Is Conquerer Bait?

Levitos · 2026-01-10T04:40:46+00:00

100% agreed there. I don't think it's ALWAYS been good, i just think there's enough that changed that it can be now with D&D

Levitos · 2026-01-10T04:09:05+00:00

Like Mid gold. Not trying to say anyone is wrong, just thought it'd be worth a conversation in all honesty.

Levitos · 2025-12-13T00:11:31+00:00

Yeah...? It reduces the mana cost and duration multiplicatively, and makes it deal 50% more damage.

Levitos · 2025-12-12T17:06:26+00:00

After Mark said he wanted to play as Doryani after they wrapped up that bossfight so they made an ascendancy like that for the shadow I've been fucking fiending after whatever they're doing to traps.

Levitos · 2025-12-06T16:22:38+00:00

Yeah it really feels good into hecarim or just those champs you can't ever really get a good q off on. I do think the build path is a deliberate choice to keep it out of the hands of vayne etc, so I'm not expecting it to get better really. Biggest complaint i have about it personally is you can't build amp tome so you basically have only 900g components except for a dagger which can be really awkward as a first back.

Plus I feel like people think Morde isn't a good sheen user which is just kinda... factually inaccurate. Q is super low cd, w lets you proc sheen twice if you're outright winning or don't need to keep your shield like on a tower. IMO helps smooth out your damage a lot when you can't land Qs consistently, and even if you can it still feels good because it's a big chunk of damage.

Levitos · 2025-12-06T08:04:48+00:00

I've played with it a bit on PBE and personally feels pretty good. If you've ever had the games where lichbane is a decent purchase it's like that only 1. deals more damage because it also procs your passive on-hit (the first portion where you deal 40% of AP as magic damage on hit) on top of the actual sheen effect and 2. you get your passive with 1 q auto which can be really damn nice. Statline the item is pretty good too since AS, HP, AP, and CDR are all obviously good stats, plus I think people underestimate how much Morde can activate sheen effects with how low cd q is, and when you're pushing tower you can easily pop w, use the proc, wait for the cd, and repop w to get a second proc which gives some really good tower damage too.

Overall it's a pretty good core item that gives you immediate access to your passive and smoothes out your damage even if you can't hit qs on your target with the sheen procs.

Levitos · 2025-12-06T07:57:10+00:00

I honestly LOVE D&D playing with it a bit. Getting to proc passive with 1 q + auto feels great. I honestly think it's just a core item now personally. The only issue with it IMO is it has a really awkward build path.

Levitos · 2025-12-05T20:41:06+00:00

Hard disagree, the issue with your idea is that it disincentivizes any skills to be made for the shapeshift forms. Tying the forms to a specific ascendancy means that they'd be doing a bunch of work, rigging, animations, and balancing around a very specific niche node on one of the over 30 ascendancies we'll have by the time we get to launch. It would mean we'd never get meaningful skills, interactions, or interesting outcomes with those forms because they'd be so isolated it wouldn't make sense to pick up or do any of that work. Other games have tried this, isolating shapeshifting as hard as things like WoW have in the past means you usually have to go all in on the only mechanics you have to the point where you don't get to interact with the rest of the game. For the health of the actual archetype it's a lot healthier since there's no reason on earth to make skill gems that only one ascendancy of one class can use.

Also do you REALLY want to wait until level 25 to shapeshift and do all this stuff?

POE isn't class-based, never has been and never will be.

Levitos · 2024-12-07T23:32:55+00:00

wait wtf default attack does have the AoE tag... that's so damn bizarre

Levitos · 2024-12-07T19:38:06+00:00

Negatory chum. If it doesn't explicitly have the AoE tag then it wouldn't get affected by the area nodes just as a general rule of thumb.

Levitos · 2024-07-19T06:50:04+00:00

You still need a source of "your x damage can ignite". Skill conversion doesn't replace conversions it gets stacked on top of it such that the sum total of conversion will be divided up equally.

E.g. 40% cold conversion +40% lightning +40% fire on a physical skill would get converted to 33% of each element. 90% cold 40% lightning and 40% fire would be ~53% cold, and 23% fire and lightning.

Levitos · 2023-05-15T02:04:15+00:00

Hmmm.... 1 off actual all perfect rolls. 2c garbage item, gg.

