Path of Exile Questions Thread - December 22, 2020

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't cyclone's stun immunity removed because GGG said they fixed the issue with the terrible stun de-sync? This issue is still completely persistent, and the stun immunity hasn't been re-added yet. Often it makes the skill feel horrible to use without a form of stun immunity, and should be fixed ASAP.

submitted by /u/Nicolas277
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Tooltip calculation sucks. Sometimes even PoB has limits. 99% of "does x work with y?" questions could be solved by providing us a target dummy with damage display.

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 10:26 AM PST

pls add :)

submitted by /u/superanonymousgamer
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The complexity of PoE should be a strength, not a weakness. But without parallel endgame progression, it takes what should be a deep, rich endgame experience and converts it into chores barricaded behind layers of RNG.

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 12:48 PM PST

There is no question that Path of Exile has been and continues to be a complex and rich experience, with even veteran players able to learn and discover something new with each new league.

However, where I believe GGG has fallen down is when it comes to compartmentalizing the content from their core endgame system, the Atlas.

In my view, there are 4 major endgame systems that could and should be compartmentalized from one another. Keep in mind that I'm talking about access to content and not rewards from that content. The Atlas, Delve, Heist, and Synthesis are these 4 major systems. All of the other league systems (Metamorph, Blight, Legion, Incursion, etc) are minor content that can be, and in many cases already is, folded into the major content. The one sticking point is Betrayal which I want to touch on a bit later.

The thesis of my argument is that the major content systems should be self-sustaining, allowing players parallel endgame content progression paths that do not rely on the Atlas for resource farming to enable that content. In other words, for example, if I want to get to endgame and specialize in running Heists and ignore my Atlas completely, I should be able to do so.

Quick aside here - Based on comments I've seen previously, I would like to preemptively handle two statements:

1) "But amalgamemnon, without limiting access to content, player retention will go down".

Sorry, but there's just zero evidence to support this. The vast majority of players do not play this game like the top 10% do. I can tell you anecdotally that many of my friends stopped playing the game because they found it to be "confusing" because they weren't clear why they were being violently jerked from a content type they were enjoying to go farm more of arbitrary resource X in the Atlas in order to keep doing the content they enjoy. And, it also follows that removing roadblocks major content would allow for more specialized characters, with higher level characters potentially having a Delve farmer, a Heist farmer, and an Atlas farmer, all optimized for one specific type of content, which increases high-end build variety.

2) "People are going to just do the content with the best rewards so allowing people to endlessly run content X will ruin the economy".

Yeah, only not really. See, there are essentially two ways people choose to engage with endgame content in PoE: people who do the content for the reward, and people who do the content because they enjoy the content.

The reward-driven player is going to mode skip from content type to content type depending on what gives them the most reward. GGG has already demonstrated they can adjust rewards on the fly, and even if the rewards from one content type become overly attractive, that content will be swarmed by reward-driven players, flooding the market with that reward type, eventually decreasing prices to the point where another content type becomes more attractive.

The content-driven player is going to play their preferred type of content, with a high tolerance for the level of reward because to them, doing the content is its own reward (up to a point).

Summary:

In the current implementation of the game, GGG has made the decision to create barriers to content (that reward-driven players find ways to trivialize and content-driven players see as detracting from their experience) in order to control the amount of reward coming from those content types into the economy.

By flipping this philosophy on its head and removing barriers to major endgame content pieces, GGG keeps the content-driven player (who tend to be less competitive and more casual) happy and engaged in the game, while taking on the responsibility of balancing rewards so that the first type of player always has something to chase, as well as allowing the economy to balance itself out.

Will it require some active monitoring and tuning on GGG's part? Absolutely. But the upside of simply allowing players to play the game in a way that they find fun is huge, because right now, the constant toggling that players have to do in order to play the content they enjoy is miserable for most players.

TL;DR - GGG needs to stop gating content based on the idea that the rewards from that content are too good. Instead, GGG needs to balance rewards so that content may be accessed without having to do chores to overcome barriers to that content.

