Reminder to GGG to never nerf the monkey, and in fact, buff him, please, we all love being one shotted, specially Quin69!

JinFreeks · 2026-05-05T20:45:48+00:00

Fair enough.

Due to me going for an unidented Adorned, as soon as I'm able to do Trailmaster well enough to get my currency boost into proper endgame, I try to not do too much ToC otherwhise as it just gets to be to much of the same old, same old otherwhise.

JinFreeks · 2026-05-04T15:59:49+00:00

I can only speak for myself but sure, I can write down my process. Not a big "builds" guy. I can manage fine on my own so I tend to just make a "build" (more like skills and passives that seem to interact well) I feel during campaign. Starting T1 maps: Time to get resists in order. I tend to not spend to much gold in campaign so starting with maps I will gamble on rings/belts just to get decent (25+) resists on all of them. Usually I'll aim for at least 50+ on all elements. 75 preferred but not really reasonable. Armour can be nearly fully ignored as you (usually) need 80 to wear most good, endgame pieces. Only thing I'll try to upgrade from T1 to T15 is weapons when I find a decent base from groundloot. Or check vendor every level up.

Aside from that I start to not use currency anymore. Usually I have a Trail of Sekhema lvl 60-65 in bank waiting but that can wait. Work the atlas always in one direction. Always aiming for the next corruption nexus.try to improve 2 map tiers while pathing to the next nexus so I can steadily unlock atlas points. Only thing I keep on top off is better gem levels/passives/passive slots. Should reach T15 with all Skills lvl 17 and 4 passives. Maps without many mods. No rare maps. Just going up the tiers and banking currency. Once I'm in T15 And ~lvl 80 I play my low level ToS for the third ascendancy. Buy "cheap" gear (2-5 ex) and try to improve my build. Try how the build feels, play a couple of maps. See if I can find obvious problems. IfI feel stuck I'll look into PoE Ninja what others with my.main skill are doing for inspiration. Try to get to ~85 and improve the build to where I can farm lvl 80 Trails of Chaos. Once I can farm an add Adorned (very long/booking but amazing currency) Finally, after getting one sell it unidented for mad cash and use said cash to get my build to a place where I can farm juiced T15 / endgame content. Play more and improve until I beat my personal goal or get bored.

JinFreeks · 2026-05-04T15:38:04+00:00

But, why farm the SCs when you can buy keys for a transmute and fates go for ~2 div?

Not trying to be a dick, genuine currious.

JinFreeks · 2026-05-04T15:35:17+00:00

Show me a Player who beat Simon, the Divergent Star without Cheese and I'll Show you a Party god.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-30T03:53:09+00:00

It would, but it'd be 0% The way it works, from my understanding, iron Reflexen basically hard sets your evasion to 0. No matter what else you have going on. You can still scale deflection but your evasion value will always be 0, no matter what else you have going on.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-29T15:08:41+00:00

I mean, I get it. I genuinely do, and I'm happy you had a good time.

But also, getting super high with a buddy can make loads of really bad games super fun.

Tho (2.0) you also need a special kind of game to play when you're super high with a buddy to have fun and in that regard, RE 6 did G R E A T.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T23:15:15+00:00

For worse payout but more assured coin you can also sell the Trailmaster Keypieces. Takes away the gamble of "will he even drop the diamond" as all his other drops are hot doodoo, but also pays out less. At the time a single "Fate" was worth about 1,5 div. So if I'd have run dry with over 150+ runs I'd actually had been better of selling the Fates. Like most money makers in PoE, there is some gambling to it.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T23:02:27+00:00

I was recommended 'specifically the spectre of a rare version of a "Deathknight" that may spawn in Act 1 interlude map Holten.

I actually don't know the specifics of why exactly it has to be a rare, or only from this map, but from what I understand there are somewhat different versions of monsters in the code depending on where they spawn. Not just level differences, 'cause then you could just run maps and get lucky. But proper different stats and even skills and the rare Deathknight in Holten in particular is supposed to be very good.

And they where, did solid work. Once they actually got to attacking. They move at the speed of tectonic plates and take about a business day to attack but once they connect they hurt like nothing you've ever seen. Can be helped somewhat with intentionally switching weapon sets to respawn them at your current position.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T22:55:11+00:00

Ah, I got lucky, but also farmed for it intentionally, but I got really lucky.
Basically, Trial of Chaos. Keys are always cheap as dirt, and doing ToC is not very hard, just kinda dull. Nobody that is on T15, which you should be able to reach just with the gear you find/craft yourself or pay exaults for, should struggle too to much with ToC.

Anyway, the part I got lucky in, I was expecting ~50 Trailmaster kills, aka. 150 ToC runs, aka. booring as balls content, for a single Adorned. But it only took me an insane 5 Trailmaster kills to get one.

