I saw bits and pieces of the update to the game and started to watch their video describing the upcoming changes. At a certain point, I just closed the browser window tab for the video because it affirmed all my beliefs culminating slowly in that the GGG is catering to streamers. What I mean by that is rather than trying to grow the player base out, GGG had decided to revert to its original plan in making hardcore (i.e. nostalgic) game play the emphasis.

There absolutely was no reason to do this. The original game was very difficult due to it being overtuned. Unless you were in a group, the game play pretty much was frustrating. My guess is that they’ve aligned their thought process with the misguided beliefs that ex-Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime stated about World of Warcraft not focusing on the social aspect anymore, which supposedly is what caused the game’s slow decline.

No, what causes a decline or rejection of a game is if people get too frustrated to want to play it. And that’s exactly what I’m seeing here.

Let me take you back to another game with similar prospects that ultimately bombed and failed: Wildstar. The game makers there theorized that by making a delta of Vanilla World of Warcraft with some updated mechanics in combat that it would be the thing that would be the latest and greatest WoW killer. Instead, what happens? Yup, company dies and you’ll never see the hard work if you were suckered into thinking this narrow focused idea of a game would ever survive.

What about Diablo 3 when it initially launched? Pre-auction house, the game on Infernal was unbeatable. Very few got their Diablo kills in before an infamous nerf that would lead to the auction house. Of course, the hardcore players loved it because they would be the ones reaping in making money from the gear they could collect and sell off to the suckers who just wanted to get passed that stupid artificial gate of gearing. Eventually, the only things that would happen were a bunch of scams and the eventual closure of the Auction House once the gold dupe issue got out of hand. But in my case, all my friends had quit long before then.

Then let’s take another example of a cataclysmic failure in gaming: Cataclysm. Again, one of the lowest points in World of Warcraft coming down from their peak with Wrath of the Lich King. What happened there? Lich King peaked with a good story and features that would allow for more casual playing. Yet video makers frequently cited the LFG function and supposedly lackluster dungeons as things that killed their videos. So Cataclysm comes out with higher difficulty and people hate it. No more LFGs because people didn’t want to bother with watching videos that “hardcores” would do. “Bring the player not the class” became what I consider a failed mantra of poor myopic game design.

And yet again all the hardcores praised the moves, loved the raids, loved the increased difficulties in dungeons. But where are they now? These are the people that supposedly would be the bread and butter as all the n00bz and casuals fucked off.

Let me tell you where they are: sucking their own dicks.

Because eventually the hardcore player will grow old, mature a little, get a family and look in the mirror at their declining health as they no longer are their lovely high school or even college figure (and probably they dropped out too thinking that the 100-200 live viewers on their Twitch channel barely can support basic living these days). Only the few that remain are clinging on because frankly, they’ve managed to create the “cult of personality” surrounding them or in all honesty never had anything else.

Yet these foolish game makers believe that “making things harder” is the way to improve their game. Okay, so how exactly does revamping old story mode that you repeat every fucking season for every fucking character that you want fun exactly? How does that improve the game? My first instinct in starting a new character is get me to the end game as fast as fucking possible.

There’s a reason Adventure Mode was created in Diablo 3. Heck, I read the demand pop up in Path of Exile because people are fucking sick of going through the same damn 10 acts. And now you’re telling me they want to slow things down and add artificial dangers just to “scare the player?” Don’t you mean scare any possible new players off?

The whole “slow things down” argument to me is that it’s an ineffective method to mitigate perceived player loss by supposedly keeping them more engaged and not handing out anything. So a fight that I’ve done a hundred times in a less than a minute or whatever will be painfully prolonged without any true rational to 10 minutes per or however long because they believe I will stay engaged in the game a lot more. No, it just means I’ll delete the game from my drive and use that space for a good pr0n0 movie. So why the hell would I want to prolong a fight that has the same boring mechanics for the sake of doing it longer for the 100th time? Please, answer me this. Why should I ever want to repeat content that’s unfun, that I’ve completed already numerous times because I supposedly enjoy ruining my already ruined wrist? How is that a good user experience? And which user are you targeting? A new user? A veteran user? A bored veteran user? Where did this usability study come out from that informs your finance department to okay such an endeavor?

This game is almost 10 years old but it looks like shit and plays like shit. The only somewhat satisfying thing at its peak was destroying things quickly in maps to get loot that maybe 1 in 10 chance was decent. All that’s gone because the game designers are fucking stupid.

And I know exactly when things got fucked. That whole stupid Path of Exile convention is what killed GGG. You had a bunch of sycophants in the audience who were ready to suck any pre-cum stained penis working for GGG, which meant that these bozos allowed a bunch of blowjobs go to their undeserved microscopic heads (yes, that’s an intended double entendre). Imagine that, a bunch of New Zealand jabronie developers suddenly believing that they’re super stars because of a tiny ass convention. You want to ask me what’s wrong with the world it’s exactly this kind of bullshit.

And because these jackoffs actually bothered to pay for a trip to New Zealand of all places, you know they are hardcores. So they probably got into these developers’ ears to give them new backlogs. A small percentage of the population whereas the developers needed to hear from a wider audience.

Then I saw that Neon/Neo/Mark/Whatever guy and thought “well, that’s why there might be a food shortage out there”. But apparently this epitome of someone who probably is better off serving in a Ringling Bros. act has a lead position. The general feedback on the reddit forums, after listening to this candidate for why solar eclipses happen, was “we should hear more from him because he sounds like he has a clue.” Technically, yes. But I immediately got the impression that he is a huge part of the problem (emphasis on physical huge)

Let me say based on the way the game is built at the moment, it sounds like he’s responsible for a lot of the bad encounters. And this is after that bald crackpot Chris Wilson (why are all guys named Wilson dickheads btw?) bragged how “they know how to make a boss encounter” to very little applause (probably Mathil1 since this is his livelihood).

Anyway, at this stage, I pretty much see GGG as a lost cause and I’m extremely sorry I spent all that money on supporter packs and whatnot. Easily, I could have used those funds for more Del Taco or Jack-in-the-Box late night runs or perhaps more accessories and a new head for my sex doll. But pretty much unless Tencent comes in as a deux-ex machina type of figure and literally plucks up the 3-4 imbeciles running that place, I see just a steadily decline in quality in Path of Exile.

What’s worse is that the Twitter responses from the Twitch regular defendants are sickening. They love it because they know that they’ll have more chances to die within the game, which equates to more bullying which equates to the microtransactions that the stupid 14 year olds do in giving these goobers the $1-5 per. Yeah so it works out for them great but the game is going to have a far smaller community just like the declining World of Warcraft. Then what are you going to do? If you want, I’ll lend you some money to buy the bazooka to blow your foot off with because at least you’ll get some pretty good views and donations with your beggar button that day.