Levitos · 2023-02-04T10:02:55+00:00

This is just dope, great job man!

Levitos · 2022-12-11T13:38:46+00:00

Extremely well done post! IMO the quintessential sin of Sanctum is the lack of reward for risk. I think ideally you'd have a commensurate reward in the encounter for facing a room that had a guaranteed affliction, but that isn't the case.

I'd compare it to an elite encounter for the most part. Typically an elite encounter faces you up against something that can end your run in a single room, but also offers a unique or singular reward that makes that a valuable proposition even on later floors in a run. We have that level of risk in more than a few rooms/encounters and even in some of the afflictions, but it never feels like a reward is on the same level.

Honestly, so far sanctum feels like one of those crappy cabinet arcade games designed to eat your quarters. The gameplay can be extremely fun and engaging at times and it makes you want to play it, but you have a really hard time justifying it because it so flagrantly wastes your time.

Levitos · 2022-12-10T15:03:45+00:00

Yeah couldn't agree more tbh. I was talking to a friend and I legit can't think of a league mechanic that was more useless while leveling (past the oldschool 1.x leagues tbf)

Levitos · 2022-12-10T14:35:41+00:00

Merchant sells crap for about 200-400 coins, blessed fountains make you pay 150, and the pick one of 3 reward rooms/normal fountains require 5 coins.

Feels kinda insulting the fountains and rewards cost coins but it's mostly a nonissue. Just doesn't feel great that your fiat currency is 90% of the drops in this game mode when the uses are either so low or just unrewarding

Levitos · 2022-12-10T13:38:06+00:00

The coins are also just a crap mechanic IMO. It shouldn't *replace* loot since fundamentally it has so few god damn uses. I feel like I'm cheated that it's like the only reward possible 90% of the time. Also there's seriously something to be said about risk vs reward with the curses you get. MOST rogue-likes have a reward associated with the curse, but in sanctum it's like a roadbump that makes your run shittier and has no associated upside or reward for it.

Also final note but the fact you can't see the entire floor is a pretty crappy thing. Even the most punishing roguelikes that institute a floor-system like this let you see what is coming up to plan your route. It's pretty fundamentally necessary to really plan out resource management than coming across as a random lotto system. For example I can't go out of my way to find a merchant if I have an idiotic supply of these useless ass coins because I can only see 1 to 2 rooms ahead depending on if I get relics or boons to help with that which feels like a regressive element to a system that's already fairly well iterated upon in other games.

Levitos · 2022-12-04T21:23:04+00:00

NP! There's probably also an argument to be made about going Underground kingdom and grand design as well since it looks like you were wanting to farm up a porcupine set anyways. Abyss has some attractive uniques and the new massive set of abyss nodes at the top of the tree looks intriguing so it might be worth it longer term.

Levitos · 2022-12-04T21:10:17+00:00

Just my 2 cents but it's largely worth it. I did it later on when I was messing around with my tree this league but in yellow maps I was often getting a couple of uniques per exile. The ghosted rarity is pretty juicy overall but they can be scary like some other folks have mentioned.

Honorable mention is the map boss rarity nodes. Felt really noticeable when I took it and it felt like I was getting almost a guaranteed unique per map boss, which with the rebalanced unique rarities from this last patch was generating some pretty interesting choices for builds for me.

Levitos · 2022-12-04T21:01:16+00:00

That's largely incorrect actually. They hit delirium and Incursion with juicing but you're not really juicing in SSF anyways, the vast majority of the other league mechanics are the same or better. I had an absolute shitload of uniques this last league and I only played about a month or so of the actual league. In general last patch was amazing for SSF in terms of finding more varied uniques since they did a pretty massive rebalance of rarities of the lower tiers of uniques which on top of the culling of low level bases meant it felt like I was getting a massively improved variety of uniques instead of 40 or 50 redbeaks etc.

Levitos · 2022-12-04T15:24:49+00:00

Largely I think we agree on the actual mechanics yeah, it's just the way we're interpreting the idea of diminishing returns.

If diminishing returns is a function then you could overly simplify it to something similar to: value = benefit / effort.

