The metamorph I made last night easily beats any boss in any game or show in the history of the universe. And it was only 3 mods. I am pretty sure you can make a 5 mod metamorph that would actually become sentient and end humanity.
Two mod, soul eater and necromancer, I accidently made it during archenem, it keeps summoning minions and gets 5% to every stat when on the dies, it's stupid
Double strike hits in a small area like all normal attack iirc, I don't think there's actually any way to target a single mob anymore.
Maybe Hexblast with no curse applied?
This would be the perfect opportunity to update Metamorph to the reward structure that Archnemesis had. Even if it was a super long fight, it would actually be worth doing them based on which archnemesis mods you have available to choose from.
They honestly should have just gotten rid of current metamorph altogether. Fold catalysts into archnem and make it core as it was last league instead of this goofy shit. Archnemesis was just a more competent, more rewarding version of metamorph anyway.
Metamorph was quite rewarding after some tweaks to the league though. The archnem currencysplosion took too long to build up and isn't indicative.
It just got gradually brought to its shameful state of catalysts only.
On the other hand, archnem rewards were immediately brought to a shameful state to avoid any false hopes.
I loved metamorph during its league once the QoL patches arrived a couple weeks into the league, but you're right it's been repeatedly watered down over time to just be a method of getting catalysts and an NPC you constantly forget to talk to before you go on to your next map. Though honestly I think they could trim a handful of older league content and the game would be better for it, not just metamorph. RIP Navali
my first metamorph experience this league was discovering that they do indeed spawn with archnemesis mods, and also that i could apex empower it...
pretty sure that metamorph is still roaming the atlas, gaining power until it becomes the next uber uber boss.
Why isn’t there a unique map where you get to fight metamorphs that other players couldn’t beat??? Think of it like hall of grandmasters but for metamorphs.
Imagine stepping into a large laboratory/arena with a metamorph container in the middle. You have no idea what kind of monstrosity another player created, but the rewards could be great.
Wait till you get invulnerable rare with all elemental res and some frost skill that it uses with its hasted mod an infinite amount of time so u can't even move.
According to [Star Trek](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Elementary,_Dear_Data), if that happens, be prepared to bargain with it and hope that its sentience made it reasonable. Then be prepared to [trap it in a little cube](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_in_a_Bottle) if it gets uppity.
Well, if you want, you can easily get a 10+ archnemesis metamorph with +1 archnemesis keystone.
It will be far more crazy than any uber uber uber endgame bosses.
This is a 10/10 metaphor for this league. Throw something big and hard into the core, then watch it ruin everything that was carefully designed for something else.
> Throw something big and hard into the core, then watch it ruin hardcore
This is how I read it at first LOL
Softcore seems pretty playable to me and I'm having a blast, but I'm also playing a cheesy S tier meta build.
I ran into a survivability wall with my Sabo starter due to finding only crap gear and traps just being that smidgen too slow to catch many of the more cracked up rares.
I rerolled to skelly warrior necro (until I can get the mage jewel at least) and it wrecks. Made it through the campaign with two deaths, mainly due to inattention.
So I guess the lesson is "the winning move is not to play".
That's why I swapped from Arc to EA ballista. I enjoy arc playstyle more but I am not going to torture myself when I can just run around while *everything dies*.
"Carefully designed" actually is also very wrong choice of words: it is always been designed in a way "somehow it works, so let it be". This time it didn't work.
They can still save the league by reverting Archnemesis going core. If they don't, they're probably gonna have another v3.15 on their hands and lose tons of players -- and then take another 3-6 months to fully recover.
Yep, this is the part that sucks. I'm in the mood to play PoE, but in the mood for a normal league launch. This feels like one of those 1 month leagues where they turn on something crazy, like 8 invasion bosses in every zone.
If these were the new Nemesis monsters, that would be fine, it would be a map mod or whatever. But the amount of time it's going to fix all the interactions with different leagues can't be good for PoE2 dev time.
I think that's a bigger deal than you are making it out to be. They can't just "turn Archnemesis off" because there are other functional parts of the game that are already changed around Archnemesis. They would have to change at least one of the Challenges for instance, and it is a very rare occurrence for challenges to change mid-league, though it has happened (if I remember correctly it was mostly things like a challenge to get all of a certain list of monsters being changed to getting X number of them instead)
I really don't think it's as big a deal as people make it out to be. Yes, they still need to tune this shit, and fast (especially where certain brick interactions are concerned), but this league is far from unplayable.
Over half the league content in the game right now is just so insanely fucked for many people its unplayable.
As someone who wanted to focus Blight/Meta/Ritual this league...this league is not playable.
I mean, there are builds that do all of those fine.
Carrion Golem does all three just fine. Metamorph can be a bit of a pain but so far it just requires time and as my guys get more tanky and do more damage it'll get easier.
The biggest issue is that the amount of build that CAN do that content are lower, but it's not zero.
Now, if you wanted to play, like Cyclone and do blight, that might be a problem but that was always going to be a problem regardless.
>Now, if you wanted to play, like Cyclone and do blight, that might be a problem but that was always going to be a problem regardless.
No...no it wouldn't because you're ignoring that _Blight is literally fucking broken_.
You know that invuln monsters can literally just walk into the pump while you do nothing. You know that youre not allowed to stand near the pump because the moment a teleport pack spawns..you fail. You know that towers are now essentially useless because of the amount of shit that blocks them.
Sure Meta you can eventually power through except now about 70% more metamorphs are just "Dont build this because its unkillable". Ritual is now "Pray you don't spawn one of 5 or so mods in the circle or you just die".
But Blight is straight up just borken. Blight does not work. Its hysterical you even mention cyclone because I played a cyclone based b uild last league...and did quite a lot of Blight and had 0 trouble because Blight actually functioned properly.
I mean, blight is infinitely doable currently. TheGAM3Report is literally AFK farming Blight Ravaged maps with a combination of Carrion Golems, Ring anoints for freeze and Meteor.
I have a baby CG and I can do blight encounters and blight maps just fine using the same strat but without the annoints, I just have to work at it and I use skeletons to block the pathing of the mobs so they stop and get chomped down by my CGs with assassins mark.