Either way, this is an absolute joke. Let’s be honest here. Diablo 2: Resurrection is going to kill Path of Exile’s momentum once it comes out. The people at GGG should have been going, “Oh shit! We need to do something!” So you effectively closed the door off to a possible cross over audience when others looking for new content post-Diablo 2 launch and this is the best impression you can give them? Let’s just chase any potential new customers away by throwing out a horribly buggy, underwhelming game with shit graphics that are stuck in the late 90s with unfriendly game play and carpel tunnel inducing mouse clicking? That’s your response?

I doubt that this blog post will find its way to where it needs to go. But if it does and I get heat with this, I ain’t apologizing for how I feel. I paid for shitty cosmetics hoping that the company would re-invest it into making a better game. Instead, I feel deterred, ripped off and closed off as a result of very poor managerial decisions. If I saw Neon/Neo/Mark/Whatever himself, I’d slap that goof’s blobulous face so hard it’d rotate and put Jupiter into orbit around Earth. But I’d be doing GGG a favor at least in having the balls to do what they should have done a long time ago.

The post How I Was Right About GGG/Path of Exile appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Initially, when I re-spec’d my Pathfinder I took Master Toxicist, which was something I used before. However, what I failed to realize was that this skill was better when you employ a Herald of Agony crawler because of the Virulence stacks. After ripping out Herald of Agony in favor of Malevolence and Haste, I didn’t realize how gimped I was for damage because of this node.

What I failed to notice was how important attack speed stacking means for Toxic Rain. This was especially discernible once I moved from a Quill Rain to a +3 crafted bow. While the overall damage was better, the speed wasn’t the same. So I switched to Nature’s Adrenaline and noticed just how much the dot ramps up on enemies!

Another thing I did was take out Soulrend from my Asenath’s Chant and add in Controlled Destruction and Void Manipulation. This really has helped my overall area clear. Things dissolve quite quickly except for bosses.

Beyond that, I’m looking at a few other optimizations. The biggest is to switch to Wind Dancer from Iron Reflexes and speccing into Phase Acrobatics down the road. I think those will be pretty big changes but they do require a few more levels to get to.

But the real thing I want more than anything else is a Maloney’s Mechanism. I’m trying to save up for one on Standard just because I think having permanent Onslaught, Frenzy charges and Culling Strike will truly help my single target, which is the weakest aspect of this build.

Right now, the build feels great up until you hit a boss. From there, you have to keep up your Wither totem to slow them and just spam cast your Toxic Rain. Some bosses just seem too sketchy and I’ve become afraid of doing legion. I feel that the Culling Strike out to help out, although the new Hunter quivers with the DoT multiplier probably would be a safer bet.

With regards to my latest Champion, I found that I had a fully ascended Slayer lying around with a full respect. So I did a normal lab and hit that reset button and converted him into a Facebreaker Earthshatter fister. Rather than leveling from scratch, I decided to just give this build a go since I’ve read a lot of good things about it.

First, it’s fairly tanky. Permanent Fortify and Adrenaline from First to Strike, Last to Fall really help survivability, despite employing a sketchy Abyssus. But the standout aspect is the sheer damage output. You use three war cries, Intimidate, Seismic and Enduring, which are annoying but the area obliterates huge packs.

Not only that but when facing a boss, you can just line those up with an Ancestral Warchief and practically dissolve bosses in a hit or two. Since the damage fans out around you, you can clear good sized pockets of mobs.

The main issue is that it’s super slow. Triggering all the war cries and zipping around with Dash along with flask management do require a great deal of button pushing. This button pushing makes the clear speed less than optimal compared to say the Pathfinder character I just mentioned. Also, not everything gets destroyed with a single hit. You will have stragglers frequently.

However, the damage is very reliable and easy to scale. I had an excellent Facebreaker with 797% more damage and Enfeeble corrupted, a Ryslatha’s Coil, Abyssus and Great Old One’s Ward lying around. These items give a huge amount of physical damage boost. From there you just need to get more physical damage from good Steel Rings and an amulet.

That said, your weakness is a struggle for resistance and stats (a lot of dexterity). Also, you might want to use reduced mana cost on your jewelry. Because of this, you have to juggle between damage, resistance, life and an open prefix.

I think if I had leveled this character from scratch on a normal league, I probably would’ve gone 2-hander. The great thing is that there’s no real gear requirements. Really all that’s required is a good weapon or highly rolled Facebreaker. But I think the 2-hander is much easier to start with since you don’t have to worry about resist as much. Also, you will have extra slots for gems like a better movement skill.

Overall, the champion Earthshatter wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. At least, the near end game version. If I feel motivated at all, I might try it on Heist.

The post Path of Exile: Toxic Rain Pathfinder Update and Earthshatter Champion appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The Elementalist version has a higher number of Golems available because of the Golemancer ascendancy. However, one thing I’ve noticed is that the other two ascendancies really don’t do much for this bulid since most Carrion Golem builds use Brutality to boost up the physical damage. That makes the elemental portion quite useless since you’re not really taking advantage of the elemental defenses and offenses. Also, the buffs provided by Carrion Golems really aren’t great compared to the other golem versions.

The Necromancer version is far more minion heavy, even though you get less golems overall. But the key piece to this build is the Commander of Darkness piece which scales attack/cast speed from your auras. Here, you use a lot of mana reservation reduction nodes like Charisma so that you can stack various auras.

Also, with Commander of Darkness, you get a nice perk of effectively discounting the Cruel resistance penalty and use that for pushing your resistances beyond 75%.

With the change of Vitality from a flat percentage mana reservation to a raw mana cost, Vitality becomes easier to fit into builds along with Clarity and Precious, which also uses raw mana cost. So you can keep these gems at lower levels and use a Prism Guardian to add higher costing auras to the build. Also, you add Purities and nodes like Influence to boost the buffs’ efficacy.

What happens is that you can get 90% elemental resistance along with a fair amount of regeneration from both Discipline and Vitality. Of course, you move your build into a low life, energy shield build and have Zealot’s Oath to increase your Energy Shield regeneration.

Because you don’t have as many golems compared to an Elementalist, you use a Clayshaper to add another golem to the mix. You could start off with two Clayshapers until you’re ready to switch to a Prism Guardian for leveling. Alternatively, a Cold Iron Point can be substituted for the Clayshaper to get a +3 to your golems and other minions that are tagged with physical.

Along with this, you will want to use an Elder Helmet with Minion Life and a +minion gem level support. Here, you can put Zombies, Specters and/or an Animate Guardian gem. Specters are an interesting choice because you can attempt to go for having 4 summoned specters that provide support for your minions. I’ve read good things where you can use Carnage Chieftains and Chieftain Hosts for the boost in Frenzy and Power Charges to really add damage to your minions.

