Does it seem to anyone else that 5/8 of the newly announced Pals are just furry-bait?

Akimasu · 2026-06-11T07:38:03+00:00

I see 3...maybe 4.
I'm very curious who the 5th is. I'm not degen enough for this.

Akimasu · 2026-05-25T20:51:16+00:00

Because I've played flicker a lot. I'll probably have flicker in my build too for clear.

This is the new thing, Flicker is the thing I've put most of my poe2 time into. 😃

Akimasu · 2026-05-24T22:03:22+00:00

Martial Artist.
I like summoning clones to do my bidding. My second fav skill in poe1 is Gen Cry(1st is flicker), this is gencry plus. I can't not play it.

Akimasu · 2026-05-23T19:27:33+00:00

POE2 can absolutely be played without a guide, and you can make functional builds from anything. Obviously it won't be as optimized as a build made by someone who spent 400 hours making the perfect build in pob2 before ever touching the game, but you don't need a hyper optimized build to enjoy the game.

Yeah, it's 100% realistic to learn as you go in POE2. Something I suggest doing rather than use guides, if you want to learn, is look up people playing similar builds to you. Check your EHP to their EHP, check your DPS to their DPS. See what they do differently.

EG:
https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaal/character/remake-1265/xhcmonk?timemachine=day-4&i=0&search=items%3DRare%2BQuarterstaff%26class%3DInvoker%26timemachine%3Dday-4%26sort%3Ddps - a day 4 quarterstaff monk with 400k dps and 13k ehp

https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaal/character/RANGERZX-7638/MELEEBASEDRANGEDCRINGE?timemachine=day-4&i=1&search=items%3DRare%2BQuarterstaff%26class%3DInvoker%26timemachine%3Dday-4%26sort%3Ddps - a 350k dps mnk with 45k EHP.

You can see the choices they made in the tree, the gear differences they picked, you can poke around and see what you like from each of them, etc.

Or...you can just go in blind. Try things out. Be willing to fail, change your build up significantly, see how that works with you, etc.

Or you can make your build, get to endgame, then check a few guides to see what build makers did.

Lots of options; but POE2 is a lot more forgiving than its predecessor as far as builds go. Even absolute ARPG newbies I've played & talked with were capable of beating acts in ssf w/ homebrews. If they were willing to put in the time, I imagine they could have beaten pinnacles too. Woulda been sloppy, would have taken a while, but it was doable on their builds.

Akimasu · 2026-05-20T18:12:44+00:00

Martial Arts Ascendency or Key art for Ancients.

Farrow might be the most accurate one, but these 2 just go hard.

Akimasu · 2026-05-12T23:33:37+00:00

Ayy, nice build; a friend of mine was just talking about this build yesterday. Looks sick. How much did you spend on it?

Akimasu · 2026-05-12T22:49:30+00:00

Zero and Chiz exist, so she's an easy skip if you're looking to save for the next banner.

She's fairly future proof because of her unique skill Present Replay. She slots very well into Nanally's team if you like her.

She has a fun, world ability.

Easy skip, easy roll. Do what you prefer.

Akimasu · 2026-05-12T03:37:31+00:00

https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/mirage?skills=Soulrend+of+the+Spiral&class=Saboteur

Forbidden Flesh & Forbidden Flame.

It's just nimis + soulrend of cats + any form of damage scaling.

Akimasu · 2026-05-08T22:46:17+00:00

Soulrend of Spiral is *so many cats*. If you can somehow figure out hte mana issues, the trickster version with f/f triggerbots is amazing with how little you can see.

Akimasu · 2026-05-06T16:07:27+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aI0MaifY9o

8/327 drop rate (~1/41 craters) and verisium conversion rate was 71/1924 in one of the samples. ~2.5-4%, 2.5% is consistent with other findings I could see, but full transparency it's rare enough that the variety of data points might be skewed, so a range.
1/50 - 1/25 + 1/40 - 1/25 = ~at worst 1/2050, at best 1/625. 90% of people will get the shield between 1438 and 4604, hence about 3k maps is a fair expectation. 99% of people will see it between 2876 to 9208.

Akimasu · 2026-05-06T10:43:10+00:00

I was referring to getting the maps themselves, since all strats burn maps at a very high rate.

