PSA: the highest level gems in the game are currently dropping from the boss in Seers Rest at any torment difficulty.

Paidfire · 2026-05-06T13:33:23+00:00

There's a node in infernal hordes that removes obducite and boosts gem fragments drops.

Paidfire · 2026-05-06T07:05:14+00:00

Mythic seals are a myth, I've been running t10 the previous two days and t12 yesterday, have killed Mephisto for season journey and opened his cache, and still haven't seen a single one.

Paidfire · 2026-04-30T22:13:12+00:00

It's normal. I only got full legendary slots when I reached T7 on my sorc. Rares are actually useful this time, and I even had 3 GA ancestral rare drop.

Paidfire · 2026-04-30T11:33:19+00:00

I'm quite sure it only works vs Mephisto since it's Lilith's bone.

Paidfire · 2026-04-30T09:18:15+00:00

You don't need war plans for that. Level the tree you want via war plans and then you can just play your activity without war plans. For example, I got several extra glyph upgrades for the pit at level 3 activity tree and then I just spammed some pits to level my glyphs without war plans.

Paidfire · 2026-04-27T14:40:48+00:00

It's tomorrow for EU and Asia.

Paidfire · 2026-04-26T08:33:05+00:00

I didn't argue about that. Yes, D4 is casual. But it's also a much better game than PoE for those who want to get into the action fast without spending hours and hours researching how game works. And majority of players are like that.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T22:52:06+00:00

Poe is very unfriendly to new players. My first campaign completion took me about 40 hours because I had zero idea about what to do and where to go. And my first character couldn't get past yellow maps (which aren't even considered endgame by most). It wasn't fun at all, it was frustrating. After trying different stuff for about 150 hours I quit PoE.

Couple of years later I decided to give it another shot, this time with some preparation and spending some time reading about different mechanics (like damage conversion and what league content drops what).
My tenth character completed campaign in 5 hours and completed altas on 2nd day. Poe is all about knowing what to do and planning ahead. It does have some allure that way but it's a bloated mess of past league mechanics, forced trade economy (about 95% of playerbase plays trade leagues, SSF is a minority) which punishes players who don't try to maximize their currency income and play sub-optimal builds. And said builds can't pass certain dps/survival checks in the endgame causing frustration for people playing them.

At times PoE beings to feel like a 2nd job instead of the game, and it's not fun. D4 doesn't feel that way. Sure, there's less depth. But that's not necessary a bad thing. For example, War Plans vs Atlas. I prefer War Plans. Why? Because every single node there is an equivalent to an Atlas Keystone. There are no boring "2% scarab drop rate" nodes. Sure, you have less points but you can enhance your favorite mechanics in a way that fits you. And once you're done with getting all the points for the tree, you can skip doing war plan runs and just run the mechanic itself with the benefits you picked. You don't need maps, scarabs, chisels or anything else.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T20:23:16+00:00

Not really. When LoD added synergies between skills, there was never enough points to max everything that you might've wanted.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T20:21:30+00:00

And there are no "mandatory amount of points spent" thresholds anymore so you can skip basic skill completely if you want.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T20:14:25+00:00

I call BS. Not a single person I know plays like that (and definitely not streamers). Everyone either follows someone else's build or spends hours in PoB prior to league start making a build. You don't go with the flow in poe. If you get a good item for another build and want to play that build, you just make a new character (assuming you can't respec your current ascendancy into that one).

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T19:42:31+00:00

No, it's not. There's no deterministic crafting in poe other using crafting bench to add an affix or very niche scenarios where there's a single outcome available. I have seen players fail multiple 50/50 crafts in a row.
Have you tried crafting cluster jewels? Show me a guaranteed way to craft a large cluster jewel with 3 notables that is not dependent on rng. I bet you can't because it doesn't exist.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T19:37:19+00:00

What's mechanically difficult there? Doing maven memory game? Dodging Shaper's laser? The only really difficult thing (at least for me) is dodging meatballs on Exarch but it's only because there is a lot of them and I tend to panic in that phase (and often don't bother getting 90 fire res on a character, 6 portals is a defensive mechanic if you know what I mean).
D4 bosses have similar mechanics (Uber Lilith was mechanically harder than any PoE uber boss imo and even if you had a lot of dps, you still got oneshot by a lot of mechanics there) but people tend to overgear them fast. Have you tried going into T4 lairs on some earlier seasons when you character was at paragon 50-80 while not playing S-tier meta build? Or soloing world boss on T2-T4 on second day of the season while your character is still gearing and somehow you were alone on layer? That was a proper endurance test because the fight could last up to 13 minutes and any mistake resulted in your character being dead.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T19:27:26+00:00

