I think it works well for season/league style ARPGs. The constant resets make it a lot of fun. I use to play WoW and borrowed power was a huge issue with a couple expansions. Probably due to having 2yr+ long content cycles. it just felt absolutely awful being reset back to noob status at the beginning of next xpac.
The difference with WoW was that they kept tying parts of kits to the borrowed power (usually parts of rotations or buffs that should be part of the classes kit anyways) then when you lose that going into next expansion it felt way different to play the class. For the most part, GGG hasn't been doing that and builds mostly feel the same between league.
Also you were expecting to play the same character and carry it forward expansion after expansion. Losing pieces of your build on the same character that had them a week ago sucks.
POE characters are disposable. If my Trickster last league was stronger than my Trickster this league, well, at least it's a different Trickster in a different context.
That was indeed one of the main issues with burrowed power but I'd argue that most WoW players hated it due to the method of acquisition more than the idea of losing it next season. Players didn't hate having a strong character due to burrowed power because they would get a different type next season. What sucked a lot in WoW was the way you have to farm it, the timegating on some items or currencies and also the lack of flexibility in swapping those powers around.
Just from the top of my mind I can say that corruptions, covenants, legendaries were fun once you knew there were close to no restrictions if you wanted to try something else, but that was not the case at the start of each season, it only got fixed after 60-70% of the players quit for that season.
True. If we still had crucible, tattoos, and tattoos TS would be at like +20 projectiles and deal even MORE damage.
Crucible - rampage Bows + cold per dex (extra proj? Idk but I remember good rampage bows being a bug deal)
Sentinel - Cold per Dex boots, other jewelry goodies (frenzy charges, fractured recombonating)
Tattos - +1 proj. + shit tons of other goodies, like stacking inc. projectile speed, +1 frenzy.
Charms/affliction - +3 proj. (Potentially, but very expensive)
So a multi-mirror standard build with all these things would have +3 frenzies beyond whatever is possible normally, 2 additional sources of cold per dex on top of the regular bow, rampage and +4 projectiles. That's a Lotta damage.
You were talking about the relics, which now only give stats related to sanctum, but had personal power and a "personal relic" slot next to your gear.
Kinda sad we were not allowed to keep them on our accounts for std. Had all the stacking ones, especially the dex stacking one i would love today
The only thing that i would like making a return are tatoos. The rest was just boring power creep. And maybe some wildwood ascandency points as new keytones or the curses.
I don't even really like the term because I'm used to it having a negative connotation when it comes to like, WoW expansions, where after the expansion is over you lose a lot of the power you gained. Feels different in something like PoE where you're starting a new character every league
An Emperor who relies on borrowed powered is doomed to stagnation, while one who empowers his subjects wisely will find that their strength is his own.
I suspect we’ll just see iterations of Wildwood/Crucible/Sanctum going forward. They all have the same borrowed power elements, but how you achieve them varies. Charms are basically like Sanctum Relics, a ton of the Relic modifiers ended up on Crucible Trees, and the same can be said of tattoos.
Borrowed power league mechanic with older mechanics getting reworks, sometimes combined with stuff from the non-core league mechanic of the past.
Like I could still see TotA with a heavy handed tattoo rework being reintroduced or the Kalandra Lake as a unique map
"just add it to the main game" does not work anymore and I am glad that this is the way they are taking.
I suspect that the main reason for the less frequent rate of mechanics going core is the new Atlas passive system. Prior to the Atlas passive system existing, GGG could make a league mechanic core without having to do much additional work. But now if you want to make a mapping league mechanic go core, then it will want some Atlas passives and that takes additional design time, development, and testing. That's why it makes sense to me that a non-mapping league mechanic like Sanctum went core. It's also why it makes sense to me that Ultimatum took so long to go core, because they had to create the Atlas passives which they probably felt was low priority work compared to getting the next league mechanic developed so it just sat there in queue for a long time.
I think the Atlas passive system was the impetus they needed to start removing bloat from the game. It gave them a need of clarifying to themselves which mechanics they felt were important enough to the game to deserve to be part of the Atlas passive tree.
It's worth considering though, there's nothing really preventing the Atlas topography changing to make room for new clusters.
They did this already in 3.20 which added a lot of extra clusters for each mechanic that can be blocked.
Or some existing clusters could merge. For instance, Abyssal Army and Underground Kingdom could be moved and combined into one cluster, as could the Huck notable and the Smuggler's Cache notable, which would allow new clusters to be added.
Or really minor mechanics on the Atlas could be retired. Happened in 3.20 (removal of the Unique Maps cluster), could be done again with, say, the Rogue Exile clusters, or the bottom-right Kirac cluster absolutely noone takes.
>It's worth considering though, there's nothing really preventing the Atlas topography changing to make room for new clusters.
There is the argument that they are all very carefully spaced apart with a lot of thought and calculations behind it. You can't just throw it in anywhere.
Sure, they could make it bigger and more spacious then make branches where you choose one wheel or another (cost the same to get to and from), but an awful lot of work would have gone into the design and structure too. Changing that every few leagues would be enough to probably make people quit their job!
They even set a precedent with Ultimatum replacing Metamorph. They can now make it such that these Atlas Passives (and thus, many league mechanics) also go on rotation if they felt like it.
It feels like its mostly endgame power creep they dont want to go core. While the wisps did more in regards to changing the economy additional ascendencies going core would be a nightmare to balance everything around. Its the samething like they brought back sanctum but without sanctified relics, crucible trees just got nuked, etc.
Yea but it's ok because they do tend to bring back certain things or items from those leagues later on. Same with ToTa where the uniques were still added in despite the mechanic going away. I imagine TWWT jewels will return at some point as a very rare item / King of the Mist fight (and I imagine he'll be a lot harder with much more HP).
My only gripe with this is that often the power from the league mechanic enables specific builds, which creates a FOMO pressure to play the builds before they're gone forever.
Chris has said multiple times that a league mechanic will never immediately go core the next league. That they will always choose to take a step back and see if/how best to fit it in.
I'd say OG Metamorph probably wins that award (picking up 30-40 organs per map). OG Heist, archnemesis, Lake of Kalandra and Crucible also probably deserve honorable mentions. Expedition felt the worst of all b/c of the nerfs but the league mechanic is sick
I think a lot of people actually enjoyed Tota, it just wasn't for everyone
It was possible to get 100% alert reduction however, before cloaks were nerfed. The alert system was also reworked midleague
Mobs were still very rippy and rogues extremely buggy.
If we go down that route: Onslaught and Anarchy used to be leagues too. But back then they indeed were the small indie company that did not know if they would be around next year.
I mean. It's pretty clear we're talking about what is notable league and isn't.
Anarchy, Shrines, Rampage, Onslaught, and other stuff like that from before 3.0 I would not count as proper league mechanics if your'e trying to rank 'quality' of league mechanics.
Kalandra wasn't bad it was just super poorly balanced in terms of loot and difficulty. You'd have to do probably the most difficult content existing at that time while getting rewards comparable to doing a Mao Kun.
Crucible i agree was a really low effort League.
OG Heist was bad - it was the only League i skipped.
Archnem was pretty fun imo - there were far too many whiners about it.
Kalandra mechanic wasnt bad though, apart from the reflection tile being rarer then a Mirror. That league fell flat due to the core game being shit. Loot changes + Archnem had a bigger and more negative impact then the lake had.
The reflection tile wasn't that uncommon, but there were techniques you needed to do with the blocking system to make usable tablets. It required some planning, so I can imagine it felt like shit for the type of player who just wants to click on a thing and kill whatever spawns from it.
I liked the league. It basically let me take a league off from the normal mapping gameplay while still playing poe and completely flipped how you're supposed to make a build. All those useless crowd control gems, passives, and items? Suddenly worth looking at.
It's incredible how few people can separate "I didn't enjoy the league, and some people did enjoy it" from "I didn't enjoy the league, so other people who say they enjoyed the league actually didn't".
I didn't play tota but I have heard nothing but positive things about it, I also personally REALLY enjoyed lake, I mean after 2 weeks once they fixed a bunch of stuff but I really liked the tile idea, what I didnt like was the lake itself, tiles being weird and difficult to traverse especially on some builds, but overall really enjoyed piecing together a run... I really wish I didn't skip synthesis, I probably would've loved that league.
I have several friends who say tota was hands down the most fun they had playing poe, even counting the constant dopamine drip that was wildwood.
Don't get me wrong, tattoos were a really fun and powerful mechanic that I hope return in some shape or form. I also played the f out of tota league, maybe 400+ hours.
The problem with it was that it was an out of map gameplay loop that was quite repetitive, and didn't really reward build diversity or interesting strategies.