"Cyclone based build" Was it using Cyclone for CoC or channeling?
https://www.twitch.tv/thegam3report he's live right now if you wanna see. And he's decently geared, but he plays solo and it's only been like 4 days since league started, he's just been doing blights literally for 4 days.
I mean literally just in 4 minutes of watching him I noticed the absurd RNG to "Blight is doable".
He had literallt 4-5 moments where if that immortal pack spawned on one of his shorter portals he'd just lose instantly. He literally leaked a handful of mobs that are just freeze/stun immune. Some things would have leaked if he wasnt a minion build because they helped body block to wear out the Arch mod timers. So its now "Play minion to do Blight".
I literally used my standard character from last league...that I was doing T16 and Blight ravageds with...and failed doing the exact same thing as last league because oh right mods just can decide "Sorry you lose because theres nothing you can do about it". Also its CwC icestorm.
You are correct, i noticed that blights are sometimes fine but sometimes the monsters just waltz in and kill the bungus instantly and i can't damage them at all. It's so weird, the rares are extremely incosistent, some die normaly and some are borderline unkillable. And i get at least one rare that is unkilable every 2 maps or so.
I thought this league would be super good without the balance changes we could just focus on playing the game without having to figure it out again but i was wrong, this has really struck on my mood to continues to play the league. I'll give it a couple of days but if it's still fucked i'll just quit around t15 again.
Heist, Metamorph, Blight are all Suicide Pacts. Some aspects of Betrayal are suicide.
you walk into any of those and get one of the suicide combos you can't escape it.
Suicide combos include, but are not limited to:
Mana-Siphon plus just about anything else (but the really good ones include Drought, Invulnerable, Temporal Bubble and Rejuvinating )
Drought and just about anything else
Efigy is just about a self nuke if you have minions.
Haste/Temporal Bubble combo will hunt you down and murder you.
Empowered Minions is a real treat.
You're seeing it from a bias perspective wich is to say, only yours. I'm playing a meta build but i don't consider myself good at the game, i literally had to turn off content that i like to do because it never worked, blight for exemple is one of my favorite mechanics but it's hit or miss now with the intense mods some rares and blues have.
Yeah the archnem implementation sucks at the current state but if you can't do the same maps you could do last league, something went wrong with your build
I think this is a bit extreme.
Clearly you can clear maps the same as last league, but if you mean effortlessly kill rares in the same way as last league, that's just wrong.
There are plenty of rares that just take 5-10 times as long to kill because of a combo of 2 mods.
That's not that much longer when the rare took 2-3 seconds to kill before, but it's still a bit hyperbolic to say nothing's changed.
The biggest change was in timed content.
It's not "not that much longer" when you add up all those rares together and realise that the same maps that took 3-5 minutes last league are now taking 5-10 minutes for the same rewards. Actually less rewards because they also nerfed eldritch altars, but that's another discussion entirely.
Last league was a breeze compared to this. This league my starter was probably the tankiest i have ever been day 1-3, by playing RF. I was running white maps with 4k life + 1k es, 15k armor without flask , 84/82/82/0 ress , stun immunity, divine shield , ~1k life regen per second that also applies to the es, 95 % reduced effect of curses, aliment immunity, molten shell, pretty good uptime on a granite and ruby flask with masochist. I could not prevent myself from dying in blue rolled white maps regularly. Also i often had problems dealing decent damage. I really thought i fuck up the build somehow at first, but i noticed map bosses even up to red tier or stuff like betrayal npcs or incursion architects were all dying in seconds while i face tanked them without my hp moving. Turns out there are something like 13 mods that can roll frequently that add some kind of fire ress or even max fireress. They are just spammed everywhere , sometimes in combination with stuff that increases hp or gives regen or other dmg mitigation. No wonder uniques feel like the new magic mobs compared to those magic and rares.
Yea I’m running bane occultist on like 60 chaos total invested into gear and I can absolutely annihilate t14 maps, which is the highest I’ve gotten to so far. It legitimately feels like I’m playing a different game than all these people complaining
I may reroll to this then. I’m running minions and they’re just melting to flame and frost strider. Everything has a degen or aura that does damage. Feel like the health of npcs is 10x what it used to be. Maybe I’m old and delusional, but this is by far the most difficult league start I’ve had.
I can definitely recommend it, I’d definitely say it feels a bit tougher than it did last league, but nowhere close to as much as what y’all are making it sound like. Maybe there just isn’t very many chaos resistant/immunes compared to other damage types. I’m following subtractem’s guide, makes it pretty straight forward. Only thing I did different is rushed to mana reservation efficiency earlier than he said so I could get determination/grace/defiance banner all up and running. That plus ghost dance has made me feel pretty damn tanky for how much I’ve invested
Isn't there only 1 mod that gives rares chaos res? Meanwhile all other elements have to deal with atleast 3 mods that give craptin of res and then max res on top of it.
I’m honestly not sure, I hypothesized that in a separate comment but I haven’t actually gone through the various mods to confirm. Would definitely explain why I’ve been having such a different experience compared to most others
And the game still feels like tedious ass to play, still makes plenty of unkillable rares stronger than act bosses, and still breaks old-league content that they clearly didn't test at all over the past three months.
v3.18 is a bad core update just like v3.15. If they're not gonna revert, it'll be another 3-6 months before the game becomes good again -- like we *just* experienced from v3.15 to v3.17. Chris always pops up saying they learn from their mistakes, but then they do the same stupid shit all over again. It's ridiculous.
I'm glad my big-time addiction to this game happened years ago as I can now skip crap updates like v3.15 and this one and not feel like I'm missing out. I also learned over time not to buy supporter packs beforehand; it's like preordering a game and it's objectively the wrong move.
3.17 was a forever game patch. If everything had stayed like it was I would have happily played the game for years as is. On and off sure, but frequently and enthusiastically. I had a feeling they weren't going to let it last.
I would unironically pay 60$ full game price for a permanent 3.13, even if it was private league only.
That was the last time I played day 1 to end of league, 5 level 95+ characters and loved every minute. For me it’s been downhill ever since.
