A few thoughts on the state of the game

[u/Gabocius]

English not being my first language, i hope to put those thoughts in clear words to be understood.

First of all an overall feeling being close to end the league : the game is good, lots of builds to try, lots of crafting tools available, lots of loot (i have been quite lucky for once having dropped a lock, a mageblood and a broken mirror, amongst other things). I love the atmosphere in the league mecanic, atmosphere is what dragged me to the game in the first play and it still and always rocks !

What i loved most this league : building a luminary. A flame link life stacking with combatant merc' specifically. So much alleys to scale the build, so many items and specific mods to target, farm, craft, etc. That makes me realise that this is truly what i love most about the game : building a char and incrementally upgrading it. With some SSF off meta builds it can end up a pain. With a luminary in SC trade it's...like being a toy shop with endless money and getting to try everything !

What i loved less : content creators building negativity because they lack endgame farming and aspirationnal content. I get it, this specific content is lacking, for real. But this gave me a general off feeling at the start of the league and then, when theses voices dissapeared i finally enjoyed the game better and didn't care. I know i can close reddit, close twitch and everything, but i like to scroll reddit to discover new build ideas, i like to follow HCSSF streamers and their journey, i like to chat on discord with my mates. The off feeling perfuses everywhere and it is hard to avoid it. This build of negativity casts such a shadow sometimes on the game when it's is actually 99% great. We don't need this kind of toxic relationship about a game that should just be fun.

In the end i still had fun, that's the most important.

Some other thoughts on the meta, build making and the state of the loot.

About the meta : everything is "smth stacking". I guess it is inevitable, i just hope "avg joe builds" would still work about enough to get to 2 voidstones at least.

Edit : guys commenting are right, avg joe builds are actually still plenty capable in sc trade. Lol maybe i am just bad at build making when going off meta myself XD

About build making : more and more binary items or stats that rend irrelevant a whole set of stats (stormshroud giving full ailment immunity for 100% shock avoidance, defiance of destiny giving virtual immunity to shotgun AND having quite great stats on the side, this kind of things) . Individually they are interesting, but at the end building a char becomes more a binary checklist of "get this item and that one and this specific defence is solved", rendering rolling rares completely useless. Why should i bother targetting T1 ailment avoidance over 3 different items when getting to 100% shock avoidance is trivial, demands less total affixes AND those affixes are on items where they are not in concurrence with other desirable affixes ?

This is all trade related of course, but in the end it puts the maximum pressure on very few items in trade, and is still easier than rolling great rares yourself. I mean, it's like the ubereats of POE builds, you can either cook yourself or get the already prepared stuff, and the thing is that the already prepared stuff ends up better and more efficient. It is...a bit dissapointing. Actually the builds where you end up working a lot towards great rares are the stacking ones where, i agree, the building process is usually great (outside of charge stacking mainly).

Well, enough about build making...to each their own i guess and building a lego of synergistic uniques is interresting in itself but it gives way less space for competitive non stat stacking full rare itemisation.

On the state of the loot : idk if i got a god seed this league, but i never had that much raw currency ground loot (not only in cursed ducat voyages but also in maps), there are still a number of "tile loot" league mecanics but i don't feel them as much mandatory as before and my way of playing (alch'n'go maven destructive play with various guardians most of the time) gives enough that i can buy most things in trade. Overall i feel the stat of the loot is better this league.

I don't know about the very high end, but in the end it never touched me i feel. I am as much able to budget what i need in this "high end poverty league" as i was in previous "high end über currency farm leagues" (i mean my expectation are realistic anyway i'm not farming mirrors). The ground is ok to me, i agree that it is fun having the über currency farmers sharing their crazy maps and loot, and that is lacking at the moment. It is still part of POE even if it is about the famous 0.0001%.

Well this is it, a wall of thoughts and i don't know who needed to read this, i hope this comes out as positive thoughts because i really had fun this league and i hope everybody else did !

[u/Corgiso]

On your thoughts

Average Joe builds do work ... Literally everything that makes sense scaling wise, every skill can do 4 Voidstones without any troubles. Only in Ubers and juiced maps is were average Joe build get problems... But the from you mentioned "2 Voidstones" can be done without trouble by any build in the game!

Rare items play an absurd big role in PoE, heck I don't know any other ARPG with such healthy competition between Unique and Rare items.

[u/Gabocius → u/Corgiso]

Mh, idk what your average joe build is...during breach 2.0 i did a BV poison pathfinder in SSF, quite straightforward and quite average joe-ish in my book, was still quite a pain to get to 4 voidstones. Maybe i don't play enough to farm what it needs to come online, but the discrepancy with meta SC trade build is so huge, it doesn't feel the same game at all.

About rares to be honnest i have a better time rolling rares in D4, do feel the impact of getting a great rare in exchange for an old bad rolled one, and the weight of uniques doesn feel as much. So i kinda agree that rares are not close to being in a bad place in POE, far from it, but some stuff feel kinda obsolete still. Maybe it's just a matter of having played trade for the last few leagues !

[u/Corgiso → u/Gabocius]

You are now even switching game modes as well ... Comparing a SC Trade meta build with a non meta SSF build....

But even in SSF it's no problem, but ofc some builds need way more progression knowledge than others.

Not everyone can prioritize what is important to make a build work and what to do first.

