Path of Exile - upcoming F2P Daiablo clone

[frunk]

Yeah, once.  No such restrictions in GD - Respec all you want

You can always make more of the currency (or convert to), just like you can in Grim Dawn.  Also in Grim Dawn the bottom row points (whose name I don't remember) you can't respec and the Devotion points cost extra which is a limited resource.

[crazy canuck]

Those are the professions.  I don't mind not being able to respec that.  But there is a lot more flexibility in GD than POE.  You don't have to grind currency to respect in GD.  It is really cheap and the iron pieces are dead easy to accumulate.

[Iormlund]

My altholism got the best of me once again.

Inspired by Mathil, I fully leveled a Divine Ire Ignite trickster in three days. Most of that was Fireball-based, as I needed lvl 80 for Stormfire.
My other characters had more than enough DPS but lowish health pool (Energy Shield item prices are nuts). So I went with Mind over Matter & Eldritch Battery (via Diadem). I'm fairly happy with the result. With 7k combined life & ES plus the Ghost Shrouds and some leech, it's the most tanky build I've ever run.
Of course with my budget I don't have anywhere near the 1m Shaper DPS Mathil does, but I can still one shot every Atziri phase. I did die a few times to the damned mirror due to the huge AoE though. 

I'm further than I've ever been at this point. I've downed Atziri, Xoph and am up to t14 maps (without buying). I might actually even kill Elder if the fucking Shaper stops fucking with me.

[Iormlund]

Well, my first Elder spawned ... in a tier 15 map.

The guided hammer toss from the Purifier gave me some grief, but all 4 guardians are down now.

[frunk]

An Update from Chris

I'm quoting the whole thing, as I think it's a great message.

It seems like the after holidays expansion is usually sub-par.  I think they should dedicate that slot to an easier to release set of changes, say a dedicated Legacy league with some twists.  It might be better to build a bit of downtime into their yearly schedule.

An Update from Chris

It doesn't take much reading of the official forums or subreddit to realise that a group of Path of Exile players are angry about a number of topics and feel that we haven't given solid answers about how we're going to address these issues. We will explain as many of these topics as we can in the Q&A that is currently scheduled for later this week. However, one thing that the Q&A doesn't address is how we got here. I wanted to personally post an explanation of what has been going on behind the scenes at Grinding Gear Games that led to this state.

Synthesis was more work than we expected. It was developed over the Christmas holiday, and its gameplay prototype came in very late. We didn't have a lot of time to iterate on it before release or to make drastic changes that it potentially needed. While our improvements after its launch have helped a lot and many players are enjoying it, we fully acknowledge that it is not our best league and is not up to the quality standards that Path of Exile players should expect from us. It will not be merged into the core game in 3.7.0. Maybe we can do something with it in the future, but we have no current plans.

When we reveal 3.7.0 in three weeks, you'll see that its league has a focus on repeatable fun, and the combat revamp has a lot of focus on improving the fundamentals of Path of Exile's gameplay. In order to do this, we have had our heads down, focusing on getting 3.7.0 to be ready as early as we can within its development cycle.

But that's not all we need to work on. There are a large number of critical projects going on at the same time. For a start, our 4.0.0 mega-expansion is taking a huge amount of the company's time. We see this upgrade as critical because the next generation of Action RPGs is coming and we have to be ready. Not proactively keeping up with competitors is how companies die. We don't see the huge time investment in 4.0.0 as optional at all.

In addition to 4.0.0, we've also committed to running the ExileCon convention later this year. You may think that this is a fun optional side project for us, but we see it as critical because we need a stage (literally) to announce 4.0.0 to the world. Talking to other developers has shown us that conventions are by far the best way to market a new product of this size.

Then there's the Korean launch. South Korea is a large market and we feel we are years late to release there. Due to that, we committed with our publisher to release in Korea alongside 3.7.0 and we will meet this commitment, but it's yet another project to handle concurrently.

Then there's various issues with Path of Exile on the console platforms which feel bad about because we have made promises that we haven't yet fulfilled. After the Xbox launch, all of our console resources went into preparing the PS4 release which meant we didn't spend enough time supporting the feature requests from the Xbox community. Now that the PS4 version has launched, we need to make headway on console features.

All of these areas, from 3.7.0 through to the eventual release of 4.0.0, are going to make massive and lasting fundamental improvements to Path of Exile. We have been making great headway and are incredibly excited to show this work when it's ready. However, this has all come at a cost.

While we have released many patches during the 3.6.x cycle to address community concerns, the significant internal development focus on the long term of Path of Exile has meant that we have chosen not to prioritise things like completely overhauling Synthesis or creating an entirely new type of one-month race.

