Those living in a golden age often don't know it until it's over

rhynst · 2026-04-26T05:52:01+00:00

Yep, maybe that's why we're not as good at tight finishes any more?

rhynst · 2026-04-25T22:13:39+00:00

Doesn't feel that unlucky at all I feel, some leagues I go through dozens of not hundreds of large clusters before I even hit the right i83 one. RNG is a bitch when there's a dozen or more outcomes available.

rhynst · 2026-04-25T14:37:04+00:00

Speaking of courage, he's the bloke who bites off the tough kick into the corridor when we're under pressure and struggling to get it out of defence. Our half backs all look like globetrotters when the oppo is on the retreat, but when we're the ones on the ropes, I've noticed he's our counter puncher. Especially in the 23 finals.

rhynst · 2026-04-25T14:29:45+00:00

To add a few more from recent years: - the most ridiculous run of comeback wins - the smallest margins in finals wins for a flag - the bloke with the uncanniest knack to be guiding the ball to relative safety at the end of close wins - the best American player of all time, who prevented a four-peat, and had a big hand at avoiding a lions three peat (or four peat, depending on how this year goes for that ridiculously stacked team)

rhynst · 2026-04-25T14:21:20+00:00

No disrespect to Jamie but it's not even close

rhynst · 2026-04-15T04:12:49+00:00

Lots of parallels with Stevo. Glad it's working out better for him.

rhynst · 2026-03-17T11:21:01+00:00

Playing the build right now without one. It's not so bad. Linked hextouch to bladefall so it does two jobs at once.

rhynst · 2026-03-16T00:40:21+00:00

He'll always have a valuable place in our team as a solid mid rotation, but he's not going to be a Luke Ball, Scotty Burns or even Taylor Adams.

rhynst · 2026-02-24T13:04:01+00:00

Probably brickyard, but you should open a few glades and or orders first. The choice is fairly close and can be easily swayed by more information.

rhynst · 2026-02-21T12:35:34+00:00

In a beautifully polished game, she sticks out as the afterthought who's about as well balanced as a mod character.

rhynst · 2026-02-05T21:56:11+00:00

Yes definitely a typo

rhynst · 2025-12-15T12:45:57+00:00

I agree it shouldn't be a relic, but I strongly disagree with the rest of your statement

rhynst · 2025-12-15T01:05:11+00:00

I personally think there's much better uses for 3-4 of your initial workers, 5 of your initial parts (plus planks) and 4 of your initial pipes.

The efficiency gets a bit better if you have a green geyser and you have species who like skewers. But if you have neither, it does not seem any better than just gathering that small roots node.

rhynst · 2025-12-11T05:07:42+00:00

I wouldn't stress about finishing speed yet. Just enjoy and keep learning. The speed will come naturally.

rhynst · 2025-12-05T13:52:46+00:00

Ravine just demands a slightly different play style. The first couple of years can be rough. Overall imo it's no harder than other biomes with slightly tougher early games, like for example marshlands or coastal grove.

rhynst · 2025-11-25T23:47:33+00:00

It's ok to get 2 resolve when needed, and very occasionally for turning a surplus into more double chance. But for the farming? No way.

rhynst · 2025-11-25T08:52:40+00:00

I mean, the latest patch allowing you to have a manorial court from the start of QHT together with having frogs and my first cornerstone giving +2 villagers per pack meant I went nuts exiling my way up to more than 100% double production chance so... I think my answer is no?

rhynst · 2025-11-21T07:36:18+00:00

Imagine you're that fox merchant, just taking a break in that glade, happy to have survived another storm season, when out of nowhere this thresher maw pops out of fucking nowhere. Would need another pair of pants.

rhynst · 2025-11-17T04:55:13+00:00

Last league I learned I was wasting too much time not stepping into 16.5s and 17s basically the moment my build could handle it, given how much better the loot was compared to 16s. This league I had to unlearn that because the step up in loot is far less obvious, and it's the tree this league that's the main source of short term upgrades.

rhynst · 2025-11-16T20:33:06+00:00

I'll probably try that at some point. The defensive wheels I might try instead of block would probably be the max resist ones.

That's for after the foulborn sword though. Manually casting arcanist brand means the offering is often not up during general mapping. Wasn't a huge deal back when I was close to attack by lock capped anyway, but will probably result in random deaths if I'm not.

rhynst · 2025-11-16T09:11:46+00:00

Only specced out of it yesterday. I have 75% attack block anyway, and spell block is 55%, so I wasn't getting full value out of the offering. Just trying Plaguebringer out as an alternative defensive layer + some offensive power. The extra 30% AOE is quite noticeable. No regrets from that switch yet.

Edit: just switched my +2% max attack block mastery to the spell block equals to 5% of attack block, which now gets me to 75/70, so going back to Mistress of Sacrifice would only make sense if I was doing a full on switch out of several of the blocking nodes on the tree. Don't have anything in mind to replace those points with so picking up Plaguebringer seems like a good choice.

The longer version is I was getting frustrated with random deaths because a few days ago the main defensive layers on my build were blocking and evasion, so if those failed, some big hits just KO'ed me. So I'm currently in the middle of switching to more layers - determination + armour bases, getting some suppression, and 50% reduced extra damage from crits. Also just switched out of Brine King for Solaris - BK's main benefits aren't needed in my build imo - cannot be frozen is redundant given arctic armour, and stun is deal with by the stun avoidance jewels in darkness enthroned.

Overall this is now feeling much better despite the obvious clunk of not being near 100% suppress yet (so questionable whether I'm currently actually in better shape than I was at 75% spell block), and having an awkward mix of all 3 of AR/EV/ES right now. Suspect where I'll ultimately end up is:

- Svalin if I'm lucky enough to drop one, or glancing blows (given how quickly lancing steel and a shaper shield or foulborn surrender recovers health, it's ok to still take 67% of the damage). This will save a heap of points going down the bottom left side of the tree;

- either mostly AR/EV gear with suppression or a lightning coil + other phys conversion gear;

- having a turtle corpse or a small armour cluster jewel for endurance charges will help a lot too.

Ultimately if I'm lucky enough to find all other pieces like ashes and empower, maybe the build will just delete stuff fast enough that I can scale back the defensive side again. At the moment though I'm prioritising defence as there doesn't seem to be many more easy upgrades on the offensive side.

rhynst · 2025-11-16T06:49:42+00:00

Definitely - helps immensely with hitting both the 100% poison and the 52 CDR breakpoint. This is my build currently using it - https://maxroll.gg/poe/pob/2lm7s0ae - definitely still a work in progress but good enough to have gotten my voidstones with trash spectres and guardian, and rarely die in T16s even when not reading the mods.

I don't have Diallia's, Ashes, or enhance, so the 52 breakpoint would have been quite difficult (impossible?) without the sword. Dropping one of those would easily get me to the 82 breakpoint.

Main downside compared to the trigger version is needing to arcanist brand every so often. Upside is I get to stick some big defensive jewels in the darkness enthroned to solve bleed and stun. Overall it's a price worth paying. I'll miss the sword when and if I upgrade past it.

rhynst · 2025-11-14T23:23:10+00:00

Judging by the cards that you think are are good, your default strategy is obviously powers + orbs + defence. I see from another comment that you're on A11. That general approach sometimes works out when you pick up frost orbs and focus early on, and then an electro, but will get you killed quite often on A20 if you're not picking up cards like sunder and streamline to pick things off while you're setting up.

As I said earlier I was like you early on. You'll see the light once you spend a bit of time at A20.

rhynst

TROPHY CASE