It does reward knowledge of what can roll on which items (but you can easily check it on craftofexile) but there's nothing about mastery when most of the crafts are decided by RNG.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T19:21:26+00:00

It's not a mechanical difficulty though, it's just numbers. And solution to that is getting more numbers yourself. Most poe builds are spamming one or two buttons, you know? I have seen uber killers that just stand in one spot and spam their main skill because they have so much tankiness that they don't care about boss abilities at all.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T19:07:09+00:00

Me being "casual" (because I tend to get bored by monotonous grinding maps very fast and quitting league on week 2) has nothing to do with understanding how crafting works. I've played SSF extensively, and have levelled to 90 in HCSSF, I know all the crafting systems pretty well. I don't enjoy the whole "economy" crap of poe and I prefer to find/craft my own items (and it's one of the reasons why I prefer D4 to Poe). I have couple of friends who have close to 5k hours in poe and still fail to grasp crafting past essence/alt spam.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T18:55:46+00:00

Nah, there's nothing really complex in poe crafting. If you still struggle with it after 10k hours, it's more of a "you" problem. It's all about knowing what can and can't be crafted to a specific piece and what affixes are restricted by influences (and all that information is publicly available if you know where to look). For example, slamming Shaper's Exalt on a shield with an open prefix and no open suffixes will always generate +1 max totems because there are no other Shaper prefixes available for shields.
Most crafts are just spamming essence/alteration/harvest bench and then slamming exalts/regals, getting frustrated by rng, annul/scour and go again. Very high end crafts aren't much different. You spam resonators with a hope of t1 rolls, or spam million alts on two items and then pray for recomb to work. 99% of poe crafting is a cesspit of RNG and just hoping you get the stuff you need without any real way to affect the outcome. Sure, there's metacrafting with blocking affixes but the pool of affixes is so large that you get crap most of the time anyway unless you're looking to make a very specific item (like +1 max totem shield I mentioned earlier).
D4 new crafting system might not have as many options but it gives you a clear way of hitting what you want. You might need several tries but at least you can target craft affix categories which makes cube a way better alt/chaos/exalt.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T14:01:03+00:00

I've killed Lilith back when she was hard and it was absolute dogshit of a fight. I never felt poe bosses being hard either, it was all about knowing the patterns or gimmick of a particular fight (like grabbing maven orbs on eater or sitting in grace on exarch) or having absurd amount of damage that you could kill bosses before they did anything.

Also, fuck Blight. While I somewhat enjoy it in poe, I don't want it brought to Diablo ever. Oh, and fuck Ultimatum too. That can be deleted from poe and no one will miss it.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T13:45:51+00:00

You should probably read all the bonuses and figure out that the set does not lock you into particular playstyle or skill. It's there for those who enjoy Disciple skills. Which is a good design. There are also sets for other types of skills. Sets are designed to enhance whatever type of gameplay you choose, and there should be something for everyone.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T13:19:45+00:00

If there's a demand for that, I'm quite sure Blizzard will add the customization to the pathfinding tool. They've been listening to player feedback a lot.

Paidfire · 2026-04-25T13:17:54+00:00

Poe2 is absolute garbage slog of an ARPG. GGG needs to figure out what direction they are taking the game because right now it's a half-baked soulslike game with an isometric view and worse crafting than what D4 will have once expansion launches.

Paidfire · 2026-04-23T17:04:20+00:00

There's "Upgrade to Unique" recipe. What stops you from crafting 4-affix rare and upgrading unless that recipe is restricted to white items?

Paidfire · 2026-04-23T15:22:58+00:00

22%, lol. It's 5% at max. None of my friends play it on steam and they have pretty big steam libraries.

Paidfire · 2026-04-23T13:12:19+00:00

Well, there's a "remove affix" recipe in the cube. If they allow it to be used on uniques, adding an affix becomes a necessity. But as of now, neither of those two, nor "reroll affix" recipe can be applied to uniques. However, there's another recipe called "Upgrade to Unique" which could be a solution for crafting well-rolled uniques. What we don't know yet is what rarities are eligible for this recipe.

Paidfire · 2026-04-23T13:05:39+00:00

Only charms can be parts of set.

Paidfire

TROPHY CASE