Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Absinthe]

Some of the shit the IGN guy said was dumb but overall I agree with him that the game is overrated, that the infodumping story-telling approach is shit, and that the actual combat is pretty mindless and plodding because the game mostly focuses on tuning your build so you can mash a single button to destroy anything in your way. Sure there are some bosses where you have to be careful about handling their attack patterns, but it's mostly walking out of the line of fire so the boss doesn't oneshot you, and I think the one-shot boss attack pattern design is pretty asinine.

 

[Shadenuat]

I also agree on him saying that, well, not all skills and playstyles in PoE were created equal. He just made a blind guess based on a low level gameplay by playing something stupid, but on high level it's also somewhat accurate (the table of mobility skills popularity would be a good example).

The interesting thing about the review and comments on it is that the dude actually focused on the main parts of the game, he focused on the gameplay - i.e. if killing monsters and leveling actually felt fun for him or not. Since it didn't, no amount of mapping, lab runs and atziri blasting really has anything on that. People in the comments went insane about it, but more of grinding content behind what everyone is calling a "10 act tutorial" doesn't really disprove what he is saying.

The only dumb thing I think he said was that "if some choices are wrong, it means there are no choices". Not only it's a bit too high level of a concept to tackle in the review, but as he said himself - PoE system provides outstanding control over all of your character's stats, and where he might have picked something wrong due to inexperience, a person who really knows how to tweak his "car" would make out of that something "right". Wrong choices are simply a consequence of a character system where you have total control over everything, and can play with as low as 1 hit point or hit like a noodle but buff the fuck out of your minions etc.

Overall I think that review was really nothing to get fussy about. It was made by a casual, but he did cover the basics. The rating of 7 something is not bad at all, most of the positives were highlighted. I hate to death many things about PoE but I'd still probably rate it at least 8/10 just for the amount of hours you can spend staring on a passive tree, but there are worse reviews out there.

The community reaction was worth it though, as noted.

If I was a developer and read that 10 acts of story and levels and shit I've put time into was concidered "a blocker", it would have made me think what the fuck I was wasting all the time and dolla bills on. Just make an ARPG with small tutorial, give everyone level 80 right after and make them fight in an over increasing procedurelly generated brutal build testing world-arenas then

 

[Gerrard]

Went to a side room during first delve, almost died, got Tabula Rasa.

 

[Shadenuat]

woo another passive reset
free mapos from Zana!

gonna switch my witch completely from fire+minions to ice+minions. Kinda got tired of fire and Hatred just would be better + tired of lacking in monster control.

and finally roll my princess mononoke with dual daggers to die miserably in melee on level 59.

but first to read the patch notes



oh wow. that's some long notes.

man traveling from witch to templar for minionz seems like a nobraner now.

 

[SirSingAlot]

meta too bright it seemd, couldnt decide for smtg cool with first char, leveling with new Caustic Arrow and wanna try new Pathfinder with Chaos/Poison and Herald of Agony.

 

[Shadenuat]

Quickly respecced my witch changing minion gems to phys damage & hypotermia. Picked all passives for minions & ran Hatred. Also picked siphoning trap, ice golem, etc. Wanted to try frost bomb but ran out of sockets meh.

Highest map I had was level 11, ran a few mapos, bosses die in 2-5 seconds. I wasn't sure what was happening so checked stats, 366% minion damage. yeah, they buffed summoners I think. I really struggled before update now same character stomps over average stuff.

 

[ArchAngel]

Went to a side room during first delve, almost died, got Tabula Rasa.

I did die in darkness :D
Didn't find anything of worth yet

 

[you know what time it is]

Speaking of IGN, saw their video from PAX on Artifact. The guy that played it seemed to have the same grasp of PCs and gaming in general as elderly people do. Their ineptitude is pretty much a meme now, even amongst their readers.

Delve seems p fun so far, even though it crashes every now and then. I'm still torn on what build I really want to try out, went with templar for the time being (since they got the most changes, aside from rangers and have potentially decent builds with almost all of the new skills), seemed like a safe bet to figure out new mechanics and shit, before diving in HCSSF

 

[Reinhardt]

I'm just running scion with smite and have no idea what i'm doing.
And i hate new league. My inner autist demands full clear of mines so instead of going deeper i'm doing low level shit.

 

[Sykar]

Still playing Standard league only.