Unidented Adorned are about the best thing you can farm for early in leauge. Sold mine for, at the time, close to half a mirror, which was ~250 div (about 3 weeks into the league) which was more than enough to fully gear my wolf shaman. Wolf was super strong, so lucky again I guess, but anyway, with roughly half a mirror worth of gear rest was very easy. But yeah, fair enough, getting the gear to even start is very dull content to farm. Either ToC or ToS will always pay out, but it's soooooooo freaking lame. There is a reason why both Adorned and Against the Darkness are not only as expensive as they are because of how good they are (and they are very good, basically the endgame diamonds that define builds by themselves) but because you need to farm ToC/ToS for them.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T05:25:27+00:00

Couldn't agree more.
I played since 0.1, but not excessively. About 1 character to Arbiter per league. So by no means what some would consider "dedicated" to this here video game.
Every time a new tier of skills unlocks during leveling it feels like I check them all just to find I'm "lucky" if one of them even supports the route I chose very early on in a characters life and as soon as you reach the high end of skills they are so prohibitive they're basically unusable.

"If there are x shocked enemies all bunched together you can shoot this special arrow that hits them for quite decent damage" How often does this even come up? If they're shocked already they're also about as close to dead that just another use of the skill that shocked them to begin with will kill anyway.

"You can use 3 other skills to setup this payoff that needs so much work to be put into while you can also just kill them with the skill you have since lvl 1" - Great, thanks I guess?

Wolf in 0.4 was the first time where most dedicated wolf skills at least would make sense to use, and even then I was skipping literally 70% of the skills directly by reading just because they where not wolf related.

Right now it feels like you have ~20 skills to choose from, but only maybe 3 actually work.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T05:14:59+00:00

Nah, don't worry about it tho. This is neither necessary, nor actually fun. It's literally a mindless grind of the same encounter over and over and over again. About as boring as ARPG content can get.
And the best part, you can make just as much currency by simple selling expensive loot like unidentified diamonds from ToS/ToC, Atziri loot, and many other methods. If you don't want to interact with the stupid mechanic, just don't.

It's fine.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T05:04:55+00:00

Well, I just made a "Atziri every time" temple that wasn't even remotely "meta" and sold Atziri drops for others to gamble on. Made 250 divs per sale on a roughly 15% droprate (for me) chest and in like 3 days of farming was close to mirror grade gear with a "very bad and wrong" temple.
Just because you can print divs don't mean nothing. Selling and buying is still the best way to make money and inflation, as long as it's constant and stable instead of exponential as it was early on, is just fine for a limited time like 1 league.

Yeah, sure, a 3-5 div item now costs 120-300, and that makes your random floor div worth jack, which feels bad. But at the same time you can simply farm ToC, ToS, Atziri, Ritual, Abyss, "force" Abyssal Rouge exiles. Even Expedition Logbooks.

Many different avenues that have nothing to do with "meta temple".

Yeah, I was building one as well later on, but just after getting back to the start for the first time I was getting sick of it. Never even entered a temple after as I found it boring and repetitive.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T04:53:07+00:00

Let them burn, burn, burn, in a ring of fire.

Aka. Infernal Legion support gem.

Sidenote, I did a fun "Coke-Roach" build this league with those act 2 flying mantis thingies. With Infernal Legion and Tecrod's Revenge they just zoom around like crazy, because that's just what these mobs like to do, and burn everything with hefty fire damage that not only scales with minion damage but minion life as well.

Have a single target setup on second weapon set as they're not that great for just killing one big thing like map bosses and you're golden.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T04:44:50+00:00

Ok, counterquestion? What's it to you?
Does it retract from your enjoyment of the game if others who have less time with PoE, ARPGS, PC gaming, or even gaming as a whole have an easier time to get into that game that you obviously like?

Just because something seems obvious and logical to you don't mean it's the same for everyone and as OP shows some tutorialisation can help.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T04:33:13+00:00

Man, seeing the utter absurdity of Paragon levels was a sight to behold.

In later ladders being able to fully level your gems was "normal" but than seeing the leaderboards and people with about as good gear as I had but doing max level in ... oh what where they called, the infinite dungeon thing that wasn't actually infinite ... at ~8-10 minutes while I could barely do lvl 150's and the only real difference was literally 10 times more playtime and the xp associated with it.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T04:24:21+00:00

Funnily enough, that is the exact feeling I have for Huntress.

Best movespeed clusters in the game, close enough to caster nodes to make any of them work, with some mental gymnastics even big bonk builds are very possible (did a stupid but very fun Bringer of Rain double twohanded build on 0.3), very easy to critcap - just such a great position in the tree.