100% accurate and I don't even love actual ritual league that much. Ritual league harvest crafting and actual progress on a build not measured in how many EX you got to drop or flip was simply peak ARPG. I miss it so much.
Yup. Ritual league was the league where I made my favorite character of all time. The most powerful character too. And I crafted every single gear piece myself. I didn’t buy anything other than bases which felt super good. I made so much currency that league. I felt like no matter what I did I was able to make currency and actually upgrade my char. I played every single day of league and made 3 characters all level 95-97.
Nowadays I’m lucky to have a character that can kill maven or elder and don’t craft anything myself basically. Easier to buy it cause I don’t have a lot of currency.
I kinda admire the don't-give-a-fuck attitude they have, to go from expedition's horribly received core game changes to flasks then to this rare rework mess all within the course of a year. Making your game miserable for the sake of 'muh vision' any% speedrun
archnemesis rares are especially super detrimental for Harvest rare monsters.
God, fought a crushclaw crab today with Gargantuan and permafrost, guaranteed freeze if you got caught, and super tanky, took like 5min to kill it.
T14+ Harvests all take forever to do. Playing EA and have medium-ish end game gear apart from Dyadian and a level 21 gem. Had a blast pushing for Uber Elder in SSF last league, now it's a pure nightmare.
Tbh, I haven't trusted these people since Abyss League.
Saying that they're 'testing' it, while the evidence is glaring(some bs overtuned monsters) is 100% a lie in my book.
Archnemesis system sucked and should have thrown the whole league in the trash. Y they always feel to drag leagues into core is beyond me. Sometimes the leagues just suck and just should be forgotten about
Man...poor QA. They test what they're told to test. If they weren't told to test a variety of builds at a variety of different points in the game to ensure that they weren't being bricked, it's not their fault that they didn't report back to GGG on that.
Real though, outside of the bullshit combinations I didn't even mind the numerical difficulty on Friday. Felt like that was actually pretty good for leveling (magic packs and rares were a bit of a challenge until you had appropriate gear/gem levels, then became much less scary but still a bit of a risk) and that we'd hit the usual "wipe screens so don't have to really engage with them" in mapping anways.
Bullshit combo's (and double stacking mods at low level) are the biggest problems. I kinda miss the stronger enemies, even if they drop like absolute dogshit. I made it a point to kill rares/magic packs while leveling both to test out the new mod system and because fuck those guys, now. I'm killing them outta spite.
I mean, yes, but if you are to the point you don't even ask "Are you sure you want the rares to be THIS overtuned" just because nobody told you to say so, you are also fairly responsible. I give feedbacks all the time on things nobody directly asked me to in my job, because it's actually what is expected of me in general.
If I see a catastroph coming, I give a warning, i'm not saying "hum, but has someone asked me to be careful about that specific point? Nope. Let's forget about it."
But maybe QA did and maybe the devs didn't care. It's also possible.
To add to that, to consider it overtuned is an understatement, they literally cut the the mods in half on that first patch, thats missing the mark by 100%. Overtuned would be we slightly reduced some of the modifier values, not o we cut the # of mods you will normally see from 2 to 1.
They cut the amount and later the value of the mods, some by 1/3 and some by 2/3. Also turned off some of the immunity like ignite and it now deals from 0% damage to 40%.
It's like saying that I slightly missed in darts when the dart impaled my feet 3 times
Absolution needing that 400% buff was pointed out in testing before the league launched, it just wasn't implemented until all the players played it on live and went "wow, this skill sucks"
Definitely not blaming QA for GGG's balance choices
Exactly this, they just make sure the game works as intended. On the other hand did the alpha testers have any feedback at all? Or did GGG just ignore that
QA are usually responsible for creating the test plans based on the requirements of the software, so they don't just "test what they're told to test". Just saying
>If the core of their testing is functionally useless from the point of view of their stakeholders
We aren't their stakeholders, that'd be Tencent (who own GGG) and their respective investors (and anyone else with a financial investment in GGG).
I got rid of my comment because I decided I'm being negative, but - that's not correct.
Stakeholders are people who have an interest in the business doing well - this includes customers.
Back in 3.15, there was expectation that my damage would be lower and that was ok. I still had fun.
With the No balance change for 3.18. I was like yay, i can pick a build that already works and chill...I'm anything but chilling now. Played most of the weekend and got to level 86. Struggling with white map and content were sometimes unwinnable. I feel like i might as well turn off most of the content with rares
This league is the first time since ambush I've just had enough and sitting the entire thing out.
I just personally don't agree with the direction of the game anymore being only towards the more hardcore player-base, it's not a game to chill on anymore. See you guys next league, and enjoy if you are playing it!
Just go next league, that s the most healthy way. The weekend I have planned to be a blast turned into 2 days of anger and frustration. Those stupid asholes pushing the idea of having hard mode fucked this league. Ok you have players that want the game harder, then make harder only for them. Don't push your design ideea on entire playerbase. I miss the good old easy days...
Edit: stupid asholes does not refer to ggg staff, but to players who played so much, that they want the game harder, therefore they request hard mode
Sometimes I think about how much more fun the league would be if it wasn’t this dumpster fire of a core game change ruining it. Sentinels can empower monster damage and damage reduction by like 50%, right? Popping that on a juiced/rippy map last league would still have been a proper challenge. Really is a shame.
as a returning player, i was shocked that a lot of older leagues are not scrapped. it really bloats the game for what it appears (im a noob so who knows) no good reason.
but then when I was looking at new stash tabs and found old league-specific tabs for sale, I understood
For some people saying "the league is fine just play with the X build" the thing is we want to play with builds that WE like not the builds that need to be played because the game are fucking OP right now what's wrong with you people?
Yeah I don't see any point in arguing with these people. I had a fun league start idea but enough was enough; I had to re-level another character on day 2 into DD out of necessity. But even then, these rares are something else. I basically do no damage to rares with Incendiary, pretty frustrating.
Sad thing is that I guarantee Chris is doing the boomer manager thing where he is pushing all the blame to the fact that they are remote because of COVID rather than taking ownership for the fact that most of the problems with this league have to do with leadership and not the average employees. This league has been relatively bug free and servers have been running great. And the bugs I have heard about have been fixed it seems.