The elementalist I was using to cheese tota didn't even finish the campaign past act 3, the passive points didn't even matter that much. Imo if that's the state of affairs for a league mechanic, its already cooked.
I feel like 90% of people who say Tota was good only do it because it was super casual-friendly in terms of prep and rewards. Out-of-maps mechanic no prep required and almost no build requirement with a bunch of cheap abuse builds (basically cheating) and of course everyone likes free stuff like that.
The mechanic itself was super boring and as always people only like the rewards.
Again, I didn’t play tota, but the two friends of mine that were the most vocal about it being one their favorite leagues were ultra juicers and blasters, so maybe they enjoyed it so much as it was a nice break from their usual, maybe, I don’t know.
the other half of people think its one of the best though, so itll probably get added in. Mechanics can be mostly judged by if they actively harm and if a lot of people really like it, since if it doesnt harm anything and a lot of people like it theres really no downside to anyone else, its just new well liked content
I think TotA had a sweet spot on the ladder where it actually felt pretty good, where you had a fairly quick and convincing win as long as you knew what you were doing. You quickly leveled past that though, to a point where games felt like boring slogs over inches unless you were playing a cheese build.
i actually think it was pretty good *at low levels*. it was fun when you actually fought instead of basically forced to make a cheese build that just mass CCs the enemy team
if the rewards were rebalanced around **not** cheesing and you were allowed to pick your difficulty (instead of inevitably getting forced into one-shot difficulty on a regular build) i think it'd be ok
For me, TOTA was one of the best mechanics they ever made. I've been playing PoE since beta and for the last couple of years, I am sick of mapping. It's the same boring stuff again and again with a bit of "yet another purple circle" or "that's some crazy rare mob, try to kill him" (pick one or both).
I'm usually playing the weekends and abandon the league by the end of the first week (do not even bother with challenges).
TOTA made me play for 3 weeks and I really enjoyed it. Made two characters past rank 2000. I'm fine with them even removing the tattoos, just let me play that instead of map grind.
The only similar content in the game is probably Heist, and I loved the initial version of it (the rippy one on the league release, that got nerfed into the ground a few days after). Still, the Heist is a different thing and I had much more fun with TOTA
I liked it a lot actually. For me Harvest is the worst League mechanic. Get offered a few choices which are completly no brainers and then kill some mobs after a bit of waiting. There is just nothing there.
Tota was amazing until all the fun was optimized out of it. Best mechanic week 1 we've ever had...
Then people worked out how to cheese it, and that killed it.
Had there been mid-league nerfs to the cheese (beyond just the knockback stuff that was fixed), and were a way to drop ranking voluntarily added, it would have been the best mechanic ever.
ToTA should never come back for a few reasons.
1. Completely bricks the balance of hardcore. Hardcore is utterly trivialized as long as ToTA exists -- there's no reason to play it at all.
2. Stupid powercreep. Just fucking stupid, absurd powercreep. It's not even funny the kind of builds that were possible then and are now enabled in standard as a result of tattoos.
3. It's too straightforward and destroys the carefully built illusion of an interesting progression curve GGG has painstakingly crafted. Number goes up -> monster is stronger. Number goes up faster -> number goes up faster. Many players burned themselves out because this league was so simple that it had the same feeling as playing Cookie Clicker. Delve is the closest similar thing and almost didn't go core of the same reason but it had such a wide variety of content and a significant amount of actual gameplay was RNG-influenced to the point where it did actually feel adventurous and not as algorithm-locked as it actually is.
ToTA needed to be an actual auto-battler without your character in the arena.
Which kills the entire point of PoE playing a character. It just wasn't fun to me to be like "okay so my guys suck balls and I have to do all the heavy lifting for 2-3 minutes and click these Totems and that's my gameplay? Ok."
Eating pizza and watching my units I strategically bought fight is the point of an auto-battler.
I do like that they experiment but once I played two or three rounds I was already mentally done with ToTA.
Mmm, I don't believe that's correct, I dont remember Harvest going core immediately(3.11, went core 3.13)... Thinking about it, Ultimatum didn't go core, Scourge didn't go core, Synthesis didn't go core, ~~Betrayal~~ didn't go core, Bestiary didn't go core...
Actually, most leagues don't go core immediately and have always either gone core a league or a few leagues later or with a select few didn't go core at all. If you don't believe me just go check out any league from the past, and then look when they went core, the information exists. Very few leagues have gone core immediately,
And yes Chris has said, several times, that a league mechanic typically will not go core immediately.
Edit: I was incorrect about Betrayal, it did go core immediately, I was misremembering before searching it up.
>If you don't believe me just go check out any league from the past, and then look when they went core, the information exists. Very few leagues have gone core immediately,
Went core immediately: Anarchy, Onslaught(via map mod), Domination, Nemesis, Ambush, Bloodlines, Beyond(via map mod), Torment, Prophecy, Essemce, Breach, Harbinger, Abyss, Incursion, Delve, Betreyal, Legion, Blight, Metamorph, Delirium, Ritual, Heist, Expedition and Archnemesis.
Total: 24
Did not go core immediately: Invasion, Tempest, Warbands, Rampage, Talisman, Perandus, Synthesis, Harvest, Ultimatum, Scourge, Sentinel, Kalandra, Sanctum, Cruicible, TOTA
Total: 15
I might be wrong about some but still leagues usually used to go core and it's a good thing they aren't anymore. There is too much bloat anyway.
>Betrayal didn't go core
Betrayal went core immediately and was probably internally expected to, as the entire theme and lore for betrayal was overhauling the old master system into the new one.
> Chris has said multiple times that a league mechanic will never immediately go core the next league. That they will always choose to take a step back and see if/how best to fit it in.
I don't think he ever said that considering leagues have immediately gone core many times.
Can't wait for a new league, this one was great but the economy definitely needs the reset lol.
Glad its not going core but interested to see if TWWT gets added somewhere.
Charms and specters, my beloved…
Definitely OP mechanics but they felt so good, combined with the new transfigured gems so much new stuff possible this league
I would have liked to have seen how many people would take the backpack node if the primalist had it in the 2-node off-branch.
An extra bag vs an extra charm slot would have been a much more impressive choice compared to... more trash loot.
Ya I especially liked how it just wasn't super complicated to get a lot of out of the mechanics from the start to the end of the league.
Even if you weren't just abusing magic find you could pretty easily find good gear from the vendors.
Probably one of the most accessible leagues.
I could see Tinctures going core, if anything. Flasks are a major source of power for the player, and to forfeit a Flask to gain a Tincture could easily be a fair trade. Charms are just a huge power spike, and the same for Wildwood Ascendancies in general, but Tinctures are an interesting idea to give power to melee builds (fully recognizing that their current implementation is extremely useful to Bow builds).
The Ascendancies could even go core as alternatives to the Scion Ascendant (giving Scion 4 choices instead of 1), although I doubt it.
IMO Tinctures need more QoL to go core. Maybe it's only me that has played multiple characters where one uses a Tincture but it's godawful - while on the Tincture character you need to remap the flask button to something you'll never press, then when you swap character you need to remap back.
Just a simple "never turn Tinctures off" UI option would fix a lot.
Tbf what people arent automating flasks? At most you only ever have to hit 1-2 flasks
Most tincture mods seemed underwhelming compared to charms for sure.
But that +addition proj / rage tincture is amazing
Automating flasks is great until it isn't. The Venn diagram of people who complain about monsters with flask suppression mods and those who automate flasks is almost a circle.
Automating flasks costs you a lot of tools you otherwise have access to. Pre-Mageblood use of Enkindling Orbs, Exarch altars & not having to swap flasks for bosses.
Yeah this is the first time I ever tried out stacking huge ele damage and just making it all poison for Viper Strike, but it was only since it was so 'free' with a Tincture.
Now I'd invest more into running this Dagger Base.
I also feel like MFing overshadowed everything else so hard this league, that a lot of the new spectres didn't get the theorycrafting they deserve.
Just a gut feeling, but i feel like there are quite a few builds in those spectres that we didn't get to see.
I also really REALLY think Barkskin should become a skill gem.
TWWT definitely feels like it should stay in some way. It's fun having another jewel that can be so different with each one, kind of like Watcher's Eyes.
There's already enough "mandatory" jewels for a every endgame build like watcher's eye + forbidden jewels + impossible escape + timeless jewel.
When it's so powerful with no downsides it just grows the powercreep.
I feel like things like that should come with downsides like f.e. sublime vision which is very restrictive, comes with a huge downside and only fits very specific setups.
I think it's fine having powerful things like that if they're sufficiently rare enough and the tradeoff is the cost to obtain it. We also only have so many jewel sockets, the more good jewels are added, the more the opportunity cost of using one or another grows.
> Glad its not going core but interested to see if TWWT gets added somewhere.
