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[Hellshingu]

Really happy to see some performance optimizations finally. This game had some serious issues when it came to burning/chilled/shock maps that I always tried to reroll out of them due to spikes.

I wonder if they'll ever move engines in the next year or so. Would like to see this game take advantage of UE4 personally.

 

[squidyj]

Waiting on these Patch Notes to figure out which of several builds I want to roll with :/

 

[Zynx]

Waiting on these Patch Notes to figure out which of several builds I want to roll with :/

Same here. They're coming out on Wednesday. I get the feeling that everyone's working real hard up to the last minute - usually the patch notes come out a full week before.

 

[TheFatOne]

Might have to roll a juggernaut first after seeing that new armor unique. Getting rid of crits and that huge armor is insane.

 

[squidyj]

Might have to roll a juggernaut first after seeing that new armor unique. Getting rid of crits and that huge armor is insane.

The crit mod is nice though I wonder what kind of juggernaut you would want to build for it. Seems like the sort of thing youd wear if you didnt want to run around investing in a ton of endurance charges to keep your damage reduction up and give IC a huge duration. If you are getting all the endurance charges though Im not sure why I'd want to bother on a pile of armour when I can be phys immune most of the time while maintaining a high DR when Im not immune. Always hate missing out on life.

Might be worth it for the crit mod though

 

[TheFatOne]

The crit mod is nice though I wonder what kind of juggernaut you would want to build for it. Seems like the sort of thing youd wear if you didnt want to run around investing in a ton of endurance charges to keep your damage reduction up and give IC a huge duration. If you are getting all the endurance charges though Im not sure why I'd want to bother on a pile of armour when I can be phys immune most of the time while maintaining a high DR when Im not immune. Always hate missing out on life.

Might be worth it for the crit mod though

Have to remember the crit mod also applies to spell damage and this is where I would die in high level maps. Have to wait until the patch notes are up before can theory craft something. At first glance I want to pair the chest piece with verusos battering rams. Need those damn patch notes.

Edit: forgot to say this. I put a high value on not being able to be crited. Means the damage overall is less spikey and manageable. It's just absolutely massive to me.

 

[squidyj]

BF Miner Occultist
RF Totem Chieftain
EQ Juggernaut (facetank all the things)
SRS Necromancer.

I think it shouldn't be too hard to level any of these as a first character. Just can't decide.

 

[Hellshingu]

BF Miner Occultist
RF Totem Chieftain
EQ Juggernaut (facetank all the things)
SRS Necromancer.

I think it shouldn't be too hard to level any of these as a first character. Just can't decide.

SRS Necro is a good first because you can easily gear it for MF if you enjoy that. Obviously a littler more squishy and can be dangerous if you don't pay attention. I usually run some sort of summoner MF in every league, not that it helps at all as I haven't ever gotten a T1 unqiue (Shav's, Kaom's, etc) after 4.5 years of playing.

 

[Cerity]

patch notes up

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1716228

e: Seems like a lot of the balancing was focused on performance which is pretty funny.

 

[Zynx]

Wow, cast on crit and similar things were completely gutted.

500ms cooldown? There's no reason to use it over self-casting now. And gone are the days where you can enjoy spraying screens full of fireballs and stuff - I really liked the barrage-gmp cocs characters I made even though they were far from the most powerful of my characters.

Kinetic Blast and Lightning Arrow no longer bounce off frost walls for crazy single target damage too.

Hmm.

 

[squidyj]

Some of these nerfs seem rather savage. Goodbye Lightning Arrow. Goodbye CoC

Assuming bosses are still on the old values a full 50% curse effect only gets you to 60% on a boss.

EQ + Voidheart is kind of a mess too. Voidheart proc chance nerfed, eq aftershock damage and aoe nerfed, less duration nerfed.
17.34% less damage for hit + aftershock total and then there's bleed to think of. It's probably not an issue on bosses, but as the sole source of bleed it would make clearing much harder.

The buffs to other melee skills don't look like they'll be enough to push those skills forward either.

I kind of want to go back to blade vortex with these changes though, 20 stacks at 63% more damage is equivalent to casting 32.6 stacks, it means you can spin up to clearing damage faster with less mana spent and spend more time running your buzzsaw into packs. It's 34.8% less damage versus boss when capped on stacks. The nerf to poison doesn't help though.

