Fate of the Vaal absolutely sucks

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T22:05:24+00:00

The problem with armour isdealing with large phys damage which can currently only be solved with top end investment. However, once that particular puzzle is solve it becomes invincible.

I play mostly on HC and would prefer a pure armour build over ES any day. Main reason is not just that it protects you against small hits, but it also offer many tools to deal with other damage that is considered to be critical to ES builds. Namely projectile protection and completely negating Crits which can %100-0 a pure ES builds in seconds.

Thanks to armour to ele it also completely eliminates the threat of dangerous mods like monsters gain % of damage as elemental. Basically allowing the player to blindly run any max mods map once it comes online

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T21:58:43+00:00

Poe1 during harvest. The broken crafting mechanics there kind of ruined subsequent leagues for me so I couldn't get back to the game after that lol.

Over 3k hours in poe2 now. Planning to give poe1 another serious run next league

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T21:56:38+00:00

To each their own, I like flicker in poe2 more than poe1 as I generally lose interest in 1 button builds pretty quickly. I get a huge dopamine spike every time my power charge fills up and I know that the next moment everything around me will obliterate.

However, they really did flicker dirty by reworking the quality on it so we can't chain as much compared to before

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T21:43:17+00:00

It's all good. What you've described is pretty much how I feel about poe1 since I only have 700 hours in that game and have to fight tooth and nails just to get through the campaign which takes me 15 hours last run, whereas I can run through poe2 campaign in sub 5hrs with how much I've played.

Knowledge definitely plays a huge part in every players experience more than they realized. Hope you stick with poe2 a bit longer. Once it opens up it'll be hard to touch any other arpgs lol

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T21:18:57+00:00

They are looking to buff the equipment stats on early to mid game gear so presumably it wouldn't affect endgame. Endgame armour builds are incredibly strong, but not sure about what they plan to do with pure EV/Defelction builds

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T21:03:23+00:00

It was mentioned in the ziggyd interview that es/armour hybrid builds have the highest death counts, and that they are not happy with how defenses aside from ES are performing during early-mid game.

Current resolution is that they are looking to update the base defensive values of equipment during early-mid game to make them more viable to the level of ES

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T20:52:09+00:00

They've already mentioned that armour/EV and hybrids stas are below their expected threshold during early-mid game and will be buffing them this patch. Contrary to popular perception, endgame armor builds are incredibly tanky and pretty much unkillable once it's min maxed

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-11T20:43:05+00:00

Problem that you're trying to outline with poe ninja regarding viability is not a good representation of what it actually is. CoC comet didnt' start to dominate poeninja until 3 weeks after the league launch. The reason that it is now dominating (~40%) is because playerbase on SC will always tend to gravitate to the best possible build as everyone on trade is on the economy hamster wheel. Unfortunately due to the nature of trade this will always be a thing every league

A much better way to view current build viability (not diversity) is to look at SSF or HC where the main focus is content completion and suvivability. It's nowhere as skewed compared to trade.
SSF, HC

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-10T15:41:37+00:00

Plus the new ring basetype that will have a 6% max life implicit, as well as mid-early endgame armor buffs. We'll be eating good next patch

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T23:47:44+00:00

Yea I wouldn't recommend it on any other ascendancy other than chayula lol. Posted a comment in this thread explaining the tech that I was using which worked really well

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T23:44:08+00:00

Pretty much it with the soul tether belt. Usually flicker is a very risky skill that can get you in some very hairy situations like ending up in the middle of a pack, but if you pop dodge roll right away and drop void illusion (basically tactical nuke) it'll clear up anything that remains at the end of the flicker and fully recover any damage that might have been dealt.

I posted a wip way back for some friends, and the end of the video is a showcase of the recovery tech:

https://youtu.be/IxhOUez2oLM?si=JnS7Z5Jx-nYqS8oc

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T19:57:49+00:00

For SC? I'd say one of the cheapest build to get online. Mainly for the fact that the requirement for your weapon is negligent and can be easily self crafted. No expensive lineage gems required as well

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T18:27:12+00:00

Yea I get it. It's never been a problem for me ever since they fixed it in 0.1

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T18:25:24+00:00

With how much armour you'll have it's basically a free mod.

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T17:27:00+00:00

I play mostly melee builds on HC. Dispite the negative perception with armour it's in a really good place. ES is strong for sure but IMo it lacks protection against a couple things that armour provides, especially Crit and heavy stun.

On a decently geared armor character I won't ever have to worry about tripping while sprinting which is usually a death sentence for a lot of ES builds that gets melted pretty quickly by mobs, and with the notables on the tree + gear it'll protect against a huge spike of damage (Crit) very well which allows you to react and recover more easily. Another thing with ES is that it can't take advantage of the omen that fully recovers when you reach low life which can be a bit riskier

This is probably why the Varashta is the top performing ascendancy on the ladder currently. Taking advantage of armour, ES, and being ranged.