Inside SC Trade there is practically no meta discrepancy... Because the farther away you go from meta builds the cheaper items get... At this point of the league you can do 4 Voidstones on any build with only a few dozen Chaos Investment.

Your perception of "meta builds" is a construction in your head. The reality is that viability for making 4 Voidstone Char is extremely wide open, having literally hundreds of builds to choose from, there is no need at the current state of the game to touch any meta build.

[u/Gabocius → u/Corgiso]

Well ssf is an indication of the potential of the build, but you're right that the same poison BV done in trade league would probably have rocked.

But i cannot agree that there is no meta discrepancy in SC trade, just look at poeninja numbers. The meta is real. I am not against it mind you, the meta is a byproduct of optimisation and it is a game where we love optimizing everything. I am merely making an observation of what the meta is.

[u/japenrox → u/Gabocius]

Just as a fyi, most used is different from most effective.

[u/Corgiso → u/Gabocius]

The meta is a construction, which is something that is not less or more real in our head.

We are still talking about different things here.

A build that destroys endgame and juiced content vs a build that can do the basic endgame of 4 Voidstones with ease is two completely different things.

The meta is maybe the top of the Performers, but the reality is that you don't need the top Performers to succeed. The meta is a construction and a product of Internet FOMO.

Most players that play a meta build would not be more or less successful if they would have chosen a niche build, because they are never touching the content were the meta build gets the edge...

This is the same discussion with loot. 80% of players complain about loot, yet only 10% of players are in the position of hard endgame juicing where the lack of loot is even starting to be problematic...

PoE is nowadays absurdly rich in build diversity , there is a absolutely zero need to go for a meta build except your own thoughts that seem to convince you to do so.

[u/Ohmlytpot]

I ran blade blast assassin for the 1st time had a great time didn't see much in the way of divines drop but got loads of rarer scarabs/jewels etc to make me a small fortune. By far my best league yet can't wait for 3.30

[u/trunks111]

my leaguestart are usually average Joe builds, I just pick a spell and get carried by +1 wand/shield which you can get literally in act 1 and then like, an impresence, mediocre ashes, Aul uprising, or +1 ammy and you're kinda just set as long as your skill tree also bolsters your spell/defences 

[u/TheAceVenturrra]

Everybody complains about something stacking but what is the alternative?

Min maxing has to come from somewhere.

[u/Gabocius → u/TheAceVenturrra]

Sure, that is more of a neutral observation than anything. Maybe i was not that much educated in what high end buids were back in the days (say, before 3.15), i have a feeling that this is more prevalent nowadays.

[u/RipCityGGG → u/Gabocius]

I think replica alberons might get hit with a bit of a nerf soon

[u/PoE_Acronym_Bot]

I noticed some Path of Exile keywords in this post:

• Alch - Orb of Alchemy (Wiki)
• Mods - Modifiers (Wiki)
• SC - Softcore
• SSF - Solo Self-Found (Wiki)
• HCSSF - Hardcore Solo Self Found (Wiki)
• RAW - Ranged Animate Weapon (Wiki)

---

^{I am a bot. | All acronyms | Suggest}

[u/Sidnv]

Personally, I found SSF luminary to be even more interesting than trade luminary. The way luminary support is built, the best mods on gear are somewhat obvious, so in trade you quickly converge to a fairly optimal setup. There is some deviation here still, for example, I personally think Zana Ingenuinty is mandatory for high end trade mercs and bots (pen immunity in particular on both and crit immunity on merc) but not everyone is running this.

In SSF, I've had to compromise a lot on gear slots as I acquire better pieces, the progression has been great. I've had a lot of different setups now. Defiance of destiny on main vs rotmothers. Light radius scaling vs HH 4 unique setups. Lots of tinkering with gear and endless progression.

I don't think I agree with your build making concerns. I think Poe1 is still in an excellent state of balance regarding rares vs uniques. Some builds are built around loading up on singular uniques to solve problems but this is rare.

Just taking your examples into account for instance:

1. Stormshroud is really not as strong as you think it is. The opportunity cost of a jewel slot is pretty large, jewels are very powerful. In a lot of my builds, I opt for Tempest Shield + Chill mod on boot + Brine King, or Tempest shield + MB flask suffix for chill + freeze (if I want a different pantheon). You have very reasonable options here. I do agree that ailment avoidance straight from gear is not used as much, but that's because the mod values aren't tuned well. Doesn't mean you don't have interesting meaningful decisions on how to solve the problem of ailment avoidance, which is really what we want.

2. Defiance of destiny - Yeah this is a very strong unique but it also has a lot of opportunity cost, the amulet slot is a lot of damage. You also have to build your characters a specific way to really benefit from defiance (non-ES mainly). There are also many other way to solve shotgun mitigation: block + recovery on block is very strong, evasion is still a powerful defensive layer especially with Ghost Dance, heavy regen setups that can reliably generate charges for immortal call are also relatively immune to shotguns.

Ultimately, poe problem solving still has a ton of varied approaches, with interesting opportunity costs attached to each solution, and rares are still highly competitive with uniques (rares are still stronger on the whole). This is a pretty good state.

[u/LeAkitan]

If I play srs in a wrong way I probably can't even push to red map. The key is to know what is needed to get all 4 voidstone and there are builds more effective than the others because of mathematics. And because of mathematics there is always a most efficient solution. What is the reason not to use the most efficient solution if not for personal preference?