Well I finished leveling to 95 in the Blast from the Past event. Got talked into going RF Chieftain at the last minute. Ended up taking me about 5 days of playing and 14 deaths. I think I had 2 deaths in the 90s. I ended up wasting a bunch of passives just to take the Keystone that disabled tormented spirits after I got 1 shot from full by a possessed map boss.
Overall I'd say it was bad for the first ~20 levels, then great until red maps where it becomes just mediocre. I probably should've just muled gems at the start, but I really didn't want to and suffered for it. I went Tasalio (fire -> cold/lightning res), Hinekora (explosions), then Valako (shared max res). RF is naturally strong in the campaign and regen and res are pretty free from Tasalio and nearby nodes. Explosions really carried everything until red maps when the damage noticeably fell off, but before then it was smooth sailing even with garbage gear. No issues getting to late yellow maps even with a few pieces of ilevel 30 gear.
Biggest problem is Chieftain does not have a good fourth ascendancy. I went Ramako because that's the only viable option and it effectively doubled my damage while standing still, but standing still is a meme against anything that you need the damage against so its actual value is probably 10-20% of that. Maybe it's useful in a lategame build world where you've progressed to 100% taken as and are just face tanking, but it certainly isn't in a league start scenario. Damage at red maps while moving was pretty bad - only about 400k. I ran Infernal Cry + Hinekora and it carried the mapping really hard. Hinekora's percentage is so low that it's unreliable and rarely chains, but it can one shot some rares or map bosses if it goes off at the right time. I'd gladly trade 500%/5% for 200%/10%.
Defensively Chieftain was great on a budget. Res is pretty much free across the board since you only need fire res and it was easy to get to 90/90/90/75. Phys was a little rough since I never managed to get the taken as chest unveil or 6 link the lightning coil I found, but it was fine for mapping.
As far as the event itself, Sentinels were still good, but recombinators weren't. The first recombinator didn't drop until 89 and were pretty slow in coming until ~92 (ended up around 30 total). I was pretty aggressively spending currency on items, but got very little worth recombining. The crafting currency just really wasn't there until late reds which lined up pretty close to reaching 95, so it was just another one of those events that was over before it got going.
Oh well, at least it was something to do until next league.
Huh. Not sure how I feel about transfigured gems. Possibility of a bunch of really cool new stuff, but I'm worried that it'll mostly cash out as "alt quality gems replaced with a bunch of stuff that isn't as good."
On December 01 2023 06:01 ASoo wrote: Huh. Not sure how I feel about transfigured gems. Possibility of a bunch of really cool new stuff, but I'm worried that it'll mostly cash out as "alt quality gems replaced with a bunch of stuff that isn't as good."
We'll see!
I think consolidation is good because things were getting a bit bloated, with so many helm enchants and alt qs. but we will definitely be losing some good stuff. I remember when they destroyed most of the Threshold jewels, some interesting builds were lost
personally I'm pretty hyped as someone who loves Lab running, but if Lab is totally unreworked, this is a weird choice. Most people don't enjoy spamming lab, its kinda dated content
I don't like Lab, but I don't mind this stuff coming from there as long as it's tradeable. It's good for people who like it to be able to make money that way. I'll just buy my gems from you.
I spose it's not fundamentally different from having to source Alt Q gems from the Heist spammers
IDK if the spectres is too good to be true. They showed off the Hydra boss, that's gotta be super rare or something, yeah? If it is added to your desecrate pool, then maybe not? Been a long time since I played spectres
I think you start with Warden or Warlock first, then once you get some insane charms you swap to the custom class. Seems super fun and OP lol
Mark described the new boss spectres as very rare, wanting the vendors to have stuff worth "multiple divines" to find. They're also on the squishy side and can't be desecrated, which means good luck keeping them alive in a build.
Notable alt qual gems that are gone (probably missed some):
Divergent Inspiration (-10% mana cost, now -5% on superior) Anomalous Arrogance (reservation) Anomalous Petrified Blood (more prevented, more taken over time) Divergent Cyclone (sort of baked into superior now) Anomalous Precision (reservation) Anomalous Herald of Agony (poison chance) Divergent RF (increased spell damage) Anomalous Blood and Sand (proj speed) Anomalous Mana Leech (damage per mana spent recently)
My thoughts so far:
Skills RF is giga dead. If you're doing a captain lance style int/str stacker with like 70k ES then it's a buff, otherwise it's a massive nerf at typical investment levels. Scaling HP for RF does nothing for other skills like fire trap. I'm really hoping there's some additional % HP scaling with gem levels they forgot to mention. + Show Spoiler [RF Scaling 20-30] +
Gem level vs HP breakeven point
Cold DoT is probably dead. Vortex having a long cast time (0.75) and seemingly still being 0 range is going to feel awful to use. If they stealth added a range to the skill it might be OK, but still worse as a build.
Spark looks AWFUL at low-mid investment. You lose proj speed from superior, proj speed from anom blood and sand (since alt qual supports are just gone), and Ashes took a huge nerf so you probably won't use it now and that's another 20-30% proj speed from both superior and blood and sand. The quality is now +2 proj instead of +3 (enchant) and your options for adding quality are worse than before. If you wanted the circle spark that seems to just be totally gone.