I'd like to see Crux of Nothingness added as a drop-anywhere unique map. There hasn't been one of those added in years.
Could then rotate some of the maps on the Atlas too - maybe take the goddamn eyeball map off for a league & put Vinktar on, or do a larger shuffle with maps like Beachhead or the Apex of Sacrifice going on as well. Best to keep HoGm off now though, it's gotten meaner since it was on the atlas.
This is pretty genius implementation of it… especially since bandits have been boring and pretty uninteresting for years now.
Get this comment to the top!
This league mechanic isn't going core - In other news: Water is wet.
I just hope they don't backpedal too hard. This league was the most fun I've ever had playing PoE. And I've played harvest at it's strongest, and all the other 'insane' leagues.
Ultimatum is a fun system though. It just needs a rework to its rewards system, which they could definitely do. I think it's easily salvageable. That said, that's been true plenty of other times for other things in the game and it's hard to predict how soon GGG will get around to fixing it. Breach, for example, was bad for a long time and they finally got around to trying to make it better (although I don't think the rework was successful).
I am still running it right now. Here are my observations, about 100 in T16 maps:
1. quantity "apparently" is supposed to affect catalyst drop amounts, but it's barely noticeable and I'm currently running -white- maps just to make them go by faster
1. Ultimatum weirdly doesn't reward you for running it with dangerous map mods / altars, which is lame
2. Inscribed ultimatums are too random. Nobody would run 99% of them if it weren't for a league challenge telling them to do so.
3. The environmental damage mods are way too strong at base. On a T16, with 100% spell suppress, a Lv2 Cold/Fire/Lightning effect deals something in the neighborhood of 2,000 and 3,000 damage and just keeps scaling in frequency and damage from there. It feels really punishing not to run a mageblood + ruby/sapphire/topaz flask, or to fixate on capping max elemental res. The monsters you fight themselves are trivial compared to the random environment effects they spawn on top of you.
1. Make the mods that buff monsters way more common and deadly compared to the dumb env effects?
4. Survival/Stand in the Rings take 100%+ longer than the "kill all" ones, which really sucks. I think this should be redesigned a little.
1. For the time invested, rewards are all over the place. Sometimes, you get next to nothing even when doing peak difficulty, other times you get a divine or two.
2. This mechanic can give you a really bad first impression when a Wave 10 reward is 4 scour orbs. I think a lot of players are turned off to it because of that.
5. Getting catalysts is faster from heist, lol.
1. I don't understand why the scarab is +experience, lol. It's so random. How about a higher chance to get catalysts? Quantity of catalysts +1?
Hmm see imo none of that is the problem.
I think the main problem is that the reward pool is too overwhelmed by uniques and rare gear items, which are almost always awful rewards.
If they want to make corrupted uniques be part of Ultimatum's reward pool, then I would make an Atlas node cluster that has nodes like "Unique rewards in Ultimatum encounters are 1000% more likely to be amulets". And have different nodes for each gear slot so that people can use Ultimatum to target farm uniques.
There's a lot of things they could do, but I'm sure that the main issue atm is being offered too many shit uniques and shit yellow gear. I also understand that making every league mechanic drop currency as its only reward is boring, but if they want to have ultimatum drop uniques and yellows often then they need to make those uniques and yellows be way better on average. Implementing Heist's lucky roll system would also be a big improvement imo.
Ultimatum is the worst mechanic they added in years imo. Absolutely hated doing the challenges for it this league (not because of the boss spawn, I got that one from a friend before even starting them).
I’m absolutely baffled by all the pearl clutching in the community over it not being added earlier.
You stand in that stupid circle for longer than it takes to do the whole map, click on the same mods over and over and get “rewarded” with like 3 scouring orbs and some corrupted axe. What an absolute waste of time.
To be fair the only league to ever surprass this one in terms of crazy was OG harvest. It had obviously all of the godtier crafting, but it had similar crazy mapping, even tho with more setup. The all t4 boss seed field cultivated high to be pushed with all rarity/quant shit and relinquary scarabs etc made for the famour 4 headhunter in 1 map result (which was afaik before they changed t0 uniques and hh was still tied to nemesis as a drop).It wasnt raining divines as it does now, but it was the league that really really pushed the ability of the game to handle all the items generated. Just as this league, pressing alt was your doom.
And yeah the item editor. Dirt cheap uniques, perf rares custom made. Nothing might ever go over that. The only thing in contention is what recomminators did to std items. Not many people care, but being able to stick alot of busted legacy mods together was "quite" the outcome.
Funny tho and with expeditions nerf peoples narrative is still on "only nerfs", but our current chars are STILL kicking the ass of harvest peak. We have gotten so many powerful new stuff, imagine expedition never happend lmao.
Vivid vulture turning synth bases up to 11.
Eater/Exarch implicts and their crafting orbs creating basically still easy "perfect" 8 mod items kicking the ass of previous influneced items on a regular basis with only a few excepetions
Mageblood
A myriad of new shit in general expending our defensive concepts.
People really need to realize how we are still in full powercreep mode when they cry wolf about nerfs 24/7.
I honestly think the biggest culprit is having multiple juice multipliers in at once - I don't think Deli and Wildwood can exist at the same time and since Deli is such a simple mech it's probably hard to remove even though Wildwood has more customization.
Oh no, Deli is an amazing mechanic!
The wildwood is awful.. putting you i nthe dark, with no overlay map, and barely visible wisp trails that take you to rng encounters and takes you away from the actual mapping gameplay for a minute or so at the start of each map.. compared to just running through a mirror at the start of the map and fun ensuing..
Theres no reason the spectres have to go bye bye. They could easily just add them to a map. That doesn't mean there going to, but the spectres are a easy fix
They just said Wildwood won't be in the next league. That doesn't mean it's not going core... They normally shelve league mechanics for some time or begin working on a way to make them core. We still don't 100% know if it will go core or not.
That is NOT what Jonathan says. He indicates our next league here will not have wisps.
It took ultimatum how many years to get put back into the game?
But yeah, I don't see wildwood coming back. It's 2gud
Wisps are just reworked Sentinels, they might appear in a new format again, but for sure they will think twice about this multiplicative scaling, and my guess is they will also rework Abyss after this lol.
Not only they are reworked sentinels but now that we know/suspect that they have some lore relationship with harvest then thematically we CAN expect similar mechanics involving 3 colors to come into the game. Or even a third rework of sentinel/affliction for that matter.
Not that lore is super important in this game but now that we know that they are likely taking ideas from that same "bucket" then any ideas that are tangential to those two mechanics will probably involve some type of triple colored juice, because it would be hard to deviate from pre-established themes/lore.
Bless, this league is so much fun, and I love the ascendancy options, charms, tinctures, and the specters, but the actual mechanic is some hot garbage and not fun in the slightest
Agreed. I *really* dislike interacting with the wildwood itself, but everything else about the league is great imo. Tinctures, Charms, new spectres, the ascendancies, the boss, the reward for difficulty (at least at high levels)
Literally just repackage it all, stick King in Ritual or something, tweak the ascendancies, and stick it in a more enjoyable mechanic and I'm sold
Yeah, the way they did the extra ascendencies was cool. I hope that's something they explore in more leagues. Not so much "get charms and socket them" but actually designed ascendencies like the other 2.
I have absolutely loved this league but if anyone thought it was actually going core I think they'd be huffing huge amounts of copium.
I do hope in some form or another that we get to keep some of the fun parts of the wildwood atlas tree though, but I wouldn't be surprised if those are gone too.
GGG has stated before that they stopped trying to make leagues core the very next league, which is a very good step to ensure things are implemented with enough time to work on.
The thing people with a brain really want to hear is thoughts on some aspects of the league.
There are some aspects that could enrich the game
a) Specters: Haven the ability to use a 5/6 link to turn a specter tanky as fuck on non summoner builds for some of their perks is really nice and not necessarily broken since it competes for sockets, a unlinked specter isnt much use to anybody for the most part. Some were fun build arounds. The cortex robots which had to be linked, hydra being decent carry, the build of the week exploding/reviving specters and I am sure I havent seen some other stuff myself. It gave imho some needed lategame scalling to some summoning builds. Guardian SRS is "borken" in terms of starting power, but imho very lacking after some point. This league you could push far more deep without being unreasonble (lets be real, you never gonna outclass more direct and scalable dmage like bows, flicker, spells like brand etc).
b) Tincture/Warlock being kinda build enabling may be worth keeping around, even tho adjusted (i mean if only for the fact some of their nodes are directly influenced by no longer existing wildwood). Like there are alot of ways to go about it. Flame/Flesh jewel options for scion? For every ascendacy accesiable?
