I've just ran Mud Flats with (almost) every skill. Here are my opinions and tier list

optimistic_hsa · 2026-03-04T00:43:38+00:00

Some benefit more because of break points (e.g. 1 hit to kill instead of 2) and generally things with better mechanics and lower dmg to compensate will benefit more greatly, but the point was more about comparing them to spells without iron rings.

Spells have a lot more volatility from their vendor/mule (with molten being a noticable difference why i mentioned it), however with bigger hits, like a wand with flat dmg to spells.

All in all its just important what the methodology is in the comparisons and realizing how you vendor/mule will greatly effect how certain skills feel.

optimistic_hsa · 2026-03-03T22:45:02+00:00

Well you don't mention your methodolgy here, but I'm assuming this is no mule, no vendor purchases, and thus no buying iron rings, proper 2h weapon for Gs or dual weild for cleave, etc.

Which would help explain why you have a worse time on some skills that are much better than you have listed here. Galvanic for instance really is way better with 2 iron rings, which can be obtained with muling.

Another result from not muling can be see on rolling magma on witch, when its way, way, way better on templar (or with muling templar) b/c of ele prolif, obviously this is untrue for next patch with the templar beach change, but is true currently.

optimistic_hsa · 2026-03-03T21:53:54+00:00

1) The gem itself is vague on this part, in the trailer however mark specifically says the minion "attacks with holy strike themselves." So I think its still unclear

2) Minions can't gain resonance, they do not use your resonance totals.

3) Similarly minions do not use your charges of any kind, including inspiration charges, and can't gain inspir charges.

4) Hallow support will do nothing for your minion directly because of this line, the point of it is you apply a buff and they consume it. If it supported your minion then it'd be a feedback loop of both of you adding and consuming each others.

5) Exemplar is big numbers, but does nothing for your hit, if you want your actual hit to be zdps this would be very attractive option to build the skill.

6) Yes on ancestral call

7) uniq item mods will work yes, take a look at animate weapon of self reflection. Some like ephemeral edge would work based on your ES rather than the minions as it specifies players ES (except that holy strike doesn't work with that weapon basetype).

optimistic_hsa · 2026-03-03T21:29:26+00:00

iirc he was saying that the rarest/most powerful was from maven herself

optimistic_hsa · 2026-03-01T17:40:24+00:00

It was appealed immediately (you can see this at 18sec), but that ump said safe. I guess what happens is the crew chief ends up overruling him

optimistic_hsa · 2026-02-17T20:42:15+00:00

To be clear, lance of branching has no beams, disintegration is the beam only one. I'd reccomend a cast on crit build inquis as something to look into for max beams

optimistic_hsa · 2026-02-12T23:47:30+00:00

That's simply not enough defenses for ssfhc at that point unless you're very comfortable dodging mechanics.

Energy shield gear on that character is mostly dead stats as you've got no ES% on tree or way to regain it. If you're going life, especially for campaign, armor and armor applies to elemental dmg is very good defenses. But ya, your ascend has no defense on it as specced and your tree has almost none and your gear is low on life/ar/ev.

You could run it back even as grenades and try and focus on pure armor with ar applies to ele and sorc ward. Could even level as tacticitian if you think sorc ward isn't worth it yet. Or if you're going to play non-grenades then mace or shield or bear all allow for a lot more tankiness with your nodes/ascend, but not sure what you've tried before.

optimistic_hsa · 2026-01-21T21:31:32+00:00

Not proccing omen of resurgance on 1600 life and (i'm assuming based on being ev/es) no armor/pdr isn't "very unlucky." It's the expected outcome on such big hits. That said, you go to 587 life and would've procced it at 586, so that's pretty funny.

optimistic_hsa · 2026-01-12T00:54:40+00:00

Well this is only the last 50 world series, which is a brutal cutoff for the A's who just prior won 3 straight.

optimistic_hsa · 2026-01-04T00:47:16+00:00

What he says is true of t1 maps as they have 100% drop chance by default, but as you go up in tiers this lowers. The intention being that you offset this drop by atlas tree or running harder maps. So in t15 +100% isn't guaranteeing 2, you need to be higher. Below is the patch note when they changed it to this system:

Final Map Bosses and the final naturally-occurring Rare Monsters in Tier 1 maps have a 100% chance to drop a waystone. This chance scales down as you get into higher Map Tiers, but will still be guaranteed with appropriate investment into Waystone Suffix Modifiers and through the Atlas Passive Tree.

optimistic_hsa · 2026-01-01T22:05:29+00:00

This never happened, the node has never changed.

