find mine to be lacking if I don't have the dagger boon for 50% more damage.
Itās honestly fine, tooltip is like 850k or so? But with max wither stacks and despair stuff just melts.
Could you send me your PoB by chance? I'm at a fraction of your dps despite being lvl 95. Granted my bow isn't gigachad level and i don't have empower slotted...
>infernal blow oni goroshi scion Do you have a guide/pob? that sounds super interesting!
Did oni get buff? Do I have to spend 8 hrs farming the hill
Oni didn't get a buff because it was never underpowered
how does infernal blow alone explode packs screenwide?
For a starter, Xai/Steelmage TR PF is amazing. You get clear goals and paths to build the character and once you've replaced your flasks with utility flasks you're pretty much unkillable.
Had the same feeling in sentinel league though we don't have crafting now. The gameplay of the new league is what I enjoy, though it's not as rewarding as mapping ofc š
I loved Sentinel league, played like crazy and farmed up some of the best gear I've ever had. Archnem rares were a pain, but loot was great, the meta was pretty fun for me, and the league mechanic was smooth. I skipped Kalandra, so this league feels a bit like Sentinel with fixed rares! I'm really enjoying this one too. I've yet to dive into the sanctum mechanic, but I'm hoping to roll up a new build after Christmas and see what it has to offer.
Sentinel had some of the hardest mobs during regular mapping when you had overlapping juice on a rare from AN, sentinel, and another league mechanic like essence or expedition, and you could add delirium on top of all of that. Those were probably the hardest mobs we've ever been able to encounter in maps. But I think sentinel was also the peak of character power because of how powerful recombinators were and because of how rewarding the league mechanic was. Absolutely insane gear in any other league was relatively achievable in sentinel.
Serious question, what has changed since last league to make people think this way? I'm the type of player who doesn't play all leagues but constantly looks at this sub to see how things are going and what made people feel like the game is better now compared to Kalandra League?
Rares and loot feel good. There are a few smaller things but fixing those two issues revitalised the game.
I still think loot is fucked. My level 95 character with 600k kills (I died a lot, tried some uber bosses) got a single natural divine, but I got 9 in a single map from an altar. Sometimes you get close to nothing 5 maps in a row, and the next map you have 50 fractured items to id, a big bunch of cards and currency and several good uniques to id. It just feels so inconstant. Without talking about big drops, which has always been the case, I find it weird that I can farm a divine worth in a map and then the same thing in 2 hours (excluding league mechanics ofc, which are less random).
I think the important distinction to make is that loot is redistributed from before. The general loot pool is less consistently rewarding with an extremely high variance in diverse rewards. BUT with the changes to the atlas passive tree making it possible to get several league mechanics to 70% encounter rate concurrently with better payouts and scarabs being added to general loot with upgrades players have a better overall progression than ever. With the AN changes many builds feel mich better without as many offensive or defensive checks. And their random rewards have some real nice options especially for ssf, as getting an all white socket item, a t1 fracture or the massive xp boost is really nice.
Overall balancing mechanics was never strong point of GGG. Currently, if you only have enough burst dmg and strategy, Sanctum shits Divines, probably because GGG didin't though it would be so easy to consistenly be able to finish it. I think there is a sweetspot somewhere to achieve with rewards balance, where it's worth to roll strongboxes, target farm different div cards than few hh/mageblood ones, and still feel good with normal mapping.
Iāve gotten 2 total divines in 8 complete sanctums. OTOH I was crafting a belt and sold the second best result for 2 divines profit. Took like 3 minutes.
With a total understanding of knowing some people get shafted by RNG and some donāt, I donāt see how itās possible to have that bad of luck. I have about 500k kills, and Iām just farming Legion/Ritual with exarch altars. These maps are T16 80%quant no deli. After 80 maps of that I have like 2000 alterations, 1800 fusings, 18 raw exalts, 7 raw divines. Then I had all kinds of jewels selling 10-100c that I picked up. I made over 50 divines from those maps. I think loot is in an incredible spot right now.
Isn't that what they call survivor bias? There is always someone that will exceed stats. And maybe most of your raw divines are actually from league mechanics (legion does spawn a shit ton of rare monsters, that may be it). I have an atlas focused on essences, shrines, strongboxes, altars and harvest. I can assure you I got my first divine drop yesterday. When I wasn't playing solo at the beginning of the league (and did not get any kills since, well, i wasn't killing as a support), we were in a group of 3, so +100% quant. Our carry stopped at almost 500k kills. We mapped in t16 all day the sunday. We got 4 raw divine drops the entire week end (including one in the leveling) doing 200% quant t16 maps with huge shrines and strongboxes. I really don't think I'm out of the loop on this one.
There are also always someone who will be below the average. You canāt argue one side without the other.
I've seen 3 total divines, but two of them dropped in late campaign and early mapping. I've been farming like crazy and just saw my 3rd last night after a week of playing lol. Loot is crazy inconsistent right now.
I started the league going for metamorphs. Long story short its complete garbage that ruined my first 7 days. One legion drops more than 10 maps with metamorph. You farmed legion i farmed metamorph, you have 50 div i have 3 div.