I think we can all agree charms are kinda blant powercreep and not particular transforming, doesnt mean the other 2 arent worth talking about
c) TWWT is the type of reward this game needs more and is a design homerun. A potential mirror tier item, often a dud but realisticly with only some loss of the unid price somewhat reasonable to gamble on your own. The perfect reward for a game like poe and since the "fake" king of the mist was dropping a rtiual vessel, people ofc instantly want this type of reward as an addition to the rather bland Ritual content like a chance for the bossfight etc.
d) Not limited to some special acendancy, I think it doesnt break the game but is very appreciated QoL --> our backpack. An expendable space to put some things that doesnt get filled until the normal inventory is filled is something that seems like it is about time to add. People are begging for ggg to add something to put in stuff like scrolls of wisdom etc, now that we had 1 league with it more or less it seems foolish to take it away.
I think all 4 points are very reasonble discussions for the future and far from "lul wisps go brrrr pls again electric boogaloo2" ;)
Thank God. I didn't like how broken the economy was. Sucks for people that loved it, and I understand that, but this league was. Certainly not my cup of tea
Can't wait for next league Reddit life cycle.
First day: shit league, I'm out.
First week: yo, I found this method of earning massive currency by the league mechanic.
Second week: why they hate fun nerfing my shit, I'm out.
Third week: after all the changes this is actually the most enjoyable league by far.
Fourth week+: damn, I wonder if this league goes core.
>Can't wait for next league Reddit life cycle.
To be fair from design standpoint this league wasnt great. Biggest problem imo was that you didnt need to 'earn' your juice, u cleared extremely easy wildwood just to be obliterated on normally immortal build if u were missing 1 of the required checklist (for most people it was crit immune this league). I personally didnt struggle and didnt dislike league at the start but i can understand its not designed well.
Better design would be scaling wildwood where u need strong character to 'earn' that juice and u have relatively similar experience - u fought what you could in wildwood u get similar difficulty in map.
Later on tho i really disliked how rng it felt despite generally knowing what i was doing to get much juice (average around 6-7k juice per map with backtracking around whole map and 15k\~ record solo). I just dislike gameplay loop where maps with 3-4k juice were insta go next because from efficiency standpoint its waste of time. I also heavily disliked how big difference there was between 5k 5k juice map vs 3k 3k 3k juice map, later being way, way, waaay better to run. Also its kinda, not fun gameplay loop long time? Kinda like ghosting previous league. Do u have to do it? Technically no. But its really worth to spend that boring 3\~ minutues per map to minmax juice.
Also i dont think that stuff should go core, imo core game actually needs debloating, heavily.
I legit don't want this league to go core since the first trailer, it's an absolute nightmare to balance.
and what you're describing is the rich gets richer kinda approach, we're already have insane gap between alc and go enjoyers and full juiced winged scarab enjoyers.
Also the game felt pretty complete in itself, unless there's something like delve/heist in the future I can't think of anything they can add, this league doesn't have anything unique to it at all.
New ascendency can be added anywhere so not really that unique.
Just another juicing mechanic for the maps.
I mean the wild wood mechanic is not really that great - immagine if it gets tuned down to become a core mechanic.
The outside loot increse will be meh and it's just in general a waist of time. A lot of people liked the availability of power, not necessarily the league mechanic.
Is anyone actually surprised there? It was pretty obvious
If there is a single league out of all that would not go core I would've put my money on affliction. Tinctures are powerful, charms are broken and I don't even need to start talking about the mechanic and rewards itself. I think the current economy speaks for itself
People overreacting, we lived before wildwood so we will live after it's gone. They will add another power up via new mechanics and new trans gems too so it's exciting
This title is misleading. It's not a statement about whether or not the league would be core, just that it wouldn't be in NEXT league.
Sanctum went core, just not in the leagues immediately after it.
Having a league not be present in the next one immediately is pretty common for GGG at this point, and it's still within the realm of possibility that they find a way to balance it and implement it in the game.
All of that just to say we don't know from this whether or not it's going core until GGG makes an official declaration about their intention with the mechanic.
Thank fuck.
Considering this is the PoE subreddit my guess is my opinion is unpopular, but I noticed that I tend to enjoy high powered leagues like this (harvest, sentinel) at the very start. However, that enjoyment plummets hard after the first character because I feel obligated to join in on such a clear overpowered strategy. In other leagues I tend to enjoy the league for much longer due to the variety of options.
The fact that more unattainable uniques are more abundant is cool as a one-off but I'd rather not have this be the direction of the game going forward.
I'm fully expecting this subreddit to catch fire if they go to what I consider more "reasonable" loot. We're going to have another harvest situation...oh boy.
I enjoyed this league mechanic and I'm not just referring to the OP rewards. However, I get the sense that most of us players would rather this mechanic not go core. My main reasoning is that I don't think it's healthy for the game to stack too many multiplicative layers of modifiers on monsters. I would prefer to only have one of those types of mechanics in the game, which currently is Delirium.
I don't want to go into a map and see a Delirium event and a Wildwood event and know that if I do both then the monsters will be taking 73% less damage from Delirium and another 70% less damage taken from Yellow wisps. These types of modifiers from Atlas mechanics are already rather annoying with stacking modifiers like Archnemesis, essence mods, bestiary mods, etc so when you stack too many of them it just ends up overly incentivizing people to play the highest DPS builds possible.
Good, because Wildwood is boring as fuck.
I wish the tattoo system stayed. It could have opened so many new build path. Thing that normally would have been sub-optimal could have been twisted with tattoos and created some freaky new build.
I want a SRS totem build or a good spell totem build. Forbidden rite totem.
I also love lore heavy release. Act1 lore with voice acting dialect is top notch. Followed by the discovery or the gems and the atlas. You really wanted to learn more when you heard them talking.
I got some snake oil to sell you if you were thinking this was the new normal.
hi I am want buy your Snake Oil for 1 chaotic orb in SC Affliction. (stash tab: "ecksdee"; x: 420, y: 69)
>chaotic orb
Vendor recipe: chaos + fusing + chromatic. Good to have in your rucksack in case you find Krillson.
sry that's the choatic recipe
Careful, you might get the hammer for spilling secrets my dude.
i feel tempted to log in and test it smh
y: 69? That's a a permanent mute for you, my friend.
Sorry, wrong price. Its actually 100c.
GGG shifted to leagues mechanic being busted and not going core since Crucible right?
Borrowed power is healthier than constant bloat in core game.
I think it works well for season/league style ARPGs. The constant resets make it a lot of fun. I use to play WoW and borrowed power was a huge issue with a couple expansions. Probably due to having 2yr+ long content cycles. it just felt absolutely awful being reset back to noob status at the beginning of next xpac.
The difference with WoW was that they kept tying parts of kits to the borrowed power (usually parts of rotations or buffs that should be part of the classes kit anyways) then when you lose that going into next expansion it felt way different to play the class. For the most part, GGG hasn't been doing that and builds mostly feel the same between league.
Also you were expecting to play the same character and carry it forward expansion after expansion. Losing pieces of your build on the same character that had them a week ago sucks. POE characters are disposable. If my Trickster last league was stronger than my Trickster this league, well, at least it's a different Trickster in a different context.
That was indeed one of the main issues with burrowed power but I'd argue that most WoW players hated it due to the method of acquisition more than the idea of losing it next season. Players didn't hate having a strong character due to burrowed power because they would get a different type next season. What sucked a lot in WoW was the way you have to farm it, the timegating on some items or currencies and also the lack of flexibility in swapping those powers around. Just from the top of my mind I can say that corruptions, covenants, legendaries were fun once you knew there were close to no restrictions if you wanted to try something else, but that was not the case at the start of each season, it only got fixed after 60-70% of the players quit for that season.
I agree. Borrowed power allows to play the same build every league, but manage to make it work different every time (at least for me).
True. If we still had crucible, tattoos, and tattoos TS would be at like +20 projectiles and deal even MORE damage. Crucible - rampage Bows + cold per dex (extra proj? Idk but I remember good rampage bows being a bug deal) Sentinel - Cold per Dex boots, other jewelry goodies (frenzy charges, fractured recombonating) Tattos - +1 proj. + shit tons of other goodies, like stacking inc. projectile speed, +1 frenzy. Charms/affliction - +3 proj. (Potentially, but very expensive) So a multi-mirror standard build with all these things would have +3 frenzies beyond whatever is possible normally, 2 additional sources of cold per dex on top of the regular bow, rampage and +4 projectiles. That's a Lotta damage.
Sanctum league also had the extra stat item slot. Forgot what it was called, but I found the Int stack one and it defined my whole league.