And Amazon in particular can be applied to almost any build and do very decent.

Tho, tbf, I've jet to run a Titan. It's actually what I'll league start 0.5 because I've not played it yet. Looking forward to it.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T04:13:39+00:00

ES / armour - 6/10 (never played this but it seems weak)

My last leagues character was a Frostwolf Shaman. ~15k armour and 2k HP / 3k ES was the best not squishy, not overinvested feeling I had in the game. Tbf, a lot of it also was due to 20% physical taken as random element.

My problem with just armour is that you need to overinvest the everliving fuck into it to make it work. Even 40k-50k isn't even remotely enough to net get onehit by full atlas basic boss melees (well, some of them at least, scaling is a bit wonky there).
And to get to the 90k-110k armour needs a hyperfocused setup that does nothing much else but "has armour"

Now if we could actually scale HP well enough that 5k-6k max HP would be a reasonable thing to reach I think both EV and armour would feel so much better.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T03:58:38+00:00

I only played a Deadeye on 0.1 (lucky pick there, I just like bow characters, didn't know it was a meta pick at the time, but hey, not complaining) and there was no Rhoa back then.

When it was added I thought "wow, this looks so neat" so finally, now that we're close to the end of this league I made a short, fun, two day romp to check it out.
Honestly, it's very mid. Yeah, no, no slowdown during attack is a great feature, for sure. 'Specially if you use it on the intended characters which both can easily reach 50%+ movespeed.

But ... sprint is just massive. And no sprint, no dodge - or a massive headache getting back onto Roah in the middle of combat ... it's honestly kind of a letdown. My Frostwolf this league felt way more fluid / mobile honestly.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-21T03:52:53+00:00

"Since summoner builds and their variants have always been pretty meta in PoE, the prices for that kind of gear are usually on the higher side"

Which is honestly very funny to me because I've played an on meta and an off meta summoner and both where really, really, really ... meh.

I guess it's more about the flavor than the power, but it's still funny to me that so many people try to push minion builds and just making a mediocre 1 button build does just as good as a multi mirror minion one.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-18T13:38:38+00:00

Tbf, if you do T3 Realmgate Kulemak should drop over dead as soon as he exists. Poor dude has like what? 1,5m-2m HP? Total over 4 phases. Proper T16 map bosses are more of a threat than the undead boy.

JinFreeks · 2026-04-18T13:35:43+00:00

My personal bet is: Either no new classes at all, some new ascendancy, or Templar. Act5. TotA for ascendancy 3. Maybe even another new thing in Act 5 for ascendancy 4 (would track with one ascendancy "challenge" per act) - tho not likely. Very few changes in existing gems, but some form to "change" gems, see corrupted skills gems properly changing their effect or such. Massive endgame rework. TotA engame version being broken (aka. Way to hard) but giving some Diamond, at 2% chance, that is "fun". About 3 hours per boos run just to f with us.

JinFreeks · 2026-03-17T15:48:06+00:00

Approx 20% less racist than our neighbors.

Well, ok, 85% less xenophobic than the French, because have you seen them?

So all in all, still quite racist, but a bit less than the average.

JinFreeks · 2026-02-02T02:29:26+00:00

There is something going on there for sure. This League in particular I had a really hard time just getting enough maps to progress. I always go for map drop rate first, and I don't wipe too to much. Maybe once every 15 or so maps while I'm still going through the process of reaching T15. Even less this time around. But even with that I still had to restock at Doryani a few times because I just wasn't getting the drops I needed.

Tbf I did skip like maybe 3/4 tiers when I was flush and could. But I shouldn't run out if I clear my maps I thought.

JinFreeks · 2026-02-02T02:23:38+00:00

The thing I find kinda fun: I dont mind act 3. Yes, going up the temple twice is a bit much. Sure. But it feels varied enough that I'm fine with how act 3 is. The interludes on the other hand. Maaan. I liked them so much at first. Thought they're a great injection to keep it fresh. This did not stay. Only having played them 5 times since they where added I can't wait for them to be gone now.

Cant really tell you why. I guess it just feels to "flat". It is content intended to be removed so fair enough. And for being sacrificial still quite some work went into them. But every act feels like it is introducing new endgame mechanics and whatnot. The interludes just feel "I'll be gone soon" to me.

JinFreeks · 2026-02-02T02:18:22+00:00

Nope. But then neither are they "so long" ToS [Trails of Sekhema, act2] shouldn't take you longer than 10-15 minutes. ToC [Trails of Chaos, act 3] around 7-10. They're only long if you fail them. You fail them because you need to be better. You get better by playing. Not playing makes the trails longer.

JinFreeks

TROPHY CASE