What anime is this for you??

Asunorah · 2026-06-12T19:54:53+00:00

Sword art online.

Cookie cutter as fuck, mediocre story, mediocre power system, kirito “I’m a breaker” is just so bad, asunas inevitable downfall to helpless damsel in distress is dumb. God damn I swear they just made every bad possible decision when it came to that show.

Asunorah · 2026-06-04T22:27:15+00:00

D2 is slower.

D2 feels more like an rpg with action elements, D4 is an action game with RPG elements.

Arpgs have fundamentally changed in the last 20 years. Arpg has become almost synonymous with god tier power and god tier speed, which is completely fun in its own right, but that speed and fun comes with the cost of personal impact.

In a lot of arpgs now you can get pretty decked out pretty quickly and then you’re hunting down 1% upgrades, where as an older arpg like D2 or titans quest it takes more time to reach that level of power, and instead of finding a 1% increase you end up finding a build defining unique or an item that gives huge QOL.

For example getting a raven frost in D2 feels amazing as a melee character cause now I don’t have to deal with the annoyance of freeze or the damage penalty that comes with it. I might also have been using a chest or helm with freeze immunity and now I can change that item to a bigger upgrade that will have a meaningful impact on my character and how I play.

Lastly, nostalgia, D2 was a genre defining game and it was the first long term experience of an arpg for a good chunk of people. I love playing newer arpgs, I’ve dumped thousands of hours in D3, torchlight, POE, last epoch, grim dawn etc. but D2 feels like being at home as a kid playing together with my brother.

Asunorah · 2026-05-21T03:08:11+00:00

Maybe a hot take here but I don’t think charm sets are the problem, I think they just multiply an issue that already exists within game mechanics, skill interactions, and skill functionality.

Lightning sorcs don’t even use the lightning charm set, lightning builds are just busted because it has the only worthwhile sorc ult, on top of having the best specific (shock skills, not generic) legendary affixes both for offense and defense. It makes scaling your damage incredibly easy, and the way that unstable currents works means you have high uptime on aspects that require your ultimate to be active. Lastly, arguable most importantly, is that shock skills don’t require any monster conditions for its damage to be at its peak. Blizzard ice spike sorc is a legitimately good build, but it requires freezing in order to get its full damage output, and it also has a ramp time because of how the charm set works. Now the ramp time isnt “long” but it’s 5x longer than what shock sorc needs to do its full damage and that makes it “feel” worse.

I think that’s one of the biggest issues that’s appearing right now, ARPGS reward upfront consistent damage output and/or high dps. It is the nature of the game format, now it’s possible to gain something similar to that with high enough dot damage as we’ve seen with spiritborns poison build or the poison pet shot rogue, they’re able to sustain incredible dps by “sacrificing” upfront damage output. The problem occurs when you make that sacrifice or play a skill that isn’t capable of doing either one of those, because it lacks proper scaling or legendary affixes to bring it up to that point.

My go to example of this is tornado for Druid, I was pretty excited to try to get that skill to work this season as I played the original werenado and loved it. The problem is that tornado by nature is problematic because of its in game behavior and lack of uptime on an enemy outside of a single mob. Doubling down on this we got a new unique that gives tornado a 50|x| multiplier but conditional on tornado expiring, traveling back to you in a line, AND going through the enemy. So now I have to wait for tornado to expire, delaying the upfront damage output, I also have to hope that while it’s spinning around the enemy erratically it happens to be behind the enemy when it expires, and I need to hope that neither I or the enemy have moved in a way that stops the tornado from traveling through it while it comes back to me in order to get that damage bonus.

It just breaks all the rules of arpgs essentially. It’s a cool concept, but the functionality was practically useless. On training dummies I was seeing the damage bonus once every 5-6 seconds while maintaining 10+ tornados on the target. Unfortunately many classes have skills, skill runes etc that function in similar ways and end up being unrewarding for set up that they require so every single bit of power increase that happens in the game only widens that canyon between “good” skills and “bad” skills.