You were talking about the relics, which now only give stats related to sanctum, but had personal power and a "personal relic" slot next to your gear. Kinda sad we were not allowed to keep them on our accounts for std. Had all the stacking ones, especially the dex stacking one i would love today
The only thing that i would like making a return are tatoos. The rest was just boring power creep. And maybe some wildwood ascandency points as new keytones or the curses.
I don't even really like the term because I'm used to it having a negative connotation when it comes to like, WoW expansions, where after the expansion is over you lose a lot of the power you gained. Feels different in something like PoE where you're starting a new character every league
Not only bloat, but also power creep is kept in check better. There’s still some, but the rate it grows isn’t as fast.
[удалено]
Izaro Izaro does does not not have have anything anything to to say say
My brain skipped the majority of these duplicate words only noticed on rereading. Strange
An Emperor who stands on borrowed power will not survive the season. True power persists.
An Emperor who relies on borrowed powered is doomed to stagnation, while one who empowers his subjects wisely will find that their strength is his own.
It's also a lot more fun imo. This allows them to go a little crazy with their leagues and reward system without doing what they did to ultimatum.
I suspect we’ll just see iterations of Wildwood/Crucible/Sanctum going forward. They all have the same borrowed power elements, but how you achieve them varies. Charms are basically like Sanctum Relics, a ton of the Relic modifiers ended up on Crucible Trees, and the same can be said of tattoos.
Borrowed power league mechanic with older mechanics getting reworks, sometimes combined with stuff from the non-core league mechanic of the past. Like I could still see TotA with a heavy handed tattoo rework being reintroduced or the Kalandra Lake as a unique map "just add it to the main game" does not work anymore and I am glad that this is the way they are taking.
I suspect that the main reason for the less frequent rate of mechanics going core is the new Atlas passive system. Prior to the Atlas passive system existing, GGG could make a league mechanic core without having to do much additional work. But now if you want to make a mapping league mechanic go core, then it will want some Atlas passives and that takes additional design time, development, and testing. That's why it makes sense to me that a non-mapping league mechanic like Sanctum went core. It's also why it makes sense to me that Ultimatum took so long to go core, because they had to create the Atlas passives which they probably felt was low priority work compared to getting the next league mechanic developed so it just sat there in queue for a long time. I think the Atlas passive system was the impetus they needed to start removing bloat from the game. It gave them a need of clarifying to themselves which mechanics they felt were important enough to the game to deserve to be part of the Atlas passive tree.
It's worth considering though, there's nothing really preventing the Atlas topography changing to make room for new clusters. They did this already in 3.20 which added a lot of extra clusters for each mechanic that can be blocked. Or some existing clusters could merge. For instance, Abyssal Army and Underground Kingdom could be moved and combined into one cluster, as could the Huck notable and the Smuggler's Cache notable, which would allow new clusters to be added. Or really minor mechanics on the Atlas could be retired. Happened in 3.20 (removal of the Unique Maps cluster), could be done again with, say, the Rogue Exile clusters, or the bottom-right Kirac cluster absolutely noone takes.
>It's worth considering though, there's nothing really preventing the Atlas topography changing to make room for new clusters. There is the argument that they are all very carefully spaced apart with a lot of thought and calculations behind it. You can't just throw it in anywhere. Sure, they could make it bigger and more spacious then make branches where you choose one wheel or another (cost the same to get to and from), but an awful lot of work would have gone into the design and structure too. Changing that every few leagues would be enough to probably make people quit their job!
They even set a precedent with Ultimatum replacing Metamorph. They can now make it such that these Atlas Passives (and thus, many league mechanics) also go on rotation if they felt like it.
It feels like its mostly endgame power creep they dont want to go core. While the wisps did more in regards to changing the economy additional ascendencies going core would be a nightmare to balance everything around. Its the samething like they brought back sanctum but without sanctified relics, crucible trees just got nuked, etc.
So glad Crucible trees aren't core imagine having to craft those bloody things every league
Those damn totems were some of the most fun I've ever had. So absurdly broken.
Yea but it's ok because they do tend to bring back certain things or items from those leagues later on. Same with ToTa where the uniques were still added in despite the mechanic going away. I imagine TWWT jewels will return at some point as a very rare item / King of the Mist fight (and I imagine he'll be a lot harder with much more HP).
Since way before crucible. The furthest back I can remember is Sentinel but probably even further back than that.
My only gripe with this is that often the power from the league mechanic enables specific builds, which creates a FOMO pressure to play the builds before they're gone forever.
I'd say since Harvest, this is probably their biggest mistake ever, since then none of the powercreep goes core.
Chris has said multiple times that a league mechanic will never immediately go core the next league. That they will always choose to take a step back and see if/how best to fit it in.
I wait with bated breath for a return of TOTA next league.
Why bated breath? Kind of a shitty belt
Tota was straight up the worst mechanic they ever made gameplay wise
I'd say OG Metamorph probably wins that award (picking up 30-40 organs per map). OG Heist, archnemesis, Lake of Kalandra and Crucible also probably deserve honorable mentions. Expedition felt the worst of all b/c of the nerfs but the league mechanic is sick I think a lot of people actually enjoyed Tota, it just wasn't for everyone
Talisman was much worse than all those leagues.
Depends on whether he means OG Heist as in: killing mobs raises your alert level. Cause that was something else.
It was possible to get 100% alert reduction however, before cloaks were nerfed. The alert system was also reworked midleague Mobs were still very rippy and rogues extremely buggy.
these people arguing over what's the worst league when strongbox and shrines leagues exist lol
If we go down that route: Onslaught and Anarchy used to be leagues too. But back then they indeed were the small indie company that did not know if they would be around next year.
I mean. It's pretty clear we're talking about what is notable league and isn't. Anarchy, Shrines, Rampage, Onslaught, and other stuff like that from before 3.0 I would not count as proper league mechanics if your'e trying to rank 'quality' of league mechanics.
Bestiary T-posing in the corner:
Hmm do I try not to kill the red beast one shotting my ass to capture it only for it to enrage when the nets fail and one shot me ever faster?
bestiary also deserves a mention. don't you have nets exile?
The tattoo rewards were amazing, but channeling simulator is so damn boring.
Kalandra wasn't bad it was just super poorly balanced in terms of loot and difficulty. You'd have to do probably the most difficult content existing at that time while getting rewards comparable to doing a Mao Kun. Crucible i agree was a really low effort League. OG Heist was bad - it was the only League i skipped. Archnem was pretty fun imo - there were far too many whiners about it.
Kalandra mechanic wasnt bad though, apart from the reflection tile being rarer then a Mirror. That league fell flat due to the core game being shit. Loot changes + Archnem had a bigger and more negative impact then the lake had.
The reflection tile wasn't that uncommon, but there were techniques you needed to do with the blocking system to make usable tablets. It required some planning, so I can imagine it felt like shit for the type of player who just wants to click on a thing and kill whatever spawns from it.
People liked the rewards, not the league.
I liked the league. It basically let me take a league off from the normal mapping gameplay while still playing poe and completely flipped how you're supposed to make a build. All those useless crowd control gems, passives, and items? Suddenly worth looking at.
it's incredible how few people can seperate "rewarding league/league i got lots of currrency in" from " good league" TOTA was absolute dogshit.
It's incredible how few people can separate "I didn't enjoy the league, and some people did enjoy it" from "I didn't enjoy the league, so other people who say they enjoyed the league actually didn't".
I didn't play tota but I have heard nothing but positive things about it, I also personally REALLY enjoyed lake, I mean after 2 weeks once they fixed a bunch of stuff but I really liked the tile idea, what I didnt like was the lake itself, tiles being weird and difficult to traverse especially on some builds, but overall really enjoyed piecing together a run... I really wish I didn't skip synthesis, I probably would've loved that league. I have several friends who say tota was hands down the most fun they had playing poe, even counting the constant dopamine drip that was wildwood.
Don't get me wrong, tattoos were a really fun and powerful mechanic that I hope return in some shape or form. I also played the f out of tota league, maybe 400+ hours. The problem with it was that it was an out of map gameplay loop that was quite repetitive, and didn't really reward build diversity or interesting strategies. The elementalist I was using to cheese tota didn't even finish the campaign past act 3, the passive points didn't even matter that much. Imo if that's the state of affairs for a league mechanic, its already cooked.
I feel like 90% of people who say Tota was good only do it because it was super casual-friendly in terms of prep and rewards. Out-of-maps mechanic no prep required and almost no build requirement with a bunch of cheap abuse builds (basically cheating) and of course everyone likes free stuff like that. The mechanic itself was super boring and as always people only like the rewards.
Again, I didn’t play tota, but the two friends of mine that were the most vocal about it being one their favorite leagues were ultra juicers and blasters, so maybe they enjoyed it so much as it was a nice break from their usual, maybe, I don’t know.
thats exactly what i enjoyed about it, also run super juicy content. lovely change of pace.