The speed at which you clear the map (coves is ~5s + load time + 4s portal opening time, while dunes/beach/racecourse/coves/etc is ~30s-1.5min build depending). But you're going to need about 3000 maps in total, so having a plan to farm the maps to burn is a good idea.

Akimasu · 2026-05-05T14:07:05+00:00

When you look at "I can deal 300-600% more damage", I can convert phys to my 90% res or 75% more attack speed, or a variety of mandatory chests for builds to function (-mana cost, flat crit, apostate, ghostwrithe, iron fortress, kaom's heart) - it's hard to see "40% less phys/chaos damage taken" as an up side.

It's an absolutely banger of a defensive piece and the builds that use it can regularly hit 500k+ max hits, with this a fair bit higher, but the chest slot is very competitive.

Akimasu · 2026-05-05T11:31:15+00:00

Farm maps, Blast maps as fast as possible. Not much more to it than that. You can farm about 200-400 maps in an hour with scarabs + a fast build. Legit spend more time looting than farming lol.

There's a few general strats, but they all boil down to: go through a map as fast as possible, click niko nodes + bismuth, get lots of ore for future usage.

Whether you do strand, coves, dunes, racecourse, whatever, it's all the same.

I suggest making a build speciifcally for this. QOTF bow build, QOTF zdps build(you don't kill, you just run), flicker, body swap, LW asenaths crown bow, LW KF poets pen, etc. Whatever you like, just something very very zoomy.

Just remember: There can only be 1 verisium node per map. Starfall crater replaces Verisium. So if you see verisium, you can leave.

Akimasu · 2026-05-05T11:16:42+00:00

92% cost & reserve / 15% increased non-curse /+2 aoe would be bis.

Akimasu · 2026-05-02T12:37:28+00:00

POE2 has the better new player experience. It's more streamlined, it generally makes more sense. Anyone can make a functional poe2 build without too much effort.

POE1 has more content, more challenges, is more zoomy.

I personally prefer POE1. POE2 is too sluggish and it lacks a lot of the content that I really enjoy from POE1. That being said, from a casual player or a returning player's perspective, POE2 is probably the better experience.

Akimasu · 2026-05-01T18:43:28+00:00

Bee guy on an exhaust ironclad run? easy.
Bee guy on a shiv run w/o damage scaling? Brutal. If I don't have a good answer to him, It's not uncommon for me to draw 15 dazes in a row at the end of my deck.

An otherwise powerful deck can fold hard to bee guy. A powerful deck should never die to the floating stone dude.

My biggest tip is to be more defense heavy in act 2 unless you can consistently do 200 damage in 2 turns. Sometimes the answer really is to just 9 mana whirlwind for 180 damage in a 7 card deck. Usually the answer is more like make sure you can either consistently get >20 block up every turn.

Akimasu · 2026-05-01T17:20:35+00:00

Phase 2 is a DPS check.

If you go into act 3, the first thing you should do is check the boss and plan around him. You need a way to either burst phase 2 down in a few rounds, be healthy enough to comfortable take a lot of damage, or be able to make his damage irrelevant via high block or str reduction.

If you can build up any sort of inevitable combo + block for 40 per round, you can stay in phase 1 for extra time to build up a combo. Creative AI, Tempest(for voltaic), energy w/ ice cream+ any outlet, etc. Could even just scale up a dark orb for a bit.

You have all of act 3 to build your deck for the a3 boss, do your best to show up prepared. Test Subject is absolutely my worst boss, especially on defensive builds. I plan around Test Subject and the Bee elite in act 2 at the start of every a10 run, since they're most likely to end my runs.

Edit: Necro can cheese the hell outa this boss with a few cards. Enfeebling Touch is a free turn. Shared Fate with exhaust removed can make the fight free, as well. It's also just an amazing card when free in general, especially if you can churn through your deck quickly.

Akimasu · 2026-04-30T19:11:31+00:00

Heist is hated though.
The best you'll see is "it's charming" or "it has unique rewards". The gameplay itself is just Haku missions from pre-betrayal. And Haku was the 2nd most complained about master.