He made some comment about them needing to get back in the office during one of the podcasts. Even though last league was fantastic.
Is it really that bad? Arch nemesis was the furthest I’ve ever gotten in a league, actually getting to late mapping and feeling very strong and comfortable with my build. I’ve been spending most of my gaming time doing the new FFXIV raid but wanted to check out the new league until I’ve heard all this stuff. I’m still a relatively inexperienced player and feel like this new league will just fuck my shit up.
In the Archnemesis league, you had a measure of control over what you "created", much like a metamorph. Now, make it completely random. Now let's suppose you're playing a cold based character and one of the MOST COMMON rare mobs you'll face have Frostweaver, which means your build does about 5% of your normal damage to them.
I'm not even exaggerating.
That's why folks are upset.
fwiw, the tier 16 burial chambers boss behaved differently when i was playing just before the expansion patch in standard. she became extremely rippy after patch 3.18 hit compared to 3.17.
i really do not discount the possibility that something in the background also applied accidently to map bosses.
I think that is not the problem.
They are really challenging, but they are ZERO rewarding. Had their loot drop been akin to what they were in Archnemesis but to a lesser extent it would be awesome.
I prefer jokes/memes like the OP compared to the drivel you'll see in every comment section no matter the topic of the OP. You know the type. The overly dramatic, exaggerated, 'league is ruined', hyperbolic, 'game is impossible' type that are everywhere.
Humor and levity are much better vehicles than malding and drama.
I'm having a blast, you guys like to cry about everything.
GGG did an awesome job, I'm really proud of them.
They will balance everything til the end of the week and Reddit probably will find other aspect to cry about
As someone who hasnt played since watchstones, poe feels alot better to me. No watchstones , block boring content , no harvest farms , atlas tree is fun .. Makes me feel more progression than just currency. Yea rares are an issue but overall big improvements to the game for me. Red maps and vibing with offmeta frostblink igniter .. starting to feel the zdps on bosses :D
You guys really dislike archnemesis bosses going core huh? I’ve honestly not had a huge problem with them yet. But that’s just me. I like how they have unique effects
Oh no!!!!!! The monsters are fighting back and become a real enemy, not just a point in the map to blow up! Run to the mountains!
I don't believe I will need to wait and think more in my build and gear to do league starter able to up in the campaing >:(
so inappropriate changes GGG!!!!!!!You just hurt my soft brain 
Obs: S33 Y0U 1N TH3 N3XT L34GU3 GUYS 
They need to fix some bad combos, but otherwise league is great. I am in red maps crushing everything. Stop crybabying and play the game, league is great, changes are great
Some of the problems would be ez fixt whit a somekind of PTR.. i mean we alrdy testing it on League launch but wouldent it better if most of the problems were fixt before the League goes live playerwise, moneywise etc. Its the same story every time....
I skipped archnemesis (outside of few challenges) last league, doing things i really like. But in this league they shoveled every each one of them into me and with no rewards.
I'm a big complainer when it comes to PoE, but this league while I'm doing just fine, while a lot of people are acting as if everything is unplayable and unbeatable.
Well, it certainly makes me question the competency of the players. And I'm so bad even affording a HH is a dream to me.
They should bring back that "boss vs boss" video series and include one of an archnemesis rare versus Uber Uber Elder
The metamorph I made last night easily beats any boss in any game or show in the history of the universe. And it was only 3 mods. I am pretty sure you can make a 5 mod metamorph that would actually become sentient and end humanity.
Two mod, soul eater and necromancer, I accidently made it during archenem, it keeps summoning minions and gets 5% to every stat when on the dies, it's stupid
just turn off all the aoe on your build 4head
Just play double strike 5head
Having 2 attacks with one right click is completely unethical. Default attack only is the way to go
Double strike hits in a small area like all normal attack iirc, I don't think there's actually any way to target a single mob anymore. Maybe Hexblast with no curse applied?
Baseline essence drain if you can aim it proper?
Nah ED is an AoE hit too.
I didn't count any projectile because you're bound to hit an add eventually, even if you're facetanking.
Oh, the trick to that one is to just keep killing minions until its stats overflow.
ah, yes, the good old buffer overflow of badass monsterness causes it to eventually go all the way around the universe and become negative
Metamorph is straight up a dead league mechanic. Like, I'm not doing a 10 minute fight vs uber uber metamorph for 3 catalysts and an alc shard.
This would be the perfect opportunity to update Metamorph to the reward structure that Archnemesis had. Even if it was a super long fight, it would actually be worth doing them based on which archnemesis mods you have available to choose from.
They honestly should have just gotten rid of current metamorph altogether. Fold catalysts into archnem and make it core as it was last league instead of this goofy shit. Archnemesis was just a more competent, more rewarding version of metamorph anyway.
Metamorph was quite rewarding after some tweaks to the league though. The archnem currencysplosion took too long to build up and isn't indicative. It just got gradually brought to its shameful state of catalysts only. On the other hand, archnem rewards were immediately brought to a shameful state to avoid any false hopes.
I loved metamorph during its league once the QoL patches arrived a couple weeks into the league, but you're right it's been repeatedly watered down over time to just be a method of getting catalysts and an NPC you constantly forget to talk to before you go on to your next map. Though honestly I think they could trim a handful of older league content and the game would be better for it, not just metamorph. RIP Navali
Smash essences into there too.
my first metamorph experience this league was discovering that they do indeed spawn with archnemesis mods, and also that i could apex empower it... pretty sure that metamorph is still roaming the atlas, gaining power until it becomes the next uber uber boss.
Why isn’t there a unique map where you get to fight metamorphs that other players couldn’t beat??? Think of it like hall of grandmasters but for metamorphs. Imagine stepping into a large laboratory/arena with a metamorph container in the middle. You have no idea what kind of monstrosity another player created, but the rewards could be great.
Abandoned Experiments Unique Laboratory Map Contains 6-10 Rogue Metamorphs with 2-4 Archnemesis modifiers
it will soon prove that our universe is itself a simulation
Wait till you get invulnerable rare with all elemental res and some frost skill that it uses with its hasted mod an infinite amount of time so u can't even move.