 

[Zynx]

Lightning arrow and Kinetic blast are still good for packs, and you can still have a single-target skill as well.

The CoC nerf though...I'm still in shock. I still want to do barrage-gmp-coc builds!

Yeah, I don't like the look of melee after the patch. Heck, I don't have a lot of builds that I'm excited to play. Only 4 at first glance, unless we get new uniques that enable new things.

Ancestral Warchief and Poison mines or traps - both look unscathed and are builds I haven't really tried before.
Ice Spear Hrimburn - Ice spear got buffed and this was a build I wanted to try anyways.
Blade vortex - also something I never played but wanted to try, now stronger in most situations, except for max blade stacking against bosses.

 

[TheFatOne]

GGG doesn't understand melee.

 

[squidyj]

Lightning arrow and Kinetic blast are still good for packs, and you can still have a single-target skill as well.

The CoC nerf though...I'm still in shock. I still want to do barrage-gmp-coc builds!

Yeah, I don't like the look of melee after the patch. Heck, I don't have a lot of builds that I'm excited to play. Only 4 at first glance, unless we get new uniques that enable new things.

Ancestral Warchief and Poison mines or traps - both look unscathed and are builds I haven't really tried before.
Ice Spear Hrimburn - Ice spear got buffed and this was a build I wanted to try anyways.
Blade vortex - also something I never played but wanted to try, now stronger in most situations, except for max blade stacking against bosses.

I wouldn't get too comfy with poison

Poison now deals 8% of Physical and Chaos damage as Chaos Damage for 2 seconds (down from 10%). While we have future plans to fix Poison (addressing double dipping), this nerf brings it slightly more in line until we can make those changes.

20% less damage for now, presumably killing double dipping for the future.

 

[Cerity]

Yeah, the melee skills have needed a full reworking as opposed to damage tweaking for ages now. The general buff to the other melee skills just seems sad.

I'll have to see how the bladefall mine change is in action but it'll either be that or SRS to start off for me. Haven't played SRS since the changes to the AI and it seems to have gotten a pretty nice buff with the changes melee splash.

 

[TheFatOne]

Yeah, the melee skills have needed a full reworking as opposed to damage tweaking for ages now. The general buff to the other melee skills just seems sad.

I'll have to see how the bladefall mine change is in action but it'll either be that or SRS to start off for me. Haven't played SRS since the changes to the AI and it seems to have gotten a pretty nice buff with the changes melee splash.

Not only are the melee buffs laughable because they increased monster damage, but they nerfed one of the only viable good clear speed melee builds because it was too popular. Fuck that noise. EQ wasn't really even over powered. It was over powered for a melee build, but melee is still so far behind ranged. Mechanically they have to just overhaul then entirety of their melee system. It's garbage, and no skill balance changes will ever fix the root of all the melee problems in POE. I would love to play more melee builds if GGG ever actually fixed melee. At this point though I very much doubt they know what to do with melee. It's been a big problem from the very beginning.

 

[Rufus]

The particle effects system has been optimised, especially for CPUs with AVX capabilities. Particle simulation is now up to four times faster if you're using a modern CPU. This can translate to double frame rate in high-particle situations such as Burning Ground.

My trusty old Phenom II can't even do SSE4.1, haha. This old thing can still keep up otherwise. Pour one out for aging hardware.

Zana, Master Cartographer has a new voice actor.

Aw.
Though she won't sound like Tora any more, so that's good. I hope she keeps the accent.

Significantly improved the Alien Grass in the Belly of the Beast.

What?

When seeking Prophecies from Navali in your hideout, the difficulty used is now the latest difficulty in which your character has ever accessed the Twilight Strand.

I prophesy a lot of wasted silver coins.

Arctic Breath: 35% more damage.

So long as it gets stopped by any small object, no amount of buffing is going to make it useable.

With the wide-ranging melee buffs and adjustment to Earthquake, we expect to see a much more balanced use of melee skills.

Oh boy. As usual, the skill which a) doesn't namelock b) has good AoE and c) respectable single target will 'win'.
That combination of things is the best tool for who the game is set up in terms of speed, monster life and pack size. They don't seem to grasp this for whatever reason.

Bosses that had a reduced effect of curses on them now have a multiplier rather than a reduction. Over time, more and more curse effect has been made available to players. With the boss curse effect reduction being additive, the increased curse effect available to players overwhelmed it. Temporal Chains and Enfeeble arguably still trivialise most bosses.

