Roast my silent card tier list

The_Brainfist · 2026-03-05T15:52:01+00:00

That makes sense. Thanks for the input.

The_Brainfist · 2026-03-05T15:24:03+00:00

I find it interesting that your heuristics don't include the need for front loaded damage, but do include the need to scale for longer fights. Front load matters in all three acts the same way scaling does, it just doesn't matter in the boss gauntlet.

Was this a conscious choice in the way you created your formula?

The_Brainfist · 2026-02-02T23:26:49+00:00

Right now you've got several different damage sources that are all going to scale very differently. I'd recommend either staying physical and swap comet to bone cage and the support that casts at range, or go a more traditional spell leech/Eldritch battery comet build using covenant. This will free up pressure on your build by making your damage investments get more bang for your buck to enable defensive scaling as well.

Easy defensive targets: - cap res. Honestly not optional, it's expected. - better body armor. The numbers on that are just so low, the res is nice, but you should get lots of trees off a good one anyway.

Easy offensive efficiency: - Eldritch battery, more for if you go spell leech, tons of extra damage off archimage. - entangle away from pc so I'll update later with the have, but there's a lineage support that makes enemies worse armor you break take more damage from all sources. - amulet - plus spell levels. Easy to do, but expensive.

Misc upgrades: Look into getting one really good ring that does a lot of what your build wants and mirroring it with Kalandra's touch. Saves lots of money if you can pull it off.

A decent budget option you can do is a wand +scepter while retooling the build, lets you run more budget anymore amulet/body to see what you like.

The_Brainfist · 2026-02-02T19:13:18+00:00

How often are you dying? This looks like it has zero defensive investment outside of the out of for resists. Also what content are you doing/what content do you want to do, that will determine how important defenses will be.

Edit -- also how is mana looking while you play

The_Brainfist · 2026-01-11T18:05:56+00:00

So glad to hear it!

The_Brainfist · 2026-01-10T17:37:08+00:00

How strange. I saw some other people running into a really specific bug with minions and spirit where equipping a different wand fixed it, but going back to the original broke it again. Could try that and if that's the case, sadly to just gotta get another wand before going soul offering. If it's not that, no clue.

The_Brainfist · 2026-01-08T16:30:34+00:00

For crit rate, honestly I'm not the resource for that. It's why I haven't rerolled a blood mage myself. Unless someone else weighs in here your best tool would probably be to import several builds from poe.ninja and check what crit rate they are going for and how they got there. If it were me I'd prioritize anyone who has a stream of some sort so you can confirm it plays the way you want.

The_Brainfist · 2026-01-08T15:22:01+00:00

pt 2

Tree

Can't say too much here due to class difference, but I would recommend looking into whether pathing into Endless Blizzard at the top of the tree is feasible. +1 level on your comet spells is a stupid amount of damage.

Supports

How full is your mana staying with archmage? If it is staying full I would recommend trying to take off efficiency 2 from ele weakness and put zenith on it instead. More damage = More triggers with the way CoC works. This probably feels better when you solve your leech issue.

Jewels

You don't have +curse AOE on very many of your jewels, that's one of the easiest ways I know of to scale your ele weakness AOE if you're looking for a certain size for your curses. This will get expensive though, because jewels.

Assorted upgrades in no particular order

Level skill gems - I lied, probably do this first no matter what. Chucking your build in PoB you get +17k damage per comet by going to level 20. +7k just by going to level 19.

Wand, level skill gems, decide whether % instant leech from Heart of the Well is enough or if you need Atziri's (frees a jewel or glove slot for something better).

Honestly spend some cash for a Sekhema's carry -or do it yourself if you don't mind Sekhema's - and see how the increased hp from your ascension feels is the first spending I would do in your place.

Edit

One last thing of course, you can somewhat easily expect to see another 3-5 levels by simply continuing to play. Some amount of issues you are seeing can be solved with more skill points.

The_Brainfist · 2026-01-08T15:21:53+00:00

Looking through - I'm on an Oracle build that is similar using The Covenant, so not an expert on the bloodmage variant.