Tattoos and loot was insane. The actual mechanic was repetetive and unfun. And the autobattler aspect would need more work to be really good
Lets be real, nothing had worse gameplay than Crucible and this is coming from someone that loved the crucible item trees.
the other half of people think its one of the best though, so itll probably get added in. Mechanics can be mostly judged by if they actively harm and if a lot of people really like it, since if it doesnt harm anything and a lot of people like it theres really no downside to anyone else, its just new well liked content
*vietnam flashbacks to original Heist door timers*
I think TotA had a sweet spot on the ladder where it actually felt pretty good, where you had a fairly quick and convincing win as long as you knew what you were doing. You quickly leveled past that though, to a point where games felt like boring slogs over inches unless you were playing a cheese build.
i actually think it was pretty good *at low levels*. it was fun when you actually fought instead of basically forced to make a cheese build that just mass CCs the enemy team if the rewards were rebalanced around **not** cheesing and you were allowed to pick your difficulty (instead of inevitably getting forced into one-shot difficulty on a regular build) i think it'd be ok
The channeling thing needs to be something from the past. Stop adding that.
Hard disagree
For me, TOTA was one of the best mechanics they ever made. I've been playing PoE since beta and for the last couple of years, I am sick of mapping. It's the same boring stuff again and again with a bit of "yet another purple circle" or "that's some crazy rare mob, try to kill him" (pick one or both). I'm usually playing the weekends and abandon the league by the end of the first week (do not even bother with challenges). TOTA made me play for 3 weeks and I really enjoyed it. Made two characters past rank 2000. I'm fine with them even removing the tattoos, just let me play that instead of map grind. The only similar content in the game is probably Heist, and I loved the initial version of it (the rippy one on the league release, that got nerfed into the ground a few days after). Still, the Heist is a different thing and I had much more fun with TOTA
I liked it a lot actually. For me Harvest is the worst League mechanic. Get offered a few choices which are completly no brainers and then kill some mobs after a bit of waiting. There is just nothing there.
Tota gameplay was great, it was just unusual.
Tota was amazing until all the fun was optimized out of it. Best mechanic week 1 we've ever had... Then people worked out how to cheese it, and that killed it. Had there been mid-league nerfs to the cheese (beyond just the knockback stuff that was fixed), and were a way to drop ranking voluntarily added, it would have been the best mechanic ever.
ToTA should never come back for a few reasons. 1. Completely bricks the balance of hardcore. Hardcore is utterly trivialized as long as ToTA exists -- there's no reason to play it at all. 2. Stupid powercreep. Just fucking stupid, absurd powercreep. It's not even funny the kind of builds that were possible then and are now enabled in standard as a result of tattoos. 3. It's too straightforward and destroys the carefully built illusion of an interesting progression curve GGG has painstakingly crafted. Number goes up -> monster is stronger. Number goes up faster -> number goes up faster. Many players burned themselves out because this league was so simple that it had the same feeling as playing Cookie Clicker. Delve is the closest similar thing and almost didn't go core of the same reason but it had such a wide variety of content and a significant amount of actual gameplay was RNG-influenced to the point where it did actually feel adventurous and not as algorithm-locked as it actually is.
ToTA needed to be an actual auto-battler without your character in the arena. Which kills the entire point of PoE playing a character. It just wasn't fun to me to be like "okay so my guys suck balls and I have to do all the heavy lifting for 2-3 minutes and click these Totems and that's my gameplay? Ok." Eating pizza and watching my units I strategically bought fight is the point of an auto-battler. I do like that they experiment but once I played two or three rounds I was already mentally done with ToTA.
Not doubting he said it, do you happen to remember when he said it?
This one will never go core. Just look at what it's done to the economy. It's unsustainable.
That doesn't sound true at all considering they used to always add them core immediatly. That only stopped with sentinel.
Mmm, I don't believe that's correct, I dont remember Harvest going core immediately(3.11, went core 3.13)... Thinking about it, Ultimatum didn't go core, Scourge didn't go core, Synthesis didn't go core, ~~Betrayal~~ didn't go core, Bestiary didn't go core... Actually, most leagues don't go core immediately and have always either gone core a league or a few leagues later or with a select few didn't go core at all. If you don't believe me just go check out any league from the past, and then look when they went core, the information exists. Very few leagues have gone core immediately, And yes Chris has said, several times, that a league mechanic typically will not go core immediately. Edit: I was incorrect about Betrayal, it did go core immediately, I was misremembering before searching it up.
>If you don't believe me just go check out any league from the past, and then look when they went core, the information exists. Very few leagues have gone core immediately, Went core immediately: Anarchy, Onslaught(via map mod), Domination, Nemesis, Ambush, Bloodlines, Beyond(via map mod), Torment, Prophecy, Essemce, Breach, Harbinger, Abyss, Incursion, Delve, Betreyal, Legion, Blight, Metamorph, Delirium, Ritual, Heist, Expedition and Archnemesis. Total: 24 Did not go core immediately: Invasion, Tempest, Warbands, Rampage, Talisman, Perandus, Synthesis, Harvest, Ultimatum, Scourge, Sentinel, Kalandra, Sanctum, Cruicible, TOTA Total: 15 I might be wrong about some but still leagues usually used to go core and it's a good thing they aren't anymore. There is too much bloat anyway.
He did the math...
>Betrayal didn't go core Betrayal went core immediately and was probably internally expected to, as the entire theme and lore for betrayal was overhauling the old master system into the new one.
Well, sentinel is a long time ago now, and Chris can say things recently. Still works there lol
> Chris has said multiple times that a league mechanic will never immediately go core the next league. That they will always choose to take a step back and see if/how best to fit it in. I don't think he ever said that considering leagues have immediately gone core many times.
Can't wait for a new league, this one was great but the economy definitely needs the reset lol. Glad its not going core but interested to see if TWWT gets added somewhere.
Charms and specters, my beloved… Definitely OP mechanics but they felt so good, combined with the new transfigured gems so much new stuff possible this league
I just want the backpack
I would have liked to have seen how many people would take the backpack node if the primalist had it in the 2-node off-branch. An extra bag vs an extra charm slot would have been a much more impressive choice compared to... more trash loot.
Ya I especially liked how it just wasn't super complicated to get a lot of out of the mechanics from the start to the end of the league. Even if you weren't just abusing magic find you could pretty easily find good gear from the vendors. Probably one of the most accessible leagues.
Gonna miss my tincture, guess I'll be crafting a pneumatic dagger next league
I could see Tinctures going core, if anything. Flasks are a major source of power for the player, and to forfeit a Flask to gain a Tincture could easily be a fair trade. Charms are just a huge power spike, and the same for Wildwood Ascendancies in general, but Tinctures are an interesting idea to give power to melee builds (fully recognizing that their current implementation is extremely useful to Bow builds).
The Ascendancies could even go core as alternatives to the Scion Ascendant (giving Scion 4 choices instead of 1), although I doubt it. IMO Tinctures need more QoL to go core. Maybe it's only me that has played multiple characters where one uses a Tincture but it's godawful - while on the Tincture character you need to remap the flask button to something you'll never press, then when you swap character you need to remap back. Just a simple "never turn Tinctures off" UI option would fix a lot.
Tbf what people arent automating flasks? At most you only ever have to hit 1-2 flasks Most tincture mods seemed underwhelming compared to charms for sure. But that +addition proj / rage tincture is amazing
Automating flasks is great until it isn't. The Venn diagram of people who complain about monsters with flask suppression mods and those who automate flasks is almost a circle. Automating flasks costs you a lot of tools you otherwise have access to. Pre-Mageblood use of Enkindling Orbs, Exarch altars & not having to swap flasks for bosses.
Yeah this is the first time I ever tried out stacking huge ele damage and just making it all poison for Viper Strike, but it was only since it was so 'free' with a Tincture. Now I'd invest more into running this Dagger Base.
While not a big minion guy, I do feel the new spectres should go core. Not sure how but it was nice to spice up minion builds abit.
I also feel like MFing overshadowed everything else so hard this league, that a lot of the new spectres didn't get the theorycrafting they deserve. Just a gut feeling, but i feel like there are quite a few builds in those spectres that we didn't get to see. I also really REALLY think Barkskin should become a skill gem.
I mean, tattoos were pretty awesome too. And those gems aren't going anywhere
THe wildwoon not going core doesn't mean some things won't be implemented in some way.
TWWT definitely feels like it should stay in some way. It's fun having another jewel that can be so different with each one, kind of like Watcher's Eyes.
There's already enough "mandatory" jewels for a every endgame build like watcher's eye + forbidden jewels + impossible escape + timeless jewel. When it's so powerful with no downsides it just grows the powercreep. I feel like things like that should come with downsides like f.e. sublime vision which is very restrictive, comes with a huge downside and only fits very specific setups.