With a good Elder Helmet, you could say do Raise Specters and Animate Guardian to get the bonuses from the support gem and life. Then with the two remaining sockets, add Elemental Army and Blood Magic support.

I imagine the Raise Zombies gem would probably go into the gloves section. I’ve seen some offensive setups with Multistrike, Melee Physical and Minion Damage or Maim to take advantage of Melee Physical. I think something like an Elder version with Chance to Bleed and Faster Attacks might be interesting additions. If not those, then swapping in a Culling Strike could be effective here too.

For Auras, you definitely want at minimal Pride and Dread Banner. Pride for the physical damage boost and Dread Banner to increase your impale effects for your carrion golems. I think Precision and Clarity are good starters too. From what I’ve read, keeping them low level is a good idea so that your mana reservation doesn’t get eaten up all at once.

Then you can pick up some good auras once you get your Prism Guardian. I imagine that Pride would be a natural choice to place there. I’ve seen Grace and one of the Purities. That leaves the last two Purities in a slot like Boots. I think Discipline could even go there if you can pick up some cluster jewels that have the ability to negate the cost of your purities. Grace is interesting to me since you get a nice boost in speed.

The last gems will probably be your typical Desecrate, Flesh Offering and Convocation. While you could take Mistress of Sacrifice, it got nerfed so I don’t feel this skill is really that effective for this build. Instead, Bone Barrier is the way to go since you’re going to be socket starved.

As with other low life builds, Presence of Chayula, Shavronne’s Wrappings and Sin Trek will be a good chunk of the defensive options outside of the Prism Guardian. I think you will probably need a Heavy belt though to boost up strength since a lot of the support gems will be very strength heavy.

The last pieces are rings. I’ve seen Vivinsect used in both ring slots for Auras. But they don’t have much in terms of good defensive bonuses and impose a penalty of 10% increased Mana Reservation. However, they would be good for aura gems like Discipline. Still, they might be difficult to obtain and are currently quite expensive. So I imagine a decent socketed ring could act as a reasonable substitute until the Vivinsect is obtained.

The thing about this build though is that you will have to transition from life to low life since the gear will be difficult and expensive to obtain. I think the first objective would be to obtain at least one Clayshaper in a new league and then putting some points into Mana Reservation Reduction nodes just to get a few auras running.

After that, your main pieces of gear would be Prism Guardian, followed by the three items for low life builds along with Primal Jewels. You could try to use a Primordial Chain but that prevents you from using non-golem minions. If you go that direction, you really are better off doing some other golem build as an elementalist.

The last pieces I feel are the two Vivinsect rings because of the high cost and the penalties needed to use them. Perhaps, the other thing would be getting Golden Oils to anoint Charisma.

So in effect, this build is like an aura stacking Ascendant or Guardian except that it’s more minion focused. I’m thinking of trying this on Standard from ground up since I have the bulk of the gear there. I do have a Necromancer that I could just pull in which would allow me to completely bypass the lower level leveling process and let me feel the general end game portion. But part of me also wants to level one from scratch.

I think the only real hassle is moving to low life. I think it is possible to get away with a life build and using the tree because of the changes to vitality. But my only real skepticism here is Cruel and Merciless lab. The main difference between this build and an elementalist version is that you won’t be using stone golems early on to get that extra boost in life regeneration. Instead, you’ll depend on Vitality. So I think it won’t matter for a while. Still, I have to play around with this to see how well it performs.

Overall, I like the concept of this build on paper. It seems that the damage can scale up nicely. Also, because it’s minion based, the leveling process shouldn’t be too difficult. I figure no matter what you’ll be forced to re-spec a portion of the tree at some point, but it really depends on where you are in the leveling process. The real question is how does it feel in practice?

The post Path of Exile: Elementalist vs Necromancer for Carrion Golems appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Blizzard has been known for very high quality games ever since I discovered them. While their games have bugs, the general smoothness, style and presentation have garnered Blizzard huge praise by the gaming community.

I think when Activision and Viviendi acquired them, there was a huge change in tone. It was said that Blizzard had autonomy in being a studio under Activision, but I don’t think that really had been the case. Over time, from what I’ve heard, Blizzard was slowly losing control over to Activision pressure and that eventually led to many of the lifers leaving, including the former CEO Mike Morhaime.

The first real disaster from Blizzard occurred when Diablo Immortal was announced. It wasn’t what the hardcore Blizzard fan wanted and looked to be Blizzard caving into pressure not just from the mobile market, but the Chinese market (where the game apparently was outsourced).

But even before that the game company had been experiencing smaller failures that looked like terrible marketing ideas or cash grabs. Diablo 3’s Auction House was a notorious example where the worst incident allowed people to abuse some bugs and effectively make real cash. Warlords of Draenor and the last WoW expansions were considered poor busts as expansions to WoW. Hearthstone is pretty much a game dictated on keeping up with the meta, which implies either hard grinding or buying packs of cards. Titan was dead in the water and lead to a pretty bland copycat version of various shooter games mixed with a bit of MOBA action. And Heroes of the Storm was Blizzard’s feeble attempt at getting into a market that they had missed by a long shot.

So what does this have to do with Diablo 4? The thing here is that Diablo 4 has to be perfect as an ARPG in the minds of the fans because it will be the deciding factor in a post-Morhaime led Blizzard whether the company still has its mojo.

From what I know of Diablo 3, the game originally was supposed to be the next gen MMORPG from Blizzard. However, the original team left for some reason (possibly an internal conflict of interest between WoW and the Diablo crews). If I read the way Cataclysm was done, it looked to be the final WoW expansion and possibly a hand off to Diablo 3. I only say this because WoW was effectively thrashed to death by Cataclysm so badly that it alienated fans. I feel that Wrath of the Lich King was too successful for Blizzard’s own good; why else would you want to change the design that would turn away all the casual players?

However, Diablo 3 didn’t turn out to be anything that was promised. I know that the original PVP system was nothing like that garbage that was put out because I knew people who did internal testing and praised it. But it was never released for whatever reason (probably the impossibility of balancing)

My gut believes that Diablo 3 in the end when it first was released just used the skin of whatever engine was started but striped down to make a deadline. However, the game was overtuned to make it appear people could grind forever.

I don’t think Blizzard could have predicted the hype of their own game because of how poorly it launched. The other thing I don’t think they could have predicted was the backlash of how poorly tuned the game was.

I know some people enjoyed it but it was a small percentage. After a few months, the game kinda died down. I feel that a lot of people saw right through the Auction House as a marketing joke that basically said Blizzard had sold out their fans.

