The Good the Bad and the Really Ugly. Lets talk 3.15.

I wanna hear your alls take in a civil discussion :)

Reason I want to voice my opinion is not that it's superior to everyone elses, but because I truly don't want GGG to become Blizzard'ish, in the sense that they want to tell people what's supposed to be a "fun game". Blizzard went down that route really hard, believing only in their own vision and ignoring players completely.

There's a million things I could add, but i'll try keep it just 1 *thing* in each category... other people can add their own, or comment on mine.


My own takes:

The good:
I loved the new ACT 1 difficulty.
I loved being challenged more and running into Brutus so randomly that it was a nice surprise! It brought memories back to my days of first time running into Butcher and being caught off guard ;P

The League mechanic is okay, parts of it are really good and fun, like log books etc. For me personally it's a bit too time-consuming, meaning, I feel the time you spend doing it on regular maps is too much if you like to run a lot of maps.


The bad:
I could mention the mana nerfs, but they reverted or somewhat *un-nerfed* most of them. I'll have to see how it plays out.

The League mechanic is too time consuming per-map. bad, even if parts of the mechanic is great.

Catalysts not increasing chances of the mod-group that specific catalyst represent. Idk why that needed to go... it seems like every time there's even a small probabilistic change where players can impact crafting or push it in a certain direction through choice of tools (catalysts in this case), FUN is detected and removed. Are we really not even allowed a small % increase like the catalysts gave? ... that isn't deterministic, it's just a small probabilistic chance... why can't we have that..? Must everything be so god damn brain snoringly random?

Idk why GGG didn't pickup on the tons and tons of people unhappy with their vision of "crafting = lets close our eyes, exalt slam and pray!" ... Zzz.


The ugly:
Flasks.

Flasks period.

I've no idea what's going on with this flask system.... first none of the flasks give any immunities and it's like a joke or whatever... then they revert that and give *some* of them a 4 sec immunity. But only if you use the flask during an affliction.

So I guess they want players to NOT use their flasks BEFORE they are afflicted by *some relevant affliction* ... but at the same time, they're adding a bunch of *special orbs* that try to automate the system for the player by activating adjacent flasks or activating flasks depending on what you get hit by etc etc etc... wtf ?

It's like...2 steps back, 1 forward, 2 back again .. idk wtf?

If you wanted flasks to have a *special impact when used* then why the hell are the mods so generic on them?
If you wanted players to ONLY use a flask when the player is afflicted by a certain ailment... then why the hell are flasks not simply about ailment removals and utility only and not about adding power to your build? It feels really stupid, knowing you got half charges on your flasks and then not being able to press your flasks to clear a big dangerous pack of monsters.... because... hey.. you used your flasks already? lul, check this out, boom you're frozen, no charges? aww too bad!

Ok, so go freeze immune... sure, I did.

But then wtf is this? I'm still being frozen.
I'm stun immune, I'm freeze immune, I'm following all the forced gameplay from GGG. They change things so that you have to work around it okay... but then why the hell are monsters still freezing me?

Yeah ok, it's not a freeze, technically... they just somehow slow your character to such a degree that you pretty much are frozen... but it's a slow, not a freeze, so ha!

Oh and another thing... Curse flasks for SOME reason do not grant any immunity on use, even when used while cursed... why is that? .. how is the curse flask so different from a freeze or ignite or poison flask? o...O did the chemist guy never figure out how to produce a real curse flask up-to-par with the rest of the affliction removal flasks? lol.. so he just sold them, half-baked?

Every map with a curse on: hehehe press your curse flask, it won't do nothing LUULZ.

God it feels awful.

It feels awful having to jump through so many hoops, to fulfill a weird vision. Yes a weird vision of:
"ok so we have flasks in the game and for 10 years we've conditioned players how to use them and what they're about.... but guess what, we're gonna change it in a way that makes ZERO sense, HA! but it's new..."

Everyones reaction when they first saw the intro video to 3.15 and saw the word: "FLASK rework" ... WOW! COOL! ... everyones reaction when they played the league: Ok cya next league, lets hope for *another rework*.


Sorry, it was mostly negative from my point of view... but hey, just being honest.

straight up rerolling vuln maps cause I don't need that stress in my life

We all play this game to waste time. Everyone playing by the rules anyway. You seem to have issue with that.