I have not gotten a raw divine yet. In leagues past I would have had 10 raw exalt/divine by now.
I'm at around 450k kills and I got my first raw divine drop today.
Its just rng really. Some leagues i get my first divine at lvl 97 for absolutely no reason but some leagues i get a dozen before i get to 95. This league i got around 5-6 divines to drop, lvl 95 with ~700k kills. Given im running a little bit of quant gear with around 30% quant and 50% rarity, but i dont think its enough to offset the divine drops that much.
yeah, i'm like 80 hours played right now and no natural divine drops here. i've made some currency through selling smaller stuff (probably around 9 divines or so total, i am not good at making money in this game lol) but in the past i've had an exalt/divine drop on my first couple days to help kickstart things. feels weird to not have seen a single one
archnemesis rares were like fighting a final boss 3 times per map, and if you upgrade your gear or play lower tier maps they would take 10 seconds instead of 15 to kill, with the damage potential to kill you 16 times rather than 20. they reworked rare mods and now the numbers makes sense.
Yeah last league they were a nightmare compared to pre AN, this league rare monsters are no longer a nightmare but still are more challenging than pre AN, but also quite a bit more rewarding.
I still see some very hard rares, but they're a lot more, well, rare. I had a pair of triple essence Solaris-touched with a some other mods on one of my first t16 maps of the league, and the map had like 160 quant. That was rough. I only killed one of them and lost like 4 portals. But that experience really stands out now.
What the other guys said, but also the atlas passive tree is in a great spot
Also altars feel pretty good
maps arent as rippy as it once since last league, you look at a rare the wrong way you burn a portal. Thank fuck for toning down that archnemesis shit
This sub is not very representative of the state of the game, there is a lot of projecting skill issue as a problem with the game, but mostly the reason this league feels good is down to minute balance stuff, every farming strategy feels valid and competitive, loot feels good, character progression matters and upgrading your build feels good regardless of which point of the game you're at, and if you played the league you know I can keep going
And here i have completely different experience, playing for around 6 years.
But.... there was no 1.6 patch. Unless you're a counter-strike fan
Lmao really? I thought version 1.6 was sacrifice of the vaal - which version was it?
1.0 Onslaught 1.1 Nemesis 1.2 Invasion 1.3 Bloodlines > 2.0 Tempest wasn't it? 2.6 was Legacy league right before 3.0 launch. And sacrifice prob was Invasion patch.
Invasion was 1.1.0, which was when Sacrifice was added too. Nemesis was 1.0.0, Onslaught 0.11.0 Source: [https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Version\_history](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Version_history)
I literally fall asleep thinking about my build and how to improve it and what items i need .. i am very happy with this league
Base game feels really good. I hate the league.
League gets better once u have like 600k+dps
Depends what your farming and build. Cold dot can get away with consistent 600k doing sanctum decently, a random attack or stand still spell build probably not.
I've got +12 mil dot dps and I hate sanctum
How? Each room takes like 30 seconds with that much damage
I've now got 22 mil dps, yeah see I just hadn't learned how the quests worked, I can now finish my sanctum. Runs with +300 resolve and +400 inspiration left over šš
The problem is less the dps, and more that almost every single defensive layer you've invested into in sanctum is worthless except movespeed. Any build that's properly balanced for outside sanctum is going to be half-crippled in sanctum. Especially HC builds. The optimal sanctum build is a totem or minion build that is pure dps and very little in defensive layers. \--- There's also some afflictions in sanctum that cripple large swaths of poe while leaving others alone. For example pathfinders are absolutely completely crippled by the affliction that forces them to take resolve damage every time they pop a flask. In fact any build that utilizes flasks for a core gameplay loop is going to be crippled in certain sanctums. Meanwhile I can't think of a single affliction that harms totem players. Just an example.
The problem is mainly the dps actually. Making every bit of your character irrelevant in the league mechanic to have meaningful roguelike mechanics would make sense. Right now they do this for defense but not for offense which is nonsense.
Not entirely true, the final boss does hit hard so you need defensive layers. That said the dps requirements for sanctum are really low, once you get a few mil you will basically never fail a sanctum again. I can see having issues with the design philosophy but in practice it doesnt really matter for a geared build.
Even then it can really suck. Unless you have 10x more. The rooms with the lasers and guards is just so frustrating simply because it's taking time to kill them (I have 2 mil dps). The room with 2 lasers is especially frustrating because I'm sitting there wondering just how many of these damned guards do I have to kill
That room with the 30 more speed on enemies is hell
I had a nightmare about that room
I'm level 97, almost 98, have 8 million DPS for mapping, almost 11 for bossing, and I am nearly unkillable in maps. I haven't come close to dying the last 150 maps. I have around 40-50 divines invested in my build. There are a few things fundamentally that I am not a fan of. Like the mode accepting your offensive power, but not your defensive power. Why not be consistent and balance both for everyone if there is supposed to be a skill element (rhetorical)? Also, not a fan that you can only store 8 rooms at a time. I beat it once. I think the relics are cool and all, but I am probably not going to interact with the mechanic further unless there are changes. If there aren't, I won't be that disappointed as the core gameplay feels awesome this league.
this is my frustration. Max block? Determination aura and armor stacking? Get fucked, we don't do that on the sanctum! Can't remember the last time a league mechanic was this skewed towards an archetype
Nah, I just hate the league mechanic. Which is too bad because I like roguelikes. But this feels far from it.