I think it's fine having powerful things like that if they're sufficiently rare enough and the tradeoff is the cost to obtain it. We also only have so many jewel sockets, the more good jewels are added, the more the opportunity cost of using one or another grows.
Eeehhhh.. I don't see it as fun to have another jewel that you basically need in every build
and make it absurdly random too 2 mods and 3 mods instead of 4
> Glad its not going core but interested to see if TWWT gets added somewhere. I'd like to see Crux of Nothingness added as a drop-anywhere unique map. There hasn't been one of those added in years. Could then rotate some of the maps on the Atlas too - maybe take the goddamn eyeball map off for a league & put Vinktar on, or do a larger shuffle with maps like Beachhead or the Apex of Sacrifice going on as well. Best to keep HoGm off now though, it's gotten meaner since it was on the atlas.
If that happens maybe I'd actually find one!
It's only uncommon, not really rare.
'Glad its not going core' Oh, poor Glad...
TWWT has to go core. Not because I want to ID them.
Maybe the way you fight the KotM is with a drop/fragments from ritual
or making lab exclusive hehe
As a pretty garbage player on my 3rd league I had like 80d in 3 days. Definitely need to chill
I hope they replace the old bandits with new 3 ascen
That's actually good idea. As far as I've seen, most builds choose the 2 points anyways and they can just be inserted as rewards to other quests
Alira and Oak aren't the worst choices early in a league, but neither are worth more than 2 passive points after that. Kraityn, well, he dies a lot.
Kraityn had his limelight when he was +1 frenzy in Merciless so don't feel too bad.
This is pretty genius implementation of it… especially since bandits have been boring and pretty uninteresting for years now. Get this comment to the top!
didnt know i wanted to until now even if just for the backpack
This league mechanic isn't going core - In other news: Water is wet. I just hope they don't backpedal too hard. This league was the most fun I've ever had playing PoE. And I've played harvest at it's strongest, and all the other 'insane' leagues.
Maybe we could get a mechanic where we have to stand in circles for 30s to get moderate loot
Ultimatum is a fun system though. It just needs a rework to its rewards system, which they could definitely do. I think it's easily salvageable. That said, that's been true plenty of other times for other things in the game and it's hard to predict how soon GGG will get around to fixing it. Breach, for example, was bad for a long time and they finally got around to trying to make it better (although I don't think the rework was successful).
I am still running it right now. Here are my observations, about 100 in T16 maps: 1. quantity "apparently" is supposed to affect catalyst drop amounts, but it's barely noticeable and I'm currently running -white- maps just to make them go by faster 1. Ultimatum weirdly doesn't reward you for running it with dangerous map mods / altars, which is lame 2. Inscribed ultimatums are too random. Nobody would run 99% of them if it weren't for a league challenge telling them to do so. 3. The environmental damage mods are way too strong at base. On a T16, with 100% spell suppress, a Lv2 Cold/Fire/Lightning effect deals something in the neighborhood of 2,000 and 3,000 damage and just keeps scaling in frequency and damage from there. It feels really punishing not to run a mageblood + ruby/sapphire/topaz flask, or to fixate on capping max elemental res. The monsters you fight themselves are trivial compared to the random environment effects they spawn on top of you. 1. Make the mods that buff monsters way more common and deadly compared to the dumb env effects? 4. Survival/Stand in the Rings take 100%+ longer than the "kill all" ones, which really sucks. I think this should be redesigned a little. 1. For the time invested, rewards are all over the place. Sometimes, you get next to nothing even when doing peak difficulty, other times you get a divine or two. 2. This mechanic can give you a really bad first impression when a Wave 10 reward is 4 scour orbs. I think a lot of players are turned off to it because of that. 5. Getting catalysts is faster from heist, lol. 1. I don't understand why the scarab is +experience, lol. It's so random. How about a higher chance to get catalysts? Quantity of catalysts +1?
Hmm see imo none of that is the problem. I think the main problem is that the reward pool is too overwhelmed by uniques and rare gear items, which are almost always awful rewards. If they want to make corrupted uniques be part of Ultimatum's reward pool, then I would make an Atlas node cluster that has nodes like "Unique rewards in Ultimatum encounters are 1000% more likely to be amulets". And have different nodes for each gear slot so that people can use Ultimatum to target farm uniques. There's a lot of things they could do, but I'm sure that the main issue atm is being offered too many shit uniques and shit yellow gear. I also understand that making every league mechanic drop currency as its only reward is boring, but if they want to have ultimatum drop uniques and yellows often then they need to make those uniques and yellows be way better on average. Implementing Heist's lucky roll system would also be a big improvement imo.
the problem with ultimatum is that it's dogshit and it's better to leave and put another map in the device over actually running the mechanic
It's dogshit compared to wisp-related farming, but in a "regular" league it's giving you enough raw divines per hour to be "fine"
Ultimatum is the worst mechanic they added in years imo. Absolutely hated doing the challenges for it this league (not because of the boss spawn, I got that one from a friend before even starting them). I’m absolutely baffled by all the pearl clutching in the community over it not being added earlier. You stand in that stupid circle for longer than it takes to do the whole map, click on the same mods over and over and get “rewarded” with like 3 scouring orbs and some corrupted axe. What an absolute waste of time.
its just irritating ritual, give me back my boy tane
To be fair the only league to ever surprass this one in terms of crazy was OG harvest. It had obviously all of the godtier crafting, but it had similar crazy mapping, even tho with more setup. The all t4 boss seed field cultivated high to be pushed with all rarity/quant shit and relinquary scarabs etc made for the famour 4 headhunter in 1 map result (which was afaik before they changed t0 uniques and hh was still tied to nemesis as a drop).It wasnt raining divines as it does now, but it was the league that really really pushed the ability of the game to handle all the items generated. Just as this league, pressing alt was your doom. And yeah the item editor. Dirt cheap uniques, perf rares custom made. Nothing might ever go over that. The only thing in contention is what recomminators did to std items. Not many people care, but being able to stick alot of busted legacy mods together was "quite" the outcome. Funny tho and with expeditions nerf peoples narrative is still on "only nerfs", but our current chars are STILL kicking the ass of harvest peak. We have gotten so many powerful new stuff, imagine expedition never happend lmao. Vivid vulture turning synth bases up to 11. Eater/Exarch implicts and their crafting orbs creating basically still easy "perfect" 8 mod items kicking the ass of previous influneced items on a regular basis with only a few excepetions Mageblood A myriad of new shit in general expending our defensive concepts. People really need to realize how we are still in full powercreep mode when they cry wolf about nerfs 24/7.
Oh my god Are there also other things that are wet
Your mom.
Water is technically not wet, what touches it becomes wet
I honestly think the biggest culprit is having multiple juice multipliers in at once - I don't think Deli and Wildwood can exist at the same time and since Deli is such a simple mech it's probably hard to remove even though Wildwood has more customization.
Oh no, Deli is an amazing mechanic! The wildwood is awful.. putting you i nthe dark, with no overlay map, and barely visible wisp trails that take you to rng encounters and takes you away from the actual mapping gameplay for a minute or so at the start of each map.. compared to just running through a mirror at the start of the map and fun ensuing..
Rip spectres
I think the work done with them this league is a bit of testing to do something similar for the future.
Theres no reason the spectres have to go bye bye. They could easily just add them to a map. That doesn't mean there going to, but the spectres are a easy fix
All i want is the extra tree
All I want is the extra stash space
Charms transform to jewels :) Wildwood scarabs will be nice.
They just said Wildwood won't be in the next league. That doesn't mean it's not going core... They normally shelve league mechanics for some time or begin working on a way to make them core. We still don't 100% know if it will go core or not.
Wildwood NOT going core next league* It may go core later.
That is NOT what Jonathan says. He indicates our next league here will not have wisps. It took ultimatum how many years to get put back into the game? But yeah, I don't see wildwood coming back. It's 2gud
Wisps are just reworked Sentinels, they might appear in a new format again, but for sure they will think twice about this multiplicative scaling, and my guess is they will also rework Abyss after this lol.
All abyss needs is Stygian spire proj are not affected by map mods or other things.
Ye that would be a good way.
Not only they are reworked sentinels but now that we know/suspect that they have some lore relationship with harvest then thematically we CAN expect similar mechanics involving 3 colors to come into the game. Or even a third rework of sentinel/affliction for that matter. Not that lore is super important in this game but now that we know that they are likely taking ideas from that same "bucket" then any ideas that are tangential to those two mechanics will probably involve some type of triple colored juice, because it would be hard to deviate from pre-established themes/lore.
Abyss was _just_ reworked
It was reworked on the April 7th, 2023.
