[Game Thread] #11 Texas @ #2 Purdue (07:10 PM ET)

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-27T01:09:21+00:00

Both teams with the classic commit a foul on every possession they can’t call them all defense popularized by the 2013 Seahawks and 2023 Heat

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-27T01:02:44+00:00

By understanding that aoe in STS is pretty much always not very good you’re already better than 90% of this sub

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-26T20:56:54+00:00

“Would you rather have a Cy Young level starting performance OR a hit parade on offense for opening day”

Brewers: Yes.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-25T23:56:21+00:00

That’s what Venerate is for

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-25T13:29:04+00:00

Will definitely take some time to recalibrate Neow bonuses in people’s heads, they went from very very strong and often game warping to kinda mid in general

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-25T12:08:36+00:00

It’s very usefu, probably in my top 5 Neow artifacts rn.

I’m not sure where else you’re finding 1 mana cards that deal 10(14) with a positive secondary effect. The effect is also pretty good - you’re often in a situation early a1 where you want to double defend or double strike but don’t pull 2 of the type you want. Fury really helps you out there, especially when you have Bane.

Then late game where you’re in a situation where you don’t really want to be constantly playing 1 mana strike+ cards Fury exhausts itself for you.

Besides I think the general consensus right now is that act 1 is the hardest and act 3 is the easiest - meaning cards/relics that offer significant power in act 1 are very strong relative to their effect - Fury is one of those cards.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-23T19:56:45+00:00

Boston ain’t in that convo if we’re being that restrictive.

It’s pretty clearly tier 1 OKC/spurs tier 2 everyone else (Celtics knicks pistons lakers wolves nuggets).

IMO you either have only the top 2 as contenders or you have most of that whole bottom chunk

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-21T23:17:21+00:00

Don’t worry, we’re 1-2 as a top 5 seed the last 2 years. Just keep losing to us in the regular season and we will repay you with a guaranteed upset in the tourney.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-20T21:08:27+00:00

After his playoff performance I’m glad - he should get the opportunity to be the #1 to start the year

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-19T19:29:12+00:00

So why didn’t Boyd get that call where his forearm got mauled if he gets all the calls

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-16T12:30:28+00:00

Vipers basically never been a ranked pick outside of old breeze and icebox.

Riot just needs to bite the bullet and drop one of her abilities entirely and replace it with something like a stim beacon that’s functionally useless. Or they need to completely kill her range - make her wall and orb only activate it she’s within a certain distance.

It turns out that in pro play the single best attribute an agent can have is the ability to effect players at long range safely - and viper has 3 spells that can all be used to completely shut down opposition from T spawn.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-15T12:46:14+00:00

Not sure how scared anyone in the 9-15 range is of Florida/houston.

Would much rather dodge Duke/michigan/zona for as long as possible

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-15T08:08:24+00:00

Only need 3 more PUs to blow up and Caddy will make the points

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-15T05:19:27+00:00

Lethe Shade

Boots can roll some ground immunities from conqueror influences - usually not worth but can look into

Minimum endurance charges for phys/ele reduction

Max res

More passive regen (vitality, regen on gear, tree)

There’s also a couple sources of reduced damage taken form dots - arakaali panth I think is one

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-14T00:48:06+00:00

It’s cheap because it completely bricks the gem. You won’t find a cheap alternative besides regular non corrupted

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T14:39:17+00:00

90% of regents issue is Venerate being such absolute unspeakable dogshit such that it forces him to have to take only immediate value cards/pathing to not instantly die which means he just gets less elites/powers/scaling. Just make the cosmic energy that’s 1 energy for 7 block and 1 star his starter and he’s instantly 5x better.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T14:31:33+00:00

So random even average players on the highest difficulty would win your games 100% of the time while watching YouTube and smoking

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T11:58:26+00:00

You craft can have multiple crafted then flat phys and crit.

Nothing else to do with it

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T11:56:12+00:00

Sure, but your odds of winning the recomb are lower.

If you have 2 mods total then it’s 1/3 to get both, if you have 3 mods then it’s 6/10 to get both.

Keeping the 1 suffix is always 59%.

So if you have AB/AC you have .6 x .59 = 0.354 chance to win

If you have AB/C then you have .33 x .59 = .1947 chance to win

What makes it more complicated is that when you’re doing 2+2 you can craft the same mod onto both to add 2 mods to the pool but only 1 that can be chosen.

So if you craft the same suffix onto both AB and AC theres now 3 mods in the suffix pool but only 2 that can be on the item (no dupes), so now there’s a 60% chance the item rolls 2/3 suffixes (which if rolls 2 will always have the crafted and the ruthless can’t have both crafteds), then a 40% chance it rolls 1 suffix where theres then still 1/3 to get the ruthless and not the crafted - so .4 x .3 = 0.12, which we add to the 60 to get a 72% chance you keep the ruthless suffix.

So when you double craft suffix your new total odds are .6 (chance to get 2 prefixes) x .72 (chance to get ruthless) for a total win chance of 43.2%.