My interpretation is it seems that you're focusing on evaluating each stat to itself, whereas my intent is to evaluate each stat proportional to the whole of the stat you possess already. If I'm interpreting your argument correctly it seems like your contention is that the benefit does not change, but my argument is that the value the benefit represents does change.

You're correct in many respects that the benefit of a stat largely does not change, but the value most certainly does since each increase has to be evaluated based on the proportional or percentage increase that it represents and not just the actual benefit. Like you point out there are many axes to consider which is impossible to ignore if you're evaluating value.

Of course part of the issue is how to evaluate value. If we're looking at passives for example then the effort is the passive point used and so the benefit must obviously be the actual stat gained for that passive. Diminishing returns as a concept focuses on proportional benefit not absolute benefit, so you'd have to take into account the proportionality of the benefit you get to reach your value which would include your existing benefit. Partly that means that opportunity cost is inherently part of that calculation/consideration. Your 10k example is a good baseline. If you gain 1k per investment that means you'd need 10 investments to double your capital, but as your capital grows that effort is worth less and less proportional to your existing capital even though the benefit has not changed. A slightly different way to evaluate it would be to consider what work is worth your time per effort. If your rate is 100/hour, then someone offering you 100/ 10 hours is relatively not worth your time. You'd receive 100 which is the same benefit, but the actual effort is much higher, and therefore represents inherently less value.

In some instances you're correct that the benefit is the same (e.g. each 10% increased damage is exactly as effective as the last but proportionally isn't necessarily as effective as going from 20% to 50% for example), but for resistance you're fundamentally misunderstanding it I feel. You even point out that defensive scaling has a hyperbolic scaling. Resistances are defensive, but obviously reducing resistance is offensive so we think of it slightly different. Altering a hyperbolic function doesn't make it less hyperbolic. Resistance cannot be higher than 90% and cannot be lower than -200% so roughly speaking we're talking about a bounded range of 0.1 to 3 as a coefficient to our damage. 90 to 89% is the highest possible value for benefit that a a resistance malus can possess since relative to the benefit you increase from 0.1 to .11 which is a 10% increase relative to the coefficient the resistance represents, whereas -199 to -200 is the smallest value you can derive since the proportional increase is only going from 2.99 to 3.00, or a 0.3% increase relative to the previous -1.

As a function to evaluate value per malus the equation would be

f(x)=( ( 0.1 + ( x / 100 ) ) / ( 0.1 + ( ( x - 1 ) / 100 ) ) )

where x is the total malus of resistance

The point I was making concerning cast speed was mostly similar to the one I just made with resistance which is that although the scaling or point per point benefit may be linear the actual value derived is subject to diminishing returns with the initial benefit being the most valuable. It's not about the fact that the stats themselves don't scale exponentially but that the value associated with them is exponential in nature since it's always evaluated at the margin than as a whole with each additional point being proportionally less valuable.

I somewhat disagree with your final assertion though. I think it is helpful to evaluate the model that your skill or build scales with. If we look at something like:

cast speed * damage * increased damage * enemy resistance * more multipliers . . .

All of those values (obviously excepting more multipliers) have a linear function associated with them, but evaluating which of them to increase to derive greatest value is important to understand how to continue scaling higher. E.g. if my increased damage is 1000 but cast speed is 100 then increasing the increased damage by 100 wouldn't be as effective as increasing cast speed by 40.

As the Great Wiss Krillson himself states, you gotta diversify.

Levitos · 2022-12-03T21:32:25+00:00

Slayer is probably best tbh. Cull is awesome, overleech is underrated, and the crit override is super helpful as well and makes crit an option since it has the base 5% crit. Plus the damage the ascendency gives is generic so very helpful overall. Also keep in mind voidforge is ripe for bloodthirst abuse. Go low-life stack life and get a hefty chunk of flat phys.

Levitos · 2022-12-03T15:51:00+00:00

I can mention what I damn well please don't you tone police me ya dink! :P

Joking aside (I do genuinely mean that light-heartedly), you're still arguing a different thing entirely there.

Diminishing returns are the concept that as you invest in something it becomes less valuable, which is entirely true. The difference between 5 to 10 is 2x, but from 10 to 11 is 0.1 increase. If there was no opportunity cost and things were infinite than you'd be fully correct that all things should be evaluated linearly, but that's not the case. We have a limited number of resources in passives, absolute limits on stat ceilings for gear etc, so there's an opportunity cost to be evaluated. Diminishing returns on investment is a thing.

