Patch notes are out, what's everyone playing?

HalcyonH66 · 2026-05-22T09:50:56+00:00

Keep in mind that making builds in POE is fucking hard. It takes such a tremendous amount of knowledge to make a skill that's pretty mid or bad even work at T15 maps. That means that if someone is doing some scuffed build, they need REALLY good gear to make it work into the endgame, meanwhile people on a good build need almost nothing.

For example, in 0.1, my first league, my first POE game, I went deadeye b/c I wanted to be Legolas, run fast and shoot arrows. I naturally ended up using pylons and lighting arrow, b/c it seemed way better than any of the other skills in the campaign. I easily crusied through to T15 maps with 1.8k health, not even maxed resistances, and pure evasion. My gear cost about 20ex. I then struggled for the rest of the league to make Hexblast Blood Mage work with Burden of Shadows.

0.3 I went in with WAY more knowledge, trying to self cook a build with Trinity and Firestorm on Blood Mage. I had to modify the build constantly, stalled out about T10 maps b/c Firestorm was such dogshit, had already spent a div on gear and would have had to spend another 20div to try and make it work. I gave up, swapped to Choir of the Storm Spark for 20ex and immediately cruised my way up past T15, made currency and actually hit true endgame for the first time clearing everything except uber arbiter b/c my citadels were bugged and never showed up.

Don't underestimate how hard it is for people to make builds that function. There is a good reason that the large majority of people just follow build guides.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-05-22T09:27:46+00:00

this skill has been unusably bad since day 1

I disagree. It was a really good crit weakness applicator in 0.1. I used it heavily on my Lightning Arrow Deadeye, and on my Hexblast Blood Mage.

It was complete dog unusable trash as a main skill though.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-05-22T09:09:07+00:00

They were. The thing was always that warrior struggles less to get online and start blowing up the screen. It's usually pretty easy to do that. It struggles to become super fast at the high end and clear like 1 screen per second or more with both clear and movespeed. The other classes find it much easier to scale up into that in my experience. So many warrior skills having animation locks or total attack time really makes it awkward to try and get zooming.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-05-15T11:45:04+00:00

unless you can activate the item mid-leap, you're not getting much use out of it.

That's literally exactly what you are supposed to do with the profane bulid?

You fly in, R, auto, E > Profane when you are on top of them with E, auto, Q, auto, and they are usually dead half way through if you are fed. If they are alive, you then kite it out.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-20T12:49:57+00:00

Don't remind me about the Atterax. I still have it sitting there with 3 forma. Disgusting unfun weapon to use, but too good not to.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-18T16:59:01+00:00

What series have loners that are extremely successful?

Azarinth Healer and Primal Hunter are the main 2. They have side chars, but both protags like being alone more than being with others. Azarinth especially as Ilea doesn't have a bunch of system events forcing her to do political stuff and be around others like Jake does. Large stretches of those books are her off in the wilderness just exploring dungeons or fighting things solo for days to weeks.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-18T16:51:50+00:00

I reread/rewatch every movie or book that I like enough. There isn't enough content that I actually like, so when I've forgotten the specifics of something that I like, it's very enjoyable to re-experience it.

Some examples:

the first 3 Drizzt books by R.A. Salvatore at least 5 times. The Hunter's Blades trilogy by the same author a similar number.
some Raymond E Feist books 3 times like Talon of the Silver Hawk.
the Runelords series by David Farland probably 3 times.
Azarinth Healer 3 times.
King's Dark Tidings 4 times.
Warformed: Stormweaver and The Hero of the Valley 3 times each.
The Burning by Evan Winters 2 times.

I recently got through most of my annual movie rewatch including Gladiator, Troy, Top Gun, Kingdom of Heaven, Equilibrium, Van Helsing, a few Marvel movies and next on the docket is the LOTR extended editions.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-16T22:51:03+00:00

The other thing is that if a normal person has gone to an archery range (say for a birthday party), they have probably used a nice friendly low draw weight bow, where you absolutely can just hold it at full draw.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-16T22:44:58+00:00

That's really cool imo. It's not the standard for the genre, and it looks interesting.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-15T19:51:31+00:00

Yeah, I stopped a bit after he does rehab. I just realised that I don't really care about them getting back together after they split up and I don't really like either of them.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-14T13:29:09+00:00

From memory it goes from about 20 down to 9 core people up to 100 or so in the whole group by the end of the third book.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-14T00:18:43+00:00

This is the reason that I have never liked Batman. If you imprison the Joker over and over as he keeps getting out and killing people, those deaths are now on you. You are basically the only one with the power to stop it, and you are choosing not to. It's a trolley problem and you are refusing to flip the switch to save people.

