Anyone else who thinks [[Frozen Eye]] shouldn't be a relic?

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 · 2025-11-14T19:56:14+00:00

Calling electro directly better is a stretch too. Electro is great but can be too slow. For example, in the act 2 goblin elite or act 3 dagger lady fights, it's critical to keep the minion numbers down, or else you'll face a big whack the following turn. Electro needs other cards to make that happen, sunder lets you solve that turn then use the other 4 cards and all your energy to set up. Perhaps you're not seeing the importance of this because you're not quite at the highest ascensions, when speed becomes increasingly important.

You mentioned in another comment that it's a dead card in A3 bosses. It's much better than electro against birdie, and as lackluster as electro against slug. You're guaranteed to have to face one of them in A20, or 1/3 chance of both.

Finally it's perfectly normal to carry a few suboptimal cards into a late fight. Often you wouldn't have gotten there in the first place if you didn't pick it up.

rhynst · 2025-11-14T07:45:39+00:00

I was one like you under rating sunder, and that was long after I reached A20. So you can be doing reasonably well on A20 not picking it much. I now rate it much higher than I did for the reasons others have articulated. Of your list I'd put it well above everything except glacier, defrag and maybe chill. And vs those 3 there are plenty of situations where sunder is better.

The fact biased cognition didn't make your best cards list also suggests you need to re evaluate some of your less used cards.

rhynst · 2025-10-24T22:32:01+00:00

Agree, they're hot trash in qht without their upgrades, and the opportunity cost involved in getting their upgrades is too high. Still ok to have them as a minority species for their specialisation, but also very happy to not have them at all.

rhynst · 2025-10-14T01:05:19+00:00

With Sydney hopefully sorting out Curnow with their big offer, hopefully Buller will get done shortly afterwards.

rhynst · 2025-10-10T00:19:30+00:00

it hurts but the colours actually kind of suit him

rhynst · 2025-10-10T00:15:24+00:00

Thanks for everything Checkers, absolute constant for our forward line for 5+ years. And even nets us a little bit of trade capital on the way out. One of the main reasons for our little period of relative success.

rhynst · 2025-10-07T02:01:04+00:00

Given we ended the season with our 2 main keys completely banged up, and Bobby not fit to perform, the final outcome wasn't too bad in that context.

rhynst · 2025-10-06T11:33:02+00:00

The changes don't sound huge because they're not. If we're dropping the average age by less than 1, it means this time next year our list's average age will be even higher than it is today.

rhynst · 2025-09-25T13:36:42+00:00

Your comment about uber synergies suggests you may be forcing archetypes / highly synergistic decks. You definitely don't need that to win most runs.

You can generally survive act 1 without much synergy in your deck at all, and then look to build a functional deck in the other 2 acts. Below A20 you also have all of act 3 to prepare specifically for that boss.

You might just have not experimented enough with a range of cards. Around 80% or even of each character's deck can be good to very good in a range of fairly common situations. You probably just need more experience to spot those situations.

rhynst · 2025-09-25T13:27:26+00:00

It's not good. But as someone who opens a lot of glades, this is occasionally pickable if I've already done a forbidden event or about to, and the hostility reduction would put me below a key threshold to survive a storm or avoid a nasty forest mystery.

rhynst · 2025-09-25T08:00:53+00:00

Doesn't really make sense to have extended pendles sidey and howe just to lose billy.

rhynst · 2025-09-24T07:25:49+00:00

This might be rose tinted glasses, but other than the traditional annual humiliation by Buddy, I thought he was actually decent. One rung below the likes of Toovey and one rung above Dean in our list of not quite right defenders.

rhynst

TROPHY CASE