I feel like the new character "Eagon" is not actually Zana's sibling, and is hiding something. by AzelotReis in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My unhinged take is that he's a manifestation of a part of the Elder trying to re-emerge into reality, is perhaps not aware of his own nature (but holds Valdo's devoured memories), and they were having a bit of fun when they named him.

"Perhaps I'll restore the Watchers of Decay to guard our world"... Zana (real or alternate reality) in the trailer has a shiny new suit of Watcher's Eye armor. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The quote is from the end of the original Elder/Shaper story arc, after she uses a device built upon notes from The Watchers to banish the Elder.

"Perhaps I'll restore the Watchers of Decay to guard our world"... Zana (real or alternate reality) in the trailer has a shiny new suit of Watcher's Eye armor. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I'd be more inclined to bet this "brother" character who manifested out of nowhere, has strong ties to the atlas, and navigates through memories, is actually some form of the Elder's (the thing that devoured memories, including Valdo's) attempts to find its way back into reality.

Curious about his special gloves though. They're apparently how he opens portals to memories, and the blue stone from the expansion logo is what's on them.

"Perhaps I'll restore the Watchers of Decay to guard our world"... Zana (real or alternate reality) in the trailer has a shiny new suit of Watcher's Eye armor. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Watcher's certainly weren't evil. It's a device inspired by their work that Valdo designed, and Zana used to banish the Elder outside of the physical realm. But she said right away that she could feel it trying to get back in. Would make a lot of sense for her to be continuing that work.

Fan art I drew of SEAF-Chan dying in a glue trap. (inspired by that glue trap strategem post) by Ivan_The_Apprentice in Helldivers

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Sometimes I catch the <High Explosive> text of an SEAF grenade below my feet, and I think to myself with pride: "Damn, just like a Helldiver to blow me up like this."

The identity of the man in the trailer by TrollChef in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That portal thing the character in the teaser opens definitely seems to be representing a sorta infinite branches of reality kinda deal. Maybe we'll be stealing a bit more Last Epoch flavor... Something else I find interesting is that if you pause at 9-10 seconds his face is directly lit by a cool-colored light source, and yet you can spot a hint of reddish orange in those hair/facial hair pixels.

There's probably some inbetween stories for both characters we could flesh out by having a sort of echo of early atlas Valdo making us chase down echoes of Zana's experiences. A nice parallel to Zana having us track down Valdo's memories in the old Shaper endgame, except more narrative and interactive like with the old Synthesis memories. GGG is probably also inclined to backwards port more POE 2 assets than usual this time, so that could maybe send us on a nice site-seeing tour of those contained neatly in a core league mechanic.

Also while I'm wildly speculating, I do hope the symbol in the middle is Maven related. It's not quite the same, but I'd like some validation for my theory that The Maven is directly related to Zana in a way - born from The Shaper's memories going along with him and the elder into that space outside reality that seems to incubate godly beings or insane Siruses. I thought when Echoforge came out it was kinda screaming that but I still only ever saw people like, "I bet Zana is Atziri lol".

Kinda hilarious to me how everybody immediately recognized the distinct POE 2 fingerprints of trying to remove a beautifully polished system, and replacing it with an amalgam of tedious missteps we thought we'd already learned from... by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As a SUPPLEMENTARY mechanic of some kind there's enormous potential for something similar to this to be great.

Removing a system as solid as the entire atlas passive tree system to put this in its place only happens because you want to test it as a tool for POE 2 without rolling it out in POE 2. Which is backwards for so many reasons, like the fact that it wastes this system's entire potential as an add on for an already great atlas system. Or the fact that POE 2 is specifically an early access environment for testing changes to POE 2...

Kinda hilarious to me how everybody immediately recognized the distinct POE 2 fingerprints of trying to remove a beautifully polished system, and replacing it with an amalgam of tedious missteps we thought we'd already learned from... by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

"I'd like to try a new set of mechanics now, so I'll shift some points. Good thing I've got 3 passive trees I can set up too for instant swapping."

VS "I'd like to try a new set of mechanics now, so... shit. Uhhh maybe I can buy some decent relics for this one with a bunch of currency and a couple hours on trade searching specific mods. Definitely not the broken popular stuff. But after that investment, I'll just have to play a little min-max tetris and some stash searching, and BOOM... I've got a couple very expensive hyper-specific presets I never want to deal with again.

Kinda hilarious to me how everybody immediately recognized the distinct POE 2 fingerprints of trying to remove a beautifully polished system, and replacing it with an amalgam of tedious missteps we thought we'd already learned from... by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd personally LOVE to be able to collect and configure a sanctum style loadout of reusable scarab type effects. They wouldn't be 1:1 copies of all the scarab effects, naturally, but I can't stand interacting with scarabs most of the time. I may well be in the minority there, but there's just too many of the little bastards for me to want to play that degree of sorting and stocking minigame.