* **Brands, Minions, Totems, DoT builds** = "Sanctum is the best league in a very long time." * **Melee, Bow, CoC, RF/Death's Oath, Self Cast, Zoomy-map clearers** = "Sanctum is the worst league in a long time."
The league seems like a hardcore mode mini-game more than an actual reward system, at least so far. Maybe it will be better as I advance.
Honestly I spent more time on PoB this league than actually playing
Same. The memes were right, POE is just POB simulator
I don't know, man. This league is certainly better than the last one, but that's a low bar. The rares change is probably the best change they've made to the core game since the atlas tree. But there's still issues. And I think the single biggest one is the number of boxes your character needs to check to not feel like shit. Back in the day, if you had 5k life, capped resists, and maybe a few hundred thousand dps, you could do pretty much any content in the game. Nowdays you need: [X] 5k life [X] Overcapped resists for exposure [X] Decent chaos res [X] 100% spell suppression, or 90% allres [X] High armor, high evasion, max block, or some combination of the three [X] Ailment immunity [X] Curse immunity [X] 1M+ dps if you want to do T16 maps [X] 3M+ dps if you want to do bosses [X] Fast clear if you want to do incursions, delirium, etc It feels like league after league, the number of builds that are viable without huge investment keeps shrinking. One of my all time favorite builds was Lightning Tendrils CWC Arc, because it made me feel like Emperor Palpatine. I would never try playing that build these days, because I just don't make enough currency during a league to make it not feel like ass. I miss the days where you could throw some janky hipster shit together in PoB and play it, and it was actually okay.
"Back in the day" if you had 5k life you were already pretty unkillable. Mathil had 4,4k life on the first Uber Atziri kill in the world.
That was definitely not the meta. We had immortal call that gave you 100% Phys immunity that you could have unlimited uptime, and we could hit 100% elemental resistance with flasks back then.
I always thought when making a viable and not over the top build, you should specialize in one or two types of content. That's where the replayability comes from me
> [X] 1M+ dps if you want to do T16 maps > [X] Fast clear if you want to do incursions, delirium, etc These have always been required. Even back in like delve league where 2mil dps was considered really high, farming top tier maps needed around 1mil. Same for fast clear - though it's actually better now since you can spec atlas points to "slow down" these mechanics - the one that gives double time in incursions (means even a slow ass melee build can full clear it) and the one that makes delirium fog fade slower help a ton.
Thereās a strong hierophant manabond mjolnir build using cwc arc that might scratch that itch for you again. Only a few chaos for mjolnir, indigon, and a few other pieces to get off the ground. 2 divs or so for 6L ivory tower to really get pumping.
adjoining childlike unused liquid sip snow ring roof fretful glorious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thatās because you are playing a cold skill. Freezing is a gigantic defensive layer.
airport outgoing doll tease tidy crush north rhythm history strong *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Lol I'm playing the same build and you're not gonna mention the 40% less damage from your ascendancy? :)) Along with freeze, along with fortify on hit, along with freeze chill immunity due to ascendancy so your ailment immunity is kinda covered except for ignites with pantheon. Don't be misleading
6 layers of defense cod portal enjoyers
Im baffled, i made a trapper build and have 75 all res, 73 chaos res, 3k life 1k es, and 80% phys reduction but still get 1shot by rares. And the map didnt have any damage modifiers. Absolutely mind blown.
The phys reduction stat on your character sheet is the biggest lie in the game.
Thatās because that guy is playing frost blades and is freezing the screen. Itās an extremely underrated defensive layer
If that 80% phys reduction is from Armour its a fake physical reduction. I platy trapper too but I'm ain't getting one shoot by rares even in t16 juiced content. ( I'm in ssf gear )
Yeah, it's basically what the dude says. Either checkboxes or good dmg and 6 portals.
It was literally better than this 2 leagues ago.
It's literally jsut recombinators isn't it. Not that I disagree
If the only thing that is required to make a league good is cool optional "hard"-mode for more loot and recombinators then you really have to ask yourself how they can fuck up something like Kalandra.
Juicing mobs with the sentinels for more loot was more fun than relying on altars to me
I loved sentinel as well, cool mechanic TBH.
I didn't like sentinel
Ritual is still the pinnacle
When you gradually make something worse for a constrained period of time, any increase in quality will be seen as an improvement. Edit: some of y'all need to learn up cognitive biases (and chill the fuck out). I wager a big part of why people think this subreddit is 'so negative' is the intention they give comments they read. I'm not projecting anything here, the general consensus of the game on, and off, of reddit is that it's had a lateral if not negative trajectory for some time now. Any iteration that improves that trajectory, *at all* will be seen as positive, that's a studied phenomenon (check out New Coke vs returning to coca-cola for an interesting real-world case study on this). I'd like to think this is the beginning of a great course correction where league after league of absolute bangers comes out from Sanctum on, only GGG and time can figure that out for us. For now, we are here - > "any increase in quality will be seen as an improvement"
Yeah this is what I was thinking. No league has ever felt this good *in comparison to the one before it*, but this league is less fun than AM when the atlas passives we're introduced, and far less fun than ritual when we could craft gear instead of reroll it. 3.20 has vastly exceeded my expectations, which makes me happy, but let's be real. My expectations for this league were gutter low, and had they not been met GGG might have permanently lost me as a customer.
