Path of Exile

[Tommy John Surgery]

will be interesting to see how people min-max them to supplement builds or possibly enable new ones?

From the meta of Settlers' group play from looking at SnapOW (the POB degen behind what Empyrian and crew are doing), I have several guesses for possible support merc use cases:

1. Cursebot
Equip an Anathema and maybe a Void Battery or something else that gives max power charges for curse limit. The merc would be better if they already have their own curse gem since it won't be Level 1 but you can always use an insanely lucky Hands of the High Templar corrupted with implicits having 1-3 of the curses you want on hit (think Enfeeble or Temp Chains). If you don't have the ele curse you wanted, you can just buy or farm a Delve ring with the curse on hit mod. Voila, that's a fair bit of socket pressure relieved.

2. War Cry-bot
Since cries just inherently share effects like charges with party members since last league, you can slap on a Redblade Banner to not have to worry about power and have them give you Endurance charges and other warcry buffs.

I'm not gonna include Aurabots because I doubt any of them can get enough Mana Reservation Efficiency without access to their trees. Do keep in mind that most builds will be able to benefit from a one or two-link Animate Guardian now too.

What's everyone thinking of leaguestarting now that (most) patch notes are out?

What I do is I try to make a POB mostly for skills I'm interested in just to see a theoretical damage range and how to path on the passive tree. Then I check whatever theorycraft build-makers like Jungroan or Ruetoo do. I add the ones I'm interested in to a list with categories of League-Starter and not then I roll physical dice in bracket-style matchups per base class to determine my league-starter.

For changed gems, I have my eye on: Life-stacking Burning Arrow of Vigour Inquisitor, Firestorm of Meteors Ignite Elementalist (untested/POB'd), Blade Blast of Dagger Detonation Champion with the spell impale gloves from Elder and maybe Astral Projector for range if not just Lightning Warp Cast While Channeling (untested/POB'd), and Lightning Tendrils of Escalation combined with something Lightning to be triggered with Cast While Channeling (untested/POB'd).

For builds I personally have not tried, Dual Strike of Ambidexterity Slayer or Penis Brand Inquisitor. For builds, I'm tempted to redo: Viper Strike of the Mamba Pathfinder and maybe BAMA.

I might try out Volcanic Fissure of Snaking

I do have to warn you that a fair bit of power that this skill gem had last league came from a runecrafting enchant in Settlers which is gone now. It's still good but will take some more work to pump up those numbers

 

[Quioui]

I'm all in on mercenary being used as a MF culler for degenerate mapping, as long as the bot playing it is decent enough. It might be a bit tricky if the the mercenary can't spawn with regular trans gem but it will probably be the best for solo juiced mapping as long as you get one with a decent clear skill and the AI isn't garbage.

Spoiler: What is MF culling?

Magic Find= Increased Item Rarity / Increased Item Quantity.
Culling= The mechanic where any hit on an enemy below 10% hp becomes an instant kill.

Basically you prevent the person doing all the damage (the player in this case) from killing anything, usually by using Southbound gloves (you can only kill frozen enemy, otherwise they get left with 1hp) with Secrets of Suffering (you cannot freeze as your elemental ailments are replaced with their alternate versions), and have the one with all the MF do all the killing, so that it applies their MF. Group play MF-Culler have litterally 400dps with good attack coverage and Culling, while the group carry is closer to 400 million dps.

Also '9' players group play is going to be so degenerate I'm not even sure GGG's server instance will be able to handle it. 6 players + 6 bots counting as half a player for scaling purposes.

 

[crowabunga]

Ok, so with guardian+golem+Elementalist buffs I could make another reliable Maw of Mischief build (I'd lose the more ignite damage but make it up with minimum 25% shock dmg taken increase), with a merc to sate my socket starvation by handling Hexing, but...

CYCLONE BUFFS LET'S GOOOOOO SPIN2WIIIIIIN

Also R.I.P. Hexblast, but it deserved it. I'm also surprised that Ralakesh's Impatience was not only not utterly dumpstered, but even given some compensatory buffs to offset the heavy nerf of its characteristic attribute.

 

[Disguised In Cognito]

Ok, so with guardian+golem+Elementalist buffs

I'm not so sure Ele got buffed. Didn't it lose a bunch of golem buff effect from the second node being changed and more importantly, lose the PDR from Chaos Golem on a class that is already notoriously squishy?

My gut tells me this will be a league where being tanky will really be valued. Various effects from the memory stuff seem to juice up enemies and the ones that have memory threads could also be empowered? Unsure on the latter. Then you are going to be forced to run maps along the memory thing which may mean having to do some maps that are more deadly than others (they added some nasty ones like core and acid caverns back into the map pool). Finally, the mercenaries could potentially be pretty dangerous in high-tier maps depending on how they are balanced and I easily see them being something that starts out overtuned.