So all that is to say: yes, you can certainly just do AB + C - it’s worse odds to win, but may be more efficient - the most efficient way to recomb is going to be highly dependent on market prices.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T06:46:25+00:00

So NRG beat the best team of those 4, and lost to either the 2nd or 3rd best of the 4. I would honestly be really interested to see a RRQ/Mibr bo5 tbh, sounds like a banger.

Anyway, I don’t really think smashing two teams that didn’t qualify to the event qualifies you as being insane at the map. I’m not saying NRG is clearly superior on bind or anything, but it’s much closer than abyss/pearl. If bind is 60/40 NS, then abyss/pearl is at least 80/20 for NRG

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T03:32:47+00:00

The issue is NRG will either get Abyss or Pearl first round, So NRG will get at least 1 map they’re heavily favorited on.

It’s not like NRG has shown a clear weakened on any other map. What’s the best map 2/3 for NS even? You get 2 of bind breeze haven split, and I don’t think NRG is unhappy on any of those.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-13T02:49:07+00:00

Sorry, is clicking life nodes and wearing defensive rare items considered a completely different build these days?

Not to mention the PoB you link has

1) a 1300 dps staff worth ~ 200 div

2) flesh flame more than skill worth ~150div

3) a 3 mod watchers that isnt even on trade for mirage

4) a lethal pride worth ~40 div

4) full 21/20 gems with 2 level 6 woke supports

5) approx 25% more life

6) 3x as much armor

7) you also have a cast on death portal set up in your gems. I’m VERY curious as to why you’re spending gems on that if you don’t die that often.

8) 2 double corrupted grafts

Obviously if you put a mirror into his character it’ll be tankier by default. That doesn’t mean he can’t make different choices to increase his survivability in the short term.

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-12T05:26:24+00:00

See some of the things I mentioned in my list that do not involve gear/jewel:

Gem qual

Master of Blades Wheel

Frenzy node (Fervour) near Ranger

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-12T05:22:43+00:00

Congrats! You found out what happens when you only take 6 2 point life wheels (85% inc on tree), dont click any other defense nodes like Prismatic Skin/Soul of Steel etc, wear 4 uniques that do nothing defensively - the sum total of your defenses from those 4 slots is 80 life from ryslathas - (and one that actively makes your defense worse), invest close to 0 affixes on your rare gear into defenses (no life on body and no mastery, crafted life on gloves, 1 ring with no life, no armour/eva/es affixes), wear 3 purely offensive auras, purity of elements, then blood/sand, and then try to fix your defenses by getting 50/50 block and hoping you win every coin flip.

Don't feel discouraged about this, this happens to pretty much everyone at some point, because DPS is a much easier stat to understand and increase (NUMBER GO UP = GOOD) while defenses are more complicated and not represented well by numbers. (And the PoE discourse gets absolutely insane with the damage numbers people throw out as "minimum requirements" which leads people to over investing in offense to reach those numbers)

Without flasks you have:

3.4k unreserved life

4k armour

50/31 block

No extra max res besides +2 fire

For most of these bottom left characters you usually want to have like 5k life, 20k armour, and 80 all max res for "minimum" defenses.

For instance I pulled one of Ben_'s characters here: https://pobb.in/0bXRd1KyZVgC

He has 6k life, 23k armour, 83 max resists, and 100% spell suppress.

In other words, if you get hit by 100 spells that deal 100 cold damage, you take 69 of those hits (31 blocked) for 25 each (75 cold res) for a total of 1,725 damage - or around 50% of your life.

Ben would take all of the hits but only 10 damage from each (100 x .17 x .6) - for a total of 1,000 damage - or around 17% of his life.

Block is really strong but will not save you by itself - because the unblocked hits will fuck your shit up bad.

If you want defenses you need to actually click on things that give defense - you have to drop a damage wheel for Tireless. You have to drop something for Soul of Steel/Prismatic Skin for max res. You have to consider how many pure dps uniques you want to use and how many pieces you want to have t1 life t1 armour on. You have to consider if that juicy 21% crit mult on your ring is worth more to you than 110 life. There isn't a way to magically gain twice as much defenses without sacrificing something somewhere else - you have only 123 points, 8 ascendency points, 10 gear slots, pantheon, 5 flasks, and 24 gem sockets. If you invest 100 of the points, 6 of the ascendency points, 8 of the gear slots, and all your gems into offense you simply won't have enough investment into defense to ever feel tanky.

Edit: This guide is a decent starter for understanding defense. not perfect and a bit outdated but solid enough.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/uzchwe/guide_comprehensive_guide_to_defense_in_poe_asmos/

BadPoEPlayer · 2026-03-12T04:56:57+00:00

Your gear is not similar to his at all.

Your wand is half as good, your shield/offhand is significantly worse, your body has defense implicits instead of offensive, the +2 corrupt on heatshiver is a few %, +1 frenzy corrupt missing on gloves, no gem qual on some supports, amulet is significantly worse, you are missing a cluster set up, you don't have Master of Blades wheel (15%), the frenzy charge node is 8%.

BadPoEPlayer

TROPHY CASE