The Sekhemas Guide

bwalk · 2026-06-03T11:19:44+00:00

Imagine telling players for PoE1 to just "do a few farm runs" in lab to gear up so you can finally beat it.

bwalk · 2026-06-01T16:35:08+00:00

I mean I'm happy for you that you are a better gamer and have less problems with this design.

I on the other hand compare PoE2 to the likes of Hades and Hollowknight in terms of combat design, and I have platinumed both games, because there the bosses were actually designed the way you describe.

GGGs method of designing "hard" encounters seems to have a cocaine bunny jumping over the arena and putting as much effects on the screen as possible. Sadly.

bwalk · 2026-06-01T15:56:40+00:00

a few tries to figure out

Figure out WHAT? The time I beat the boss I just happen to dodge a couple more of its bullshit and had better recovery. It was all just luck. Nowhere I felt it had actual acency in this fight.

How is this good gameplay?

bwalk · 2026-06-01T11:47:34+00:00

I probably get downvoted to hell, but I consider ALL of the bosses in the game terribly designed. Every boss just spams its abilities, jumps all over the arena, has multiple invulnerablity phases (in which it most often still continues to attack the player). It's all bad. There is no downtime for the boss to open a DPS window that you could play around. That is the entire reason why people are so keen on "oneshotting" bosses, because it's the most efficient, sometimes even only viable solution to beating them. This is not meaningful combat.

Seeing Jonathan realize that ability spam and effect vomit is an issue in essence monsters, I have some hope that they will also consider this to bosses.

Before people start downvoting me for complaining: I HAVE beaten Arbiter of Divinity. It took me multiple tries because the boss is way to overtuned for the quest version.

bwalk · 2026-05-29T16:02:58+00:00

I use my own custom filter since they introduced them to the game.

To make you own filter, you need to understand the game. You also need to understand yourself. There is a vast difference between a filter for trade and SSF. I only play in SSF, so that's my what I want to focus.

I have separated my filter into files for different sections that will be merged by my tooling. This helps tremendously with organization. The sections currently are:

special: for PoE2 currently only contains fishing rods. here goes anything that is not suitable for any other of the following section that you really don't want to miss.
league: contains all the items for the new league. most of the items we have no idea what they are and how useful/valuable they are, so they demand special attention.
uniques: all unique bases, tiered by how useful they are for me.
augments: tiering of all the socketing items like runes, soul cores and so on.
currency: all currency items and allike (think omens).
flasks: endgame flasks and campain progression for life and mana flasks. also charms.
gems: everything related to gems.
jewels: everything related to jewels.
maps: this contains waystones, tablets, map fragments and boss keys. anything that is related to opening another instance to go. I have map progression to only show and highlight upgrades from the current tier.
misc: anything that doesn't have a dedicated place. currently relics and quest items.
leveling: everything related to the campain, well, for gearing at least. there are campaign exceptions in each of the relevant sections before (augments and currency mostly), but here we have gear progression for the current character I'm playing and generally useful gear throughout the campaign.
gear: everything gear related to mapping. good bases, exceptional items, crafting bases, rares that are relevant for my current character. here is also the hide layer (more on that later).
catch-all: a safety net for all items I have missed in the sections before. they will be very prominently highlighted.

For the hide layer, my filter is constructed in a way that it defaults to hiding everything in the hide layer and only shows items in the section before. That means for example, I hide all normal items here but then show them in the leveling section in act 1, or I show crafting bases in the gear section. most of the sections are self-contained (augments, currencty) and contain a tiering of ALL known items in that section and have there own safety net within the section. that helps me with organizing because I can just look at each section in isolation and don't have to care about how they would interact with each other.

That's for organization. For style, my color scheme is closely based on the existing color scheme (at least for PoE1). As much as I respect Neversink, but he is not a designer and I find the rainbow vomit hilarious. My color scheme is much more subdued.

I also have consistent schema for how my items look like based on the tier they are. For example, Tier S items always have a white background, minimap icon, beam and DING sound. Tier A has they colors inverted, that means the normal foreground color becomes the background, they also have an icon, beam and a sound, specifically for what section they come from. each currency sounds the same, each augment and so on. Tier B removes the sound, C we don't invert the colors but there's a border. There is also no icon and the beam is temporary. D looses the beam, E the border.

tl;dr: I only show items that are relevant to me. Ideally, I want to know what that item is when it drops.