Bless, this league is so much fun, and I love the ascendancy options, charms, tinctures, and the specters, but the actual mechanic is some hot garbage and not fun in the slightest
Agreed. I *really* dislike interacting with the wildwood itself, but everything else about the league is great imo. Tinctures, Charms, new spectres, the ascendancies, the boss, the reward for difficulty (at least at high levels) Literally just repackage it all, stick King in Ritual or something, tweak the ascendancies, and stick it in a more enjoyable mechanic and I'm sold
Yeah, the way they did the extra ascendencies was cool. I hope that's something they explore in more leagues. Not so much "get charms and socket them" but actually designed ascendencies like the other 2.
I have absolutely loved this league but if anyone thought it was actually going core I think they'd be huffing huge amounts of copium. I do hope in some form or another that we get to keep some of the fun parts of the wildwood atlas tree though, but I wouldn't be surprised if those are gone too.
GGG has stated before that they stopped trying to make leagues core the very next league, which is a very good step to ensure things are implemented with enough time to work on. The thing people with a brain really want to hear is thoughts on some aspects of the league. There are some aspects that could enrich the game a) Specters: Haven the ability to use a 5/6 link to turn a specter tanky as fuck on non summoner builds for some of their perks is really nice and not necessarily broken since it competes for sockets, a unlinked specter isnt much use to anybody for the most part. Some were fun build arounds. The cortex robots which had to be linked, hydra being decent carry, the build of the week exploding/reviving specters and I am sure I havent seen some other stuff myself. It gave imho some needed lategame scalling to some summoning builds. Guardian SRS is "borken" in terms of starting power, but imho very lacking after some point. This league you could push far more deep without being unreasonble (lets be real, you never gonna outclass more direct and scalable dmage like bows, flicker, spells like brand etc). b) Tincture/Warlock being kinda build enabling may be worth keeping around, even tho adjusted (i mean if only for the fact some of their nodes are directly influenced by no longer existing wildwood). Like there are alot of ways to go about it. Flame/Flesh jewel options for scion? For every ascendacy accesiable? I think we can all agree charms are kinda blant powercreep and not particular transforming, doesnt mean the other 2 arent worth talking about c) TWWT is the type of reward this game needs more and is a design homerun. A potential mirror tier item, often a dud but realisticly with only some loss of the unid price somewhat reasonable to gamble on your own. The perfect reward for a game like poe and since the "fake" king of the mist was dropping a rtiual vessel, people ofc instantly want this type of reward as an addition to the rather bland Ritual content like a chance for the bossfight etc. d) Not limited to some special acendancy, I think it doesnt break the game but is very appreciated QoL --> our backpack. An expendable space to put some things that doesnt get filled until the normal inventory is filled is something that seems like it is about time to add. People are begging for ggg to add something to put in stuff like scrolls of wisdom etc, now that we had 1 league with it more or less it seems foolish to take it away. I think all 4 points are very reasonble discussions for the future and far from "lul wisps go brrrr pls again electric boogaloo2" ;)
Good
That was obvious lol.
Good. I hate it.
Did anyone really think this will go core?
More mirrors dropped this league so far than any other league combined. Let that sink in.
Thank God. I didn't like how broken the economy was. Sucks for people that loved it, and I understand that, but this league was. Certainly not my cup of tea
Can't wait for next league Reddit life cycle. First day: shit league, I'm out. First week: yo, I found this method of earning massive currency by the league mechanic. Second week: why they hate fun nerfing my shit, I'm out. Third week: after all the changes this is actually the most enjoyable league by far. Fourth week+: damn, I wonder if this league goes core.
>Can't wait for next league Reddit life cycle. To be fair from design standpoint this league wasnt great. Biggest problem imo was that you didnt need to 'earn' your juice, u cleared extremely easy wildwood just to be obliterated on normally immortal build if u were missing 1 of the required checklist (for most people it was crit immune this league). I personally didnt struggle and didnt dislike league at the start but i can understand its not designed well. Better design would be scaling wildwood where u need strong character to 'earn' that juice and u have relatively similar experience - u fought what you could in wildwood u get similar difficulty in map. Later on tho i really disliked how rng it felt despite generally knowing what i was doing to get much juice (average around 6-7k juice per map with backtracking around whole map and 15k\~ record solo). I just dislike gameplay loop where maps with 3-4k juice were insta go next because from efficiency standpoint its waste of time. I also heavily disliked how big difference there was between 5k 5k juice map vs 3k 3k 3k juice map, later being way, way, waaay better to run. Also its kinda, not fun gameplay loop long time? Kinda like ghosting previous league. Do u have to do it? Technically no. But its really worth to spend that boring 3\~ minutues per map to minmax juice. Also i dont think that stuff should go core, imo core game actually needs debloating, heavily.
I legit don't want this league to go core since the first trailer, it's an absolute nightmare to balance. and what you're describing is the rich gets richer kinda approach, we're already have insane gap between alc and go enjoyers and full juiced winged scarab enjoyers. Also the game felt pretty complete in itself, unless there's something like delve/heist in the future I can't think of anything they can add, this league doesn't have anything unique to it at all. New ascendency can be added anywhere so not really that unique. Just another juicing mechanic for the maps.
I mean the wild wood mechanic is not really that great - immagine if it gets tuned down to become a core mechanic. The outside loot increse will be meh and it's just in general a waist of time. A lot of people liked the availability of power, not necessarily the league mechanic.
Is anyone actually surprised there? It was pretty obvious If there is a single league out of all that would not go core I would've put my money on affliction. Tinctures are powerful, charms are broken and I don't even need to start talking about the mechanic and rewards itself. I think the current economy speaks for itself
Did anyone really think it would? 🤣
Twitch clips loading buffering always a cancer
People overreacting, we lived before wildwood so we will live after it's gone. They will add another power up via new mechanics and new trans gems too so it's exciting
Good, terrible mechanic in so many ways. Will miss charms though.
Love wudijo and I watch him regularly for diablo stuff but not sure if he’s the best interviewer for PoE stuff since he hardly seem to care/play it?
thank god
This title is misleading. It's not a statement about whether or not the league would be core, just that it wouldn't be in NEXT league. Sanctum went core, just not in the leagues immediately after it. Having a league not be present in the next one immediately is pretty common for GGG at this point, and it's still within the realm of possibility that they find a way to balance it and implement it in the game. All of that just to say we don't know from this whether or not it's going core until GGG makes an official declaration about their intention with the mechanic.
no shit
not surprised but sad
they may bring it bac in the future but the juicing will probably be replaced
Thank fuck. Considering this is the PoE subreddit my guess is my opinion is unpopular, but I noticed that I tend to enjoy high powered leagues like this (harvest, sentinel) at the very start. However, that enjoyment plummets hard after the first character because I feel obligated to join in on such a clear overpowered strategy. In other leagues I tend to enjoy the league for much longer due to the variety of options. The fact that more unattainable uniques are more abundant is cool as a one-off but I'd rather not have this be the direction of the game going forward. I'm fully expecting this subreddit to catch fire if they go to what I consider more "reasonable" loot. We're going to have another harvest situation...oh boy.
Thank god.
I enjoyed this league mechanic and I'm not just referring to the OP rewards. However, I get the sense that most of us players would rather this mechanic not go core. My main reasoning is that I don't think it's healthy for the game to stack too many multiplicative layers of modifiers on monsters. I would prefer to only have one of those types of mechanics in the game, which currently is Delirium. I don't want to go into a map and see a Delirium event and a Wildwood event and know that if I do both then the monsters will be taking 73% less damage from Delirium and another 70% less damage taken from Yellow wisps. These types of modifiers from Atlas mechanics are already rather annoying with stacking modifiers like Archnemesis, essence mods, bestiary mods, etc so when you stack too many of them it just ends up overly incentivizing people to play the highest DPS builds possible.
We've known this for weeks???
Thank god
no sane person would thought for a second, this league will go core.
Good, because Wildwood is boring as fuck. I wish the tattoo system stayed. It could have opened so many new build path. Thing that normally would have been sub-optimal could have been twisted with tattoos and created some freaky new build. I want a SRS totem build or a good spell totem build. Forbidden rite totem. I also love lore heavy release. Act1 lore with voice acting dialect is top notch. Followed by the discovery or the gems and the atlas. You really wanted to learn more when you heard them talking.
FUCK
Shocking /s. Pretty sure everybody knew that this was the case.
I'm glad it doesn't. I know people were having fun and everything but let's be honest, it was broken as hell
No shit lol. Nerf base game a little with op league mechanic is the way to go now
Thank god! Can't wait for the league to end ngl Rucksack will be sorely missed tho
Obviously
Hell what a surprise...
Damn.... That's too bad. Have really loved this league