Naturally, those good at the game and those with low cunning loved the Auction House because they could scam people and make a profit from their abilities to manipulate the market while the casual gamer just wanted to get to the end game and feel that they got their money’s worth.

I feel that there’s a lot of people who will remember this. While Reaper of Souls managed to fix a lot of the issues with the core game, it effectively was very limited. Thus, even though I think there is a desire from the community to see a Diablo 4, it has to exceed all the bad taste that was left from the polluted history.

When I looked at Diablo 4, I felt that they probably took either parts of the original engine intended for Diablo 3 or at least the ideas and incorporate the visual essence of Diablo 2. There’s a few aspects from the game that look like parts promised as major features from Diablo 3 such as terrain interaction (e.g. hopping from large cliffs) and town hubs.

But the real question is whether the Diablo 4 team understands what the community really wants from an ARPG or if they understood what made Diablo 2 a long running game.

The thing about GGG is that, despite the quality flaws on release, they understand the essence of what the ARPG gamer wants. That essence is the idea of a mindless hack-n-slash, mixed with the ability to configure a character in any manner they want while searching for the perfect loot (or even crafting it).

When Diablo originally was released, the reason why it was revolutionary as an ARPG at the time was because it stripped down all the elements of RPGs into a basic hack-n-slash game. You still had standard RPG-like elements in basic classes, gear and monsters. But all the other elements such as useless questing, hardcore puzzle solving, lengthy boring dialog and stupid story lines were removed.

Also, the key thing Diablo had was a great atmosphere. The enemy was definitive as demons and undead hordes while the overall colors were grim with unapologetic images of death and gore. That pretty much was revolutionary at the time.

The thing about an ARPG that can make or break it is that it really is meant to be mindless. That’s part of why I feel a lot of people are slowly becoming disillusioned with GGG’s direction with boss fights and league mechanics. The complexity that a player likes in an ARPG is the options of being able to play a game they want to, being able to customize characters in infinite manners without worrying about game balance or whether one build is OP or not.

The addiction I feel to an ARPG is the feeling of progress. It’s the idea of having a project where I feel that I can accomplish something over time in a manner that doesn’t insult my intelligence with the inept decisions made by people who overthink gaming mechanics. I want to see what I can do with a game and how I go from a pleb to a god.

That said, Diablo 4 really is Blizzard’s last true hurrah. If they can’t produce a game that exceeds all expectations, they will look like a second rate company that has sold out to the marketing demons at Activision. It’s really that simple.

And here’s the thing: GGG needs Diablo 4 to be better than Path of Exile. Path of Exile 2 looks like dogshit to me. I remember hearing how Quin69 mentioned that some of the GGG developers telling him that they were not impressed by Diablo 4. But Path of Exile 2 looks like Path of Exile.

Without Diablo 4 creating a new standard in the ARPG world, GGG will clearly take the crown. This will not be good because the game is a mess. However, GGG will be able to brag through their sheep community leaders that Path of Exile is the best ARPG out there. And they won’t be wrong just because Path of Exile will have so many features crammed in that Diablo 4 will look empty.

The positive for Diablo 4 is that they have a world class company and really kill on the presentation aspect along with general high quality. Most importantly, they have a brand name both in the form of Blizzard and its own IP. So they have that built-in audience.

But a new game engine (which I assume is what Diablo 4 is working with) is a daunting thing because you have to design features from the ground up. You cannot tack on new features the way a World of Warcraft or Path of Exile can.

I think Diablo 4 will be excellent in the game play feeling department and visuals. But the thing that will make or break the game is the number of features that will determine its longevity as a stand alone product.

Already, I had seen a crucial mistake in the Diablo 4 design where characters were limited to something like level 40. I don’t know where they determined an arbitrary number like that but it feels low for an ARPG. Also, having that ceiling means that one eventually will be “finished” with the leveling process.

So does that mean the game will result in just a gear grind? I really hope not. This was a huge mistake imposed by Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft. Progress in an ARPG should not just be marked by the items you find. It’s a compliment to the development of your character.

I do know they want set items and legendaries to be a huge part of the itemization process. I’m very afraid in this department because of my previous statement. If you want a long lasting game, it shouldn’t just be about item hunts.

Also, I think they intend to make items bind-on-equip. I have a friend that says that this is what really killed Diablo 3. While RoS ended up working with this system, I would say that not having an economy is worse, especially if the game intends to be a social one.

And if they do town hubs, I really hope that they become meaningful. Most town hubs I’ve seen in games are pretty stupid and meaningless; they’re just used to show off skins and allow talk with occasional trade. Outside of showing off MTX crap, I don’t see how this is different than just listening to a global chat channel.

What the game needs to think about is advancing what interactions can be done with the world. The problem I see in basic ARPGs is that there’s not a lot of effort put into the interaction with the world around the character. Diablo 3 seemed to initially want to go in this direction but outside of one or two areas in Act 1, the whole environmental interaction aspect pretty much was dead in the water.

Even PoE is pretty shitty. I find most of the environment just to be obstacles that are nothing more than another form of a wall with a different appearance. I mean, if I see furniture, I should be able to destroy it, right? And maybe each type of environment has different attributes like their own hit points or ways they interact with our abilities (e.g. wood burns and can cause the rest of an area to catch fire). Or if I use ice against a surface, then things should slip. To me that’s cutting edge ideas.

Again, I cannot emphasize how good Diablo 4 needs to be. It has to really push the idea of what an ARPG can do. It shouldn’t just focus on visuals and boss fights. That’s just one aspect that I feel game designers put too much effort into. It needs to make people feel like they can fuck with things in all sorts of ways that make people want to explore what they can do to the world.

The post Diablo 4: Thoughts About The Game And Blizzard appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

I did have a level 21 Freeze Pulse and a Controlled Destruction. But the rest of the gems I had to start from scratch. That wasn’t a problem since at this stage, it’s just for testing and I’m doing low level maps (my guy is level 82). One thing I added was Glancing Blows but I’m probably going to remove it since the double damage is too big of a hit and a bit scary.

Probably, I will revise the build a little so that I incorporate at least one more jewel slot to get Self-Flagellation. In that manner, I can increase my damage from my curses placed on me.

Beyond that, I want to re-purpose one of my other guy’s +1 totem shields since that will be a major damage boost. Either that or I will need to figure out how to craft a +1 totem shield. Ideally, I would like it to have +15% mana reservation reduction but I’m not holding my breath for both features to show up during a craft.

Right now, I think the main issue is with Glancing Blows. It makes the build feel very sketchy at times because my health will get reduced without warning. I’m assuming that’s just me shield blocking and taking the damage. Nonetheless, it’s just too sketchy. Also, I’m using Shield Charge which really isn’t great compared to Flame Dash with Arcane Surge and Second Wind linked these days.