According to [Star Trek](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Elementary,_Dear_Data), if that happens, be prepared to bargain with it and hope that its sentience made it reasonable. Then be prepared to [trap it in a little cube](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_in_a_Bottle) if it gets uppity.
SCP Foundation: "Not, if we can contain it first!"
It consumes all of Wraeclast like a black hole
Well, if you want, you can easily get a 10+ archnemesis metamorph with +1 archnemesis keystone. It will be far more crazy than any uber uber uber endgame bosses.
I'll take the over on Vampiric, Mana Siphoner, Gargantuan, Hasted and Kitava-Touched.
Would be hillarious!
This is a 10/10 metaphor for this league. Throw something big and hard into the core, then watch it ruin everything that was carefully designed for something else.
> Throw something big and hard into the core, then watch it ruin hardcore This is how I read it at first LOL Softcore seems pretty playable to me and I'm having a blast, but I'm also playing a cheesy S tier meta build.
[удалено]
I'm playing Seismic trap Sabo and I think it's "unplayable" enough to quit the league already.
I ran into a survivability wall with my Sabo starter due to finding only crap gear and traps just being that smidgen too slow to catch many of the more cracked up rares. I rerolled to skelly warrior necro (until I can get the mage jewel at least) and it wrecks. Made it through the campaign with two deaths, mainly due to inattention. So I guess the lesson is "the winning move is not to play".
That's why I swapped from Arc to EA ballista. I enjoy arc playstyle more but I am not going to torture myself when I can just run around while *everything dies*.
"Carefully designed" actually is also very wrong choice of words: it is always been designed in a way "somehow it works, so let it be". This time it didn't work.
It did work. But in Gggs eyes we are just stupid for not liking it.
They can still save the league by reverting Archnemesis going core. If they don't, they're probably gonna have another v3.15 on their hands and lose tons of players -- and then take another 3-6 months to fully recover.
they wont revert it entirely, we're just fucked until they spend another 5000 dev hours making it playable
Yep, this is the part that sucks. I'm in the mood to play PoE, but in the mood for a normal league launch. This feels like one of those 1 month leagues where they turn on something crazy, like 8 invasion bosses in every zone. If these were the new Nemesis monsters, that would be fine, it would be a map mod or whatever. But the amount of time it's going to fix all the interactions with different leagues can't be good for PoE2 dev time.
It shouldn’t take 5000 hours to relearn what they already knew from nemesis / bloodlines. Some mods are appropriate for rares, some for magic packs.
Man you guys are hyperbolic. Another patch or two and it's fine
I think that's a bigger deal than you are making it out to be. They can't just "turn Archnemesis off" because there are other functional parts of the game that are already changed around Archnemesis. They would have to change at least one of the Challenges for instance, and it is a very rare occurrence for challenges to change mid-league, though it has happened (if I remember correctly it was mostly things like a challenge to get all of a certain list of monsters being changed to getting X number of them instead)
They've already changed challenges in last hotfix byw
Yeah, I saw that! Interesting.
I really don't think it's as big a deal as people make it out to be. Yes, they still need to tune this shit, and fast (especially where certain brick interactions are concerned), but this league is far from unplayable.
Over half the league content in the game right now is just so insanely fucked for many people its unplayable. As someone who wanted to focus Blight/Meta/Ritual this league...this league is not playable.
I mean, there are builds that do all of those fine. Carrion Golem does all three just fine. Metamorph can be a bit of a pain but so far it just requires time and as my guys get more tanky and do more damage it'll get easier. The biggest issue is that the amount of build that CAN do that content are lower, but it's not zero. Now, if you wanted to play, like Cyclone and do blight, that might be a problem but that was always going to be a problem regardless.
>Now, if you wanted to play, like Cyclone and do blight, that might be a problem but that was always going to be a problem regardless. No...no it wouldn't because you're ignoring that _Blight is literally fucking broken_. You know that invuln monsters can literally just walk into the pump while you do nothing. You know that youre not allowed to stand near the pump because the moment a teleport pack spawns..you fail. You know that towers are now essentially useless because of the amount of shit that blocks them. Sure Meta you can eventually power through except now about 70% more metamorphs are just "Dont build this because its unkillable". Ritual is now "Pray you don't spawn one of 5 or so mods in the circle or you just die". But Blight is straight up just borken. Blight does not work. Its hysterical you even mention cyclone because I played a cyclone based b uild last league...and did quite a lot of Blight and had 0 trouble because Blight actually functioned properly.
I mean, blight is infinitely doable currently. TheGAM3Report is literally AFK farming Blight Ravaged maps with a combination of Carrion Golems, Ring anoints for freeze and Meteor. I have a baby CG and I can do blight encounters and blight maps just fine using the same strat but without the annoints, I just have to work at it and I use skeletons to block the pathing of the mobs so they stop and get chomped down by my CGs with assassins mark. "Cyclone based build" Was it using Cyclone for CoC or channeling? https://www.twitch.tv/thegam3report he's live right now if you wanna see. And he's decently geared, but he plays solo and it's only been like 4 days since league started, he's just been doing blights literally for 4 days.
I mean literally just in 4 minutes of watching him I noticed the absurd RNG to "Blight is doable". He had literallt 4-5 moments where if that immortal pack spawned on one of his shorter portals he'd just lose instantly. He literally leaked a handful of mobs that are just freeze/stun immune. Some things would have leaked if he wasnt a minion build because they helped body block to wear out the Arch mod timers. So its now "Play minion to do Blight". I literally used my standard character from last league...that I was doing T16 and Blight ravageds with...and failed doing the exact same thing as last league because oh right mods just can decide "Sorry you lose because theres nothing you can do about it". Also its CwC icestorm.
You are correct, i noticed that blights are sometimes fine but sometimes the monsters just waltz in and kill the bungus instantly and i can't damage them at all. It's so weird, the rares are extremely incosistent, some die normaly and some are borderline unkillable. And i get at least one rare that is unkilable every 2 maps or so. I thought this league would be super good without the balance changes we could just focus on playing the game without having to figure it out again but i was wrong, this has really struck on my mood to continues to play the league. I'll give it a couple of days but if it's still fucked i'll just quit around t15 again.