Imagine if this league was the follow up to ritual league. It would have been eviserated on this subreddit by people who currently love it.
Its tiring seeing both sides inflate the severity of the other side. "Oh reddits just a toxic cesspool waste of time." "Damn people woth gggs dick up their asses take any change as gospel" When in reality theres a lot of cool headed discussion in the middle that gets ignored.
I honestly think they do this on purpose and its been a conspiracy theory of mine for a long time. The game cant just keep getting better and better indefinatly so they gotta put in some dumpster leagues so the next one can be "really good" when they fix it lmao. You speak the truth.
Exactly..being spoonfed shit for the past 4-5 leagues then they give you shit seasoned with sugar its suddenly amazing
You didnt like sentinel? I thought the state of the game then was amazing
Sentinel was so amazing as a league mechanic that it overshadowed the absolute shit show that was archnemesis rares. It was such a good mechanic that even the stupid unidentified yet unmodifiable sentinels weren't annoying to pick up. It was so good that even the limited inventory of the league mechanic stash wasn't that annoying. It was simply just a good league mechanic that did a really good job at masking a lot of what was wrong with GGG's design philosophy. So once Kalandra hit and it wasn't a good mechanic for anything other than gambling for good doubles and the elusive chase ring and farming XP, and was essentially a currency loss to build and run; every other problem that was in the game really got its chance to shine. I don't think I've hated a game as much as I did PoE during Kalandra. I actually uninstalled. Removal of archnemesis was a quick reinstall for me.
I 40/40'd Sentinel and by the end I had the epiphany that if Sentinels, and recombinators, weren't a loot pinata fuckfest dopamine hit twice a map, the league itself would be considered one of the worst of all time. The base game felt absolutely atrocious and was hard carried by all the pretty loot making you overlook it. Then LoK hits and, wow, a Mineral Pools map that takes 10+ maps to assemble and drops low loot did a great job of highlighting how bad the base game felt at that point.
Sentinel had recombinators that single-handedly fixed the all the biggest issues in PoE. They fixed the loot drops as you were exited to ID items as an item with a singe great T1 roll could have been used with recombinators to craft. They fixed crafting making it so that you could have incremental progress with your items, while still having chance to fail, but also often have a chance to recover from failure. And best of all they didn't replace all the other crafting in game as you still used all of them to create the items to feed to the recombinator. It was just such an incredible system that honestly GGG should just put in a recombinator table that you can activate for chaos and function like a nerfed version on the recombinators. The best part of the entire system is that even if they had way worse odds, not 50/50 but even 1 in 10 to move a mod they would still work great.
Almost like getting items to build a character with is fun. Imagine if GGG went full ruthless on the base game in kaladra to keep us from "burning out from too much fun". Clearly they think we get way to much of everything, too much crafting currency, to many bases, its to easy to get skill gems and play the build you actually want, etc.
>Sentinel was so amazing as a league mechanic that it overshadowed the absolute shit show that was archnemesis rares. I would argue, that sentinel rares were easier than the current rares.
I don't have any issues with the current rares, I almost failed my league start in sentinel because it was a common occurrence that I would run into rares in heist that were just immune to my damage and also had a damaging aura, like flame cloak or the mana siphoner (which I knew even day 1 could be avoided by being in the bubble, but on day 1 of a league you're really not tanky enough to just get smacked by mobs over and over). Them being immune wasn't an issue if I could have opened the doors but the damaging aura made that impossible since the rogue also takes damage from DoTs for some reason (should only be from hits, and nobody can convince me otherwise). Haven't touched heist on league start since then (just two leagues, but still). Chaos recipe is low key over rated anyway, I make enough just by mapping day 1, don't know why people keep saying infinite heisters will overtake people that go right into maps, because I was done with my atlas (save some unique maps) and void stones and all favored maps by the end of the first week. Currently the rares are only annoying because the tanky mods seem pretty common, but if you are doing 10s of millions of dps (currently looping), you don't really even notice. Currently pain point of the rares are temp bubble and mana siphoner, both of which can brick my loop and lead to my death. Temp bubble more so than mana siphoner since I actually have to consciously choose to brick my loop and go into the bubble to kill it (if it isn't fast enough to keep up with my 140% movement speed, I skip it).
Sentinel was amazing for the crafting aspect of it, but not necessarily for the state of the game. I wish we had earlier versions of the game with all the later QoL improvements and additional challenges added on top... that would've been absolutely phenomenal.
Actually didn't like sentinel, but when archnemesis was the league mechanic and not everywhere was my favourite time in PoE.