At any rate, the basics feel okay. Some bosses with phases may have issues when my totems freeze them. So those mechanics will feel clunky. Also, I have an Atziri’s Foible for my amulet but I’m thinking it might be overkill compared to something with more life and other useful attributes (e.g. dexterity). I did take MoM so the extra mana helps. Still I think just getting back a dexterity node might be far more useful than this amulet.

The post Path of Exile: Mucking Around With Hierophant Freeze Pulse Totems appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The idea of the Fireball hybrid using the Elemancer ascendancy is to employ golems as defensive buffs in part with your stone and chaos golems acting as a huge damage mitigation pieces. I use a lightning and flame golem as well for some damage. In the case of the lightning golem, I use a Culling Strike support gem. For my flame and chaos golems, I use Minion Life and Elemental Army support gems. The reason I go with an Elemental Army is to give my flame golem exposure on hit.

For my stone golems, I use 6 from my helmet slot which I have a Minion Life and Damage support skill built in. Then for the remainder of the gems I use Melee Physical, Impale and Multistrike.

These compliment my Fireball skill where I’ve invested in fire over time and some other elemental damage modifiers on my skill tree. But the overall idea with this build is to use Stone Golems as both a massive single target boost along with their high regeneration buff. Since Stone Golems do poor area damage, Fireball handles the main clear. In this manner, I’m getting a more balanced damage dealer.

Now, I have to invest into golem gear too with a Primordial Chain, Anima Stone, Primordial Harmony and Primordial Eminence. Also, I plan to add either another Primordial Eminence or Primordial Might for making my golems aggressive. And my cluster jewel in part uses Primordial Bond for improving the buffs that my golems provide.

I do have a wand with a lot of fire/burning damage built in along with the ever crucial Trigger Socketed Skills craft. That one I use with Wave of Conviction, Flammability and Armageddon, all of which adds more penetration and ignite potential to my abilities.

At the moment, my character is level 80 but I think that I might invest more into fire damage such as Arsonist and possibly Heart of Flame. However, I think Gravepact might come in handy along with Spiritual Aid just to boost my Fireball damage.

The two main problems with this build that I’m finding are deciding where to put my points and the need to invest into the survival of my golems. I feel that two more Primordial Harmony jewels will give enough survivability to my golems. I do not want to invest into Indomitable Army and feel that aiming for more jewel slots could be better with another Primordial jewel.

Two additional problems with this build are being dexterity and mana starved. The dexterity part is really annoying as I’ve had to sacrifice points to get back dexterity while mana mostly is an issue from Fireball’s cost. I cannot use a -9 mana reduction ring because I employ Pyre and Berek’s Respite. Both add a tremendous amount of damage and Pyre ends up helping to negate on death effects.

The only other piece of gear I can optimize for at this time is a better shield with mana reservation reduction. With that type of item (along with a mana reservation reduction for something like Malevolence as a helmet enchant), I could probably add Anger or Herald of Ash into my shield.

Overall, I’m not sure how to feel about this build. I like that it has character but the real problem is that Fireball by itself really sucks without a lot of backup. The area clear only works once you get Ignite Proliferation and GMP. But I found myself missing a lot for a while. Single target with Fireball is pretty mediocre and spamming Fireball blows because it’s slow to cast. The only saving grace came once I obtained a Trigger Socketed Skill wand but even then the damage is really hit and miss.

I think part of the problem is Ignite being flaky. The other problem is that single target casting just is horrific in this game with bosses teleporting around so much. I considered using Spellslinger but couldn’t think of a good combination to make that work.

The golem part is stupid even though I enjoy having minions running around for a good portion of my work. But I think that depending on golems for a skill’s pitfalls is more of a crutch. The fact that I’m using Stone Golems over Flame Golems highlights other issues for a build like this. Intuitively, I should be using more Flame Golems to compliment my fire damage or making the single target aspect more compelling.

Now, I could try a different helmet where I have Minion Damage and something like a Burning support. Then use an item like a Kaom’s Heart. But Stone Golem regeneration is too good and single target is pretty damn good for little investment. In a lot of Stone Golem skill trees, I notice that only Gravepact is really worth picking up. Everything else is emphasized on Primordial jewels or some of the new cluster jewels.

Either way, I’m going to play around with this build a little more. I think there’s some possible tweaking I can do.

The post Path of Exile: Fireball/Stone Golemancer Hybrid appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Well, it was very hard to setup because at level 88 (when I started this build), I was missing quite a few points to get all the critical nodes. More importantly, as I suspected in my initial PoB theorycrafting, I would be off by quite a bit of mana/life to make the reservation portion work. What I also underestimated was the need for strength mostly for Vitality. Although I had leveled up another Vitality jewel, I could not make use of it and required a fresh one.

In the end, through a lot of maneuvering, I managed to eek out enough to get the basic build working. Right now, I’m sitting at 7 Purposeful Harbingers with 2 Heraldries and a Pure Guile jammed in there, which is barely enough to get 5 Heralds with basic auras of purities and offensives to handle white-yellow maps.

What has helped massively that I can see now is the Call of the Brotherhood for the lightning -> cold conversion. However, I sacrifices Hatred for Haste because I felt movement was better than damage for now. So damage is pretty subpar but it’s enough to get through a basic map and the boss.

The important part for me has been the ability to absorb damage. The huge winners are the purities since they give roughly 90% to my resistance. On top of that, I run Discipline and Vitality (though of lower level) where I use Zealot’s Oath to convert Vitality’s life regeneration to energy shield regeneration. The combined effect boosts my ES to 5600 and gives me 3k worth of ES regeneration. So far I haven’t been hitting hard enough to get wrecked.

What I’m missing is the Maligaro’s Virtuosity gloves. This item is huge due to the critical strike and critical strike multiplier. Unfortunately, my only options are corrupted ones on my budget unless I can find (or be given) another exalt. I’m aiming for non-corrupted ones simply because I want the coloring to be flexible and those cost roughly 2.1 ex.

If I am able to secure those gloves, the next upgrade will be another Purposeful Harbinger jewel with Heraldry. I believe 3-4 Heraldries are required to make the heralds close to nothing when it comes to mana reservation. So I’m going to try and aim at 3 to start.

But it’s pretty obvious that 9 Purposeful Harbingers are really needed for the big buffs. I’m missing 100% more efficacy on my current buffs (namely Discipline, Haste, Wrath and Zealotry) and it’s pretty noticeable, especially during boss fights. I’m going to wait to get the last 7 passive voices since the market continues to plunge on those.