 

[crowabunga]

I'm not so sure Ele got buffed. Didn't it lose a bunch of golem buff effect from the second node being changed and more importantly, lose the PDR from Chaos Golem on a class that is already notoriously squishy?

My gut tells me this will be a league where being tanky will really be valued. Various effects from the memory stuff seem to juice up enemies and the ones that have memory threads could also be empowered? Unsure on the latter. Then you are going to be forced to run maps along the memory thing which may mean having to do some maps that are more deadly than others (they added some nasty ones like core and acid caverns back into the map pool). Finally, the mercenaries could potentially be pretty dangerous in high-tier maps depending on how they are balanced and I easily see them being something that starts out overtuned.

I always use Divine Flesh & Doppelganger Guise to deal with phys + chaos, so I'm disappointed but not too worried by the loss of PDR + buff effect, but for Maw of Mischief I'd be running Stone golems so their added global defense effect is pure buff and I only lose some HP regen. For non-explosive Golemancers the lack of PDR could get dicey, though.

Hopefully I can wring some tank out of Cyclone with Endurance charge stacking without giving up too much damage. Might use Ralakesh even after the nerf just so I can grab Brutal & Endurance charges together. The question is, do I go classic Slayer for Masterful Form and try to squeeze in Frenzy charge generation too, or go Champion for zdps Fortification + endurance stacking? Might not even PoB it and instead just go with my gut, can't turn out worse than the lacerate bleed Gladiator I did blind during the Settlers+Necropolis event.

Edit: oh shit Replica Badge of the Brotherhood, who needs Masterful Form when I can stack maximum Fortification and double dip on charge cap and ignore the downside since I'll never "gain" Fortification, and that's already irrelevant thanks to Ralakesh?! It's all coming together: Replica Badge, Ralakesh with "count as having maximum Endurance charges" affix variant, Arn's Anguish, and now I just need to solve Frenzy & Brutal Charge generation.

AND AND AND Infused Channeling got a buff, it's now a 12% less hit dmg taken! Oh Lord take me home we're facetanking this shit without a shield

Final sperging edit: dream setup: +10 Fortification Celestial Brace!

 

[Tommy John Surgery]

I feel like a drug addict on league-start again having withdrawal symptoms because POB (even the beta build) hasn't updated yet so I can't test if my idea for an Archmage Ignite Firestorm of Meteors Elementalist with Scorching Ray and golems will actually work. (Yes, I know I can add custom mods but that just fixes the Ascendancy nodes missing, I'm not autistic enough to look for all the gem and item changes, and add them to the custom config)

 

[Tommy John Surgery]

POB has the passive tree and ascendancy changes already but not the gem information just yet. You would still have to manually input golem buffs with buff effect adjustment, for example.

Anyway, I've done a rough draft of my idea of a Archmage Firestorm of Meteors Ignite Elementalist and I've just found out how ridiculous the golems are. I can easily get 1200 mana per second with the lightning golem, the golem nodes, Atziri's Foible, and some of the mana nodes. The build looks good so far for a league-starter with like 2M DPS on pinnacles and 6-7k ES which should be comfy for an ignite build going for maps and getting to 2-3 stones. Might want to swap over to a dedicated bosser like an armor-stacker Champion for more difficult content once I get the currency

 

[Gamer (not racist)]

I've been out of the loop for so long, can you guys suggest an easy-to-equip leaguestarter? builds I enjoyed the most in the past, ordered:

1. BV Inpulsa ELE;
2. selfcast Winter Orb CoC Ice Spear OCC with Realmender iirc;
3. 10 curses Doedre's Skin ED/Cont OCC;
4. Volatile Dead Poet's Pen ELE
5. fullblock Arakaali's Fang OCC.

I almost exclusively play spellcasters (and witch), anything with her I could try running in league? I saw that they buffed a lot of spells, but most of these builds died one or two leagues after I played them unfortunately, except for ED/Cont but I've played it way too much I'd rather play something else this time. I don't plan on doing pinnacle stuff or even Shaper/Elder unless there's new Zana lore lol

 

[Tommy John Surgery]

I've been out of the loop for so long, can you guys suggest an easy-to-equip leaguestarter? builds I enjoyed the most in the past, ordered:

1. BV Inpulsa ELE;
2. selfcast Winter Orb CoC Ice Spear OCC with Realmender iirc;
3. 10 curses Doedre's Skin ED/Cont OCC;
4. Volatile Dead Poet's Pen ELE
5. fullblock Arakaali's Fang OCC.

I almost exclusively play spellcasters (and witch), anything with her I could try running in league? I saw that they buffed a lot of spells, but most of these builds died one or two leagues after I played them unfortunately, except for ED/Cont but I've played it way too much I'd rather play something else this time. I don't plan on doing pinnacle stuff or even Shaper/Elder unless there's new Zana lore lol

Sorry for the late reply, homie, but if you still haven't decided by now, Herald-stacking Ele BV should be decent especially if you can mix in Golems.

