When Chris says that lab haters are a minority, how right is he?

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Tykero wrote:

There's nothing in the lab that invalidates builds aside from those that rely on Vaal Skills. It's always doable if you have anything approaching a functional build for the rest of the game. I'm sorry that you're not having fun in the labyrinth, but you should probably examine why that might be -- because the labyrinth itself is not terribly different from the rest of the game, it just has some different hazards.

Just wanted to chime in on this point, specifically.

I have a Chaoscaster Shadow I ran for a bit in early Talisman; Contagion/Essence Drain build w/Wither totem, all the Chaos bacon they added in Talisman release. I only ran it up to mid-fifties since other stuff ended up being more useful overall, but I try and go back to it periodically since I love those sorts of builds (multiple interlocking active skills and an active playstyle, instead of "hit Vaal Spark > collect drops").

That build is categorically incapable of clearing the Labyrinth by itself. It is entirely possible that I just suck at path of Exile, of course, but Izaro is a hard stop to Chaoscaster degen builds. He appears to be almost entirely immune to degeneration, and this is after I acquired a mid-level 5L for the character to cram as many More modifiers on Essence Drain as I possibly could.

Not every build that isn't new-potatohead-mishmash can clear the Labyrinth. My Chaoscaster is never going to acquire any Ascendancy points outside of farming up some exalts to pay for a lab carry, and I flat refuse to do that.

I understand that content changes and players have to change with it, but when the Ascendancy passives are absolutely critical to progression in GGG's new Path of Exile and yet are gated behind content which is somewhat cruelly arbitrary in who gets to clear it and who doesn't...well, I can understand the frustration, too.

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1453R wrote:

He appears to be almost entirely immune to degeneration, and this is after I acquired a mid-level 5L for the character to cram as many More modifiers on Essence Drain as I possibly could.

Strange, haven't heard of anyone else running an ED build having problems with him.

And about vaal skills, there's something we should keep in mind. They aren't intended to be used exclusively, vaal skills are designed to be nukes you use in tough encounters. You may create a build that relies almost exclusively on vaal skills but you shouldn't really expect from devs to provide any support for it. Actually, it's quite the opposite, as shown by the balance changes in last patch.

Oh the steam charts, yeah they drop for EVERY GAME because, wonder why there is something called Euro 2016 and a lot of people are watching it here in Europe. Nearly everybody of my friends or People i know, have set up grillparties, holidays and soon since 3 days ago. Maybe there is not Impact in the USA but for Europa it is a really huge Impact.

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raics wrote:

Strange, haven't heard of anyone else running an ED build having problems with him.

And about vaal skills, there's something we should keep in mind. They aren't intended to be used exclusively, vaal skills are designed to be nukes you use in tough encounters. You may create a build that relies almost exclusively on vaal skills but you shouldn't really expect from devs to provide any support for it. Actually, it's quite the opposite, as shown by the balance changes in last patch.

On the Vaal skill thing: I actually quite heartily agree. While I totally understand the desire to figure out ways of breaking any given thing the game has wide open - that's sort of the reason we're all here, eh? - I always kinna ended up frowny-facing when I heard of one-button map clear builds like Ye Olde Vaal Spark. Those skills lose something when they're more than emergency fallbacks or boss killers - and I've always hated one-button builds anyways, in any game I play.

On ED: ...well, maybe I do just suck at Path after all! All I know is I have the thing rigged with Controlled Destruction, Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay, all the things you do to make it burn as hard as you can (with the exception of me experimenting with Pierce support/tree nodes, because "Other Allies Can't Die" packs are an outright Issue with ED/Contagion I tried to solve with piercing ED projectiles, but still!), and yet even when I've got Izaro tagged up and Withered to within an inch of his unlife, he just sits there and marinates in the Chaos juices without any indication that he's actually taking damage.

Which is horsebunk, because I can drop a Vortex field on him with the EE Vortex degen build I mostly cribbed from Ziggy and he melts like pasta in a furnace. Stupid friggin' Izaro...

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1453R wrote:

On ED: ...well, maybe I do just suck at Path after all! All I know is I have the thing rigged with Controlled Destruction, Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay, all the things you do to make it burn as hard as you can (with the exception of me experimenting with Pierce support/tree nodes, because "Other Allies Can't Die" packs are an outright Issue with ED/Contagion I tried to solve with piercing ED projectiles, but still!), and yet even when I've got Izaro tagged up and Withered to within an inch of his unlife, he just sits there and marinates in the Chaos juices without any indication that he's actually taking damage.

Which is horsebunk, because I can drop a Vortex field on him with the EE Vortex degen build I mostly cribbed from Ziggy and he melts like pasta in a furnace. Stupid friggin' Izaro...

Yeah, that would truly be horsebunk... might be some recent bug, haven't played ED since the introduction but a buddy is doing it right now in Prop, I'll ask him how he fared.

While I respect any players right to have their say about the lab and voice their opinions on this game we all mostly enjoy, I cannot agree with those who say that CW and GGG are taking this game in the correct direction.

I believe that the way PoE is going now is crazy! To me, it is like we have gone off the rails.

This game is now totally different from when I first started playing it.

Traps, saw blades, mazes, ultra boring tedious frogger / super mario style game play with disconnects, lag and unbalanced monster packs coupled with a stupid end boss...

Plus ... the Ascendancy points all gated behind this craziness.

Really? Come on GGG, you have got to be kidding.

New content is good, and needed in a game to keep our interest. But new content that is almost totally alien to the genre?

No, I'm not going to quit PoE even though most of my mates have already gone, I intend to hang on because I like this game.

However, I believe that GGG have gone off the rails with the lab thing, it just leaves a sour taste for me.

If I didn't want the extra points I would never go near the stupid lab, ever.

It's not too late, they can remove the lab. I might even start playing again if they did that.

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Siochan wrote:

It's not too late, they can remove the lab. I might even start playing again if they did that.

Nah, I'd rather keep the lab and you can keep whining about it every single day.

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Siochan wrote:

It's not too late, they can remove the lab. I might even start playing again if they did that.

One time through won't kill you. Just do what I do. Wait till like 75 to do ANY trial or even normal lab. It's quick and painless and just a bad memory this way. Totally worth it for asend to own rest of game, the fun part of game. I look at lab as a speed bumb in a parking lot. It's not the whole game and if you do what I do it's not even 1% of the game.


Enchants are a total waste of time though. There is not anything in the game with poorer power vs time investment.

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Nizreb915 wrote:

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Siochan wrote:

It's not too late, they can remove the lab. I might even start playing again if they did that.

Nah, I'd rather keep the lab and you can keep whining about it every single day.

Deal. My QoL has gone up with many less hours sitting on my ass.