Uh, OK?

The chance of finding a Unique Strongbox has been doubled again.

:lol

Strongboxes that explode corpses now do so in a wave that emanates outwards from the Strongbox, rather than using Vaal Detonate Dead. This prevents some negative situations that would previously occur.

This is under the bug fix section. Pls, you knew exactly what you were doing there, GGG.

-

Turns out more substantial melee changes weren't read yet:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/50fifx/this_is_hilarious/d73n3vx

 

[squidyj]

I would very much enjoy a way to fully convert blade vortex damage to any combination of elemental damages without being convoluted and requiring a bunch of gear slots.

 

[V_Arnold]

I really love all the nerfs they keep doing. But granted, I never abused those bullshit, broken-as-**** mechanics in the first place. Out of some false pride, I know.

 

[Hellshingu]

Hmmm well I guess I'm going to put my melee build on hold. I was hoping they were really going to look at it this league but I don't think they'll ever get around to it at this point.

Don't know what I even want to run. With no new skills launching it seems like ranged is the only way to go this league. They should have delayed this expansion until they had more time to make skill gems and rework things instead of just changing cooldowns and damage %.

The CoC nerfs are going to cause a lot of outrage for sure. I had an old mjolner build that I messed around with a long time ago and it was fun but I don't feel too bad about it. Sucks for all those guys investing hundreds of exalts trying to go meta.

 

[Rufus]

I'm probably gonna give Caustic Arrow a spin. Haven't done that in a long time and I could stack MF for once. And I'm interested in trying the new CoC, see how 'bad' it really is.

---

In other, mostly unrelated news, Titan Quest just got a huge update:
http://titanquestgame.com/pcchangelog/TQ_AnniversaryEdition_FullChangelog.txt

http://store.steampowered.com/app/475150/

If you own it on steam, you get this update for free.

 

[Hellshingu]

Oh my. The patch notes thread has reached 100 pages of people raging. I never thought I'd see the day.

 

[Skittles]

Summons still don't persist on logout? Come the fuck on GGG

 

[V_Arnold]

Oh my. The patch notes thread has reached 100 pages of people raging. I never thought I'd see the day.

Of course it would. People love abusing the shit out of broken systems then complain. It is the norm in competitive arpg-games by now, which is why I never even try to get to the top 1%. Not worth it, for me.

 

[TheFatOne]

Of course it would. People love abusing the shit out of broken systems then complain. It is the norm in competitive arpg-games by now, which is why I never even try to get to the top 1%. Not worth it, for me.

The CoC tears are delicious, but the melee ones aren't. I'm hyped to get going on the new league.

I'm probably gonna give Caustic Arrow a spin. Haven't done that in a long time and I could stack MF for once. And I'm interested in trying the new CoC, see how 'bad' it really is.

---

In other, mostly unrelated news, Titan Quest just got a huge update:
http://titanquestgame.com/pcchangelog/TQ_AnniversaryEdition_FullChangelog.txt

http://store.steampowered.com/app/475150/

If you own it on steam, you get this update for free.

I'm gonna go with the classic MF Flame Brotems. This time I'm going to change it up a bit though. Going to be doing MoM + Eldritch Battery crit totems

 

[Cerity]

It's the usual combined with some pretty heavy CoC nerfs, it's to be expected really. I'd only really be annoyed if I was playing standard and saving up for a mjolners.

It also looks like they've clarified the changes to CoC/Co* too, the 500ms limit is per skill linked.

Crit
Cast Spell 1
500ms cooldown for Spell 1
Crit
Cast Spell 2
500ms Cooldown for Spell 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/50eg4w/patch_notes/d73gvj6

 

[squidyj]

I was looking for a way to make a lot of endurance charges and I came upon crit BV Hierophant.

by my calculations I should be able to achieve ~180k dps with level 20 gems (no quality), a 6l voll's protector, divinarius and rathpith globe, as well as maligaro's virtuosity. It could be more, right now I'm theorycrafting with an Added Chaos Damage Support gem but with the current damage effectiveness for Blade Vortex, if the damage effectiveness is adjusted upward to match the base damage that value will improve, also it might be better to use a different gem if the damage effectiveness is not increased, It would be nice to keep it blue without taking controlled destruction though so that I could swap in faster casting in areas where the damage is less relevant, enabling me to clear faster by spending less time casting.