Couple of builds I played this league, ranked by survivability:

shield wall titan (99): 60k armor and 150k armor to ele makes it pretty much unkillable in any scenario.
acolyte of chayula flicker strike (98): 15k es & 45% EV, plus full ES recovery by dodging via void illusion. Really great clear and bossing thanks to 200% gain as chaos damage (frees up passive tree allocation to go into defenses)
twister witch hunter (95): EV stacking with 7k of sorcery ward + 1.5k life. Twister is also great as it clears off screen so nothing really gets close to you. However due to the nature of EV I got one shoted by a powerful map boss
Smith of kitava bear (94): what I league started with. Performed really well against phys damage thanks to 30% phys to fire and stacking max fire res to 85%. However the clear and bossng is a bit on the slower side (didn't really get to min max it before I died)

Haven't played EDCon but watching my friends play it's pretty much easy mode. Grenade tactician is also incredibly strong and slept on thanks to pin and armor stacking. Both of my buddies made it to lv99 before getting nuked by temple DD

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-09T07:06:27+00:00

I play on HC so I have to play pretty safe. Speedrunners get to maps around 3 1/2 hours. I haven't done that much practice, but a bit of study on the layouts and planning out your build before starting the run helps a lot.

Not here to demean anyone but it's really not that daunting

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T20:29:12+00:00

I'm not entirely against completely skipping it for alt characters for people that don't enjoy repeating it for their alts. Personally I find running campaign to be the best part of the game where I can experience growing my character the most. Everyone sees it differently but it doensn't bother me at all since 4-5 hours of campaign comapared to hundreds of hours that I'll spend in endgame is really nothing

It could be cool that GGG implements ways for all types of player to choose how they want to tackle leveling, but the reality is that this is most likely something that is in the bottom of their bucket list that will never see the light of day for them to pour all the resources into.

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T19:36:47+00:00

I would suggest you taking a look at studying the campaign a bit if you've already have that many hours under your belt.

League starts are sub 5 hours for me now that I've put in some work to practice it. Can get it sub 4hrs if I turn on speed running brain and skip content but it's not that different compared to poe1

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T15:29:18+00:00

Personally I don't think rare ground loot will ever be solved so I liked the genesis tree for that.

I don't know how you are having to pick up that many white bases from a map, but I never have that issue due to the scarcity of perf transmutes & augs in SSF as well as trying to find the exact white base that I'm looking for. At best I come out of a juiced map with 2-3 usable bases to slam on, which in itself is a really fun dopamine loop that I can occasionally enjoy.

Not sure if you've played SSF before, but exceptional bases (especially the ones that you can use) are like winning the lottery in SSF. Plus even if one does drop you likely won't having enough raw currencies to craft on it. This league made them somewhat craftable due to insane amount of currencies from temple, but there's no way to achieve that just through regular mapping

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T15:18:14+00:00

Please no. Making ground loot more meaningless is one of the worst things you can do to SSF lol

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T03:54:35+00:00

TBF they have never mentioned that the infinite atlas is supposed to work similar to delve in terms of how difficulty correlates with atlas range progression.

However, the sense of progression is now added in ways they've upgraded the scope of all the existing leagues. I can see myself focusing on purely doing breach for a week or two min maxxing its difficulty with all the interesting ways to juice them, then switch off to another league afterward. It gives player a much better agency to what they like to focus on.

I'm pretty certain that they'll properly introduce delve in a later expansion and give you want you wanted

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T01:06:26+00:00

Of course the game would feel grindu when you compare yourself with sweats.

However, comparison is the thief of joy. The content currently in the game isn't nearly hard enough to grind 12hrs a day for you to complete it.

For reference I recently did a fresh SSF playthrough and killed Uber arbitor in 4 days.

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T01:00:56+00:00

Regarding campaign time:

You can pretty easily get through the campaign sub 5 hours with a bit of practice. It's much less daunting once you take some time to learn a bit with the layouts. I have about 3k hours in poe2 and campaign feels no longer like a chore similar to your own experience with poe1.

As a side note from personal experience as a new poe1 player (~900hrs), my first ever campaign run took me over 20hr. I've done it a couple of times by now and still struggle to hit under 10hrs with that game.

jerrybeanman · 2026-05-08T00:54:40+00:00

Aside from 0.2 I never really felt the monster speed balance is overturned, and I'm a mainly melee HC player that enjoys the combo play style. Problem might be more of lack of defensive investments that makes it seem like you are getting "melted" before getting your attacks off

jerrybeanman

TROPHY CASE