Every week, there are feedback threads about many different topics. The community generally do a great job of constructively presenting reasons for wanting various changes, and we appreciate that.

When given this feedback, we have two options:
Assemble the team of seven key people who are needed to solve the issue, discuss it for half a day, and then lock in the solution, so that we can at least tell the community what our plan is, even if it's a little while before we get to it. An example of this is the when we made large functional and balance changes to Delve based on community feedback. The drawback with doing this is that it derails up to seven important projects that we're working on in order to solve the problem. We have to be selective about which problems we apply this approach to.
The second option is to read and consider the feedback, and specifically decide to deal with it later. This doesn't mean it isn't going to be done, it just means we are prioritising the existing release we're currently working on. An example is the Map Stash Tabs in Standard situation where we waited a whole league before we solved it. If we had put the time into this solution a league earlier, Synthesis would have been even worse.

Simply put, we can't fix every problem every league. There are going to problems that we don't address quickly. We'll get to them as soon as we can.

A big topic in the gaming industry recently is development crunch. Some studios make their teams work 14 hour days to pack every patch full of the most fixes and improvements possible. Sometimes when we read our own Patch Notes threads and community feedback, we feel that we are being asked to do the same. I will not run this company that way. While there's inevitably a bit of optional paid overtime near league releases, the vast majority of a Path of Exile development cycle has great work/life balance. This is necessary to keep our developers happy and healthy for the long-term, but it does mean that some game improvements will take a while to be made.

We try as hard as we can to communicate with our community about our development priorities. We post daily news and aim for some kind of substantial development update every week. Bex and her team are all over the community posts, passing information back to the developers and seeking answers to questions. However, as I explained earlier, in order to be able to share our firm plans about topics, we have to assemble the right developers, derail their current work and make some time-consuming decisions.

Due to the sheer amount of stuff we've been working on, certain topics have not been addressed to the satisfaction of the community.

I am very sorry about this. One of our key values is our relationship with our community. We feel that our internal emphasis on longer term improvements to Path of Exile has caused some damage to that relationship in the short term. We will make sure that we find a good balance between addressing immediate concerns and making the long-term improvements the game needs.

Later this week, we'll post our first set of answers to the questions from the Q&A. I will make sure that it includes all the hot topics such as Synthesis, trade, console improvements, ExileCon races, etc.

We can't wait to announce 3.7.0 in three weeks. Its name is on the list.

[FunkMonk]

So I was intending to play Total War Three Kingdoms this weekend but it turns out 3.7 came out this weekend.

Decided to start the league with ED-Contagion and it's one of the smoothest league starts I've ever had. Feels powerful, fast, and effective.

I'll start a melee build after I do some farming with ED-Contagion.

[Syt]

The melee overhaul feels good so far. I appreciate the animation canceling/smoothing, meaning that you don't have wait for skill animations to finish before you can move again. Also, movement skills are instant now. I've actually been using Leap Slam since Act 1 without support gems and finding it convenient.

[Iormlund]

I pondered going Ed-Contagion, but my 2 RL friends are starting with it. 

So I'm starting with a tanky Slayer. The idea is to stun bosses into submission. We'll see how it works out given my mediocre budget.

It has pitiful clearance compared to caster builds, but hopefully I can rely on my mates to kill everything.

[frunk]

I've played a little bit (busy with moving) and it seems fine.  I like the way movement skills work now, and it looks like former single target melee skills still need Melee Splash to have a real AOE.  It's a bit better as the single target improves when there are multiple targets in the AOE where before it always sucked having to add Melee Splash.  Still a bad gem for true single target though.

[Syt]

Early mapping with Ice Crash Juggernaut. Current build:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Syt1976/characters?characterName=Yotunakea

[Iormlund]

Cyclone is pretty nice. You can run in circles around the mobs while they contemplate the end of their existence.

I'm using a custom Pathfinder poison build which, with little investment, should go over 1.5m Shaper DPS. All while having mitigation in the form of elemental ailment immunity, Fortify, Aspect of the Spider, Temporal Chains and Dodge Acrobatics.

[Syt]

A map killed me three times yesterday in short succession. Me: WTF. 

*checks map modifiers again*

"13% reflected elemental damage "

[crazy canuck]

I tried the league but it is beginning to feel too repetitive.  The mechanic this time round is just kill as much as you can as fast as you can.  Good brainless fun but it doesn't really compete with the things that can be done now that the weather is great.  I am amazed at the amount of time people soak into this game.  There are people already starting their second characters after maxing out their first ones.

[Iormlund]

Hardcore players can start clearing maps within 6 to 8 hours. A build per week is not that surprising if PoE is your main hobby.

[Syt]

It took me 25 hours with this char to get through the campaign.

Although I do clear all maps once before moving on.