My first char last league was cold dot into spark. I apologize for ruining both builds. o7
Blazing Salvo also lost it's anom quality for proj speed and suffers from much of what happened to Spark. Wasn't a strong skill to begin with and will probably feel that much worse.
Cobra Lash works out to roughly the same as before. You lose a chain from the enchant and the alt qual 15% increased damage per chain remaining, but it goes from 5% more to 8% more per remaining chain. I edited the dev version of pob and compared some builds before and after and they're mostly within 3% damage of live.
Etheral Knives seems like a slight nerf? I think I'd rather have proj speed for distance than more projectiles (does that widen the area?) Not a big deal overall.
Exsanguinate base duration seems like a nice buff.
Boneshatter seems pretty similar at typical investment levels.
Blade Vortex poison seems better? More hit rate and base damage now in exchange for crit/aoe. Still losing anom HOAG poison chance, but otherwise a buff.
Lightning Arrow, which was already a popular starter, seems strictly buffed.
Steel skills seem more usable now since the shard cost was removed/reduced. I expect that'll be baked into transfig versions.
Herald and Purities are all generally better now if you were using superior versions.
There's some hype around Bladestorm getting more Bladestorms, but I'm not really familiar with the skill.
They fixed some targeting issues with skills like Reap (where it'd invert the sweep if targeting too close to yourself) so that should be nicer to play.
Items Ralakesh Boots just say "count as having max charges," but that seemingly doesn't give you the effects of those charges (just meaningful for other things that care about when you're at max charges). Seems like a dead item now.
Heatshiver turbo nerfed. It's probably not worth using any more since it's only 30% cold as extra fire. It won't have the utility of enabling Trinity and I don't think the damage will outweigh other options.
Ashes: from 50d to 50c in one line. Seems really hyper niche now. I expect it to be only used for builds that desperately need quality for their skills (e.g. Poison Spark) and probably only worth anything at ~30% quality.
Replica Dragonfang got similarly nerfed, but not nearly as hard. It still has +3 levels, but lost 5% on reservation, ele res, and attribute requirements. I expect its value to increase for the skills that previously relied on Ashes.
Kaom's rage gloves nerfed from 100 rage to 300. I think this was really overdue. It was way too easy to sustain large amounts of rage.
Some of the experimented bases look interesting. Simplex is getting the most attention due to having 3 mods at double magnitude. Prevailing logic is it'll mostly be for MF builds. The popular thoughts for crafting is woke orbing 2 mods and crafting the 3rd.
Micro-distillery went from 20% to 30% effect and that might be even more appealing with the Warden of the Maji ascendancy and tinctures since can basically guarantee full uptime on 2 flasks. From what I could find, the disabled slot does not count as empty, so probably won't work with the 75% increased effect of tinctures per empty slot.
New Ascendancies Kind of a let down, honestly. I hate that they gated things behind attack-only or spell-only. There are only 3 options and 1 of them requires a fair bit of farming/trading before it can be used. For early league, this forces you into one ascendancy based on your main skill.
Warden of the Maji seems way more usable overall. Oath of the Maji seems solid for campaign leveling and Tinctures seem good for early league since you have bad flasks with poor uptime until later red maps. Barkskin seems like an alright generic defense skill. There's some 5-head tech with Oath of the Maji using Abyssal jewel items, since the wording specifically says gems not jewels.
Warlock of the Mists seems hyper-niche. All of Sanguimancy, Crimson Power, and Cannibalised Faith require extremely specific builds to use. There are probably strong things you can do it like Rathpith or Dark Pact, but that's a second or third build type of thing. Sacrificing is not a cost so those won't work, but there's probably still some meat on the bone here. The rest of the options feel really mediocre.
Ravenous (consume a corpse for more damage/protection) is alright and Dark Effigy I can't find what it does. Warlock Power has the option of Pacify which does nothing for the first 60% of its duration and uses up your curse limit, Penance Mark which also uses up your mark/curse limit and is basically a worm blaster, and Affliction which only works for minions. This leads to the final choice of Foul Pact which makes the enemy stronger for a chance of gaining flask charges/vaal souls.
Since a typical build cannot use Sanguimancy, you are forced to take Ravenous, Soul Splitting, Warlock Power, and Foul Pact. As a spell user, if you go Warden of the Maji you're forced to take Barkskin, Lesson of the Seasons, Detect Evil, and Oath of the Maji.
In my eyes, casters are going to be overwhelmingly using Wildwood and praying for usable Charms from the early vendors. I hate that the options feel so limited.
Other Thoughts This definitely feels like a league to do a 1-2 week league starter with the intention of dumping it early for a reroll. There are too many unknowns to plan high investment builds because we don't know about transfigured gems, which ascendancies are available on charms and their relative rarities, and some specifics about changed skill gems, including the rarity (i.e. cost) of specific transfigured gems.