From there at level 85 I should have >5700 life with > 1000 ES and a 10% mana shield while being able to rapidly stack 8 endurance charges. That's without considering any sort of GG Rares or anything of the like (although I used fairly high rolls for my unique calculations)

from the tree and the gear i'd have ~61% crit chance. At that crit rate, if I'm maintaining my BV stacks it should be very easy to rapidly generate endurance charges, even against a single target. It's far easier in packs too.

 

[Hellshingu]

Yeah I never try to do the 1% builds as the time investment is not worth the reward for a player like me. Especially since I only play leagues and rarely spend more than a few exalts on most of my characters over the course of the while league.

Would have been nice to sell my legacy mjolnir I had on standard though even if I don't ever really go on there for more than messing around with respecs. I hope they do try and get the melee fix out sometime this league as opposed to waiting until the next one.

 

[Rufus]

The un-fucked Mjolner, at least:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexil..._notes_update_mjolner_chance_to_cast_now_100/

Whish the had some way of automatically tracking systems so the community doesn't have to alert them to things like these.

 

[Hellshingu]

The un-fucked Mjolner, at least:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexil..._notes_update_mjolner_chance_to_cast_now_100/

Whish the had some way of automatically tracking systems so the community doesn't have to alert them to things like these.

That's good. I wish I played standard so I could get rich by selling legacy items. I also should have bought a voidheart but I didn't think they would go the legacy route with that item and do a game wide change with items like this. Don't know why they'd wreck legacy mjolnirs but leave voids and council as is.

 

[Cerity]

Voidheart was going to get nerfed, it quickly became BiS and was relatively easy to get. If it had the same rarity as other T1 unqiues I'd see it staying but getting the prophecy wasn't overly hard.

They've been slowly adding to the patchnotes and it seems remote mines has had a nerf too.

Remote Mine's damage modifier no longer affects damage over time

SRS it is I guess.

 

[Hellshingu]

I guess they are going to be tweaking things right up until before release. I will hold off on any build ideas until I can see everything going in.

 

[squidyj]

Voidheart was going to get nerfed, it quickly became BiS and was relatively easy to get. If it had the same rarity as other T1 unqiues I'd see it staying but getting the prophecy wasn't overly hard.

They've been slowly adding to the patchnotes and it seems remote mines has had a nerf too.

SRS it is I guess.

I'm thinking about srs but my concern is what content do i clear with that build?

 

[TheFatOne]

FML Wanted to run blade vortex at the start of the league once I realized how broken it can be, but now ZiggyD is talking about how that's going to be his starter for this league. The prices on all the good things I need are about to triple FML. Was going to run crit brotems until I realized how tanky you can be with blade vortex while having sick map clear. Still going to run it. Even without all my late game items the skill is too good not to run as a currency farmer. Can eventually run Uber Lab with this build or run high level maps. It just too versatile to give up.

I guess they are going to be tweaking things right up until before release. I will hold off on any build ideas until I can see everything going in.

Blade vortex path finder is going to be damn good for a first build. Can go hybrid, life, or CI. Although, eventually CI seems like it would be the best at maximizing damage and tankyness due to the giant life pool when you get good gear.

 

[Cerity]

I'm thinking about srs but my concern is what content do i clear with that build?

There's not much it can't clear tbh, all map mods are pretty safe and it only gets better with gear.

 

[Hellshingu]

FML Wanted to run blade vortex at the start of the league once I realized how broken it can be, but now ZiggyD is talking about how that's going to be his starter for this league. The prices on all the good things I need are about to triple FML. Was going to run crit brotems until I realized how tanky you can be with blade vortex while having sick map clear. Still going to run it. Even without all my late game items the skill is too good not to run as a currency farmer. Can eventually run Uber Lab with this build or run high level maps. It just too versatile to give up.


Blade vortex path finder is going to be damn good for a first build. Can go hybrid, life, or CI. Although, eventually CI seems like it would be the best at maximizing damage and tankyness due to the giant life pool when you get good gear.

I've been bouncing between running some sort of BV or a BF trapper this league. I haven't played any sort of blade vortex build before so that could be what I end up doing in the end to try something different.