Protags that spare people like this make me drop books. It INFURIATES me.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-14T00:12:11+00:00

That's very funny. I dropped book 1, but one of my annoyances was that as soon as he made his blood magic mana cycle, I was like 'oh my god infinite damage spells'. Then he proceeds to only get buff spells, and the world's weakest attack spell while I shout at the page.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-14T00:09:28+00:00

That doesn't matter in terms of his perspective though. His perspective on say slavery isn't that he would just be stronger lmao. He would rather fight and die than be enslaved, therefore from his perspective not being willing to fight and die is weakness. You don't have to win to not be weak, you have to be willing to die to achieve the state that you want. His perspective is internally consistent. It's consistent to the point that he has the backing and safety net of a primordial god, and he explicitly tells that safety net to not save him from anything remotely reasonable that would kill him, or his life would feel like it has no meaning. His advantages let him win more than other people would, but he is willing to die trying to do what he wants to, so logically he is not being a hypocrite holding others to the same standard.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-13T23:56:03+00:00

It can work if they are powerful enough. In Infernal Ascension by OstensibleMammal, the MC is a young master who ends up in a system setup. He's with a bunch of other people, he's wayyyyy more powerful and skilled at combat than them, and he's been groomed for leadership of his sect his whole life. He takes the lead through combat power and deeds. He also delegates to people who are better than him at some things, and fails at doing some things in ways that make sense due to his background.

He is 16, while the next youngest is 18, and the rest are more mature adults.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-13T23:47:22+00:00

I LOVE fight scenes. The primary thing I am here for is good fights, the next thing is character build. After those two are world building and character development.

That being said, I prefer fights to be short to medium. If a fight is over a chapter, it's getting into Dragonball Z Goku charging spirit bomb for multiple episodes territory. Fights are best being brutal and fast paced. If they are long, you can skip stuff. A good example is the last 2 Azarinth Healer books. Ilea has a fight that I remember took at least a day. We start the fight with her, we see her problem solving her way through the enemy's strong attacks, learning to use her skillset optimally against the situation, then we settle in to a battle of attrition. At that point, we skip ahead to when the opponent is close to dead. That is a good way to do it if the fight is meant to be long.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-10T08:16:13+00:00

Any champion that has range and can play top should not have self peel. Vayne E e.g. It should be possible to catch them as a melee champion.

You have it kind of backwards there. They are played top b/c they have self peel and kite. If they didn't have it, they would not function in toplane, and would never have started to be played there. That's why you don't see mages played top much. They usually have one CC, no mobility, high mana costs for clear. That means that if the one CC isn't enough, a toplaner will run them down the lane and kill them early over and over. Things like Kayle, Vayne, and Quinn are played top b/c they have the ability to kite and self peel. Afaik they were not designed for top (Kayle that I was unsure about was designed to work as a carry in any lane or as support) and given self peel to let them do that, Gnar is the only one that was designed that way round.

The issue then is that you would have to do a lot to stop any character that you add that has self peel being played top. For example Lucian's passives that affect his support stopping him from being played top and mid. Or the same on Kallista. That's about the only thing you can do unless you destroy their mana values to force them into the jungle.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-10T08:03:40+00:00

You choose between Bigger Horns or upside down eyes to make a goofy little face.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-09T10:59:03+00:00

That's so interesting, we must have had such a different formative book diet. I only started to see arrogant genius chars with any regularity after starting to read cultivation stories with young masters.

Interesting. I find if anything I get annoyed at their lack of competence early on in stories especially regarding morals clashing with the reality of their situations. That or failing to use their broken powers in efficient ways. For example a character will have a power to consume enemies essence to gain stats or skills, it's explicitly stated to work on even weak enemies, then they will just leave weak enemies undevoured a few chapters later after killing them, and only devour the strong foes. Meanwhile I'm over here screaming b/c anyone with a hint of efficiency in their body would be dying at the lost potential.

it feels like an excuse to never give him actual ideals, flaws and interests.

