What do we think about the current league?

OP - you really nail on the head and i agree with everything you said.

I just feel im not gonna hit any good drops - im a casual player but even last league i managed to stumble across a couple of good drops in the wildwood that funded my janky build.

Personally, adding another difficult way of crafting has not increased my enjoyment of the the game at all.

Cons:
- They killed my beloved syndicate
- They missed the mark on scarabs, I just don't think they solved any problem by combining them with sextants
- I hate grave crafting on a UX point of view, you can craft nasty things but the preparation for a craft is just tedious.
- T17 mods are a mess, it is absolutely the worst possible bridge between normal and uber bosses

Pros:
- Love the 3 x atlas trees
- Town portal keybind is GODLY (best feature of the league)

D4 bad!

Patch
Good. I like most, if not all of the changes they've done here. Sextants were probably the worst mechanic ever from a QoL point of view. Combining them with Scarabs did introduce some new problems, but also solved some. Some tweaks on the atlas tree and I think we're OK; a "100% increased chance of dropping X Scarabs" for all Scarabs, please - not just some of them.

Multiple atlas trees? Thank you.

Portal scroll bind? Thank you.

T17 maps are in need of some more tweaks, it seems.

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League
Mixed. I like Allflames, as I like to specialize my gameplay. I also think Devoted mods are fun, but could be improved.

The crafting part? Not for me. As long as crafting is this concoluted, I will never interact with it. Sure, it's their form of balancing, but... Not for me. I will reap the rewards from a economy perspective, though.

Regarding adding the league mechanic to the atlas tree: It does let you specialiez your experience from a "crafter" or "farmer" perspective. But it also introduces some FOMO. I'm not sure if this was a good idea.

What i think about the current league? Well, it reminds me of my ex-girlfriend. She was a hot, unbalanced mess. But at least she had some redeeming qualities.

More seriously though, most things were said by OP and others. At first i thought it is only the intrusive league mechanic, but i guess GGG changed to much at once, broke way too many systems on the way and now have to deal with the fallout. Add to this killing the economy twice favoring only few players combined (imho) with subpar communication with and reaction to the community and the feedback given.

TP scroll hotkey is very nice, though.

Its.. very boring?

All the tedium of spreadsheet crafting, with slower than average map clears.

And thats... it.

To me the current league is pretty meh, it's okay currency if you're willing to sell corpses and it's good crafting if you're willing to go to university to learn to make 1 item.
Being forced on every zone sucks.
Having atlas passives for the current mechanic sucks, the nodes feel mandatory.

Scarab changes feel pretty bad, not being able to target farm div scarabs is a dumb oversight. Having the ability to reroll scarabs in their same tier in harvest would have made this patch unironically 10x better for the economy, but they removed it just to ruin harvest.

PoE this patch changed a lot in the core game that has brought it from something I personally played 4+ hours a day to login->do a few maps->logout.

I feel the aspirational content for a player like me is gone, before this patch each league my goals were:
I make a character to kill all uber bosses, delve to around 500 depth, complete 38-40 challenges, and make a fun map blaster, maybe even do some 3 man group play magic finding with some close friends, mostly in a group found (we all hate trading) environment.
In affliction since the league was so crazy we also collected every voidborn and valdo variant of mageblood and headhunter to keep in standard, and some people even made entire voidborn-item builds.

I tell you all of this because: I took my strongest characters from standard;
the best map blasters i've ever made (3+ mirrors in items) (level 100 deadeye ts original sin +1pc heatshiver/morbid nock)
The best uber bosser i've ever made (shield charge through uber sirus storms and face tank all abilities for kicks) (arakaali's fang max block poison cap with enough auras and tattoos to be used as a support)

and with these 2 characters i tried a few t17s (i used niko / shrine atlas taking almost no increased effect of modifiers nodes)
I was able to full clear them, 6 portals every time, Not one time did it feel like an enjoyable stepping stone to killing uber pinnacles.

My characters are not perfect, but they are far and above the average players in-league build in terms on enjoyment. I cannot see a group-found or ssf method to play the game to actually fight all ubers if these t17s are the requirement. They should not have been made unmodifiable, let me scour these stupid anti-fun mods.

I know there are several builds out there that are able to do these maps.
Not everyone wants to play hexblast mines.
I know if you bring an aurabot it gets easier, but my aurabot this league doesn't want to login if every group find strat just gets nuked as soon as it's discovered, not to mention 95% of players don't have an aurabot on standby.

What does the Maven say? Not Good.