Addendum Re: Betrayal

The system sucks. I unapologetically despise it. Blocking crucial crafting bench recipes behind 6 layers of RNG is a giant middle finger to the vast majority of players. I'd honestly be happier with a revamped, higher quality of life version of the old master system that was only 1 layer of RNG (finding masters in maps, which could be forced via prophecies) than the 6+ layers of RNG for Betrayal.

Or, if you want to revamp the current syndicate system, give each master an XP bar that fills up based on their rank when you run their safehouse, with double XP for them being the safehouse leader. You get their crafts based on their levels. This removes at least half of the RNG and lets you target masters that are high priority for you.

Either way, the current version sucks, badly, and needs an overhaul.

submitted by /u/amalgamemnon
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Buying hideout decoration MTX should unlock it at NPC to buy for Favor

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 11:39 AM PST

I think it's absurd that hideout decorations bought for real money aren't infinite unlocks. Take the newest ice sculpture for example - 65 points for ONE sculpture. Let's say I want to make a snowy, winter themed hideout with the ice sculptures, ice bricks, snowmen, ice gale decorations. It would take hundreds of dollars to make a hideout like that. It's just unachievable and same can be said about invisible buff mtx, but there was a thread for this already. Here I just wanted to complain about hideout decorations. Just let us buy them for favor once we purchase them, otherwise it's kinda pointless to have them in the store.

submitted by /u/Sublimatioo
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A PoE Christmas Song!

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 12:53 PM PST

submitted by /u/Chorbos
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First league where I got a full set of "The Cursed King" card in SSF. Not a single one of them came from Caer Blaidd.

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 10:38 AM PST

Deterministic farming is so passe.

submitted by /u/MelonsInSpace
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3.13 teaser

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 10:45 PM PST

submitted by /u/hfok
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My experience Delving to 2k in HC and 6k in SC

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 05:15 PM PST

Hello people of the gutters, I'd like to ramble on a bit about my experiences over the past two leagues and throw my $0.02 in on the overall state of the game in the process.

https://i.redd.it/icy5bgslwn661.gif

To begin with, I'm a long-time hardcore POE player having put an unreasonably large amount of my time into the game since Nemesis. I've seen the game evolve over effectively its entire history from a hardcore context and it's been a bit of a bumpy ride. I love this game, I've played it more than I have sunk time into any other activity aside from my career, but it has some growing issues that need to be addressed.

I had originally intended to quit POE after Delirium, but my friends somehow roped me into playing a softcore league (Harvest) for only the second time ever as a dedicated delver for our little team effort.

I had a fairly sour impression of SC before this, and to be honest I still do with regard to the core game; but I found deep delving in SC to be a very enjoyable and very different (if somewhat frustrating) overall POE experience. After Harvest ended, yet another friend decided to play a POE league for the first time in I think a year or so and I decided to join him, this time back to HC for Heist. I ended up doing very well in Hardcore Heist despite a pretty bad start, and with the recent interest in Endless Delve, I wanted to write a bit about these very different, highly contrasting game modes that POE has to offer.

Deep Delving in Softcore

Before harvest launched, we knew that gear levels were promised to be on a new level, and some of my guildmates put together a basic team to make the most of this; My friends Scooby, Psy, McLovin, and Hurst would do their usual grinding and take maximum advantage of the new crafting systems feeding me gear while I would spend all my time delving feeding them fossils which we assumed would have decent value once again.

I chose the Ice Shot Miner meta that had dominated previous leagues, in retrospect I'd say this was a mistake as the Icicle Miner variation ended up being significantly stronger with the gear level that was on offer.

Breaking out of Delve

The crafting was above and beyond our expectations and we made some seriously fun characters. Here is the final state of my Ice Shot Miner; I believe to this day it is the only triple-mine+triple-chain (800dex/800int) setup anyone has attempted. Obviously Harvest made this possible. We also didn't expect the kind of maps that Harvest allowed, so having an infinite effective supply of Fractured Fossils allowed for a truly absurd amount of end game farming to happen.