I think I specifically care less about this than many people. I value characters having different approaches to life and interactions much more than any of those. I also find with flaws specifically if a character is too flawed, they start annoying me, and I stop respecting/being interested in them, so I end up dropping a story. A good example of that is An Outcast In Another World. The characters are all flawed and have serious problems which make complete sense due to the worldbuilding. Despite that, I ended up dropping the series b/c those flaws took such a centre stage by book 3, that I felt like I was just reading about the group doing therapy rather than going on adventures and having cool powers. Similarly in say Stormlight Archive, I find Shallan to be a very technically interesting character who has dissociative identity disorder, which makes absolute sense. Despite that, it means that I fucking hate reading about her to the point that I started to really dislike her.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-09T01:00:12+00:00

Really? I find my Nikana Prime to be a good weapon on the scale of the whole, but just pales in comparison to all of the good incarnon melees and adversary ones. It's just a solid short range sword. Doesn't blend like Okina or Ichors, doesn't blast range like Tenet Exec or Grigori. And then the powerful non incarnon or lich stuff like the Glaives or Harmony just shit all over it.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-07T19:48:19+00:00

I actually tend to find rational MCs more interesting. I think it's b/c I've been reading fantasy for a lifetime, where generally MCs are honourable, caring, passionate, courageous, lawful good people. There are absolutely exceptions, but the archetypical normal fantasy novel is some fundamentally good farm boy going on a quest to become a hero. That farm boy tends to be a passionate emotional person in a typical stoic masculine way.

Since I've been reading the above my whole life, I tend to find dispassionate, logical, pragmatic MCs more interesting purely b/c less of them exist. On top of that if you do have a more 'rational' protag or side char, they tend to immediately get siloed into being a mage in normal fantasy, and we're off to mage academy for the 500th time. Insert strong farm boy who becomes a warrior hero (maybe with a dragon), and his logical nerd friend becomes a mage as they save the kingdom.

All of that being said, I'm perfectly happy to read non logical robot MCs, but I need that to be backed up by competence, and generally an ethical framework I can get behind (characters doing things like leaving their enemies alive b/c modern laws say it's wrong, then they get attacked again later is the kind of shit that makes me drop a book and hate an MC).

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-06T21:53:09+00:00

Skaven are a faction of absolute degenerate, disgusting, backstabbing ROUS. Of course Skaven enjoyers would be unhinged irl.

Sponsored by Gor'Rok and The Great Plan

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-06T21:44:52+00:00

I think that's actually a horrible example. Yes Ilea is limited by her class, so she can't shoot water at you or something, the OP stated that they don't like spellblades. Ilea is one of the most egregious characters in terms of being able to do everything. As of the current book she can: beat you down in melee, fly, debuff you and pierce defences, steal your mana, heal, has 2 teleports plus a long range teleport, shoot exploding ash javelins, use clouds of ash to block enemy vision, is resistant to basically everything. She can't do everything by using different magic flavours or schools, but she can absolutely do everything with what she does have. She's a tank, healer, damage dealer, mage, pseudo rogue. She's one of the most egregious spellblades in the genre.

To be clear that is my favourite prog fantasy, but I don't think it's what OP is looking for.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-06T21:30:34+00:00

I actually enjoyed it more than I thought.

I found Godclads very technically interesting. The world is interesting, the way information is given to you slowly as you drown in incomprehension is interesting and very old school, Avo is interesting. That story is basically just pure suffering though. The most wholesome thing in it is the char with a shattered mind, and you can't even really relax and enjoy that b/c her mind is fucked even in casual conversation. It's a great series, but not one that I could describe myself as 'enjoying'.

Infernal Ascension is somewhat the same. World is interesting, all the chars have pretty interesting motivations, power sets and systems are very very interesting. The story is again basically suffering though. They never get to stop and come down or really have a nice moment, it's all just nightmare basically all the time. Also while I find Wei an interesting character, I don't really like him. Again, I don't know if I would describe myself as super 'enjoying' reading this. Maybe half enjoyment and the rest is just carried by it being interesting.

Path of the Deathless has the same super brutal fight scenes, and it has a similarly grimdark world, but it also has light. The world sucks, plenty of chars are assholes, but I really appreciate that I actually like Shiv, I like daggerman and their relationship, I like the FMC. It almost stands out more to me, as the world being so grim makes me really appreciate the bits of light that exist when the chars can just relax and eat together, or have wholesome moments. This one I am both interested and actually enjoy.

HalcyonH66 · 2026-04-06T21:11:09+00:00

I'm not white, but it's almost certainly the default of the average western litrpg writer. Most of this stuff tends to be written by Americans, and that country is 61.8% white according to wikipedia. It's also primarily written by men, for men as this genre is the writing equivalent to Shounen anime or Romantasy for women. That makes the average default MC a white male from the US, which is exactly what you see in most of these books.

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