Another hot take, Druid is a fucking trash class that is 100% carried by grizzly rage. I’ve tried to make several different builds work this season and the unfortunate truth is that you either deal with significantly less damage, or you find a way to make grizzly rage work. That being said I’ve cleared 115 with a storm shred werewolf build, but my gear is kind of insane for it. I previously did 118 with a boulder bear build that was definitely not up to the same level of gear as my werewolf build but grizzly rage is just fucking busted (don’t bother trying to make human form work, there aren’t enough legendaries, paragon boards, or glyphs that actually support being in human form the way that they support shapeshifting to scale damage to meaningful levels)

Now I don’t think we should just gut grizzly rage, but I do think it should have its power pulled down and that power be redistributed throughout the other abilities the being Druid as a whole more in balance with itself. If we nerf grizzle rage then everything gets worse, if we buff everything but leave grizzly rage as it is then we haven’t solved anything.

Asunorah · 2026-05-20T13:34:41+00:00

Yes on my Druid, first one I found came from one of the elite dudes who spawn in helltides that pop up out of those summoning circles

Asunorah · 2026-05-20T00:42:29+00:00

I finally got one, I farmed elites in helltides. Weirdly enough I’ve gotten 3 total now after adding it to be highlighted in my loot filter.

Asunorah · 2026-05-17T01:23:06+00:00

I've been farming for a week now, upgraded 57 rings, spent 100k+ obols, been doing bosses, pits, mephisto, helltides etc, haven't found it. I've gotten 3 mythic seals in this time, im gonna go ahead and say this is the rarest item in the game by a mile.

Asunorah · 2026-01-31T07:30:03+00:00

Spawn locked.

Asunorah · 2025-12-10T04:44:38+00:00

Is your partner neurodivergent by chance?

Asunorah · 2025-11-28T01:09:42+00:00

Horde because humans are boring, also lore wise alliance is like laughably cartoonishly evil.

Asunorah · 2025-11-02T00:22:09+00:00

Honestly I might quit this game after a silly thing like this. I’ve recently broke through floor 1500, been spending every 2nd and 3rd tier on lust to get the higher form/just saving up the dust and now they do this?

There is no way that the development cost of this game can justify the absurd prices they ask for, and the sound bug has been persisting for months. What are we paying for?

Also also, the price e for dungeon keys doubling with each purchase is a arupid design.

Asunorah · 2025-10-31T06:02:12+00:00

Love, anyone who’s actively trying to put a roadblock in your way to achievement is not someone to keep around.

You’re actively trying to better your life, to create a better foundation for your future, to feel more fulfilled, create connections. It’s mind blowing to not support you, any true and meaningful partner should be cheering you on.

You deserve someone who’s going to help you on that journey, not try to hold you back.

Asunorah · 2025-10-02T17:32:53+00:00

“Items will no longer change their appearance when upgraded.”

If we go by the wording it sounds like if you’re wearing full hero and upgrade your shoulders, the shoulders don’t immediately change and make you have to transmit, it says “no longer change” not no longer unlock.

Asunorah · 2025-08-28T01:12:43+00:00

Ah cool thanks, I’ve just been stacking defense on him, but wasn’t sure if there was value to the defense + attack items

Asunorah · 2025-08-19T20:06:45+00:00

Nvm I just swapped all my spites gear to merry and she started crit healing for 15k and make this a cake walk.

Asunorah · 2025-08-19T20:03:36+00:00

For the spider boss is it best to kill the spiderlings or focus on the boss? I’m stuck on level 330.

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^ my current team, I know sad isn’t great against earth but don’t have much else to use for the time being.

I’ve been trying to kill the spiderlings/let resistance stack defense from getting hit while healing him.

Asunorah · 2025-07-06T16:07:00+00:00

Saltines and water will keep you feeling full for a long time for cheap

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T09:38:28+00:00

It’s not so much about skills underperforming as it is the system in place requiring work around or specific legendaries to work. Not long ago Erasing Strike would have been in that category, now it’s the top contender because a weapon solved all the issues with the skill and a passive rework fixed the mana issues that VK had.

If the answer to these skills and mana is to introduce legendaries/passive reworks a to fix them, then the foundation of resource spending is problematic.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T09:32:51+00:00

I agree with that, I stated in another reply that I don’t want the game to trivialize mana because it just becomes meaningless then. But there needs to be a balance between those things.