On November 16 2023 14:34 Craton wrote: Well I finished leveling to 95 in the Blast from the Past event. Got talked into going RF Chieftain at the last minute. Ended up taking me about 5 days of playing and 14 deaths. I think I had 2 deaths in the 90s. I ended up wasting a bunch of passives just to take the Keystone that disabled tormented spirits after I got 1 shot from full by a possessed map boss.
Overall I'd say it was bad for the first ~20 levels, then great until red maps where it becomes just mediocre. I probably should've just muled gems at the start, but I really didn't want to and suffered for it. I went Tasalio (fire -> cold/lightning res), Hinekora (explosions), then Valako (shared max res). RF is naturally strong in the campaign and regen and res are pretty free from Tasalio and nearby nodes. Explosions really carried everything until red maps when the damage noticeably fell off, but before then it was smooth sailing even with garbage gear. No issues getting to late yellow maps even with a few pieces of ilevel 30 gear.
Biggest problem is Chieftain does not have a good fourth ascendancy. I went Ramako because that's the only viable option and it effectively doubled my damage while standing still, but standing still is a meme against anything that you need the damage against so its actual value is probably 10-20% of that. Maybe it's useful in a lategame build world where you've progressed to 100% taken as and are just face tanking, but it certainly isn't in a league start scenario. Damage at red maps while moving was pretty bad - only about 400k. I ran Infernal Cry + Hinekora and it carried the mapping really hard. Hinekora's percentage is so low that it's unreliable and rarely chains, but it can one shot some rares or map bosses if it goes off at the right time. I'd gladly trade 500%/5% for 200%/10%.
Defensively Chieftain was great on a budget. Res is pretty much free across the board since you only need fire res and it was easy to get to 90/90/90/75. Phys was a little rough since I never managed to get the taken as chest unveil or 6 link the lightning coil I found, but it was fine for mapping.
As far as the event itself, Sentinels were still good, but recombinators weren't. The first recombinator didn't drop until 89 and were pretty slow in coming until ~92 (ended up around 30 total). I was pretty aggressively spending currency on items, but got very little worth recombining. The crafting currency just really wasn't there until late reds which lined up pretty close to reaching 95, so it was just another one of those events that was over before it got going.
Oh well, at least it was something to do until next league.
Ramako can work if you kinda built into it, although with Ralakesh boots kinda killed now, its harder i guess. Anything that teleports you doesnt count as moving, so lightning warp/ flamedash or even bodyswap do work. I https://pobb.in/5t82JkIURW1M this is what i ended up with in Ancestor. Lack of tattoos makes this kinda impossible to repeat though :/ On that note - I am very surprised Defiance of Destiny made it into next league unnerfed. Maybe it`ll get the nerf by just being fucking rare, but that item was beyond stupid for tankiness. I was literally standing still facetanking Aul at 450 depth and stuff like that. I already felt tanky before, but my god did this amulet change everything after i got one.
Was thinking about starting with any half decent minion build to get going, and then see where i wanna go. Maybe even as guardian considering they somehow DIDNT nerf radiance sentinel dmg while leveling, and necro ascendancy is mostly... boring, if i`m perfectly honest. Its good, but besides the offering stuff, everything is just "your minions now do more dmg and/or move faster".
So right now it`ll probably be minions, or some attack based trickster which also has been on the list for quite a bit now. And i didnt play strike skills last league, so i wont even feel bad about not having all the strike range from tattoos :D
I'm going to do my scuffed crit onhit srs guardian build that worked really well last season. you can just walk into yellow maps with no investment and the first big buy is the agis aurora I know I can grind out with essence farming. tMinion builds look like they're going to work well with the league mechanic and I think I can do ultimatums wellish . I'll want to have a cwdt or trigger sticked zombie falling gem but we will see. GCP's are going to be YUGE this league so make sure to check your filters for even low quality dropped gems. LA got buffed but with Kaoms heart dieing a death it'll be interesting to see what direction people go as that rage was a great roid.
I'll be on the lookout for a good tanky second character to do blight/ultim/essence.
On December 03 2023 05:51 Espelz wrote: On that note - I am very surprised Defiance of Destiny made it into next league unnerfed. Maybe it`ll get the nerf by just being fucking rare, but that item was beyond stupid for tankiness. I was literally standing still facetanking Aul at 450 depth and stuff like that. I already felt tanky before, but my god did this amulet change everything after i got one.
Yeah I was facetanking at 100% deli with basically just fourth vow/xibaqua.
On December 04 2023 22:05 Velr wrote: Has anyone tried these "cheap" herald of lightning bombers? Thinking about starting Storm Brand and then switching to that once in yellow maps.
They just sound a little "baity" to me.
I did it and it was pretty bait but I'm also bad. The problem comes is that you hit a hard wall where you get to yellow maps and then the only way forward is that staff that tripples your elemental damage but gives you -60 to all ele resits. There's no smooth progression because the two rings they tell you to use take up a lot of that resist space and damage you so much until you get the gear to survive with it. But then you will never get the defence to survive without popping at yellow maps at least once a map so leveling becomes hard. You'll never be able to do essences as they'll smack you so hard when you're right next to them.
I mean they're really fun but I would never league start it and wardloop just seems like an equal investment for a lot more gain.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/PoTullC.png)