 

[Perkel]

IGN gonna IGN

If you look actually at the footage dude tries to play as true melee. Something which GGG forgot about like few years ago and instead of fixing it they just gave more "melee" skills that are essentially just spells.

Now wonder he gave it 7.5 i would give it 1 for melee play-trough.
Grim Dawn recently reminded me how fun actually melee is.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm just running scion with smite and have no idea what i'm doing.
And i hate new league. My inner autist demands full clear of mines so instead of going deeper i'm doing low level shit.

You realize the mine is infinite in every direction right?

This league feels very rough. First char got to level 20ish, then level 2 azurite encounter removed the candle from the trakk, died before I could remember what hotkey the flare was keyed to. Not super engaging gameplay, since I hadn't even needed to use flares before. Also lots of azurite getting stuck in walls, truck failing to hoover up loot, and random zone loads in mine ruining the whole illusion of it as persistent.

 

[Reinhardt]

You realize the mine is infinite in every direction right?

 

[SirSingAlot]

if you start out, mine early. the currency rooms have yielded more wealh than i found during the rest of the playtime

 

[Shadenuat]

If you look actually at the footage dude tries to play as true melee

By true melee do you mean auto-attacking with just base weapons? Sorta like Diablo 2 barb with frenzy opposed to whirlwind?

 

[Jaedar]

if you start out, mine early. the currency rooms have yielded more wealh than i found during the rest of the playtime

This is good advice. So far I've found at least 1 chaos in every currency stash, even the ones on depth 5ish.

This league really is dumb though. The hidden rooms say "blow up a wall to unlock path to here", so I did, but I left the instance so then the game forgot I had done it (or maybe the game just expected me to use flares to get there all along... good luck).

 

[Perkel]

If you look actually at the footage dude tries to play as true melee

By true melee do you mean auto-attacking with just base weapons? Sorta like Diablo 2 barb with frenzy opposed to whirlwind?

I mean actually hitting things with your weapons instead of swinging your weapon for whatever reason where magma, fire, lightning, ghost blades and so on kills your enemies.

PoE does have few melee skils but they are mostly janky as fuck. Animation for them didn't improve since 2011, only fx changed somewhat.

I asked once GGG dev if they can make default attack gem so that few of us who actually want to play pure melee could buff it up via support (you can't support default attack without gem duh). He said that it would look bad for them and they instead want to focus on new gems with nice effects.

But GGG issues with melee is just consequence of their changed design. Since they introduced huge monster patch which basically doubled monster packs sizes and amount of packs so that they are basically everywhere and you can't get even few seconds without monster on screen it means that any single target skills is almost completely useless unless you fight boss.

 

[Reinhardt]

I mean actually hitting things with your weapons instead of swinging your weapon for whatever reason where magma, fire, lightning, ghost blades and so on kills your enemies.

Cleave champion.

 

[Jaedar]

I mean actually hitting things with your weapons instead of swinging your weapon for whatever reason where magma, fire, lightning, ghost blades and so on kills your enemies.

Cleave champion.

Heavy strike + melee splash?

 

[you know what time it is]

Not a big fan of flares and dynamite. That aside, I like the new paladin sort of theme going on there, with smite/dominating blow/herald of purity, leveling is fairly enjoyable and you are kept engaged due to summons' limited duration, a bit of a pain against bosses with phases tho and changing zones kills most of your army which is rather unfortunate.

 

[Shadenuat]

I mean actually hitting things with your weapons instead of swinging your weapon for whatever reason where magma, fire, lightning, ghost blades and so on kills your enemies

Yeah. Leveling sf delve ranger now and first skills I got were 3 different magic arrows and only melee skill was shooting frost arrows from my melee weapon. Not like aoe swing or step up and attack or something. And melee is kinda ass.

I remember how tame barbarian skill tree in D2 was in comparison. Bash, strike with two weapons, stun attack, leap, leap & attack.

 

[Reinhardt]

I REALLY have no idea what i'm doing. Lvl 35 and 20 free skill points.

 

[Shadenuat]

Put everything in life

 

[thesheeep]

I REALLY have no idea what i'm doing. Lvl 35 and 20 free skill points.

Do what you want, basically.
Try to follow something, anything, you'll change it around later anyway.

Just don't do the same mistake I did first and stay the hell away from energy shield. It's a trap and utterly useless until very late into the game and with all the right skills.

 

[Reinhardt]

Do what you want, basically.

Problem is - i don't know what i want this league.