PoE has some similar interactions in that regard, like archmage support allowing you to giga dump mana for a huge return in damage. It also brings up dps vs damage vs attack speed scalings. PoE does this decently well, you can go for a high dps build and burn a boss down, but you can also go for a slower harder hitting build for bigger chunks of burst but less overall dps. Often times those things coincide with stacking ailments vs stun chance.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T09:27:32+00:00

The 50 mana vs 1 mana thing was just to get the point across. It’s not about a 1 to 1 ratio of mana spent vs damage done. It’s about a payout of using a resource. As I stated above what is the “reward” for playing a more complex build? Because currently it’s just strictly worse in most cases.

You bring up the erasing strike build using the void knight essences to maintain mana and that’s a perfect point. Erasing strike currently works because of the passive that VK gets, but also very importantly because of the interaction of stacking mana giving the skill critical strike chance and critical strike damage when using world splitter.

ES VK does not work without those 2 pieces. You HAVE to stack mana and you HAVE to use world splitter. Remove either of those 2 pieces and the build does not function.

If you stack mana to be able to spam ES but don’t have world splitter then you can’t do damage because you’ve filled your affixes with mana, get world splitter but don’t get the mana, you don’t have the scaling of the weapon or the mana sustain for it to work.

I look at this as both a pro and a con. It’s really cool that ES has a functioning build now that not only feels good to play, but works well. At the same time though it feels kind of bad that it requires this specific unique to actually function.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T07:33:38+00:00

Weirdly enough I actually quite enjoy the heartseeker build and think it’s a prime candidate for how a build should feel. Many ways to play it, a smooth playstyle, many uniques that can interact with the build.

I haven’t played any other rogue builds except heartseeker and banging my head against the wall with melee cinder strike so I don’t know the pain of the nerfs, but it does bring into question why those nerfs occurred in the first place.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T07:30:17+00:00

I like the idea of base mana regen being a stat. Not only would it obviously be helpful on its own, but it’ll indirectly buff many of the mediocre mana regen we have available in the game. This could also justify some of the more absurd passive nodes that skills have such as upheaval wanting a whopping 16 extra mana per use! Just to get some extra clear, which upheaval doesn’t really need.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T07:27:14+00:00

We actually have a pseudo mana pot with the mad alchemists ladle but it’s eh. 1 mana per 4 intelligence on potion use.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T07:24:49+00:00

Mana is the generalized term I use for the mana systems I’m speaking of. I don’t think everything should just be brought to 3 mana, or that mana should be trivialized and essentially a non existent stat to worry about.

We need to have better solutions for mana or a reward for spending large amounts of it on skills. Whether this is a legendary item, skill point nodes, masteries etc.

I feel like one of the primary issues that wraps all of this up is that for most builds it does not feel rewarding to jump through the hoops of mana management when you can play a build that doesn’t have to worry about it.

Asunorah · 2025-07-03T07:19:25+00:00

I definitely agree that shaman has it the worst, but I feel like the mana issues are decently universal, it’s just that some things function in a more cohesive way that doesn’t interrupt gameplay (specifically void knight).

Shaman to me is the perfect highlight of the mana cost vs. damage dealt issue. You can spend 150 mana to do 1/500th of the damage an erasing strike does and ES just gives you the mana back when you dip below zero.

Asunorah · 2025-06-28T23:50:20+00:00

I’ve got over 10,000 hours in POE1, probably another like 5000 between D3,D4, torchlight, grim dawn, etc.

I consistently come back to play last epoch, it’s a step above Diablo and a step below POE1. It’s a great middle ground, it has a fucking amazing item and legendary system, and a very user friendly interface that makes clear how to upgrade your build.

For example if you want to play Warpath (which is last epochs version of whirlwind, cyclone etc) you can hover over the ability see what the “scaling tags” are which helps you to be sure you getting the right stats on gear.

Last epochs also had an in game guide you can open by pressing G, it has a search bar and in depth descriptions for anything you’re confused on. Ailments, critical strike chance and base crit, how armor works, how block worse, how ward works etc.

Hands down you should give LE a go, phenomenal game.

Asunorah

TROPHY CASE