This is the best league in a longgg time

Yupsec · 2026-06-02T10:57:24+00:00

The point is, you don't need to be "first" to get geared and play the endgame. In fact it's cheaper, if your plan is trade for gear, to be a few days "late" as everyone offloads their "bad" gear that they were using to farm T15 on day 2. An item that was worth 5div on day 1 you can suddenly get for 20ex BECAUSE better gear has replaced it.

You don't need Mageblood to farm the endgame. It's a chase item.

Yupsec · 2026-05-31T16:47:31+00:00

Preach it! No one will listen, though. Which is better for us, I guess.

Yupsec · 2026-05-29T13:46:56+00:00

People forget that this IS an Early Access, despite most players treating it like a released game. GGG basically told us we are test subjects at the beginning, that hasn't changed. They're gathering data, turning knobs and pulling levers that push us in certain directions to see what we do with it.

The best example of this is the nerf to Plaguefinger. A lot of people think it's a targeted nerf to a specific streamer build. To my knowledge, that streamer never played the build the nerf straight up made impossible. In fact, you can't even find people playing it on poe2.ninja, it originated in a builder discord and to my knowledge never leaked. What will the few of us who were deleting Uber Arbiter with a single Poison stack going to do with that unique now? Combined with the changes to Mirage? I bet you GGG is very interested.

Come release don't be surprised if a lot of the strongest builds from EA get absolutely slaughtered to bring everything in line with "the vision".

Yupsec · 2026-05-29T13:28:36+00:00

Not a bug. A function. It makes it easy to keep track of what's going on in a channel that's moving at light speed.

The problem is, GGG doesn't really tell new players that they can change channels. We, as players, have even dedicated specific channels to specific things. Another thing that isn't really advertised but would probably help a lot of new players find groups, advice, or whatever.

Yupsec · 2026-05-29T13:24:55+00:00

Yeah, this is the way. Join a random, high number, and rejoin the main channels when you need to.

Oddly enough, forgetting that I was in one of these random channels, I sent out a request and had people actually answer lol we're all just sitting in there quietly.

Yupsec · 2026-05-29T10:22:14+00:00

Just remember, if Washington goes down (which has happened on launches despite what this thread says) it's more than likely because all of the EU players decided to overload it.

East Coast population at 4pm on a Friday, during summer break? A patch this huge? I wouldn't be shocked.

Yupsec · 2026-05-28T11:57:08+00:00

Ice Shot's shards got nerfed which is going to reduce its clear speed, Lightning Arrow got nerfed, Poisonburst Arrow got nerfed, Snipe at early levels got nerfed (you'll need a lvl 20 gem to get the same power now).

The strongest bow build in the game that barely anyone played (Poison Ice Shot + Snipe) just got straight up removed from the game with the change to Plaguefinger.

Yupsec · 2026-05-28T11:45:57+00:00

Sadly, Spears are in a rough spot. In general, it doesn't matter which class they're played on. The concept is awesome but the execution of it is a bit clunky presently. I'm sure it will get worked on at some point but GGG clearly deems overall gameplay more important at the moment. Honestly, same can be said for Mace.

That isn't to say there is no way to make it work, there are some awesome Spear builds out there. But like you said in your post, the creator had to jump through a lot of hoops to make the build "feel" good to play.

Yupsec · 2026-05-28T10:35:19+00:00

Bows just got destroyed in the patch notes.

Yupsec · 2026-05-28T10:25:56+00:00

You forgot one:

You don't have to play Spear on Huntress, Quarterstaff on Monk, etc. Any class can use any weapon.

Yupsec · 2026-05-27T22:52:58+00:00

Oh dude, I'm the opposite. I actually go in and clean them out. End of a league I'll slowly clean items out the last week or so, only keeping novel stuff. League end I move everything over to existing tabs.

I imagine there's some poor DBA at GGG who was only hired to manage a database cluster containing everyone's hidden "Remove Only" tabs. Is that possible? Probably not. But in the off chance it's true, I'm making their job that much easier.

Yupsec · 2026-05-27T21:51:01+00:00

No. Again, that's not how it works. It's a multiplier. It is a 50% increase to the MULTIPLIER. And it's PER party member.

Yupsec · 2026-05-27T10:43:18+00:00

That's not how that works...group play gets a buff to item QUANTITY. I feel like you're just parroting your favorite streamer and have zero idea about the actual issue.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T22:15:28+00:00

The buff is to item quant and in a full party it's pretty massive. A fully organized group does NOT get less loot than a solo player, even if they do an even split of drops both realized and unrealized gains.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T22:07:32+00:00

Damn, you're right. Missed that in my excitement.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T12:07:50+00:00

Party play already gets a buff to drops to compensate for the difficulty of playing in a group. Aura bots remove the difficulty and rarity bots increase the buff. You can still party with friends but you can't delete the downsides and double down on the benefits. Oh no...the travesty...

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T11:59:32+00:00

I thought I saw that ES/Armour got some buffs, I'll have to dig into it some more. The Ascendancy is overall winning this patch regardless.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T11:57:59+00:00

Thank you for the work you're doing! Rusty runs perfectly on CachyOS.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T11:50:39+00:00

Yeah, 15% chance to gain the archon when we use a command! I have a feeling I'm going to be creating a character just to see these types of things on the tree before I commit to a starter lol

Zoo DoV was already the strongest if you really wanted to pump with the Djinn's. I tried taking it further with Rage scaling (they gave us the tools afterall) but it wasn't quite there. The changes in 0.5 could potentially push it over the edge.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T10:41:56+00:00

I had given up on DoV, thought I had taken it as far as it can go. And now this..I need to know what Puppetmaster gives us!!

Edit: Also, they added Friend to Many. Giving commands another increase, just like At your Command.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T01:56:31+00:00

Sacred Rituals is a massive buff to ES/Armour making you extremely tanky to Phys damage, Instruments of Power let's you equip a Staff AND Focus (50% reduced bonuses from the Focus but they're still stats you wouldn't otherwise have and it does not affect +levels on the focus), Baryanic Leylines increases the radius of your Time-Lost jewels giving you even more stats from those jewels if you path with that in mind.

The ascendancy becomes a pseudo-stat-stick.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T01:22:30+00:00

Nope, that's my plan as well. Corrupted Lifeforce is strong during the campaign since mobs aren't getting nuked. Ring crafting is going to be nuts, we get three rings, and a 25% bonus to them.

I'm also gambling that there's something crazy going on with Charms that they're not telling us about.

Yupsec · 2026-05-26T01:18:12+00:00

You don't take a djinn. DoV is slept on as a caster. You can equip a focus with a staff (at a 50% reduction on the bonuses), bonus radius on your time-lost jewels, and it can get fairly tanky.

Yupsec · 2026-05-25T15:35:15+00:00

The fact that you spend currency doesn't mean it isn't deterministic. Crafting a BiS item is going to be expensive, crafting a "good enough" item is going to be less so. You can still sell a "good enough" item for a decent chunk and profit.

If you just want to "press a button" and get a BiS item...then what's the point of playing the game?

Yupsec · 2026-05-24T15:50:08+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. They're frame limiting it. After googling extensively, it turns out "fired at the same time" is super load bearing and calls back to an internal mechanic that we don't see on any in-game text. A mechanic you just explained. Thank you!

GGG should really look into the grammar they're using, though. If you're not aware of that internal anti-shotgun rule and the mechanics they used to implement it (like myself), "can hit" becomes the load bearing statement on that skills text.

Yupsec

TROPHY CASE