Later on we learned about whissp_'s invulnerable build, and theorycrafted a BV/poison Assassin variant. This ended up working extremely well in Delve, and both Scooby and I used it to kill any bosses with any mods, and generally have a smooth ride in my Delve from ~4800 to ~5800 when I switched back to the Ice Shotter for the last push.

I'm not going to try to write a SC Delve guide here because I believe I couldn't do it justice; on that note here's IMHO the definitive guide on SC Delving. In terms of my experience I would say this:

Delving in SC is about damage, speed, and above all managing frustrations. I died over 4000 times on my Ice Shotter, and another several hundred times on the "invulnerable" build. If you had a timelapse of every time I fisted my desk that league, it would make that angry german kid look like a pacifist of monk like calmness.
Crowd control & freeze in particular is powerful; Dynamite, Frost wall, Raise Skeletons, and freeze prolif are above and beyond the MVPs of softcore delve.
Going full solo and having less than ~6 hours on average a day to commit to POE means a 6k breakout is a full league affair. I found 100 floors a day to be a nice goal, so you can have a few days away from the game and still have a nice buffer of time before league end. I think I hit 6k at about day 62 or 63.
Making a dedicated Sulphite farmer (just a max move speeder patterned off the lab runners) made a huge, huge difference to the amount of delving I could do in a day, I should have made this character on literally Day 3 or 4 of the league.
Make sure you have a friend to come recover your fossils if you screw up...
Overall I had way more fun than I thought SC would bring, and I consider a 6k breakout of Delve to be the ultimate grind that POE has to offer.

Deep Delving in Hardcore

The real shit.

I got off to a pretty bad start this league, died on my starter in first week, recovered with a typically solid skeleton guardian, and then proceeded to piss a lot of time and currency away on an ultimately flawed armour stacking Gladiator.

Some of my guildmates started to quit the league and handed me a nice chunk of leftovers, and my friend Medihell let me borrow some spare starter gear for an aura stacker. The power of the new Transcendence keystone is obvious and my goal was to see if rare fossil farming in HC was viable for the first time; from my Harvest experience I knew that this required a depth of at least 1500 to be reasonable.

Here is a post on the Guardian forum about the build I used.

This build was refined along with another player PositiveValue who I had suggested the build to and who took it to a very high level before he unfortunately died at #1 on the ladder. After this I pushed to take the #1 Delve spot and then go for 2000; yet another friend Lax let me borrow his 3p voices for this.

It's the same part of the same game, but somehow Delve HC vs SC is simply a 100% polar opposite way of playing, offering a 100% alien experience to someone coming from the other side. Maybe that's obvious, but it really couldn't be more true. If you love SC Delve, you must try HC, and if you love HC Delve, a 6k ZHP push in SC is extremely rewarding.

Devling in HC puts defense & mitigation above all else, even to a large extent damage. All past HC delve records (perhaps aside from broken Delirium herald power builds) have been overweight defenses.

The most important aspects/tips/tricks of delve in HC in my opinion are:

Destroy Corpses: This removes the highest scaling hit and an absurd degen from delve: Wetas. The best way to do this is with an explode chest (or weapon). I firmly believe these things are and always have been stupidly overtuned and it makes no sense for such a tiny creature to deal so much damage.
Be CI: Aside from wetas, the only other common mob that presents a degen is Zombie Piss. These guys feel manageable for a while, but very quickly become a hard wall for any non-CI build. No chaos vulnerable build will get past fungals much beyond 1250-1300 depth no matter your pantheon or chaos res.
Select the "Unaffected by burning ground" pantheon (Abberath) and never touch it again. Along with the above, you no longer have to deal with degens in Delve so long as you avoid Talisman, Beast, and certain aspects of the boss fights.
Eliminate all other weakness from your build. Delve requires an extremely well rounded build to survive, you need to be ailment immune, you need to have high elemental mitigation, you need physical mitigation, and you need high recovery of your primary HP stat either with massive on-hit healing, and/or high leech + regen, and/or passive recovery (on block for instance).
Dynamite is the most useful tool in HC Delve. Use it on any encounter that has a scary mob capable of spike damage that you want to lock up while you dps it down.
%Pen is an extreme damage multiplier for most delve mobs, however it is manageable depending on the node end. Once you're nearing your survival limit, don't even think about an extra damage Sweltering Burrow or a t2+ Azurite node with %Pen.
Auto-complete nodes are tempting to zerg, but be aware of the sheer number of mobs (including multiple rares-with-auras at times) which will be waiting for you. Throwing dynamite out ahead of the node end to stun lock the mobs while you carefully candle out is very useful, but be careful on bloodlines zones as you might just blow yourself up.
No-light ZHP strats work perfectly well in Hardcore. Ignore your cart's light radius, it has essentially no downside but makes it nearly impossible for mobs to tether you for miles (this is how I died in Delirium, and how Dan died in Delirium) and massively reduces the range of aggro while pathing a node.
This is why I stopped doing Harbinger nodes fairly early on; the game's design/engine struggles with situations like allies cannot die and the extreme rates of calculations they result in. The same occurs for extremely tanky mobs such as Harbinger and even some Nesting Grounds zones.
Learn useful tricks for specific encounters:
- The behind-the-shrine strat for Beast Burrow. The skellobear gets buffed by the bears you kill. If you don't want to or can't face tank the bears, you can path to the other side of the wall and wait it out. This is more consistent than out ranging the bears down a path they spawn on.
- Smuggler's Stash: Get good at identifying where Orra is coming from; she is always opposite Minara (who is very easy to spot with her headdress), and on Petrified Forest biomes always emerges next to the tree. You should spray dynamite while you dps her until she is dead. If she isn't dead by the time your dynamite is out, you better have a fuckin grade A backup plan because shits about to get real.
- Necromancer encounters: Zombies come out in three waves, Left, Right, and Both sides. About a 'beat' (count out "1, 2") after the third wave starts, let loose with dynamite. The first will explode as the Necro activates. You do not want to be caught up in his blood geyser.

Final thoughts on the State of POE

I only have a few major complaints about POE after all this time, and none of them have to do with balance.

First, a quick note on aura stacking: I believe balance shifts are GGG's intention, and there will always be one archetype that is head and shoulders above all others. Given that this is the third league in a row where aura stacking presents the ultimate build potential -- and they just buffed the absolute piss out of it with alt qual gems -- I am starting to wonder if it is GGG's intention: The archetype is an edge case, it requires the most scarce gear in the game (in case it wasn't obvious, I could not have assembled the build without a lot of help from friends), it gains ever greater power with each character level highly incentivizing level 100 be achieved, and it offers effectively unlimited tunability and upgrade paths especially in the low supply Hardcore trade league economy and especially+++ in SSF where you can count on one hand the number of players who have even attempted it.

Things I love:

The Racing scene is just fun to watch
Build diversity is moving in the right direction, slowly but surely...
GGG's artwork and audio is truly in AAA territory
Experiences like this, and this with friends

Things I don't love:

GGG have put too much focus on audio/visual assets and too little focus on Quality Control. I know it's a well beaten horse around here, but it has to be said over and over; rushed delivery and obvious lack of QA/play testing and optimization destroys the early league experience and pushes people away.
RMT is a huge plague on the Hardcore Trade League economy, predominantly driven by the growing number of Standard players who demand league specific items and crafting mats be immediately and deliberately taken from temp HC. This was blatantly obvious with Tempering and Tailoring Orbs early in HHC, and continues league after league to be a significant problem with items of extreme value in SC such as 3p and 1p Voices, and Mirrors. Put in economic terms, this presents a false demand to the HC economy and massively damages an already weak supply of new, interesting, and powerful items in trade HC. GGG have done essentially nothing to stop this. For weeks we saw on this reddit the "behold, my item" posts from Standard players who were clearly using Tempering and Tailoring orbs on their mirror-tier projects. Every one of those posters is at the root of this problem. I would love to see a void league or account binding solution here, it would transform the depth of the HC Trade economy.
GGG are far too stubborn and attached to aging game design decisions, this is hurting the player base, and will ultimately hurt GGG. As simply one example, the never ending insistence that all droppable items must be manually picked up and thus have 'weight' is complete nonsense. It made sense when you moved like a snail and spent appreciable amounts of time beating on magic and rare mobs, but today? Run anything remotely resembling an end game encounter without a loot filter and you might as well be staring at the classified sections of a dozen newspapers from 12 feet. It's the sheer amount of clicking that needs to change. There is way too much micromanagement and prep in the main game loop of mapping right now. Tab affinities were a great step in this direction, so is Metamorph organ collection, and the Delirium stacked-loot-drop, but how about the game has a 21st century minor-loot vacuum like every other developer in the genre has adopted? Let people pick and choose over actual items, but crafting mats? and splinters of things? and fragments of splinters of things? End the pain... I feel the balance on this one shifting.
I'm really looking forward to the Harvest integration. We desperately need something to fill the gap between Awakener Orbing and Meta Crafting. Awakener orbs are an excellent addition allowing the control over two item properties, but Meta Crafting is predominantly a roulette wheel on crack with exponentially higher costs. My ideal here is that the Harvest integration fills this gap, allowing a good bit of grinding to deterministically improve a woke-orbed item, but still leaving true 6xT1 perfection at the very end of the process with a true RNG gamble. You could argue that the Vaal Orb / Temple is that final idealized step in a 7xT1 item, of course...
Finally, a scheduling gripe... it would be nice if the big streamers would set their private ego-leagues aside until perhaps mid-league or end-of-league events. Competing with the main league launch just shits on the depth of market and player count in HC trade leagues. As a side benefit, those events could benefit from the lessons learned in the then-current league itself, and it would be a more interesting spectator sport as a result.

Sorry for the length, but I just had to share.

submitted by /u/mcm375
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The wall of shame is not that big this time, but it's still there...

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 06:38 AM PST

submitted by /u/Pjatteri
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PSA: You don't receive Emperor's jewels for being the top of lab leaderboard in event leagues.

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 04:22 PM PST

submitted by /u/OmegaBorg
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The Harvest Core Supporter Pack - Path of Exile - Before you Buy

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 06:21 PM PST

submitted by /u/tommos
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Dear GGG, Patch 3.13 = Begging for Harbingers as Core starting in Act 1

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 11:25 AM PST

Like the topic says...

Please add Harbingers to Core starting in Act 1

Please flip this switch in time for Patch 3.13

Thank you :)

submitted by /u/Sarainbow
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Where to get build advice?

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 06:22 AM PST

I am trying to get advice on what to buy next for my character in endgame. Is there somewhere I can post a POB and get feedback? I tried on the POE forums but got nothing

submitted by /u/28-3_lol
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Weapon/Armor/Jewelry rewards from league encounters in maps and delve should be updated to also drop fracture/synthesised items.

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 06:25 PM PST

Seeing them drop again in 3.13 made me happy and would love to have see them outside of Heist.

submitted by /u/Regooloos
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Is there a global to share flashback mods in?

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 03:43 AM PST

title

submitted by /u/BuildGod420
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[Item idea] Ever since Endless Delve gear was posted, I had this one stuck in my head. Endless possibilities.

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 02:18 PM PST

submitted by /u/zencodism
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Summoner witch help

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 01:35 PM PST

I recently started a witch summoner because I found out about the infernal legion support gem and was wondering if there are any uniques or rare mods that support area damage/fire damage for minions, I've completed the story and am looking for ways to increase my kill speed and or survivability. Any help would be appreciated.

submitted by /u/JayScribble
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After 400h, will be finally taking the next league seriously and using Flashback for practice. How do I piece together the info from power gamers to learn the best way to reach end-game?

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 01:21 PM PST

tl;dr Title, basically. 400h but still basically a noob. About 150h each of Metamorph and Heist, and another 100h of December events. I want to reach end-game (full atlas, boss killing, much money) efficiently at the start of the next league. Do I do chaos recipe? Rush watchstone for atlas progression? Disregard currency, acquire map speed? Wut do?