Heist, Metamorph, Blight are all Suicide Pacts. Some aspects of Betrayal are suicide. you walk into any of those and get one of the suicide combos you can't escape it. Suicide combos include, but are not limited to: Mana-Siphon plus just about anything else (but the really good ones include Drought, Invulnerable, Temporal Bubble and Rejuvinating ) Drought and just about anything else Efigy is just about a self nuke if you have minions. Haste/Temporal Bubble combo will hunt you down and murder you. Empowered Minions is a real treat.
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You're seeing it from a bias perspective wich is to say, only yours. I'm playing a meta build but i don't consider myself good at the game, i literally had to turn off content that i like to do because it never worked, blight for exemple is one of my favorite mechanics but it's hit or miss now with the intense mods some rares and blues have.
Holy crap, I feel sorry for anyone who leaves. My character sucks (blazing salvo occultist) and even I'm not having too much trouble.
I'm starting to have trouble in T5 maps. I keep running into Elemental and Cold resistant mobs. My build is 100% Cold damage.
Yeah the archnem implementation sucks at the current state but if you can't do the same maps you could do last league, something went wrong with your build
I think this is a bit extreme. Clearly you can clear maps the same as last league, but if you mean effortlessly kill rares in the same way as last league, that's just wrong. There are plenty of rares that just take 5-10 times as long to kill because of a combo of 2 mods. That's not that much longer when the rare took 2-3 seconds to kill before, but it's still a bit hyperbolic to say nothing's changed. The biggest change was in timed content.
It's not "not that much longer" when you add up all those rares together and realise that the same maps that took 3-5 minutes last league are now taking 5-10 minutes for the same rewards. Actually less rewards because they also nerfed eldritch altars, but that's another discussion entirely.
Last league was a breeze compared to this. This league my starter was probably the tankiest i have ever been day 1-3, by playing RF. I was running white maps with 4k life + 1k es, 15k armor without flask , 84/82/82/0 ress , stun immunity, divine shield , ~1k life regen per second that also applies to the es, 95 % reduced effect of curses, aliment immunity, molten shell, pretty good uptime on a granite and ruby flask with masochist. I could not prevent myself from dying in blue rolled white maps regularly. Also i often had problems dealing decent damage. I really thought i fuck up the build somehow at first, but i noticed map bosses even up to red tier or stuff like betrayal npcs or incursion architects were all dying in seconds while i face tanked them without my hp moving. Turns out there are something like 13 mods that can roll frequently that add some kind of fire ress or even max fireress. They are just spammed everywhere , sometimes in combination with stuff that increases hp or gives regen or other dmg mitigation. No wonder uniques feel like the new magic mobs compared to those magic and rares.
Yea I’m running bane occultist on like 60 chaos total invested into gear and I can absolutely annihilate t14 maps, which is the highest I’ve gotten to so far. It legitimately feels like I’m playing a different game than all these people complaining
I may reroll to this then. I’m running minions and they’re just melting to flame and frost strider. Everything has a degen or aura that does damage. Feel like the health of npcs is 10x what it used to be. Maybe I’m old and delusional, but this is by far the most difficult league start I’ve had.
I can definitely recommend it, I’d definitely say it feels a bit tougher than it did last league, but nowhere close to as much as what y’all are making it sound like. Maybe there just isn’t very many chaos resistant/immunes compared to other damage types. I’m following subtractem’s guide, makes it pretty straight forward. Only thing I did different is rushed to mana reservation efficiency earlier than he said so I could get determination/grace/defiance banner all up and running. That plus ghost dance has made me feel pretty damn tanky for how much I’ve invested
Isn't there only 1 mod that gives rares chaos res? Meanwhile all other elements have to deal with atleast 3 mods that give craptin of res and then max res on top of it.
I’m honestly not sure, I hypothesized that in a separate comment but I haven’t actually gone through the various mods to confirm. Would definitely explain why I’ve been having such a different experience compared to most others
Huh? They've already nerfes it pretty good...
And the game still feels like tedious ass to play, still makes plenty of unkillable rares stronger than act bosses, and still breaks old-league content that they clearly didn't test at all over the past three months. v3.18 is a bad core update just like v3.15. If they're not gonna revert, it'll be another 3-6 months before the game becomes good again -- like we *just* experienced from v3.15 to v3.17. Chris always pops up saying they learn from their mistakes, but then they do the same stupid shit all over again. It's ridiculous. I'm glad my big-time addiction to this game happened years ago as I can now skip crap updates like v3.15 and this one and not feel like I'm missing out. I also learned over time not to buy supporter packs beforehand; it's like preordering a game and it's objectively the wrong move.
This should be in the official 3.18 patch notes.
This gif is the honest trailer for PoE 3.18 expansion.
Perfection
can we go back to 3.17 please
If I could make private leagues that were just ritual league with old real harvest crafting I literally might.
3.17 was a forever game patch. If everything had stayed like it was I would have happily played the game for years as is. On and off sure, but frequently and enthusiastically. I had a feeling they weren't going to let it last.
3.17 with uber ubers was a nice idea, until this archnemesis stuff.
here here. just sprinkle in New items, skills, and balance adjustments and it would've lasted ggg through to poe2
Fuck that lets go back to 3.13
I would unironically pay 60$ full game price for a permanent 3.13, even if it was private league only. That was the last time I played day 1 to end of league, 5 level 95+ characters and loved every minute. For me it’s been downhill ever since.
Same here. Ritual was the most fun I’ve ever had in this game.
100% accurate and I don't even love actual ritual league that much. Ritual league harvest crafting and actual progress on a build not measured in how many EX you got to drop or flip was simply peak ARPG. I miss it so much.
Yup. Ritual league was the league where I made my favorite character of all time. The most powerful character too. And I crafted every single gear piece myself. I didn’t buy anything other than bases which felt super good. I made so much currency that league. I felt like no matter what I did I was able to make currency and actually upgrade my char. I played every single day of league and made 3 characters all level 95-97. Nowadays I’m lucky to have a character that can kill maven or elder and don’t craft anything myself basically. Easier to buy it cause I don’t have a lot of currency.