And speaking of golems, happy league start Kiwis! It's actually crazy how thanks to normal lab, Elementalist starts zooming like a Deadeye build from Act 4 onwards with the golem shit. Rolling Magma levelling is actually tolerable this way.

Good luck to our EU friends who might still be dealing with server issues!

 

[Gamer (not racist)]

Sorry for the late reply, homie, but if you still haven't decided by now, Herald-stacking Ele BV should be decent especially if you can mix in Golems.

And speaking of golems, happy league start Kiwis! It's actually crazy how thanks to normal lab, Elementalist starts zooming like a Deadeye build from Act 4 onwards with the golem shit. Rolling Magma levelling is actually tolerable this way.

Good luck to our EU friends who might still be dealing with server issues!

no problem, appreciated! yes, I just started league and I was still looking for builds. that sounds interesting, thanks a lot, I'll look it up. good luck to you too!

 

[hawkisnight]

I didn't have much time to play so far but I am doing shield crush champion by someone named exiled cat. I lost interest last time just before last act but I am planning to get to mapping this time. Hopefully I was not baited into shit skill.

 

[crowabunga]

Running a Champion and taking my time levelling it's been so long, and not sure what skill I'll pick but the base tree (life, impale, fortify, keystones) is consistent enough I'm not worried about tree planning yet.

My impression of the mercs is that, if they work in endgame like they do in the campaign, where if they die in a zone they can't revive within or return to it, then I'll want to spec them for mapping and clear speed but keep all the DPS & build-enabling shenanigans to myself: unless I can make the perfect merc it won't be worth the risk of losing them in a boss fight and bricking it before I've even run through all my portals, whereas I can stomach an occasional slowdown in mapping.

 

[reformed alert]

The disconnects, rollbacks, and losing my maps suck so much. Makes me not want to play Will probably wait a few days until it (hopefully) gets better. At least I'm not an XBOX player, they are getting fucked really hard

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

I know PoE2 isn't out yet, but kinda odd how many game make sequels only for people to realize it sucks balls and go back to the first one.

 

[Gamer (not racist)]

I know PoE2 isn't out yet, but kinda odd how many game make sequels only for people to realize it sucks balls and go back to the first one.

poe2 sounded good in theory, but the execution is done too poorly for it to actually be enjoyable at the moment. I like both poe zoomzoom and poe2 slower approach, but I put 2 on hold until they rework many aspects (if they ever do)

 

[Dante Alighieri]

I know PoE2 isn't out yet, but kinda odd how many game make sequels only for people to realize it sucks balls and go back to the first one.

Poe 2 just needs more work

 

[Quioui]

You know the league is good when no one talks about it because they're busy playing

 

[Gamer (not racist)]

You know the league is good when no one talks about it because they're busy playing

what's it like? I just got to endgame before dropping out and moving back to standard mainly because I played it for the past year thanks to Settlers and got so used to my legacy quicksilver that playing league without it was making me suffer. I also don't particularly like mercenaries and I'm more interested in the new Zana lore, so it was an easy decision.

I just know that some merc+equip make mapping a joke, with how strong they can get lol

 

[Quioui]

what's it like?

Some mercenary will one shot you when you fight them, and once recruited it's quite hard to get them to do exactly what you want (the gear restriction is based on stats type + the mercenary 'class', you can't put a unique shield or a two handed weapon on a merc wearing two 1h weapons. They will have two auras at most and even those are pretty rare). Still pretty cool, and I'm sure the community will get better at squeezing out their potential.

I didn't do many T16 memory maps ("T16.5"), but the potential is there as well. The first few felt like actual T17 but with good layouts. Big monster density, and massive area but using the regular map generation layout. I'm just a bit doubtful on how much loot you can get out of them consistently as you can't put Searing/Eater/Maven on them. I dislike having to push extra button to spend the petals, Sentinels were fine because you could craft them and maintain a consistent set of them between maps, the petal skills are random every map.

The main appeal is finally getting some meta shakeup and QoL after almost a year.
I have a friend playing Golemancer Elementalist with self-casting spells and it seems ridiculously fun and strong. I went with Templar Mjölner myself, I want to push it to the Squire stage this time around (I went Manaforged Arrow the last time I played it).

got so used to my legacy quicksilver

If you're a zoomie addict like myself you want to grab all the good stuff:
Onslaught, Tailwind+Elusive on boots, Adrenaline on Death rush if you can afford to spend a ring slot on it, action speed whenever you can grab it and good travel skills (Whirling Blades, Leap Slam, Lightning Warp, Frostblink of Wintry Blast)

 

[hawkisnight]

Mercs seem to get stuck and die pretty easily. Granted I mostly ignored them so far and didn't invest anything at all. I only got one interesting with le heup ring.