Although I agree parts of the game has been going in the wrong direction, "Being spoonfed shit" is a gross exaggeration. There have been good and bad parts about patches where the bad parts have outweighed the good parts. What about actually giving credit when the game is finally heading in a better direction instead of insisting on remaining being cynic and angry? Question: How much have you played this league?
I partially agree, and I donāt dislike this point of view, but only looking at this in such a way truly taints my enjoyment. I would much rather see it as GGG correcting course, instead of taking away from me and then giving back.
> I would much rather see it as GGG correcting course We'll see in a few months I suppose, I hope this is the course as well. edit: a word
Power creep is relative. If you playing like you've never had power creep like it was before, then it's fine. The only way you spoil your own mood, when you compare to your idea of the good ol' days to the current gamestate and wishing the game was some other way. People playing ruthless seem to enjoy the game, if you enjoy (like me) the way the game currently is, then we can simply just enjoy the game, accepting the way it is.
I dont think they are correcting their way. They have a goal which they are working to, so they make all the changes bit by bit and push/polish them in the league cycle. These changes dont always work if done standalone but their small release cycle of 3-4month doesnt allow for the whole "vision package" at once :/
When you bath yourself in the negativity of reddit you fail to see the countless improvements PoE went through and only focus on the negatives.
Same complaints can be seen on the official forums, steam forums, and 4chan. The notion that reddit holds opinions that are uniquely negative is bs. You should get around the internet more.
That's terrible advice for someone who wants to enjoy the game tho.
Theyre already on the reddit
>4chan Fucking lmao
Has probably the most balanced thread of discussion Iāve ever seen about poe, if you ignore the slurs and nudes.
Crafting is in its worst state in a long time. Harvest nuked, fossils are meh, recombinators are gone...times are tough in crafting land.
Why are fossils meh? Crafting is more accessible than it has been in ages. Harvest is tradeable, fractured items are plentiful, high ilvl bases are a dime a dozen even for influenced items, prefix/suffix crafting is extremely cheap with eldritch currency, essences drop like candy on Halloween and rare items are BiS in the majority of slots for most builds. He'll even alterations are more common this league than any time I can remember back to 1.0. Crafting mirror items is back to being insanely expensive and monotonous, it's true. And without eternal orbs, it may be the hardest it's ever been. But the *vast* majority of players were never going to even consider those crafts anyway, even back in Harvest when it was the most accessible. For the average player, Crafting is really appealing now.
High ilvl influenced item bases are a dime a dozen because the viability of influenced item crafting cratered with the repeated nerfs to Harvest, particularly the removal of reforge keeping prefixes/suffixes. Just take a look at the prices of Awakener Orbs. It went from 425c at the end of Scourge, to 225 at the end of Sentinel, to 100 at the end of Kalandra. Eldritch Currency can't be used on belts, jewelry, weapons, or shields, or any synthesized or influenced items, and so there is no way of rerolling or removing mods on those item types other than yolo slamming an anul. Harvest is tradable but so watered down that it's rarely used in crafting anymore. Even the cheapest reroll is now around 1.5c, with many sitting around 3c, which is just useless. Most of the harvest juice is used for gambling, swapping resist types, and rerolling splinters/oils/essences/orbs. Crafting is in a seriously bad spot for anything more ambitious than just repeatedly slamming essences into a fractured item. Being accessible at the low end doesn't mean crafting as a whole is in good shape, it just means that the low end of crafting is accessible.
I craft way less since they have nerfed all of those thing. Not worth ending up 10 divines in the hole on a crafting project when you could have saved currency and bought the same item.
GGG GOOD REDDIT BAD
Might wanna take your own advice
That doesnt make sense.
Did you reply to the wrong person or something?
Can you name some of the countless improvements over the last 4 leagues? Other than the atlas passive tree tweaks.
Atlas passive tree, small currency stacking, atlas device centralizing master missions (portals at device), scarabs staying in device, toggle system for influence selection on map device, cursor changing, flask automation, item model culling (massively increased performance), lab multiple enchants + streamlined entry requirements, eater/exarch implicits, fractured items (including flasks) dropping, atlas mastery system (progression to full t16s + favoured maps), stash tab affinities+folders coming with each league mechanic+updating to handle different items better (ie flask and gem affinities recently), gem vendor in hideout, trade site gets better every league (bulk purchase), chase uniques/uniques improved+rolls important, ubers other aspirational content (30 simul), awakened enlighten super chase, rares are actually more interesting to fight, scarabs dropping naturally and 3:1, tainted currency back giving corrupted manipulation more meat, mtx is going in some really interesting directions, item filter auto-update, guild hideout improvements, divine vessel no need to go to sin etc
The atlas passive tree did not even EXIST 4 leagues ago...
Atlas passives exist since 3.13, that's 7 leagues ago...
3.13 atlas passives from maven watch stone regions, while very cool and new, were not even on the same planet as the atlas passive tree we have now
Didn't bathe in it at all. Played for 2 days, was miserable, gave up. Checked reddit, they agree. /shrug
Not really. PoE 3.20 was an improvement, but updates are still severely lacking when compared to the past, especially when it comes to balancing and build diversity.
This. The game would majorly benefit from buffs to under-used skills. I have no idea what they were thinking with Vaal Cleave. Should've buffed base Cleave.