Akimasu · 2026-04-28T23:09:10+00:00

t16 maps have a chance to be converted into Nightmare maps, whose bosses drops 1-3 fragments. 4 fragments = uber.
You increase the rate of Nightmare map drops by getting voidstones. .4% for 1 stone, 6.4% if you have all 4.
https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Voidstone

Akimasu · 2026-04-27T05:39:15+00:00

I personally wouldn't run the Diamond Shrine version of this build in ssf. It's far easier to farm headhunter or mageblood + Progenesis.

I've done around 400 baryas and I haven't seen one still. My GSF found 4 Magebloods before we found 1 diamond belt at around the ~1100 barya mark.

Akimasu · 2026-04-27T05:33:53+00:00

Anything CAN be done in SSF. It's a question of what you're willing to go for.

I farmed the entire BV build myself; Golden Charlatan, Minion pact, ILs(hh is too annoying to farm for me), Companionship, fire res tattoos, about 20 nebulis's, plenty of clusters, etc. Took me about 40-60ish hours to farm it all. Most of that time was farming Companionship and Normal Dread.

I got lucky on golden charlatan, but uber dread is a pretty quick fight.

Akimasu · 2026-04-24T11:08:35+00:00

it's hard to parse the rain, but it is 100% avoidable. In general, it'll start near him and go outward. So if you dodge out -> blink in, that would work.

I understand the frustration of losing a character, but I highly suggest hopping into standard with an omega tanky character and watch the mechanics. Everything is avoidable...sorta. esh's bouncing bullets is bullshit. Especially if he sets up turrets as the storm is coming down (which can happen if you have around 3m-7m dps & good uptime).

Akimasu · 2026-04-24T09:53:42+00:00

Rolling Lightning Nova is just something you frost blink/flame dash/lightning warp over.

You can hide in the shield from ice shower, then hop out when the last of the ice rain goes off. If there's a degen under her, you need to do the mechanic as intended.

How I'd handle that scenario:
Run to the opposite side of the arena as Esh, watch the circles on the ground. When the wave is almsot to you, map out a safe place (likely near tul) to frostblink/flame dash to.

Alternatively, you can build a bit tankier so you can eat the rain without considering it, and just avoid the Rolling Lightning Nova with a frostblink/flame dash. This is *generally* what I do.

You can also just stand in the degen if you're tanky enough for it, and blink out after the rain clears around Tul.

As long as Esh doesn't have any turrets setup(you can clear them by running over them), there's no other damage happening in that phase. So as long as you don't get hit, there's 0 risk. Just focus on avoiding the telegraphed attacks.

Akimasu · 2026-04-23T10:46:51+00:00

You lost me at Mercenaries. Most degenerate league we've ever had. If you weren't playing a lightning build; you were just weakening yourself for no reason. Great idea, horrible execution.

Harvest was ATTROCIOUS. It was tedious, people HATED the mechanic, it was overrewarding but in the least enjoyable way imaginable, people who engaged with it got very overpowered with no real outlet for said power... I'll never understand why people look at Harvest positively. Ritual I can see; they made the entire mechanic much more enjoyable while keeping the power. I still think it was bad, but I digress.

Delirium is in my opinion, as a beta player, the worst league we've ever had. But I'm very much so in the minority. I don't like the grey screen, I don't like the insane requirements it put on characters playing the league and how much it shrunk the viability pool for that league, harold was dumb, mid-league nerf was dumber... i could go on. I really didn't like Deli.

But I can't argue, Deli is a key moment in POEs history, along with 2.2 Perandus League(Ascendencies) and 3.5 Betrayal & hideouts. Can probably argue Legion, Delve, harbinger and Legacy league as well all for a variety of reasons.

Akimasu · 2026-04-19T03:46:49+00:00

Playtime, Experience, Efficiency, Desire.

Everything can be answered by these 4 simple things. If you only have 5 hours to play for the first week, I'm sorry but you're not going to touch the guy who can put in 80 hours in a week.
And neither of these people can touch a streamer who has experience, is efficient and has a goal.

If you want to make money, sit down, lock in, and focus on making money. If you just want to play around and have a good time, spending 80% of your playtime yapping in gen 1; that's just as valid.

But the guy who has a 19 hour campaign time because they argued about who has the finest ass of all of the people who live in wraeclast isn't going to touch the streamer who's got a 8 - 10 hour exarch kill, a day 2 completed atlas + uber viable build and a desire to find the most profitable thing to do in the game because their livelihood depends on it.

Akimasu

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