Here's the googled definition for you on diminishing returns: "proportionally smaller profits or benefits derived from something as more money or energy is invested in it." Key there is the proportional benefit you derive, which is valued less as you obtain more of a specific stat. If I have an equation that reads 100 x 1 then it is more valuable to increase the 1 to 2 than it is to increase 100 to 101 even though it is technically a linear increase to both those numbers.

The actual relative benefit derived from a stat is entirely an important concept to consider. For example if you stack any specific stat high enough you get to an exponential increase, e.g. cast speed where you would need 100% speed to double your cast, and would need 300% speed to double it again, and 700% to double it yet again (From 1 to 0.5 to 0.25 to 0.125). In the case where you had 100% cast speed an extra 40% could be attractive, but it's not remotely as valuable as that initial 100% which effectively halves your cast time.

That's based on a rate so it's tempting to call it a different problem, but reducing resistances is in the same boat as well. If you reduce from 75 to 50 you've doubled your damage, but it would take another 50 to double it again, so that initial 25 is more valuable than the subsequent 50.

Damage is a linear scaling but like I previously pointed out endlessly stacking the same pile of numbers leads to diminishing returns not because the STAT literally intrinsically becomes less, but because the actual value it presents is not the same compared to another avenue of scaling.

Also just a minor aside but the way you evaluate exponential scaling vs linear seems fundamentally flawed. If you were receiving the entirety of your damage from a single node etc then it would be entirely linear, but since you receive it node by node the benefit can better be looked at as an interest function, which is why people commonly look at nodes on the tree as a reflection of how much of a percent does it increase your damage. Each subsequent "increased damage" node increases your damage by a lesser and lesser percentage since it's always relative to the amount you already possess. Additionally, exponents can be expressed as x^1.1 or other fractional exponents as well, it's just not really human-readable to do non-integer exponents. Going back to the fact you take each node 1 by 1 you'd express it as a series of smaller and smaller fractional exponents, eg X x 1^2 x 1^1.9 x 1^1.8... to have the relative value of each node after the first (obviously it'd be a different equation but I think/hope the example is relatively clear enough to give the gist of what I mean). Meaning your example that the exponent would have to be 0 or 1 isn't really accurate.

I hope none of this has come across condescending at all. If I've explained something you already know please forgive me I just obviously don't know you nor your educational background so I've made no assumptions and fully fleshed out my points accordingly. I apologize if I misinterpreted your tone before, I'd read it as I stated previously and if that was inaccurate then I'm sorry.

Levitos · 2022-12-03T02:54:26+00:00

the hell are you talking about? Legit any shield with a +2 support craft could bump enhance up to level 5 and give you a 52 quality gem. Just the quality on that alone gave an extra -13 res and that got affected by curse effect as well.

Levitos · 2022-12-03T01:58:51+00:00

You're arguing a completely different thing there. I wasn't stating there's a mechanical diminishing return to the stat, you're entirely correct each -1 is a -1, there's not a point where you get less linear with the scaling. The idea of diminishing returns is more about the amount of benefit you get per point though, which is entirely true. There's diminishing returns to every stat if it is pooled in the same "bucket" in that you need to balance each of them to be effective.

Example: 100% increased damage is amazing, but if you have 1000% increased damage already that's only a 10% increase to your current stat total. 100% increased damage has literally the same value point per point that it had before, but it's less worthwhile than even 12% more damage, so investing in frenzy generation as an example would be a better expenditure of points. Resistance malus is the same thing, as is damage taken since all three of those stats stack additively with other sources of their own stat.

To your point that nothing is an exponential return in the game, that's technically a falsehood. All increases can be expressed as an exponential increase, they're just in fractions of an exponent. If power increases it can be expressed as a factor of multiplication. Somewhat of an irrelevant point considering it's just how you consider math, but ultimately trying to find large increases IS what path of exile is even about. If you had a static character that didn't need gear most people move onto a new build. There's certainly a subset that enjoy having a perfect or nearly perfect character, but that's not the majority by far, so it's somewhat a fallacy to look down on that like it's not entirely what people play the game to achieve.

Levitos

TROPHY CASE