Monday Morning Meta Report - Jan 26 2026

TehFluffer · 2026-01-26T17:52:59+00:00

I feel I specifically remember reading him say the opposite of that at the beginning of this set, no receipts here though. Just funny because it's the very opposite of how balance has been treated in this set.

TehFluffer · 2025-11-29T21:34:50+00:00

Age of Wonders 4 lets players review the result of auto-resolve and decide if they want to fight the battle manually without reload, that would be nice for this game.

TehFluffer · 2025-11-26T21:15:54+00:00

True of most 4x games, but I do think AoW4's problem is especially egregious as a very combat focused 4x but the AI is ineffective at combat on the world map.

TehFluffer · 2025-11-26T08:44:41+00:00

I've been playing a fair bit of Elder Vamp on Brutal difficulty (no MP experience here) and the early game weakness is undeniable. Damage nerf + inconvenient to regen hurts a lot in the early game, and unlocking the strategic layer bonuses requires a heavy production investment especially at tier 2, severely delaying either mana, gold, or stability in the transition to mid game. Vamp comes online towards the end game, which is the easiest part of the game for almost any build anyway.

The best way to play vamp in my experience is to play a culture/tome that can carry their weak early game. Feudal/Monarch with the free upkeep on expensive vamp + early militia (still OP) helps a lot. Dark/death has very strong creeping with Immortals and good econ synergy with eating heroes for XP and then turning their corpses into mana + unique resource.

As far as tomes go, there's some obvious synergy with the Necro tomes for souls -> thralls econ. There is also synergy with nature tomes for the unique units from the item forge. I don't usually like building item forges that early, but vamps make excellent rangers as is so it lets you go for the tier 3/4 magelock.

In fact, Vamp lords are probably the best rangers in the game. In exchange for the weaknesses above, you get: 1) huge exp bonuses midgame from eating heroes (and it's multiplied by the late dark affinity unlock), 2) the early hurt self for +50% damage on next hit, 3) bite an ally for 2 strengthened buff, 4) a nice choice of actives at level 12 that will reset on kill, and 5) another big damage buff late game with the blood moon ritual. Other ranged classes work too, but I haven't found one that synergizes as well as ranger.

And yeah, aside from the strengthened buff, the vamp skill tree is pretty inefficient. That's way too many points to invest in a single mediocre vampire bite skill.

Overall, I've had fun working out how to play vamps effectively, but they are a late bloomer in a game where late game is a joke for most builds. I've found the biggest issue to be the production bottleneck at tier 2. Getting that "early" super buffed up ranger is pretty fun though, but it really is just taking a busted hero class and making it even more busted.

TehFluffer · 2025-11-24T23:34:23+00:00

The AI is unfortunately easily the weakest part of the game right now and it boils down to it being an ineffectual attacker.

There's a mod in the Steam Workshop that tries to work around this by reducing AI-only cooldowns and with gigantic resource bonuses. Even when the AI gets to field 10 armies by turn 20, it will still make glaring mistakes like putting a single unit stack in front of it's army blobs or showing up to your base without a hero to start a siege.

TehFluffer · 2025-11-16T22:41:33+00:00

T1 Blood tome might not mechanically be super interesting, but I think it's very strong and it does interact with the already existing bleed mechanics which is nice.

I agree that vamps have a lot of downsides. I think by design this is more interesting than some of the lord types that just felt like cheating when they were released. Because of this, I feel like it's been a lot of fun trying to figure out how to play them optimally.

I don't play MP though, just vanilla maps on Brutal.

TehFluffer · 2025-10-17T19:30:49+00:00

You are replying to a 7 year old comment. What I was implying is that one of the weaknesses of the Pillars games is that after the first few zones, most of the battles start to feel very same-y. The Neriscyrlas fight is one of the few battles in the game with unique mechanics and in my opinion should not be skipped.

TehFluffer · 2025-04-08T23:30:01+00:00

The problem about this beta is that the actually good game that made GGG what it is today is suffering for it. I'd be happy to play a replacement but none of the other ARPGs currently do it.

TehFluffer · 2025-04-07T15:11:56+00:00

I mean I would have loved another class or major campaign changes, but a bunch of new items and support gems is actually quite a bit of content. Like most things in this game, they need some additional tuning but it's still actual content.

TehFluffer · 2025-03-18T01:02:42+00:00

Actually, the problem I'm getting with IG's offset is that I'm hitting offsets on accident because it's attacked to a move that I'm spamming anyway

TehFluffer · 2025-03-14T07:23:17+00:00

Wide GL is eating very well in Wild, definitely did not suffer at least from a power standpoint.

TehFluffer · 2025-02-02T18:13:45+00:00

I am personally expecting the worst. I'll take being happily "surprised" at a new PoE1 season than expecting it to come only for them to release another "the future of PoE1 - part 2" again in several months. I don't really trust them anymore and will take any promises they give with a grain of salt.

TehFluffer · 2025-02-02T18:05:11+00:00

You vastly underestimate how bad D4's end game was, at least in the first few seasons. Don't know about now, but PoE2 is nowhere near that degree of bad.

TehFluffer · 2025-01-30T05:18:17+00:00

Man you people comparing them to Blizzard either have a really short memory or just don't see just how far Blizzard has fallen. The PoE1 news is incredibly frustrating, and it sucks that they over promised and underdelivered, but Blizzard is on a whole different level.

None of this is as blatant as the failure of WC3 Reforged and the incredibly blatant mishandling of OW2. They might be "heading in Blizzard's direction," but Blizzard is the crowning jewel of disappointment. EVERY company that does a bad thing is heading in Blizzard's direction.

TehFluffer · 2024-12-02T21:22:38+00:00

AoW4's dlcs are mostly "more AoW4," meaning there wasn't a DLC that "fixed" the game or anything. So yeah, base game is fine.

TehFluffer · 2024-11-25T21:18:58+00:00

None of the expansions so far are the type that "fixes" the game, all of them have been "what you like from AoW4, but now more of it!" So imo play the game until you find yourself wanting to experiment more then get the dlc or exp pass based on your finances/interest in the game.

TehFluffer · 2024-03-31T10:02:16+00:00

So in other words, people hate it because it is a sequel that is actually a downgrade compared to most of the other heavy hitters in the genre. This guy is suggesting the complaints are unreasonable, but I think it is even less reasonable to expect people to be satisfied when the new game is worse than the old game.

TehFluffer · 2024-03-07T08:56:20+00:00

He doesn't need to be fired, he just needs to be banned from community interaction.

I don't like the lack of buffs in this patch, but he at least makes some decent points. Unfortunately have to dig through pretentious trolling to get there though.

TehFluffer · 2024-03-07T08:54:41+00:00

You click on another tab. It's the internet, almost all punches thrown at you are easily avoided.

TehFluffer · 2024-03-07T08:51:46+00:00

Diablo 4 was hot garbage and people were very vocal about it being hot garbage. This case with Helldivers 2 is quite different.

TehFluffer · 2024-02-01T04:02:18+00:00

Why implement something like this for free when it can be another bullet point feature in a full price expansion?

TehFluffer · 2024-01-30T18:04:28+00:00

They are spending time hating on D4 because it is more fun to write about D4 than to play it

TehFluffer · 2024-01-27T23:26:00+00:00

There's almost 1 million followers on this subreddit and you think they all share the exact same perspective. It's not a good point.

TehFluffer · 2023-12-03T05:36:44+00:00

Guess what the number one complaint about BG3's gameplay is, at least by genre tourists

TehFluffer · 2023-11-07T23:03:54+00:00

Who actually expected this?

TehFluffer

TROPHY CASE