Let's talk about the race rewards for Soulthirst

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Reinhart wrote:

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Col_Jessep wrote:

Yes, I expect all race rewards to be useful for the group of player they are targeting. ;P

If you think that target group is new players without any PoE experience, you are wrong. I mean you need to partially know what you are doing to be any good in a PoE race.

New players need to start at some point. If GGG really wants expand racing they have to target the audience that usually would not participate. Marketing 101.

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Reinhart wrote:

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Col_Jessep wrote:

Crest of Perandus. Even a new player will figure out very quickly that that shield won't help him to stay alive.

Well, your player skills partially determine if you stay alive or not. You can never fully rely on equipment.

That doesn't make a shield that is worse than most stuff you would pick off the ground any better now, does it? At least the legacy version had a high block value:

Its use was limited but with the nerfed version you might be hard pressed to find a worse shield.

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Reinhart wrote:

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Col_Jessep wrote:

I find this seasons' low tier rewards just disappointing compared to earlier seasons. Too niche, too specific, too high level or just plain useless. The old reward were much more useful (at the time).

Weird, I have heard this every race season. Not just this one. The same whining every time. Vendor crap. Useless. Everything is useless except for mjolnir and shavs. So we can all be copycats of eachother. Just recently I have seen players armed with tabula rasa and iir gear, getting killed over and over again by normal Malachai. Instead of a little thinking, most people just follow the same set of build guidelines without even realizing what they are actually doing. But the boy was deadset to get some more iir! Can you blame them? Hey they are using "OP-items" like tabula rasa or lightning coil!

So, now you are comparing one of my all time favorite uniques, Tabula Rasa, to the nerfed Crest of Perandus? C'omn now. I can show you several endgame viable build that can use Tabula but I don't think anybody would even consider CoP. You can almost use any other shield and be better off. The new CoP is a wasted slot.

But again, what about the white lvl 70+ staff. How is that useful for a new player? It's an item that you will only use in maps. Just make it a 5-link and move it to the higher tier rewards for experienced players where it belongs.

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Reinhart wrote:

Also, you didn't answer my original questions.

EDIT: This thread got moved out of gameplay it seems.

Yup, it was moved because my case was too strong and GGG knows it! *donnes tinfoil hat* =D

Concerning your original question: Would I race without reward? Not in solo races, nope. I did a group race with two friend back in the day and it was the best time I ever had in PoE! Pretty much all people who I know from that time have quit though.

The only living being interested in PoE that I know is my cat now. Occasionally she steps on the keyboard. That's one of the reasons I don't play HC anymore. There might have been an incident...

The early race rewards seem decent to me. You get a good leveling item (the shield) and a good endgame craft item (the staff). The only one that's questionable is The Princess but that's the first reward so it's understandable.

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The Princess is absolutely useless unless you specifically build your character so that he doesn't use that weapon and deals damage with his main weapon. How many new and casual players do you expect know how to that?

That's not true at all. The princess is a very decent leveling unique, not a stat-stick.

Like pointed by the original poster you can use it for a dual strike build.

I recently tested The Princesses on a "Ranger Sword Dual Strike Acrobatics" http://poeurl.com/zy5ntAT build. Both swords being The Princess until A4N Mines (HC). Attack Speed from the passive tree was +54% when I switched to "better" swords.

Main skills I used were Dual Strike with Melee Splash, obviously, and Frost blades with LMP.

So, you can use these swords for Normal leveling for at least 20 levels. Both increased damage taken mods are safe enough to ignore completely. A great choice for a race price, IMO.

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Col_Jessep wrote:

I really like the alternate artwork on the items but I don't see myself ever using one of them in the game except for skin transfers.

you could have saved a lot of time by just writing this

you can also copy-paste this for every previous and future league as well, thus saving additional time


EDIT: I forgot that the non-skinned rewards (like headhunter, volls, taste of hate) make excellent trade bait. So its not 100% about skin transfer potential - you can also get mega rich!