I think once I can make that last few ex for the main gear, my next upgrade will be a Cinderswallow Urn. At 1 ex, I think this will be a nice upgrade since it provides a good damage boost and qualifies for my Necromancer ascendancy’s “consume a corpse” aspect to improve my AoE.

Once those are in the place, the truly hard grind starts since it’s mostly leveling to get more passives. At some point, I’m going to need to do Uber Lab since 3 missing passives are just too big for a build like this. Those passives might help me acquire another Purity small cluster gem to help reduce more mana cost. The goal here is to get Hatred back into this build somehow.

Currency-wise, this will be very tough as everything passed these items are multiple exalts each. Obviously, Unnatural Instinct will be an excellent upgrade as well as more reduced mana gems. Then there’s items like Tailwind and Elusive boots and a helmet enchant for mana reduction on something like Haste.

And of course, the real top tier stuff will involve getting better armor like the Saqawal’s Nest and a shield with more mana reservation. And for fighting Sirus A8, I would need a gem with corrupted blood immunity.

Thus far, my luck hasn’t been great with drops since the switch over. And the map clearing isn’t much better than it was. But bossing is less sketchy with the high ES regen and other high resistances in place. Of course, I still need Uber Lab which I’m not sure if this build will handle. I figured on outleveling it by a mile then doing what I could to get around traps by re-specing and removing things like Blood Magic.

The post Path of Exile: Scuffed Herald/Purposeful Harbinger Abuser Build appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

From what I understand, a few key QoL improvements on the Chinese Client version are 1) pet that picks up loot; 2) customizable macro for flask; 3) expanded stash tab, 4) 1 click auction; 5) unlimited skill tree re-spec before level 70; 6) useful leveling loot from side missions; 7) in-game skill tree planner and have managed to reduce botting/scamming using BoP (bind on pickup) currency through story mode.

Looking at these features, it’s basic ideas that seem to deserve to go into the core game. With all the commotion being raised right now on reddit and Twitch about the different mentality here, it’ll be amazing to see whether GGG chooses to ignore the player base and put out another stupid manifesto explaining their position of one market vs the other.

The reality is that the constant defense from GGG (and so-called GGG White Knights) is that QoL does not impact profit. So what about the pet that picks up loot? I can’t see how GGG can justify their position after the Chinese market showing what something like that can bring.

And before people refute that “yeah but that makes it pay to win…” is it? How many people on forums constantly complain about RSI because the in-game pick up is god awful? If you pay to win here, then it’s paying to win crippling wrist surgeries in the future.

But the more I read into this, the more I believe that you have these bozos in this 80s era of “hardcore” gaming where you played from an Atari 2600 and used a stiff joystick, being unable to save and starting from scratch while liking it. I mean the game progressively has gotten worse as they added features. What game degrades as badly as this? Even a shitty game like Ultima 8, which was shrink wrapped software, eventually got a downloadable patch to fix the horrible platforming.

I mean the direction of the game seems to focus on 2013 Kripparian, even though he too long moved on and became realistic once he got a life (and a wife). It’s like they’re stuck on this cycle where their best usability study was from 2012 as an anti-Diablo 3 response.

But now, they’ve become poised to dominant the ARPG market (if they haven’t already) and are lost in a poor business model that has outdated itself. Similar to the Chinese Client thread, another issue has come about related to MTX where people have pointed out that you need to pay to turn off features for the game to perform better. What kind of ass-backwards thought process is that? Either the developers are really this bad or GGG is this corrupt. I’m leaning in the middle.

Nonetheless, I find it funny how Tencent put money into here when it’s clear that GGG does not want to expand their business. I mean if I were in charge of GGG, the first thing I would do would be to get that investment money and start hiring overseas. As both a company and as someone who wants the best product possible, I would try to acquire the best talent I could afford. It worked for the WWF back in the 80s, Blizzard, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

Instead, the game just lacks that polish. GGG seems proud of it. It’s like taking the biggest poop and showing it to your girlfriend. Yeah it might be a great personal accomplishment, but no one is going to want to look at it nor smell it.

Here’s the sad thing: I think the game has so much potential. The core ideas of the game of having highly customizable characters is the best I’ve seen in a long time. They have a good long term outlook because the game does a good job ensuring that getting the ultimate, perfect build is impossible.

Where they fuck up the most is holding steadfast to this archaic notion. I have a variety of friends who have tried the game and they like it. But the game is so badly unpolished and unfriendly that it’s punishing. In the end, the quit and move on. How many players have GGG lost because of certain this stubbornness?

Let me provide an analogy to this. I often listen to Jim Cornette’s podcast because he provides a great deal of insight and history for the wrestling business. However, some of his views are clearly outdated (e.g. his true feelings of women’s wrestling, non-white wrestlers, high spots, etc.). Even though he has great genius about booking and understands the business itself, he’s limited to a very specific era. If he was running a promotion, most likely it would fail because he refuses to update his dogma. It’s not just about how a wrestling match looks but how the business should be looked at.

GGG, for all their intent at attempting to preserve an old school, “hardcore” mentality, in reality will probably die out or Tencent will eventually replace key people once they fully own them. Of course, someone like Chris Wilson won’t really care at that point because he’ll have made his money. But I think the company would have longer staying power if they listened to their audience.

The other thing is that QoL does go a huge way. I work at a company which has tremendous tech debt. The focus has always been on adding features without regard for performance, usability, stability or anything that the end user probably needs (as opposed to what the sales person and some sucker agree to). The mentality is not much different where features seem to equate to money.

But we’ve lost clients too because the system performed terribly, lacked stability, had poor usability and was very difficult to customize without significant investment by the requestor. I want to say a good deal of this can fall under QoL; in short if the system runs smoothly, the end user will remain a happy customer.

I can tell by the way the game has become cripplingly bad in terms of performance and sheer bugginess that the tech debt lying underneath is killing the system. I think all the new features that are added do not receive good QA to avoid things like the current herald stacking meta (which I think is hilarious). But GGG has no one to blame but themselves because they refuse to put in actual effort on the QoL side.

Now, compare that to D3. D3 does not receive the updates at the level of a PoE league. But the game responds quite well for what it’s worth. And the new stuff seems reasonable compared to outlandish unbalanced scenarios (e.g. too much/little player power or monster power).

The thing for me is that I truly enjoy Path of Exile. Which is why I get frustrated. If I hated the game, I would just quit and find something else to do. I want to see the game get better but I don’t think sugar coating my words about GGG’s mentality will help motivate them in the right direction. The people there just need a major wake up call. Keeping them on their feet and reminding them to be humble is the job of the community so that they continue to produce a quality game rather than remaining a 2nd rate indy shop.