I remember ziggy wrecked the puncture bow build I used to run in old leagues. Got nerfed the league after he showcased it.

 

[TheFatOne]

I've been bouncing between running some sort of BV or a BF trapper this league. I haven't played any sort of blade vortex build before so that could be what I end up doing in the end to try something different.

I remember ziggy wrecked the puncture bow build I used to run in old leagues. Got nerfed the league after he showcased it.

I try to avoid his builds and Mathils builds. GGG gets the nerf gun out with a quickness when they put build videos up. You can also make some currency early if you listen to some of the top streamers during the first couple of days. Sometimes you get a heads up on a unique like voidheart. Heard AngryAA talk about his uber farm build before he put his guide up, and snatched some good cheap uniques before they exploded in price.

 

[squidyj]

There's not much it can't clear tbh, all map mods are pretty safe and it only gets better with gear.

I'm talking about things like uber lab.

 

[Cerity]

While I didn't run uber lab that much in prophecy, I really don't see uber lab being much of an issue with SRS, plenty of SRS builds clear uber atziri easy enough and I didn't really think the fight was much more difficult on my EQ'er. Just need to learn the fight correctly and not expect to be able to stand in a corner just spamming skills.

I try to avoid his builds and Mathils builds. GGG gets the nerf gun out with a quickness when they put build videos up. You can also make some currency early if you listen to some of the top streamers during the first couple of days. Sometimes you get a heads up on a unique like voidheart. Heard AngryAA talk about his uber farm build before he put his guide up, and snatched some good cheap uniques before they exploded in price.

I remember the price rise on Hyaon's fury lol. That was pretty stupid for an average unique. went from 5-10c to 4-5ex for t1 rolls.

 

[Busta SMurk]

Just popping in to say, if anyone wants an invite to the guild, just PM me. I'm not following this thread, but I'll be active this league.

IGN: Busta SMurk

---

I'll personally be playing (HC) a DoT trapper this league, to start; a cheap, fast, boss killer. Get to maps, earn some currency, then I'll spec/reroll another character and push content.

 

[Hellshingu]

I try to avoid his builds and Mathils builds. GGG gets the nerf gun out with a quickness when they put build videos up. You can also make some currency early if you listen to some of the top streamers during the first couple of days. Sometimes you get a heads up on a unique like voidheart. Heard AngryAA talk about his uber farm build before he put his guide up, and snatched some good cheap uniques before they exploded in price.

Yeah I ended up not running it the league he made his build guide so it saved me some currency.

I started paying more attention to streamers builds a couple leagues ago. I did that for ziggys crit Reave build and made some good currency off those items that league.

 

[Cerity]

ziggy covering the CoC changes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fr45kniC2g&feature=youtu.be

Seems much slower, there was a lot of damage stacked on top of it but I wonder how it's going to affect survivability and clearspeed overall.

 

[TatteredHat]

Excited for the new expansion so I reinstalled PoE again, gonna go with one of Ziggy's recommended starter builds in the Blade Vortex Pathfinder and see how it goes.

 

[Hellshingu]

RIP unique flask prices.

 

[V_Arnold]

I will start an essence drain build. Anyone has some directions regarding skill tree choices? I never did a "proper" witch before outside my 88 standard srs+aura summoner.

 

[RepairmanJack]

Played forever ago and hadn't played again until the last week or so. Never made it to end game and have no clue what build to try for. All that said, I'm really excited to be at the start of a new league.

 

[TheFatOne]

RIP unique flask prices.

Can't wait. Essentially I'm actually going to try and rush to merciless and farm for currency. Hopefully I can snatch them early before they inflate in price.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Already 5k people in the queue.

I'm going to play the worst build, glacial hammer!

 

[TheFatOne]

I started to get into racing recently. Haven't participated in races yet, but have been practicing. So much to learn when it comes to racing in PoE. Have learned a lot of little tips for the first two acts. My goal is to be able to speed level to merciless on the first day on the next league.

Already 5k people in the queue.

I'm going to play the worst build, glacial hammer!

It got a 6% buff!!

Spoiler

lol

 

[Hellshingu]

Can't wait. Essentially I'm actually going to try and rush to merciless and farm for currency. Hopefully I can snatch them early before they inflate in price.

I might leave work early to try and actually start the league on time to try and get a decent start finally. Or I could just play at work and close my office door.