Announcing Path of Exile: Legion

Breach 2.0 looks very nice and interessting.

So in 16 days, the Beta will be released. Is there a schedule when you plan to release the final Version of the League? When ends the test phase?

You won't believe how much I want it to be good this time.

I like melee best, so let's hope.

Edit: Plz be good, damn Im excited at the thought of getting some good action, had the most fun in Delve.

"before the time runs out......"

sigh........

Sweet lord that soundtrack... Please tell me that will be available as a download or the like!

The league looks super fun. I can't wait to get started!

Cyclone is back on the menu!

This looks like Essence + Breach. Sounds like a simple, fine addition to me and I will definitely try it. I have a bad feeling about the change to movement skills but hopefully it turns out well and not some #technicallythatisabuff debuff.

The next Great Wall of Texts are my views on the past leagues and you may ignore if you want. I am only hoping that GGG get to see the feedback.

When Synthesis was announced, my immediate impression was "it's just Incursion v2 + Delve-like (darkness creeping part) mechanics with much more things to do in so little time". It did not seem like a good league to me before it started simply because it looked like a "reused/revamped" league to me. I felt that Synthesis was still horrendous one month after introduction because of wonky decay in memories. Thankfully, all that was fixed eventually and memories were playable though those fixes might have been too late to save the league.

There are players who like Synthesis because of the immense reward potential. In my opinion, the crafting options granted by Synthesis is a brilliant addition to the game. The Synthesis is fun because the mechanics also require players to think and plan to achieve what they desire, unlike Incursion which relied more on plain luck. However, Synthesis is very heavy in content and I feel that adding the current Synthesis to the core game is a big no-no. This is because there will be too many things to do/complete in a temporary league that lasts for short few months and these old, content-heavy mechanics will compete with newer league mechanics.

Looking at Delve as an example, in the mines, there are no Synthesis or other league-specific random encounters unless it is a special node. Players revere Delve for the profits and it is definitely a great side-dungeon or alternative to maps but if one were to only buy sulphite and only do Delve, I genuinely feel that there isn't a difference in that gameplay in Standard or temporary league besides the player pool and being able to buy newer items.

As another example, the revamped bench crafting introduced in Betrayal isn't bad but requires a lot more time and luck to fully unlock. I understand that some powerful crafts should require more investments to unlock. However, I hope that there will be constant fine-tuning to the process as the game progresses. Right now, near the end of the league, I still have a quite number of veiled crafts locked despite doing all my Jun's encounters diligently.

I have no gripes about playing Synthesis after the latest patches though. After all, we should be playing Synthesis in Synthesis league, not something like only Delve in Betrayal, in Synthesis, in Legion league.The current Synthesis may be fine for Standard league since it runs forever, but if it has to be added in the distant future, I hope that it will be simplified and look forward to it become as successful as Bestiary in core game. As a wild idea, it could be collecting memory pieces to unlock a certain encounter or however GGG deems fit.

Alva's incursions, and Incursion league, provided opportunities for good rewards but that got boring quickly because majority of the time, the final temple is a fine piece of disappointment that I personally do not feel like running even if it is a t16 temple. This is because many rooms are pointless below tier 3 and there are also a number of tier 3 rooms that are generally useless unless someone requires a specific drop from their chests. However, Alva's addition to the core game is all right since it grants access to some crafting benches and incursion as a whole is not time-consuming. Honestly, I tend to not do Alva's and Zana's daily objectives though I would usually open incursions that appear in my maps for the extra drops but without expecting to upgrade any good rooms.

Bestiary league was bad. I did not continue playing after trying out a few levels. To me, it felt as if GGG was trying to capture players interested in Monster Hunter World, which was released around the same time as the league. It felt like a poor monster hunter wannabe with stoopid nets and a retarded capturing system. In contrast, Bestiary's addition to the game was great because of the simplified monster capture system. The current Bestiary is awesome, simple, and again, not time-consuming. I adore the random monster encounters, enjoy the surprises I get from beastcrafting, and most importantly, have a good time being entertained by Einhar and his antics.