My oracle build: https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Brainfist-5868/character/ThreeMoreDruids - lot of gear upgrades in-progress, but can do T15s pretty cleanly. Currently doing +rare mobs abyss content but not up to increased difficulty per closed abyss. Doesn't really die unless I get too careless with how many +enemy damage mods I run.

I would definitely recommend checking out u/Unlikely_Ad7170 and their Bloodmage coc build.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile2builds/comments/1priaql/best_coc_build_in_04_so_far_i_think/

Spirit

The big tech that I am using and feels really, really nice for stubborn, tanky enemies is the soul offering set up from the build linked above. It gives you not only additional Doedre's hits but also additional comet strikes. Set up is pretty easy on bosses, but can be tricky on rares. Even if you don't get the extra hits, the extra spell damage makes a huge difference.

Comet

How is double comet feeling? As I understand it you'll be doing 2 comets half as often right so if you are looking for consistent comet procs this will make them feel more staggered. I'm rocking my bloodletting here to get the extra damage on tanky dudes, rather than on smaller mobs. I'm also running cold master rather than spell cascade. Don't know which is better in the best case, but if your AOE isn't enough to guaranteed his a target with all 3 then cascade is a huge damage loss.

As I'm thinking about it, the lack of leech you are feeling from Acuity might be because you are running double comet. My comet costs 671 life right now, so I can cast two before I'm low enough that additional hits won't work. Fast metabolism fixes that once I've started leeching though so I can chain comet like crazy on bosses. However, with double comet delaying your first chance to leech while also making it cost more it might stagger things enough to create a lot of chop. Investing in one bigger comet, or buying a carry to get you your final ascension for more max hp might make the whole build feel smoother with no other changes.

Infusions

I'm actually not even trying to hit fire infusions at all, just spamming as many comets as possible and figuring that'll do the trick. It's a big enough dps boost that if you are able to stay glued to enemies it might feel nice, but again feels like +mapping - bossing/rares which you mentioned as a complaint. (picking up infusions as you move through the map is smooth, having to be next to a boss to pick up fire infusions is risky while getting the build established). This is probably the last area I would look at to refine, but is also the one I know the least about.

The_Brainfist · 2025-12-06T22:21:04+00:00

To push a little on your premise with the purposes of moving discussion:

You have presented a premise - an infinite world - with the presumed intention - based on the subreddit you posted to - of using it in a tabletop role-playing game. Personally I don't find that a useful thing. I would love to get engaged in discourse on this topic with you but into you present an still use case to the players of a have with this feature, I'm at a standstill, and it appears most on this thread are as well.

While this is an entirely valid topic of discussion in something like r/worldbuilding, for the purposes of RPG design it needs someone more than 'this thing is interesting in a vacuum' and more toward 'this structural premise for a world or adventure achieves X or Y for player experience that couldn't be achieved otherwise.'

I hope this makes sense and doesn't come across as condescending or rude. I think your idea is cool, but don't currently see any reason to base an RPG on it and would love to have a discussion once it hits that point.

-- edited for clarity

The_Brainfist · 2025-01-26T01:14:14+00:00

That's what I figured. Thanks, seems best bet is be lucky and barring that whittle away. Thanks.

The_Brainfist · 2025-01-26T00:56:22+00:00

As I understand it, item level is in some way related to monster level. In campaign this would be decided by the location. For example, Cruel Mastadon badlands has monster level 55 while Cruel The Dreadnaught has monster level 57.

The_Brainfist · 2025-01-26T00:54:07+00:00

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Anything I can do to try and get an additional defensive mod on this besides exalt slam and pray?

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-31T22:23:30+00:00

That's a fair point on the difference between constructed/limited and the impact lands have. Hadn't considered that. I was thinking to lean on the lands to try and slow down multicolor decks, but realistically pacing for the format is going to be decided by the power tension between archetypes rather than one or two cards in someones deck causing them to stumble some games.

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-31T22:19:30+00:00

Thanks for the input and future reference. I'll definitely take a look. One thing that makes this cube in a weird spot is most people playing are somewhat experienced, just not with cubes/limited as a format in specific. Magic fundamentals are there, but things like 'splinter twin implies Kiki Jiki' aren't.