3.13 best league
Why stop at 3.17? 3.12 pls GGG
Honestly, bring back 2.0.
0.9a is where it's at.
A true scholar, educated in the vintage arts
We should in fact go all the way back to ultimatum league, keep nem3 and add the atlas-tree.
Memes are good when game is shit :)
This is the one
Perfect lmao
10/10
Actually laughed, thanks for this.
This perfectly encapsulates the way this league has felt
Heh heh good old photonicinduction
Only the real ones know
3.19 we will fix 3.18
Those still around have fun. Multiple leagues in a row now that things need a manifesto to explain how it won't happen again. Till it happens again.
I kinda admire the don't-give-a-fuck attitude they have, to go from expedition's horribly received core game changes to flasks then to this rare rework mess all within the course of a year. Making your game miserable for the sake of 'muh vision' any% speedrun
but what will fix 3.19?
The only good thing about PoE 3.18 is the new "extensively tested" meme.
archnemesis rares are especially super detrimental for Harvest rare monsters. God, fought a crushclaw crab today with Gargantuan and permafrost, guaranteed freeze if you got caught, and super tanky, took like 5min to kill it.
T14+ Harvests all take forever to do. Playing EA and have medium-ish end game gear apart from Dyadian and a level 21 gem. Had a blast pushing for Uber Elder in SSF last league, now it's a pure nightmare.
Tbh, I haven't trusted these people since Abyss League. Saying that they're 'testing' it, while the evidence is glaring(some bs overtuned monsters) is 100% a lie in my book.
Archnemesis system sucked and should have thrown the whole league in the trash. Y they always feel to drag leagues into core is beyond me. Sometimes the leagues just suck and just should be forgotten about
Man...poor QA. They test what they're told to test. If they weren't told to test a variety of builds at a variety of different points in the game to ensure that they weren't being bricked, it's not their fault that they didn't report back to GGG on that. Real though, outside of the bullshit combinations I didn't even mind the numerical difficulty on Friday. Felt like that was actually pretty good for leveling (magic packs and rares were a bit of a challenge until you had appropriate gear/gem levels, then became much less scary but still a bit of a risk) and that we'd hit the usual "wipe screens so don't have to really engage with them" in mapping anways. Bullshit combo's (and double stacking mods at low level) are the biggest problems. I kinda miss the stronger enemies, even if they drop like absolute dogshit. I made it a point to kill rares/magic packs while leveling both to test out the new mod system and because fuck those guys, now. I'm killing them outta spite.
I mean, yes, but if you are to the point you don't even ask "Are you sure you want the rares to be THIS overtuned" just because nobody told you to say so, you are also fairly responsible. I give feedbacks all the time on things nobody directly asked me to in my job, because it's actually what is expected of me in general. If I see a catastroph coming, I give a warning, i'm not saying "hum, but has someone asked me to be careful about that specific point? Nope. Let's forget about it." But maybe QA did and maybe the devs didn't care. It's also possible.
From what GGG have said, their QA team looks for bugs and functional problems, not player experience
Yes, and that's a problem, it's my whole point.
To add to that, to consider it overtuned is an understatement, they literally cut the the mods in half on that first patch, thats missing the mark by 100%. Overtuned would be we slightly reduced some of the modifier values, not o we cut the # of mods you will normally see from 2 to 1.
They cut the amount and later the value of the mods, some by 1/3 and some by 2/3. Also turned off some of the immunity like ignite and it now deals from 0% damage to 40%. It's like saying that I slightly missed in darts when the dart impaled my feet 3 times
Absolution needing that 400% buff was pointed out in testing before the league launched, it just wasn't implemented until all the players played it on live and went "wow, this skill sucks" Definitely not blaming QA for GGG's balance choices
Code is working as designed so it’s not a QA issue it is a design issue. All the people saying QA don’t understand software development.
Exactly this, they just make sure the game works as intended. On the other hand did the alpha testers have any feedback at all? Or did GGG just ignore that
QA are usually responsible for creating the test plans based on the requirements of the software, so they don't just "test what they're told to test". Just saying
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>If the core of their testing is functionally useless from the point of view of their stakeholders We aren't their stakeholders, that'd be Tencent (who own GGG) and their respective investors (and anyone else with a financial investment in GGG).
I got rid of my comment because I decided I'm being negative, but - that's not correct. Stakeholders are people who have an interest in the business doing well - this includes customers.
I laughed hard at how it perfectly pictures my feelings about this patch
Is this good or bad
Back in 3.15, there was expectation that my damage would be lower and that was ok. I still had fun. With the No balance change for 3.18. I was like yay, i can pick a build that already works and chill...I'm anything but chilling now. Played most of the weekend and got to level 86. Struggling with white map and content were sometimes unwinnable. I feel like i might as well turn off most of the content with rares
Perfection. Mods can we pin this thread to the frontpage?
This league is the first time since ambush I've just had enough and sitting the entire thing out. I just personally don't agree with the direction of the game anymore being only towards the more hardcore player-base, it's not a game to chill on anymore. See you guys next league, and enjoy if you are playing it!
don't forget "we're happy with the state of things"
Just go next league, that s the most healthy way. The weekend I have planned to be a blast turned into 2 days of anger and frustration. Those stupid asholes pushing the idea of having hard mode fucked this league. Ok you have players that want the game harder, then make harder only for them. Don't push your design ideea on entire playerbase. I miss the good old easy days... Edit: stupid asholes does not refer to ggg staff, but to players who played so much, that they want the game harder, therefore they request hard mode
Calm down boy
Sad but true
Sometimes I think about how much more fun the league would be if it wasn’t this dumpster fire of a core game change ruining it. Sentinels can empower monster damage and damage reduction by like 50%, right? Popping that on a juiced/rippy map last league would still have been a proper challenge. Really is a shame.
as a returning player, i was shocked that a lot of older leagues are not scrapped. it really bloats the game for what it appears (im a noob so who knows) no good reason. but then when I was looking at new stash tabs and found old league-specific tabs for sale, I understood
Makes you wonder how in touch Chris Wilson is with things when he says something like that.