Similarly, I like Betrayal because it largely does not eat up too much time. The random encounters, though dangerous, are always fun and quick to complete. Most importantly, Betrayal allows players to plan and have decently significant influence on a safehouse reward and acquire the best outcome based on their current given hand. In contrast, Abyss is merely an additional pack of mobs and loot that tries to waste your attention and time by meandering around. I tend to skip them especially in lower level areas. Being able to access the same betrayal content across the whole account would be a fantastic change though not necessary in my opinion. Currently, it can take days or weeks to unlock the mastermind on a single character via daily objectives alone and players who like to try out different builds will need to either give up progress on an older character or do objectives on one and rely on random encounters on another. Also, being able to access the investigation board using a key anywhere would be wonderful.

A lot of players dislike Betrayal probably because of the lag. For me, my gripe is that the game will force generate a subordinate for a blank safehouse (has a leader but no subordinate) only in the next betrayal encounter. This means that an encounter for a safehouse will not appear if there are no subordinates, such as by accidental interrogation or after running a completed safehouse. To resolve this, I had to #quarryallday and regularly check the investigation board in my hideout. Sometimes, it probably takes as much as 50 quarries, without checking the map but only reopening new zones, to get a subordinate up. To translate, it means that if you are terribly unlucky, Jun can appear only once in 50 maps.

My second gripe for Betrayal is that the timer for Research encounters can be too short at times. A lot of times, I have to run all the way to the end and kill the syndicate first as killing the packs first could possibly result in failure, unless you are wololoOrb. When only one syndicate member appears, we might also want to poke it a little and wait in case more would spawn. This is commonly not possible for Research in a proper map tier.

Lastly, it may seem that I generally prefer light-content leagues to heavy-content leagues. My reason is because temporary leagues are short in nature and players are limited by time in what they can achieve. An expansion every few leagues is fine, but if you introduce too many blockbuster expansions consecutively, players may become too daunted especially those players who have to skip almost an entire league or two due to real life commitments like college. There are also some of us who have to work t̶o̶ before play and a few hours a day in game is a luxury. A simple, light-content league does not mean brainlessly kill extra mobs and gain extra loot like abysses. Something like Betrayal league would be incredible with the thinking, planning, killing, and dying. Nevertheless, Betrayal content in core game could be further fine-tuned. Thanks!

this "unlocking" phase after opening legion stone may be not that necessary and it may not organically feet the gameplay flow. And I didnt see any information about the solving of existing problems with disrupting of mapping by syndicate/alva/delve. I mean developers said that they have some ideas how to solve this so player can choose what content to interact with, but i saw nothing concerning this problem.

I'm looking forward to trying out Melee changes...but there is still a fundamental problem: clear speed.

While the league mechanic looks fun, it also seems to create the scenario that should be avoided: feeling like missing out.

Seeing all the monsters frozen and ready for freeing but not being able to get them all because either too slow (melee!) or not powerful enough, will feel crap. Stupid screen-clear AoE builds appear to have a massive advantage... Unless...

Melee single target is given a massive boost to where they can target the strong monsters and slay them as priority, where AoE builds will NOT be able to.

But that would seem very difficult to balance, especially with PoE's propensity for stupidly OP clearing capability and the he fact they've made melee splash default (admission of failure to make single target meaningful). And if GGG were to 'de-tune' that it would likely alienate all the speed clearer etc, so likely not happening.

We'll see, but I don't see melee coming out of this as a first class citizen, except melee that's actually just big AoE spell triggers.

mellee rework... i as mellee need just better 2h unique endgame axes and maces, something like endgame gorebreakers :) maybe some better unique armours.. and OFC clear speed.. its sad how much more powerfull are other classes. Why archers or mages are so powerfull? They should be glass cannons, ok, but they are just cannons. I also dont like playing still the same acts again and again you need to do st with this,.

Awesome !!😁