The post Path of Exile: Did the Chinese Client Expose How Stupid GGG Really Is? appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

This league I decided to go with a Facebreaker Cyclone Champion. I had run Cyclone a few times before both as Slayer, although I did it on my Juggernaut last league but with Herald of Agony as the primary skill and Summon Holy Relic going into my 6-link after watching DatModz with his.

I wasn’t sure how good Facebreaker Cyclone Champion would be as I had tried it on a standard character with some of the gear. However, I was missing quite a few key items that would be hard to farm and I really wanted to see what the new cluster jewel hype was. So right there, I found motivation to give the league a shot.

The Facebreaker Cyclone Champion was something I had a strategy for because I knew the gear would be reasonably cheap. The main piece naturally was a decent Facebreaker gloves. From there the next major thing was to get a 5-link that could take me into early maps. For that, I decided to buy a low end Belly of the Beast and used a Jeweler’s Touch prophecy to get a cheap, easy 5-link going (ironically, I even got my own prophecy right after)

This setup would help start me off mapping while I began to build up my currency. Another major piece was getting an Abyssus to provide a huge damage boost as well as solid attributes. The next major pieces were a good shield and the Circle of Guilt rings.

I found an exalt early on which made me desire The Unshattered Will as my shield. There’s another one that provides a level boost to your socketed gems, which would make my Herald of Purity more formidable. However, the defenses on this shield as well as it naturally synergizing with Cyclone (channeling) and the high mana block gain made it something I truly wanted.

After that, I went after a Rigwald’s Curse so that I could obtain the claw wheel on the upper right hand side. After that, I think I started to save for either a 6-link version of my Belly of the Beast or I might’ve gone after a Circle of Guilt with both the reduced mana reservation and buff effect. Right now, I run one of those with my 2nd only having the mana reservation.

I was on the verge of pushing this character harder but ended up getting slaughtered during one of the trials which demotivated to play this character. I knew the biggest problem was the Abyssus but at that stage, I was starting to get burnt out. That said, I enjoyed the character right up to that point and I’m sure I could’ve handled the trial if I had Leap Slam. If not the other option would have been to replace the helmet with something with high attributes and tons of life + regeneration to tackle Uber lab.

But before I go into my switch to elementalist, I want to say that I had enjoyed this character up to that moment. The main thing was that pushing this character was not trivial. I had to balance and re-balance things constantly. But I actually enjoyed the progression because I felt I was still far away from tuning this character. For instance, I’m missing an exploding chest with mana cost reduction. Also, I was missing a 2nd Circle of Guilt with the increased buff effect and reduced mana reservation implicits. I think those elements along with my last ascendancy would have really boosted up this character. So I have yet to see its true potential.

As I was looking for a new character, I stumbled upon a Golemancer build which focused on Stone Golems. Now, the interesting part about this build is the very high life regeneration provided by the Stone Golems. I’ve run Golemancers in the past, but the main difference is that they had been buffed through the ascendancy as well as the new cluster jewels.

So I set out to create a new Golemancer and managed to get through the acts very easily. Trials were trivialized although I severely disliked using Leap Slam for the longest time here. Originally, I started off using a Clayshaper to get the extra golem. But my Leap Slam felt dreadfully slow and awkward. The main issue here was trying to cast a combination of Storm Brand to apply a Vulnerability curse, followed up by either Desecrate or Flesh Offering for a buff. The casting made Leap Slam very painful to use.

But as I predicted, Uber Lab was easy so it became just a matter of farming the remaining trials with this character until I got what I needed. Right now, I ran across a totally new issue: my build is just too squishy in red maps. I’m barely scratching 4k life with some energy shield. Part of the issue is that my skill tree isn’t optimized for the really high end build using the Brass Dome and adding cluster jewels rather than having dead zones in my passive tree. I did switch her weapons to dual Cold Iron Points but whirling blades hasn’t been much better.

A lot of the really high end builds end up moving their tree to the left side, adding more resistance and life along with using a Glorious Vanity to benefit converting Mind Over Matter. There’s other things to this as well but I ended up scratching a different itch that had been building up: Hollow Palm.

The Hollow Palm skill to me is the real star of the league for me. While people will argue it’s all the herald abuser builds, I feel like Hollow Palm wins just because it’s amazing for leveling. My first Hollow Palm character was an Inferno Blow chieftain. Of all the Hollow Palm builds, I felt this one would be severely underrated.

Now, the leveling experience for Hollow Palm and Inferno Blow was nothing short of amazing. Smooth, destroying large groups of monsters, tons of damage, easy scaling and easy to resistance cap by maps, this build surprisingly isn’t huge on the list over at poe.ninja.

But I can see why. Once you’re into maps, it becomes harder and harder to really get end game damage out of this build. More than that, you have very little wiggle room for gear and even skills. You pretty much need dexterity every where and there are a few build defining uniques outside of One with Nothing. You could get away with rares but those are super high end crafts and I’m nowhere near close nor motivated to go there.

I did end up getting an immediate itch to start another Hollow Palm build. The second one was a Raider Frenzy build. That came from Mathil’s video. But I probably won’t come close to the gear that Mathil had. Right now, I’m up to level 61 in act 8. Took me two days to get there. I would’ve progressed further but stopped and did something else.

I will say that Frenzy started off poor but slowly improved once I got a little weapon reach. But the mana issue is a constant pest and getting resist has been challenging as I am forced to compromise dexterity. Also, I find that being a raider makes this character very squishy.

My main motivation for doing a raider was that I wanted to get her fully ascended. I only had one other raider previously and that was Frost Blades. But once I found out that Blade Flurry ended up becoming a channeling skill, it pretty much killed my desire to play Frost Blades anymore. Nonetheless, I still wanted a fully developed Raider and Hollow Palm seemed like an easy way to get there fast.

Now, about the league itself. I have a lot of mixed feelings so far. Basic content-wise it’s okay. The reward system is about as good as previous leagues. I find leveling reasonable because of all the added mobs. But the real issue is visibility.

Even if the league feels squishier than ever, I find the lack of visibility to be the number most frustrating aspect. It’s impossible to navigate  terrain and figure out what’s blocking you. I mean even without the fog, I still would die. But the fog itself makes navigation supremely painful.

As for the countdown aspect, I’m indifferent. I think the Delirium concept is not good in general so they’ll probably end up retooling it or dumpstering it. The only parts they probably should keep are Delirius maps and cluster jewels. Even Simulacrums just look utterly boring. I haven’t done a single one and ended up selling mine off because they’re pretty good money. As far as I’m concerned, Delirium is just another version of Breach, except faster but visually worse in every way.

Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Stacking heraldry builds. It’s quite clear that they’ll nerf this somehow, probably enforcing a limit on the number of heralds one can stack. But I think it’s just a dumb move. The cost for making a build like this is astronomical compared to any other build as far as I know. I cannot see even an entry point for people who aren’t making a great deal of currency.