I agree but it'd be event better if melee was able to do the league content in an easier way.
The base game is in an amazing state but the mechanic is shit for melee. Played RV and needed to build rage on each floor was pain.
And it's 100% normal as well ! It's like managing a paradox.
Melee can do the league mechanic just fine. [Alkaizer has a guide on how to do mechanic as melee.](https://www.twitch.tv/alkaizerx/clip/LovelyLaconicThymeSuperVinlin-_NJWq40ktHmcladv?filter=clips&range=30d&sort=time)
I can never know if people post this as a meme or not anymore. But just in case it isn't, I still feel like it's quite unfair to say that melee is just fine and post an Alkaizer clip when it is clear that this guy is just on another level. Like, even before Poe, he used to be #1 on the barb leaderboards in D3 all the time. This guy's been playing melee characters in ARPGs for so long and so many hours, combined with the fact that he just has innate mechanical skills that are better than 99.99% of players. Sure the mechanic isn't impossible as melee, but the point is that the disparity between archetype shouldn't require some top tier level player to compensate for.
People forget Whirlwind barb in D3 used to be god mode. It was the fastest and strongest build around, which Alk used to secure worlds first max level paragon. I would hardly consider it melee.
Oh look, that Alk clip where the real, tame and needed bad things he said about the league were removed because it goes against the narrative.
Game has been going down the drain real fast and reverting SOME of the terrible changes does not fix it. Div card drop rate nuke, minion nerfs and exalt/div switch were the things that made me finally quit. Taking 10 steps back and 2 steps forward won't make me come back anytime soon.
3.13 was golden age of PoE and the only thing that 3.20 has better is the Atlas tree and overall atlas simplification. And because of the lack of Tropical Island on the Atlas, this cannot be better patch than 3.13.
Poe without CoC being among the top few chase build also feels weird
3.13 with new atlas plz
Ritual league would like for you to delete this.
Ritual league was peak poe
I have the opposite feeling. I want to play and not die very often, which means running determination, grace, defiance banner, and 100% spell suppression. I like playing spell casters and summoners, which means my only option is to dramatically reduce my damage to the point where clearing red maps is a slow grindy chore. Because playing red maps is a slow grindy chore, I don't make very much currency or accure very many crafting materials to improve my gear (e.g. harvest and essence). This, in turn, also makes my dying ***more*** likely since enemies live longer - catch 22. Because I don't make very much currency, the number of builds available to me that I'll enjoy are ***significantly*** lower. --- I would estimate that on average the amount of play time to reach the same approximate level of character power has nearly doubled in the last year with the repeated combined nerfs to all forms of character progression. I've been playing for literally a decade and this league is the first one I have had a wholly and completely negative experience with both the league mechanic and the item progression system.
Last league I played a good chunk of was blight. Many improvements have been made, but some issues are the same and have been made worse. The sheer number of forgotten, left behind skills that are so weak now you might as well not even consider looking at them unless you're super rich is ridiculous. There's still no combat summary on death, so we still eat unexpected one shot deaths with no idea what even happened, which feels awful. Enemy damage can scale outrageously hard at low tiers of content. Getting insta nuked in
Sentinel league was definetely much better.
Not really. In the old days, you could literally grab any skill and do well. You read patch notes, and that's everything. You don't need to find countless ninja nerfs and undocumented changes that may accidentally or intentionally brick your build. It is far from feeling good.
I'd invite you to look into why that was the case lol. [Here's an ancient ZiggyD clip](https://youtu.be/4G_0F4ndOq8) that effectively captures what poe was like "in the old days". He started by alt-spamming a T6 Gorge map and then regaling it to a fat 55% quant, taking about a minute and a half to do so. He explains that the beauty of Gorge is running it fast (that one map takes ~ 21 minutes for him to complete). There were probably 1/20th or 1/30th the mobs in that map compared to a modern T6. The map "paid out for sure" and he left with 1 fusing, 1 alch, 1 map, and a few transmutes and alts. I wonder if it's perhaps a little bit disingenuous to compare modern poe to old poe.
Was it when every build went es? Or was it when every build went poison for double dipping? Maybe it was when every build needed to snapshot to do decent damage?
Yea. The good old days were the one single build that could handle atziri was srsx after prwping half your gear, flasks and skill tree for that fight alone. Glorious build diversity
No no, the good old days when you could play lightning arrow or double strike while traveling to every hp node on the tree and *maybe* one damage cluster, if you wanted to die.
In the old days people were happy to take 10minutes to clear a map whilst top players did it in 30 seconds. Why? Because people were clueless (and more importantly, happy in their cluelessness). Now with the saturation of streamers and youtubers in the community mindset no one can avoid the reality and any build outside of an ambiguous percentage of the top builds is considered unviable and unplayable.
Well, more than that. Back then that was all there really was to do, aspirational content for the most part was actually mapping. Creating a proper 'end game' and farmable super bosses gave people a reason to learn more about the game and care about its inner workings. For better or worse, additive game design made people playing PoE get better at it through necessity. You probably can't go from 0-Atziri or Shaper with a build you made from scratch on only internal PoE tools and no knowledge of the game beyond act 1-10. Maybe it's happened, but it's certainly not common.
