Reached 40/40 - Affliction feedback
 ABOUT ME Putting details in spoiler for those who care.
Spoiler
I'm just gonna make a few points in order to keep this quick:
- My build is poison SRS, high budget. Snapshot PoB: https://pobb.in/QZo0rTujIs1t - My budget is bad. I didn't do a lot of Affliction content so juicing maps isn't something I did much. My best sources of income were creating Incursion temples, opening strongboxes, and doing Harvest. - I refuse to utilize carry services. In my opinion, doing so cheapens the experience of completing challenges. If I cannot complete the challenges, then either I need to improve my build, or GGG needs to start making them more accessible. ----- THE MAIN ATTRACTION - AFFLICTION Just going to say, right off the bat, this league isn't going core. With what little time I spent running maps with wisps, the game threw divines at me hand over fist. The only other time I get handed so much currency is when I get lucky and find a divine eldritch altar, but this is happening all of the time. This league was a big mistake for GGG. With the incredible amount of currency you can produce in Affliction, anything that doesn't come close next time is going to feel like poverty. This is largely why I avoided engaging with the league for the most part. While my earnings are absolutely terrible compared to everyone else, I at least won't miss it when it doesn't go core. The biggest issue I have with wisp juicing is that it also makes monsters incredibly resilient. Thankfully GGG learned since Trial of the Ancestor league in that monsters don't scale to the point your uber boss killing build is literally unviable. It's still very tough though, and unless you've got a significant amount of DPS, this excludes you from engaging in any other content which has timers. Good luck completing Incursions when any yellow monsters and Architect get massive health scaling, for example. All of the Wanderer ascendancies are pretty OP, especially the Primal Huntress. My only hope is that the Warden of Eaves's rare/unique enemy radar goes core, possibly as a passive or unique jewel. It's a pretty nice quality of life feature. The King in the Mists fight is pretty fun. He's not a particularly grueling fight, but the only real challenge comes in not getting lost in the labyrinth phase. I've had a couple occurrences where there weren't any wisps in a wide area so I eventually die. It didn't happen often at least. ----- THE SECOND ATTRACTION - ULTIMATUM The long awaited league has finally returned. I didn't like it. The monsters are overwhelming and the trial hazards are extremely dangerous. It is by far the hardest encounter in the game. You must have a significant amount of DPS and clear speed to comfortably tackle this content, something my poison DPS build clearly lacks. For what little I did with this league for the sake of completing challenges, it was at least rewarding. The catalysts all had value and the Inscribed Ultimatums were always a welcome find. ----- THE CHALLENGES I'm not going to list down every single challenge to nitpick about them since most were tolerable, but I am going to go over the ones I found most annoying to complete. Ultimate Undertaking, Peak Pinnacles I'm mentioning both together, because they share the same problem: These challenges require extremely powerful builds to complete. Of all of the other challenges, I feel like these two are the ones a lot of players are going to struggle with completing on their own, assuming they don't do carry services. Wave 30 Simulacrum, Flawless Breachstone, and 8-mod Inscribed Ultimatum all require very high DPS and clear speed to even have a chance at finishing them. Infused Beachhead is just remarkably expensive to run and there's no guarantee you'll get back even a fraction of the currency you spent on it. Of all of them, the 30 rewards in Domain of Timeless Conflict was the easiest followed by 100% IIQ heist blueprint. Uber Exarch really needs to be looked at. Despite having 2 invitations from grinding Exarch influence in Eldritch Endgame challenge, I simply couldn't beat him. His fireball bullet hell phase he spams with alarming frequency more than any other boss just kills me instantly and the damage for his other moves are overtuned. My Animate Guardian never died in all the time I played this league except for the one time I attempted to fight Uber Exarch and failed, but now I had to dump 20d just to replace them. GGG, please do not keep adding challenges which require powerful gear checks to complete. I ran a meta build that's long overdue for nerfing and I struggled to finish the Peak Pinnacles. I can't imagine what players running non-peak meta builds are going through. ----- WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW? Now that I've beaten Path of Exile for the second time in a row after playing for 11 years, I'm gonna take a short break and play something else I've been neglecting since league start which is Caves of Qud. It's a great game if you like an open-world roguelike RPG where you could turn yourself into a sentient door with a gun if you really wanted. After that, I'm gonna explore more summoner build options. I'm not gonna lie, poison SRS is a very powerful and cost-efficient build which can almost do everything comfortably at a low budget. How it's avoided getting nerfed I'll never know, but I need to stop relying on it for the same reason I don't want to be reliant on Affliction juice. I was thinking of experimenting with Zoomancer with what little currency I have remaining. Anyone know of any other good summoner builds I could try playing? PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds. Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. Last edited by Pizzarugi on Feb 27, 2024, 8:13:57 AM Last bumped on Jan 22, 2024, 12:34:31 PM
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This is a sexy post
Do a carrion golem build. There are some pretty gnarly ones on youtube to follow. Or even, because its rather different, do a popcorn SRS build (although I'm sure you probably have at some point....) Just know that NOTHING will come remotely close to poison srs in strength, budget, or speed... Last edited by jsuslak313 on Jan 18, 2024, 7:28:23 PM
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" I'll take a look at Carrion Golems. I might not play them for the remainder of this league since I already have Zoomancer on the mind, and I've missed playing with a build that uses zombies in its setup. Reminds me of the old D2 skelly necro glory days. I haven't given Carrion Golems much thought since I heard they got nerfed sometime ago, and since I've not seen anybody talking about them, I assumed it was a dead build now. I have indeed tried popcorn SRS, but it was a few leagues ago. I wasn't feeling it back then, but there's the new trans gem for them which I bet has made them much stronger. " Yeah I know. T_T I came to that revelation a couple days ago. Ever since I started running it back in Ancestor league, I've poisoned my mind. I can't see other summoner builds as anything but inferior now. I realized that it wasn't because they are inferior, but because poison SRS is far and above all of the others. It's an exception to the norm, but I made the mistake of holding them all to an unachievable high standard set by this one build. Now I want to break away from this build and bring my standards back to something more reasonable. I want to be ready for when GGG eventually nerfs it. PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds. Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. Last edited by Pizzarugi on Jan 18, 2024, 8:01:46 PM
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Carrions are a shadow of what they once were, but they can still get up there into the high single digit millions or low double digit millions. And you can build super defensively with golems too. I found that poison srs, at least my versions, were never anywhere near as tanky as my golem builds.
Plus there's very little maintenance with golems, they are always around no need for recasting! Zombies....die. |
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Ever try lightning srs? It makes poison look weak.
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" I heard of elemental SRS builds, but I've never heard of specifically lightning variants. Is there a build guide for it? PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. | |
"https://pobb.in/NuMxqr3hb9Gy Something like that. |
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" 94m DPS (I pulled PoB from youtube video linked in notes on one you provided) on a high budget is pretty insane. The only thing I'm concerned about is the time it takes to kill bosses as demonstrated in the video. My poison SRS build took just as long to kill uber bosses and it reaches 29m DPS. A build with that much damage also shouldn't be taking so long to kill guards in Sanctum even without the health/damage boons. Either lightning SRS's PoB has some configs ticked which is greatly inflating its DPS numbers, or the video clips were running on a lower budget, in which case that is impressive. PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds. Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. Last edited by Pizzarugi on Jan 18, 2024, 8:50:26 PM
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I phased everything in hota league with lightning srs, this league i am on the mf train and playing explode but i suspect it should be stronger.
Last edited by plaguefear on Jan 18, 2024, 8:51:53 PM
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" Fair enough. It's also a very unorthodox build since it uses Champion of all things to run summons. I'll hold onto the PoB for the future and wait until GGG nerfs SRS or poison, whichever is the outlier. PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. |