Have to admit that I never really used flasking the way it's described here on the forum.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

We all play this game to waste time. Everyone playing by the rules anyway. You seem to have issue with that.

I play *have been playing* because I enjoyed PoE. You know.. games and fun etc... IKR, weird concept.

mmhh, tbh for me 3.15 didn't change that much yet.

Act 1 was pretty cool for the first time, afterwards with leveling items, it's just the same as always... zooming through.

The Mana changes felt pretty bad, after the adjustment it's okish I guess.

Can't really comment on the scaling changes right now, bcz my main character is stuck at early red maps for other reasons (SSF reasons), but I think it could make a difference at ~T16 with 20/20 gems and no other way of scaling than gear wise. (for trade that should be no problem whatsoever)

I'm not sure if I like the Flask changes.
On my Conc Path Chieftain, it's basically 3 auto-anti-ailment flasks, a life Flask and a hyper juiced Quicksilver. So I don't have to press anything other than quicksilver and sometimes the life flask if I get a bleed mostly.
On the Toxic Rain Deadeye now, I strife for 100% Ailment immunity, so my Flasks are basically all "trigger on adjecent Flask use", so I press 1 Flask every 4 seconds and that's it. (nothing changed from before, where a certain macro did the same)

I think the second way of using flasks is how it's supposed to be, bcz u are supposed to use defensive flasks before the damage comes in. So it doesn't make sense to trigger those flasks after u got hit imo, that's why I don't like the auto trigger on ailment tbh. It also takes away a huge part of a characters defenses (rip Basalt Flask).

TL/DR: Act 1 nice, Flask changes meh, other than that not much changed for me.

Catalyst change was huge buff. Not losing quality is way better then pathetic 20 percent buff for the price of 100th of chaos was horrid.

What skill did you level with? I ended up doing blight into essence drain contagion. Real creative right? but it worked well.

Honestly I wasn't too impressed with the act 1 rework, it just felt like I had to kite a little more in mud flats and with hailrake. I could see it being really annoying trying to level melee.

The brutus fight got a little cooler when I realized he breaks down all the doors if you move him through the level. On my playthrough I just killed him where he spawned in and didn't see it the first time. I still prefer the arena fight with adds though.

I was hoping for more monster reworks but it seemed like mostly numerical tweaks. Tar zombies were lame the first time they removed them, they didn't get any better since then.


The league is alright but entire concept of 20 new currencies that only function for bartering with NPCs doesn't seem like it belongs in PoE. The whole plan -> bomb -> kill -> chests -> loot -> npc dump -> re-sort inventory loop every map gets tedious pretty quick. Definitely a league like blight that will feel better as an occasional thing.

Admittedly I didn't get too far into maps, but with a ranged build it felt like you can ignore just about any remnant modifier short of damage immunity and do just fine. I'm sure it's more difficult in higher tiers, but this was also another league where they needed to nerf quarry and buff map loot again.

I'm surprised they went with four RNG bosses with conditional kill challenges after how many complaints there were last league with only one. That felt a bit troll-y.


The nerfs felt half-done, as long as the gap between new content like delirium and maven and older content is so large. The older things will always be trivialized by some builds. And by blanket nerfing DPS without touching content or buffing weak skills it feels like less builds are capable of doing all content on a reasonable budget.

They need to address monster power creep, poor visual clarity, and random one-shots if they want to make PoE a fun challenge.

The worst part of the patch for me was the lack of endgame changes, watchstones and maven trees already feel stale and grindy. Second league in a row where all there is to do is the league mechanic and chase RNG bosses. The state of endgame loot is pretty poor, I'm still confused by putting league and boss loot in the global pool. And the obliteration of awakened gems gutted another reason to push endgame.

The flask changes open up some design space, but it will depend on how they use that space before I'm comfortable judging it. All I can say for now is its disappointing any form of flask piano still exists. Not a fan of the current options for ailments, it's mostly passive and boring.

currently the loop for the most part often dies ==> Loses experience ==> No loot ==> no curency ==> no equipment ==> no end game ==> no fun


repeat the loop

100%stun imune 50% freez imune and gett perma stuck every single map even with flasks perma freez/stun till you die not even move ever. a build that felt almost imortal last league dies every single map this league becouse perma freez/stun/stuck and its the exact same build........ nice league!! cyclon CWDT.... yes i got less damage yes i pay more mana thats all fine.... die becouse i gett stuck by every single monster that looks at me naahhhh this league is a joke