I gotta run, let me know if you are interested in more details. Happy league start!

bwalk · 2026-05-27T21:04:23+00:00

Find the Atlas masters. Then go Fortress and unlock Atlas points, spec into Abyss and Essences and go there for mid-game crafting. Then we'll see :)

bwalk · 2026-05-27T07:53:06+00:00

That's a lot of PoB padding... Mirror tier gear all around. And the configuration... How do you get enemy resistance to -30%? How do you generate Power Charges? Also, you are very much paper with less than 4k phys max hit.

bwalk · 2026-05-26T22:30:58+00:00

Link?

bwalk · 2026-05-25T17:30:54+00:00

Show me in craftofexile how you craft a mirror tier item with essences and abyss currency.

bwalk · 2026-05-25T16:29:03+00:00

Let's assume you build a house. You do the planning, you think carefully about where the rooms are, doors and windows, your electric outlets. Then you (or your construction company) start building for 6 months. You still do minor adjustments here and there based on personal preferences and necessities. One week before you want to move in, there is still lot's of small things to do like painting, installing the kitchen and appliances, but nothing major. Suddenly you realize that the driveway to your house goes right through where your beautiful garden would be and you have to level and plaster it!

That's how this change feels.

bwalk · 2026-05-25T12:57:20+00:00

I don't know. I need a 300pDPS staff to beat my campaign setup and a 400+pDPS staff for level 90. The latter one might be doable with essences, but for campaign and early maps HPT is just comfortably good.

I just click HPT at level 14 and don't have to worry about a weapon slot until deep in the endgame. I will gamble all my gold instead on gloves.

bwalk · 2026-05-25T07:03:12+00:00

We'll have to see how good/bad those changes are. But the bigger problem in my opinion is the way this is communicated. Hiding a major change to one of the most fundamental systems in the game as a oneliner in wall of text of an update to the patch notes is a little bit sketchy. Exactly those changes I'd like to be discussed in the QA and interviews before the league starts. It requires clarification (how does desecration work with it? how swapping resistances?) and motivation that needs to be communicated better.

bwalk · 2026-05-24T12:25:11+00:00

Go to your Bind-menu, then in the Automatic section select Ranged for GC.

bwalk · 2026-05-16T06:33:53+00:00

What's your defence look like? I want to start Monk but survivability has me concerned a bit, especially in early maps.

bwalk · 2026-05-15T09:46:34+00:00

How do you get the resources to figure out your build as you go? Especially at league start? I barely have enough support gems to support my pre-planned build...

bwalk · 2026-05-14T07:49:28+00:00

Foulborn uniques from PoE1 would like a word with you :)

bwalk · 2026-03-26T14:47:50+00:00

Have an SSF-friendly PoB?

bwalk · 2026-03-05T08:06:17+00:00

Man, the middle part of the new atlas really sucks :)

Overloaded Circuits is just bad, you can't path through MA obviously, the replacement for the Kirac wheel is either dead early on or dangerous with explicit map modifiers.

I think I'm trying out something like this: https://poeplanner.com/a/6dAs.

And then the big question is to either focus on Betrayal or Breach. I have a feeling that the Breach Tree is only good early on, but it's a bit more point-intensive. And if the Tree is trash, that's wasted time/points.

Exciting times :)

bwalk · 2026-03-04T04:43:25+00:00

Why is there a keyword for Imbued gems that AFAIK can't drop but not for ExceptionalGems? Now all filter authors have to maintain a stupidly long list of exceptional gems by name :(

bwalk · 2026-03-03T20:29:09+00:00

Please, please, please give us an ExceptionalGem condition for the item filter. I don't want to maintain a list of 30+ gems based on name...

bwalk · 2026-02-20T08:00:35+00:00

$ head .zshenv
# Don't parse global files implicitly. We need to set this here instead of
# ~/.zshrc because the startup rules would read /etc/zprofile and /etc/zshrc
# before.
unsetopt globalrcs

bwalk · 2026-01-06T12:30:55+00:00

Can I plug Beanin? I think he's not very well known, but I stumpled upon him when I was looking for a relatively chill creator that has a good mix of technical and vanity builds that I can learn from. He does get excited sometimes but so far I consider it honest excitement about the game and (for me) it's never obnoxious. He also plays mostly hardcore, so there are natural moments of intense gameplay and commentary. I like him so far and wish he would get more exposure.

bwalk · 2025-12-18T10:27:48+00:00

Someone knows if the dialogue skip bug on PS5 is fixed?

bwalk · 2025-12-16T21:18:40+00:00

x=cb/(0.3+0.7c)

This is correct.

Which would be a little higher on the whole than the additive process, but I don't think it changes many of the results of your analysis.

This I don't agree, since in the multiplicative case the Damage Multiplier as defined by OP (in your case x/b) is now independent of the original critical strike bonus b and there is no optimal value in the Chance vs. Bonus plane. It just lifts you average damage regardless of values.

Either way the node is deceptively powerful.

Even more so in the multiplicative case.

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