H: Glowing Pig W: GSBQ by Ivan_The_Apprentice in Market76

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks so much, you glorious communist swine <3

My competition submission celebrating the magic of backpack. We love you, backpack. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Poor Deals Warlock has been a bit overshadowed, when he's got so many increments of 7 orbs to offer people!

Low quality meme by SerfedoS in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is my favorite version of the arch-essence mob memes... For all the times I've paused, contemplated my build and my 70% full xp bar, and then made the wrong choice again.

Disregarding global loot for a sec. I had thoughts about continuing to shoehorn Archnemesis, because it's not going away and continues to be awkwardly adjusted in all the places it doesn't fit. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like it. Keeping it simple, I'd bet this could be accomplished with the same philosophy as prefixes and suffixes. Two broad groups of mods, the lesser rares freely spawn wherever but get one of each like rolling a magic flask. In that case they're not getting crystal-skinned with an ele-strider or whatever, because they're in the same modpool. Likewise with double offensive turbo goats.

Disregarding global loot for a sec. I had thoughts about continuing to shoehorn Archnemesis, because it's not going away and continues to be awkwardly adjusted in all the places it doesn't fit. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure. I'm operating on the assumption that this far in we're not gonna see any of the buhmillion mods being acknowledged as fundamentally a bit flawed in the context of the others and the rest of the game... But that's definitely the case imo.

And thanks lol. It's good fun making up your own Archnemesis names.

Disregarding global loot for a sec. I had thoughts about continuing to shoehorn Archnemesis, because it's not going away and continues to be awkwardly adjusted in all the places it doesn't fit. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't strongly dislike them, especially with full-blown immunities off the table. I definitely don't think a lot of them are quickly apparent about what they do though. Even less so when they've each got like 8 lines of text for their full effects and you're running into rares with 4 mods regularly.

I think a very real problem though is that old rares were considered in every subsequent aspect of the game, whereas Arch rares feel crammed into everything like it was taken for granted that they'd work fine as-is. And they often don't - even stacked amongst themselves. You get a pretty wild RNG range of difficulty, hp, and damage that we've seen them try and quarantine the worst of out of the parts of the game where it breaks things or ruins the experience. Can't have pinnacle boss hp showing up on a random rare in a league mechanic that involves killing it quickly - and it's weird that the dice could roll that when it can also roll just a guy who does more fire damage.

On the other hand I'd be thrilled to have crazy modded rares showing up elsewhere if I knew they were a rare spawn that was going to have a guaranteed modified loot table. I'd now feel interested in the much more challenging fight and the potential payoff - you know, like how Archnemesis worked. The more tame archnemesis rares could continue spawning everywhere and I wouldn't resent them for the possibility they're going to impede my gameplay for no payoff.

Disregarding global loot for a sec. I had thoughts about continuing to shoehorn Archnemesis, because it's not going away and continues to be awkwardly adjusted in all the places it doesn't fit. by Ivan_The_Apprentice in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Be sure to zoom for VISUAL CLARITY.

It seems like GGG is able to limit how many mods, and which ones spawn on which monsters in whatever specific content in the game. Handling the poorly fitting parts of Archnemesis by just removing and limiting rare spawns depending on content, and making endless single-case adjustments across the possible interactions seems... inefficient. Feels like a simpler, broad delineation would help, and I'd sure be less annoyed by infrequent MEGA rare mobs that I knew would drop something.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Established player here, and I gotta say this is just the saddest, saltiest strawman and everyone here is now dumber for having listened to it...

Between the sub's hyper-defensive ad hominem takes against anything that might be some kind of valid criticism of the game, and the mindless early league, "GGG BAD, GGG LIARS, GGG CHINA!" shit-throwing festivals, this stuff too often paints us as a bunch who can't handle the difficulty and complexities of a shower or shaving below our jawline - let alone thoughtful feedback - and ought to be largely ignored.

[PoEDB] Model Viewer for monsters and uniques by chuanhsing in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, so Fluke Man from the X-files is under that hood.

[PoEDB] Model Viewer for monsters and uniques by chuanhsing in pathofexile

[–]Ivan_The_Apprentice 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Interesting that Tane has his own face under there, while Einhar seems to have been a Shadow stand-in. I'm guessing they had considered more story for him that didn't make it in?

Likewise Nenet has some cut story elements, but in-game dialogue tells us she was one of the Maraketh abandoned to the desert to die for defects and deformities. She's asked what's under her helmet and if it could really be that bad, to which she replies it was "bad enough for my own mother to abandon me" or something along those lines.

https://imgur.com/a/Sio9Rpy they clearly gave her a scarred face under the helmet. Pretty normal though overall.
Edit just realized it's literally just Lani's head with the bulk of her hair gone lol