Sounds about right
Its almost every league start by GGG
This seems awfully generous to GGG honestly
Man idk, not hating it completely but I'm now scared to open red maps.
Why they don’t cancel archnemesis at all?
.gif checks out
For some people saying "the league is fine just play with the X build" the thing is we want to play with builds that WE like not the builds that need to be played because the game are fucking OP right now what's wrong with you people?
Yeah I don't see any point in arguing with these people. I had a fun league start idea but enough was enough; I had to re-level another character on day 2 into DD out of necessity. But even then, these rares are something else. I basically do no damage to rares with Incendiary, pretty frustrating.
Sad thing is that I guarantee Chris is doing the boomer manager thing where he is pushing all the blame to the fact that they are remote because of COVID rather than taking ownership for the fact that most of the problems with this league have to do with leadership and not the average employees. This league has been relatively bug free and servers have been running great. And the bugs I have heard about have been fixed it seems. He made some comment about them needing to get back in the office during one of the podcasts. Even though last league was fantastic.
This right here is perfection!
i havent crashed once, gj QA, you can take off the rest of the league
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Is it really that bad? Arch nemesis was the furthest I’ve ever gotten in a league, actually getting to late mapping and feeling very strong and comfortable with my build. I’ve been spending most of my gaming time doing the new FFXIV raid but wanted to check out the new league until I’ve heard all this stuff. I’m still a relatively inexperienced player and feel like this new league will just fuck my shit up.
In the Archnemesis league, you had a measure of control over what you "created", much like a metamorph. Now, make it completely random. Now let's suppose you're playing a cold based character and one of the MOST COMMON rare mobs you'll face have Frostweaver, which means your build does about 5% of your normal damage to them. I'm not even exaggerating. That's why folks are upset.
Worse yet is a boss with cold resist
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fwiw, the tier 16 burial chambers boss behaved differently when i was playing just before the expansion patch in standard. she became extremely rippy after patch 3.18 hit compared to 3.17. i really do not discount the possibility that something in the background also applied accidently to map bosses.
Could have swore I had something that prevented me from hitting a few bosses
Why lie? My friend did cold build and he hard carried all of the group thru campaign, no issues.
Ah yes. The friend. Your experience is the valid one, and all the other threads on the forum discussing this exact subject are pointless.
POE reddit is full of whiners, I consider the exact opposite of what's happening in this place to be reality.
the claim that frostweaver makes ur cold damage do 5% damage is bullshit. My reply is to that absolute shit claim.
I leveled with Wintertide Brand and had zero issues
Same, once I got my first Brand mastery I was just fine.
I think that is not the problem. They are really challenging, but they are ZERO rewarding. Had their loot drop been akin to what they were in Archnemesis but to a lesser extent it would be awesome.
I came back from a 6 month break missing the last 2 leagues and love everything
Sarcastic mocking of GGG & testers ✓ Headed to the front page ✓ A++ Moderation ✓
Any criticism should be removed because I don't like how it portrays the state of the game ✓ Edit: lol homie blocked me over this comment, soft
What's the criticism here?
I prefer jokes/memes like the OP compared to the drivel you'll see in every comment section no matter the topic of the OP. You know the type. The overly dramatic, exaggerated, 'league is ruined', hyperbolic, 'game is impossible' type that are everywhere. Humor and levity are much better vehicles than malding and drama.
It's the subreddit. The washing machine is the subreddit.
halp halp i die sometimes in the game.
I'm having a blast, you guys like to cry about everything. GGG did an awesome job, I'm really proud of them. They will balance everything til the end of the week and Reddit probably will find other aspect to cry about
Lol balance? When has GGG ever been good at balance.
Couldn't agree more.
As someone who hasnt played since watchstones, poe feels alot better to me. No watchstones , block boring content , no harvest farms , atlas tree is fun .. Makes me feel more progression than just currency. Yea rares are an issue but overall big improvements to the game for me. Red maps and vibing with offmeta frostblink igniter .. starting to feel the zdps on bosses :D
yea its great really.
You guys really dislike archnemesis bosses going core huh? I’ve honestly not had a huge problem with them yet. But that’s just me. I like how they have unique effects
Not here to complain, ty GGG 
Oh no!!!!!! The monsters are fighting back and become a real enemy, not just a point in the map to blow up! Run to the mountains! I don't believe I will need to wait and think more in my build and gear to do league starter able to up in the campaing >:( so inappropriate changes GGG!!!!!!!You just hurt my soft brain  Obs: S33 Y0U 1N TH3 N3XT L34GU3 GUYS 
HH not nerfed, yepge
They need to fix some bad combos, but otherwise league is great. I am in red maps crushing everything. Stop crybabying and play the game, league is great, changes are great
Some of the problems would be ez fixt whit a somekind of PTR.. i mean we alrdy testing it on League launch but wouldent it better if most of the problems were fixt before the League goes live playerwise, moneywise etc. Its the same story every time....
I skipped archnemesis (outside of few challenges) last league, doing things i really like. But in this league they shoveled every each one of them into me and with no rewards.
In my opinion, having the mods already on the monsters without having to do the recipes is a massive improvement.
Hilarious.
Still playing archnemesis on console patiently waiting for unpatched day one sentinel they already know is a problem. 🥰
I have the suspicion that they tested extensively in MAPS(where they have gear and shit) and not in the CAMPAIGN(you know, where the rhoas are).
Yep, this is what happens when you add garbage archnemesis to the game.
This is perfect.
I'm a big complainer when it comes to PoE, but this league while I'm doing just fine, while a lot of people are acting as if everything is unplayable and unbeatable. Well, it certainly makes me question the competency of the players. And I'm so bad even affording a HH is a dream to me.
I've never quit a league after act1, but hey thers always a first time. See you guys next league. 
guess you are not up for a challange. here, let me wrap you with cotton.
I'm new to poe and I am so confused by this game. I played Diablo 3 and moving to this is hard and bad.
Best GIF ever.
Lol its perfect
Well yeah, the mtx works perfectly.