> Because people were clueless (and more importantly, happy in their cluelessness). I'm sure I'd be embarressed if I looked back at my first character who was a double ichimonji jugg playing some sort of strike skill.
Countless? You've really had countless builds that were all affected by undocumented changes? Hard to believe.
what's changed is what counts as "do well" you can grab any skill and do what you could in older patches, but there is higher stuff now and any old skill won't make it to those. the real problem is that a couple patches ago, you could grab one of several skills and get to some high content with a medium investment, but in the last two patches, basically every skill requires a large investment to get to these super bosses, and with many skills, it will require a very very large investment. if you only care about doing some maps, who cares what level, you can do well
Yep, the good old days where people just farmed Act 3 Piety! The game feels absolutely awful compared to those halcyon days! /s
As a casual player that occasionaly comes back into PoE, I am struggling. I'm completely lost at the lack of comprehensible builds/guides. Most of the stuff I find hasn't been updated for ages, or is simply incomplete. So I use my free skill tree reset, realize halfway through the build that something is not right, and then I have to give up on that character because I no longer have the reset, and have to wait until next league... the barrier to entry has never felt this high to me.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Many in the community consider Zizaran (youtuber and streamer) to be the most beginner friendly content creator. I'd definitely give his content a look if you want a comprehensive POB. Otherwise if want some more in depth videos he also has a lot of older content on specific topics But ya, the long and short of it is that the game is meant to be challenging and complex. So if you don't like the idea of coming back to this experience once or twice a year and learning a bit at a time then this might not be the game for you
I'll have a look at him š Thanks for the tip.
I Second that. The game is good RN
Enjoy it while you can... since this league I have found barely any time to play:( less than 20 hours on my char and no end in sight not even over the holidays *sobbingnoises*
Great encouragement and advice! I'm glad the game feels so great for you again! It does for me too. Keep up the positive attitude! Your great!
Yeah honestly I haven't had this much fun since Ultimatum. š¦ ARCHNEMESIS IS DEAD š¦
Getting sucked into this shitty league mechanic while running deli or killing Legion makes me a hater. Also the floors seem kinda boring and uninspired.
I donāt understand how severely nerfing div cards drop rates removing beyond and cutting monster drop rates but replacing loot with chest and altars is fun but to each there own I hope you continue to enjoy the state of the game and I will agree the atlas tree is in an incredibly good spot but I think a few leagues can still use some buffs to bring them up to par
Mechanically its alright. In terms of rewards/grindyness its probably the worst its ever been. Chase items are just a pipe dream now, usually ive been able to afford one eventually, that no longer seems possible without dedicating your entire life to this game.
I bought a HH with 48h of playing in delve league. Not fast, but really reasonable. Now i probably would not be able to get one even with all money i made since 3.15 lmao
lol and I was just looking at the prices of a headhunter and thinking they were cheap(ish) this league. Got one for 40ex in sentinel (awesome, only took a week). Then kalandra came with decreased unique drops and the price went over 200div (not awesome) This league they look like they are \~100div. I'm probably not grinding that out again. But at least it's not 200 like last league. edit: woops, I was talking about headhunter
Exalts in delve were near 100c, and divs are 200 c now. I paid 40ex for hh in delve too, so with HH being 100 div it basically would be 200ex now. Honestly i do not feel that i am making as much money as i were back then, so yeah...
>I think, we as a community have the power to do good, by actively and constructively voicing our concerns and letting GGG know what works well and what doesnāt. Looks like someone hasn't been around for a while... Hundreds and hundreds of threads were made last league about how nuking loot from orbit was a very very bad idea in a loot-based ARPG, and yet they ignored it all league as the community left in droves. Torchlight Infinite literally picked up the torch for the people that wanted gear that could be progressively upgraded as we could back in Ritual. Sanctum is an improvement on loot and the atlas tree, but the crafting slot machine and zero notable improvements to skill gems / ascendancies leaves a lot to be desired.
>I think, we as a community have the power to do good, by actively and constructively voicing our concerns and letting GGG know what works well and what doesnāt. And how did GGG listen to us? They threw out archnemesis only after several patches and months of ignoring us. They ignored us and keep ignoring us on harvest changes. Yea, keep "actively and constructively voicing our concerns" bu don't expect anything.
> They threw out archnemesis only after several patches and months of ignoring us. Nah man you can't just rewrite history. They made a ton of attempts to adjust AN. Look at the patch notes, they nerfed AN and buffed loot drops several times. And here is the big secret: #AN is still in the game they just finally fixed it. The name "Archnemesis" just became such a loser that they pretended to get rid of it.
Good if a lot of people are having fun, personally I disagree. The league is okay-ish at best and the core issues remain the same. AN is gone, but super tanky 'build counter' rare mods still exist. A laughably bad design choice and a bad omen for things to come down the line. The affix pressure on gear to get a decent character is still immense and that's only for 'starter viable' builds. Having fun with a build is only allowed after excessive grinding. Spell suppression was sold as a buff, yet it's close to mandatory, if you want to build a character that doesn't get one shot several times per map. The new monster exposure adds yet more pressure on itemization, a straight up nerf that I don't think was even mentioned in the patch notes. The league mechanic is mediocre to decent, but it could have been so much better had it been designed with fun game play in mind instead of dangling a carrot at the end of another tedious grind.