So yeah, I started playing PoE this year in Metamorph and sunk about 100h into it before I hit a wall at tier 5 maps (due to being a noob, basically) and stopped playing. Came back in early November after Heist was already basically over, and have since sunk about another 300ish hours. I have started getting more serious, trying to learn about all the systems, and have a decent intermediate grasp on things.

However, the most currency I've ever had in my possession was 5ex and that was gifted to me from a viewer on my stream. The most I've ever earned myself is 2ex dropping via Mayhem, which doesn't count either. I've never reached red maps, never fought Shaper/Elder/Sirus/etc, never deep-delved, and only ever done a single Temple, and never done Syndicate properly etc etc etc.

So in the grand scheme of things, I'm still an absolute and total noob to the game. I've done a lot of alting and build experimenting over the events this month to learn what I like to play and also practice getting through the story quickly. On a league start, I feel like I could comfortably beat the story in 6-8 hours depending on breaks and whatnot. That feels good.

But from there, I'm still fairly lost on at what point I should pivot into pure currency farming and/or chaos recipe farming to ensure I can flesh out my build and be ready for the true end game, as well as lost on the best way to advance my atlas while not ending up under-levelled. I understand the mechanics of the watchstones, but I've never slotted more than 2 into one spot at once.

My goal for the next league is to have my first level 100 (or at least come close) and to clear as much of the end-game content as possible. I am sure I won't have the skills or time to do a full A8 clear of all the bosses and whatnot, but it'd be nice to at least beat Shaper/Elder/Sirus once. I am comfortable buying and selling items, I've got most of the microtransaction stash tabs (though I don't have a quad yet), and I generally know the mechanics of the game and feel comfortable making builds, keeping in mind that 1m DPS + 6k eHP @ level 100 in PoB is the bare minimum to even think about doing end-game stuff, and really you need a lot more.

The problem is there's so much information out there on this very complex game, many different opinions on the "best way", and it's so hard to piece it all together as a noob. Ultimately I am fine rushing watchstones to fill out the atlas, I am happy blasting through the story and farming Blood Aqueducts to get to a decent level, I'm totally fine buying a quad stash or two and doing an efficient chaos recipe, and I'm perfectly fine spending a couple hours digging through trade search to find the perfect mix of modifiers for DPS + survivability on some rares to make my build really tick when it comes to red maps.

My question is how do I sort through all this information, or better yet, is there a definitive "end-game guide" for someone taking a league seriously for the first time from the beginning with a goal of seeing everything the game has to offer? If the answer is "Get to maps day 1, farm chaos recipes and rush watchstones for the first week, pivot to low-red map farming to sell maps, currency, good uniques, t1 bases for chaos from then on out, and then enjoy end-game mapping", that's great, can someone point me in the direction of a solid path to get there?

All in all, I love this game, and I'm excited to finally start a league from the beginning and enjoy the process. I also really appreciate the sheer depth of information available out there, especially from you all here on this subreddit. I've read quite a few guides on here and it's just incredible the amount of knowledge about this game some of you have, and I would love to continue to pick the brains of the smart folks who have 10-20x my playtime.

submitted by /u/runt9
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Summoner minion survivability

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 01:10 PM PST

Is it quite common to have fairly bad minion survivability while bossing? Generally whilst i'm mapping my zombies and spectres are fine, zombies might go to 50% hp occasionally. However, when i'm bossing majority of my zombies end up dying and my spectres get super close to dying. I've been trying to farm some low level Sirus the other day and i just kept running into this survivability issue. I've picked up majority of the survivability stuff from the tree like gravepact, indomitable army, sacrifice, righteous army and even death attunement. Majority of my gems are level 20, i'm not really sure what else i could do to improve their survivability.

submitted by /u/Mindless_Attitude_74
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Path of Exile Questions Thread - December 22, 2020

Path of Exile Questions Thread - December 22, 2020

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