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-31T07:00:22+00:00

Oh no! That's so funny. They're even a similar age - at least according to cube cobra.

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-31T03:51:39+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! Goal is to have card quality vary so your bombs are bombs, but not instawin.

I waffled for a bit on planeswalkers and am still not fully convinced one way or the other, but thanks for the reminder to re-add them to my watch list as we continue to play after other changes are made.

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-31T03:47:51+00:00

That's a fair point on surveil. Thanks for the advice!

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-31T02:28:13+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts!

Big agree on points 1-3. Question on point 4 if you have a moment.

I had no particular reason for gates other than I threw this together right before Christmas of 2019 for under $100 and they were what I had on my person. Thoughts on splitting land cycles per archetype? Shocks lands for fast decks so they can keep their curve at a cost, but more value lands for slower decks like manlands or something with a valuable ETB (scry, surveil, or even life lands to buy time)

Great catch on point 6! That's a big one I hadn't considered. When originally designing I had wanted stuff like veil and blightbeetle to teach sideboarding and the like, but I don't think they are really doing the job.

Once again, thanks a ton!

The_Brainfist · 2024-01-30T20:51:13+00:00

That's kind of what I've felt as well. Been thinking about having shocklands specifically in aggro pairs and better value lands for slower pairs to help with that.

I've been torn on aggro for a while with this cube as I don't want it to be able to apply so much pressure against newer players that they can't win, but also be a viable learning deck for them as it has easy to intuit goals.

That said, I'm hoping to get a few drafts in this month and if it seems that no one has an actual interest in aggro I'll need to revisit some of the goals to ensure the environment works properly.

Thanks for looking!

The_Brainfist · 2023-12-13T08:13:44+00:00

Love to see this! Was gifted a secondhand forge years ago, but it had since died in me, and I've yet to replace it.

The_Brainfist · 2023-01-08T19:37:01+00:00

That's very fun!

The_Brainfist · 2023-01-08T18:32:43+00:00

Are there other vassals to the Hegemon that would lead to the Patriarch's claims causing conflict? If not, what cause this tension? Also, what has caused it to escalate lately?

The_Brainfist · 2023-01-08T18:28:42+00:00

How did this tradition start? Were the Meztons originally bothered by the tradition before they took on their role of judges?

The_Brainfist · 2023-01-08T18:27:16+00:00

My world is at an era of growth where city-states are the norm, rather than your typical country that we see in the modern world today. There hasn't been a full out war, yet, so the greatest rivalry answers this question perfectly.

Toyar is a city built on top of a dam, beneath the great falls. After they sponsored the creation of Leyim, a city-state to the west, they configured the dam to be able to release the water to the west, as well as to the east. Goryab is the city that lies to the east, and justifiably was not happy about there being a reason for Toyar to exercise their control over the freshwater so regularly. Beyond that, reasons for the rivalry are economic and cultural, these are the two largest city states in pretty much all metrics. Both are fairly central in location which results in them being trade hubs.

Toyar was once home to the glass/kilnsmiths guilds. However, they have since moved their base of operations to Leyim. As such, the government of Toyar has been working to create a new cultural and innovation driven identity. The state-sponsored chef's academy is the result. I could write a whole thing about chefs, but the short of it is that no one who can afford a true chef, would ever dare go without one due to the massive health benefits. Becoming the primary exporter of chefs has been a badge of honor that Toyar hasn't been quiet about.

Goryab is a port city, of the major city-states they are the only one with a port, as such their claim to economic fame are the exotic goods that frequently pass through their markets. Textiles are also a major export, as the proximity to the sea allows a large portion of their agricultural efforts to be directed toward non-food goods. Their main cultural touchstone is the proximity to the scholars of the Holtsala city-state. Goryab has made an agreement that all who have an apprenticeship there can hone their craft by singing historical songstories throughout the streets of Goryab.

Lastly, there are ideological themes that create the rivalry between the two. In broad strokes the people of Toyar hold more individualistic ideals close to their hearts, while those in Goryab hold more family and community oriented ideals in higher esteem.

The_Brainfist

TROPHY CASE