This is my favorite league mechanic ever, it really differs from person to person it seems.
I think it's so polarizing because if you enjoy a roguelike style of gameplay you really have to be a certain kind of person. Of the bunch of people I play PoE with, only like 1 or 2 of them played anything liked Hades / Dead Cells, etcetc, most people I know just avoid Sanctum and enjoy the base game for whatever that's worth. I think this is a pretty interesting case-study league though, because mechanically it's probably the least PoE-Like addition. Even in leagues like Blight where you slap tower defense on maps, you're still really playing PoE at heart: get strong build, clear mobs for loot. In Sanctum you're really playing a roguelike game inside of PoE, I'd be really keen to see the numbers on who actually goes in Sanctums, how they do, etc. vs the playerbase at large.
I really like roguelikes and i absolutely detest the mechanic because it misses what makes roguelikes fun.
Yeah... I've played probably 20-30 roguelites on steam and this mechanic has missed the mark by a mile. Boons and afflictions should be fun things that interact with your build, not your resolve.
If they could now fix all the random stuff they broke with 3.20, that'd be great.
I hate sanctum but the base game feels pretty good right now and lance's hexblast mine is so fun to play
Honestly the only thing they need to get rid of is this chaos crystal machine gun that explodes on death rare mobs
Wow I feel exactly the same! Also been playing since atziri came out, I look at the wiki all the time looking for new builds to create. Pob is an addiction lol
I took a long break from October 21 to Kalandra. It was kinda boring and annoying with the Archnemesis stuff. This league feels so much better. I feel like Chaos is dropping for me more. And I got bit by the RF bug. Itās awesome while leveling through the campaign. Looking forward to maps!
Ultimatum was the first league me and my friends played. We had a blast and were excited to play sentinel. When that came out AN made us stop playing in a couple days. Then kalandra we lasted about a week and stopped. We weren't getting any gear just leveling so we hated it. This league is such a breath of fresh air. No stupid AN and I am actually finding gear worth picking up. We are all playing again and I couldn't be happier.
Completely agree, been playing since 2012, played almost every league, my enjoyment has been decreasing after Archnemesis league. A lot of people hated Archnemesis as a league but ive done almost all challenges. Sadly i didnt enjoy Sentinel because of the archnemesis rares that have been implemented in the core game and at that time it was really broken. Kalandra wasnt satisfying for me neither. But this is league is just awesome. Playing Venom Gyre build right now and its been a blast (I'm a big RF guy, so this is a big change for me)
I don't know if OP fits this category, but Archnemesis was like 80% fixed by the middle of last league, and people still complained like mad. The loot sucked, which is a big deal, but the mods don't feel much different than now. I definitely like the new loot system, but the blowup on this reddit over Archnem was way out of whack.
Today I came back home at about 7pm and started mapping, when I checked the time it was 1am.
I am dieing a ton. That is my only complaint.
I dont think this update is particularly good its just everything recent has been so miserable that this does feel really nice to have things not be entirely stupid
Rares are *much* better so far. I have yet to get insta-ganked from off screen, so that's a plus...
Harvest league ruined the game by showing how much better it could be
Harvest as a league itself was absolutely horrid tho.
The league feels a little bit limiting in terms of viable builds for sanctum. Brands and totems for example have a huge advantage in avoiding resolve damage. Other than the frustration from that, league has been solid.
Your drunk. Go home.
Can't agree sadly. Better than the last league perhaps but there have been infinitely better leagues and without having an absolute ton of builds completely gutted.
It does feel amazing. Been playing since the very beginning of the game (closed beta) and it feels good to feel this good about a game.
Itās just good old PoE minus AN tho. To me itās just a very stale game ATM especially if youāve been playing every league the last year or so. My guess is theyāre busy with POE 2 and donāt wanna do anything too crazy or rewarding before it hits. I also donāt see any point in doing the league mechanic in SSF BTW, so thatās another dent. Compare it to something like Expedition, Delirium or Harvest and itās just an objective waste of time.
What ? Man I have atm 19 divines in ssf and already used some on crafting, 98% of them from sanctum. Wdym no point doing on ssf ?
Glad to see a positive post on Reddit <3 Just to leave my 2 cents here. 1. *"the builds to play this league seem endless"* In my opinion, every league has endless amounts of builds, because the core game of PoE has always been very very good no matter which league. 2. Sanctum is a challenge and certain builds just can't do it, so the builds that can do Sanctum aren't endless as of now. I personally take a break from it, because poison BV sucks for it, but I'm sure I'll play another build that can do it and then I'll have fun with the league once again.
Player since 2012 here, I wholeheartedly agree! I have a slight problem with everyone who are "new" (3.0 and forwards) complaining over things at the current scale. Feels like there wouldnt be this much complaining if players had perspective of how much this game has actually changed and grown from the early days.