That said, I think they should keep it. The scaling min-maxing aspect of this type of build is what Path of Exile should be about. Even if a pleb like myself, will never be able to make one without some help, I really don’t care because the people doing this type of build are those that min-max in the first place. I feel that if you put the effort in (that includes the money), you should get what you deserve.

If it means, an unbalanced game so be it. It’s not like people on day 1 start of the league will be making these. Instead, people continue to play because they see a never ending quest in making the perfect end build. A game like this should celebrate that idea. It’s far better than just adding +5 main stat.

Also, I think it demonstrates the flaws of the game in general. For instance, the Sirus fight becomes utterly trivial with this build. And it should because the fight is stupid to begin with.  I mean if the developer is insulted that his creation is trivialized, then he’s doing it wrong in the first place.

But that’s where the game for me has been dying. I really didn’t like the way the atlas structure was changed. I still find it confusing and stupid. The problem with the whole conquerors concept is that there’s another gate on top of an RNG gate. At least before, you could just get away with plain map completion. I liked that because it was straight forward and didn’t force you to  deal with extra stupid bosses that GGG is terrible at making. I really wish they just scrap the whole conquerors aspect and make it something that spawns randomly like elder and shaper before this mess started. Then people can plug away when they want to fight the conquerors and not have to deal with a forced chase.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what I might do after finishing up this raider. The only things that have caught my eye besides the stacking herald build are Storm Brand Hierophant and VD Spellslinger Necromancer.

Storm Brand is something I’ve played in the past as an Inquistor. The main difference this time around is that they introduced the Archmage support gem. I’m a bit iffy on that though because the mechanics aren’t as smooth as I would like. Even the description is a bit confusing for Archmage. But it sounds fun and I might give it a try. I did try it on another Hierophant I had in standard. But what I was missing was all the gear. So if I give this another go, I’ll have to spend some money for the right gear.

VD Spellslinger Necromancer does sound fun but only because I’m not playing a summoner this time around. Most of the gear doesn’t look too outlandish by comparison so it feels more viable. Essentially, it looks like a Poet’s Pen type of build minus the Poet’s Pens. So it’s mostly me giving Spellslinger a shot. However, since I just did an Elementalist, I’m not enthused about making yet another witch.

That leaves Scion and Shadow as my only other non-base types that I have yet to create this league. Scion would most likely be a stacking Herald build. But the real issue is that I don’t have the money to pull it off. And that build is just so expensive and I have no idea how to level it.

My initial thought in creating a herald stacking Scion is to do yet another Hollow Palm to level the character through the acts then re-spec her. However, it would be such a massive re-spec since you end up not only changing her skill tree around, but her ascendancy too.

From what I can tell, the way people are playing Scion here is to go Witch as Necromancer and then Templar with Guardian. That way the Scion gets all the buffs from auras. Since Guardian and Necromancer can play as a summoner type, one idea is to do Dominating Blow with Hollow Palm for leveling just to get the ascendancies then start off buying the gear little at a time. I’ve seen people use Mjonir and the increased stat requirement gloves to level multiple gems. So I’m thinking to go that route to level up all the aura gems to be prepared for the switch.

I suppose Templar could be done as well with Guardian but the leveling process with Hollow Palm would be a lot harder due to the dexterity portions of the tree being off to the opposite side. That’s what makes me partly inclined to go Scion.

But Dominating Blow is pretty easy to level no matter what. So that’s not a priority. If I did commit to a templar, I would probably do Storm Brand because it seems easier to gear. But at the same time, I think the investment value and return are a lot lower than making an attempt at a Herald Build.

My only real concern at this stage is time. I think if I wasn’t working, I would devote the next month to really pushing a Herald build. But lately my energy levels and motivation haven’t been there. If I knew that the build wasn’t getting nerfed, I might make a partial attempt. I feel that in the end my efforts would prove futile as the time sink would be pretty high and the outcome is unknown. I do feel that if I can get it to a point where I’m able to generate good currency, the build will exhibit a very high return.

At any rate, I just want to finish up my raider then see how I feel from there. I feel right now it’s easier to level up a new character than ever so it’s a matter of choosing a solid build that motivates me in playing.

The post Path of Exile: Gave Delirium League A Try appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

While the Delirium trailer looked neat, my biggest overall concern for this league was just a bunch of bad decisions on GGG’s part. I wasn’t happy with the manifesto and wanted to try Diablo 3 for a bit. I didn’t get too far with that and decided to take a 2nd look at Path of Exile since in all honesty, I grew bored with D3 after two days of grinding.

The thing is that the league just looked like it was going to be really bad on performance. I’m already struggling on my system but that’s without the Delirium features. I can’t imagine what it would be like to do this league under those conditions.

Also, with the exception of 2-3 items, there really wasn’t much that I wanted from trading in the league itself. The cluster jewels look cool but I can wait on those. None of the uniques are so good that I feel like they’re a game changer for me.

But the main thing is that I simply didn’t want to regrind all those trials and gear again. I pushed on the last day of Metamorph League for the remaining Ascendancies. But it wasn’t fun doing so and it felt more irritating than anything. I’ve got a good amount of items on Standard these days and plenty of old characters that I can experiment on.

Right now, the game is all about customizing my characters and is analogous to taking a new car for a spin. The problem though is that sometimes it just becomes tiresome starting from scratch with shit gear, no currency and having to re-grind everything again.

At least on Standard, for what I want to do at the moment, it’s fine. I still get everything up to Metamorph League, which is pretty friggin’ amazing. Honestly, I can grind maps all day with some beasts, blights, metamorphs and delves thrown in. I don’t need to do cutting edge content all the time. I’m not a streamer and they can show us how to get it done with all their spare time.

As someone with a job, it’s hard to grind on a daily basis and feel like I’m making significant progress. Sometimes the only time I can play is Saturday. And the type of content I can do is quite limited. I still want to play but don’t want to lose all the progress.

What is cool is that I have so much gear built up that I can finally make some builds and see how they work without going through the hassle of dealing with trade. In fact, beyond builds I’m attempting to clean my stashes by just playing and getting rid of excess garbage along the way.

I think if the league mechanic was better and more rewarding, I would feel more motivated to play. I really don’t see much difference between this and Legion or Breach. And again the only real reason for someone to play a league like this is for the cluster jewels. But it’s not enough of a game changing reason to suddenly start from scratch once more.

Honestly, I would be perfectly content just absorbing new leagues into standard as time goes on. There’s plenty of content that’s rewarding and as long as I’m having fun, that’s all that really matters to me.

The post Path of Exile: Why I’ve Gone (to) Standard appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.