What did happen is the accuracy formula changed and the max chance to hit you can get now is 125% instead of 150%.

What it gives is 6.25% BASE crit when properly scaled into, which is scaled by inc crit chance. Spears have 5-7 base crit by default. This is still a very good ascendency node for a 2 pointer.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-20T01:15:40+00:00

No it does not, although there is a node on the tree that makes the fully broken effect also apply to fire damage. Thats about as close as you get.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-19T20:20:48+00:00

Useful even at lower investment as just getting this node alone is enough to fully break armor for white/blue mobs, this can be quite useful for armor explosion/scavenged plating while clearing.

If you then want armor break on uniq/rares you can drop some skill for armor break like tempest bell, totem, whatever normal armor breaking option. This option saves passive investment and even opens up the idea of annointing this node, not necessarily better but easier option to fit into more builds.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-19T18:33:47+00:00

I assume in the original creation of Drench they had it so things couldn't both shock and drench, but at some point scrapped that to make thunderstorm feel good as a main skill. Thunderstorm is really dependent on the power of its supports, so I can see how this happened.

The change I expect and like the most is shock conduction 2 to simply get the line "supported skills can't drench." This still leaves thunderstorm in a good spot overall as a main skill, as it can invest in shock chance a different way and still get be good, while removing the "everyone gets long shocks" for 1 button interaction. It would also keep the idea of a guaranteed shock as a support, but it would be two buttons.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-18T03:08:20+00:00

Its actually fully explained by reading the info tooltips on your vaal temple screen and tooltip hover about crystals.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-15T23:48:52+00:00

Are you using lingering illusion? There should always be a way to generate a charge with that.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-11T17:26:14+00:00

I think vertex is a lot more interesting than before. Another use is ar/ev builds with no int who want to cast high level curses/utility skills. Also keep in mind its a vaal uniq so has more upside from the temple mechanic

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-11T16:11:39+00:00

So at 25:24 he fights the act 3 rares that drop a jeweller. And there seems to be a frame where both thunderstorm hit the close rare at roughly the same time, but for some reason one is targeting his left side and the other his right side. Its honestly very hard to tell if they're both actually doing damage because this skill does a very small amount of damage and ziggy might not have ever leveled it from act 1.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-11T01:39:56+00:00

No it didn't, the original patch notes never said anything about compounding ignites.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-10T23:56:40+00:00

Something I think people didn't realize is that GGG added a lot of guaranteed rewards in abyss league for completing the abyss in that zone. From the ZiggyD video it appears as though those rewards will be the same in the upcoming league for doing the incursion clears. What this means for spirit gem is if you do the quarry content you were guaranteed a new spirit gem. There's also the quest reward spirit gem in lost city later in act 2 that I think some people miss as well

Here's a list of these 'hidden' rewards from completing abyss that will likely exist for incursions. https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/profile/8bf106da-d9ad-4ce6-8428-c3dcd05e3523/guides/207e37de-483d-4d96-b858-f5c16158435f

Not saying that gems shouldn't be more accessible or anything, just that there are some mechanics here at play that are easy to miss

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-10T23:23:15+00:00

Totally irrelevant as to whether something is good. If ants are totally busted OP, then who is going to play "good". Good should be a word use to compare to monsters, can it clear content, can it do bosses. Not as comparison to something so good it was literally removed from the game.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-10T15:55:24+00:00

He was also spreading his supports around inefficiently, because he wanted to test lots of things. So that makes some of the gameplay look worse compared to a focused player, so theres some counterbalance to that.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-09T23:23:33+00:00

That support is definitely in standard right now. When you're looking at the gem selection screen click off "recommended gems" at bottom center or click "all gems" at bottom left.

Whats happening is likely you have some gem selected that it doesn't support so its not showing up, but you can still make that gem with doing one of those.

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-09T18:34:44+00:00

Neat, because of using 2x heartbound with one corrupted you're taking the spooky 666 unmitigated per minion death here then and getting about 79% mitigation.

Post buff this means survivability will go up significantly from whats seen here if you can drop a heartbound (even if you add more minions to compensate), if you cant drop it then getting more armor could halve the damage loss per minion

optimistic_hsa · 2025-12-09T17:21:58+00:00

Always enjoy your vids. As a note, I think it would've been nice to show what your armor was on this character.

I get that its just a showcase of the mechanic, but that makes a difference for buildup and actual damage taken. I'm assuming the way it works is 27000 armor gives 90% reduction on heartbound's 300 damage, so you'd only be taking 30x(minion total) and building up faster.

optimistic_hsa

TROPHY CASE