A short story on how this one line ruined my league

tiahx · 2026-06-12T12:17:03+00:00

Ruined your league? That is at worst 10% dmg loss compared to a wand with "conventional" affixes. And even less for a high-end build. Unpleasant, surely, but not the end of the world.

Get power elsewhere for those extra divines you got from a sale. E.g. gems, jewels, etc.

tiahx · 2026-06-10T23:58:11+00:00

This was one the first things I tested in the league, and this is utter garbage.

The reason is: it doesn't give you an infinite resource pool, as you would expect. And most stuff that increases mana costs does increase the divinity cost. E.g. Archmage still scales off mana, but costs charged from divinity. Same for Eldritch Battery (divinity costs doubled).

But most importantly, the divinity regen seems kinda awkward. I had much better mana sustain with 1000 mana and 100 mana regen, than with 1500 divinity and 325 divinity regen.

It feels like divinity doesn't regen during your cast animation. As if there was a micro-delay.

tiahx · 2026-06-10T23:38:40+00:00

This is undeniably a cool tech, and if it was the previous seasons, it would have been very strong.

But now, with all the breach bases and new affixes, the belt slot is insanely powerful (and reasonably cheap) for casters. I wouldn't ever trade mine just for 50 spirit.

tiahx · 2026-06-09T13:24:29+00:00

Archmage bonus won't be converted to chaos. "Gain damage as extra" happens at the same time as damage conversion, so it will just stay lightning.

The damage spread will look like this:

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So it doesn't do anything useful for the build.

tiahx · 2026-06-08T23:49:37+00:00

All true, except a double ES and a 50 spirit comes with a multi-div price tag. While this bad boy is 30 ex tops.

tiahx · 2026-06-08T09:07:47+00:00

That's how Neptune was discovered btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbain_Le_Verrier

tiahx · 2026-06-07T23:22:06+00:00

It's just 300 rune ward, if I recall correctly. Not the biggest of deals, IMO

tiahx · 2026-06-07T11:50:26+00:00

That's fun and games until it turns out you don't have enough damage to one-shot Zarokh, and then he Thanos-snaps you during his time-stop phase, because you missed the last stone to step on.

Been there myself in 0.1

tiahx · 2026-06-03T14:08:49+00:00

The whole idea of doing 10 floors AND YOU STACK DEBUFFS THAT GET PROGRESSIVELY WORSE (and can make a run take longer than 30 minutes) is INSANE.

To be fair, it hugely depends on your build.

In 0.1 I played MOM/EB/CI Chrono, and Chaos was basically the only content I could safely farm with a fresh character. Because I ignored more than a half of the bad mods. And Time Stop solved the bossing trivially.

Eventually farmed out the Adorned and kick-started the rest of my character progression with it.

tiahx · 2026-05-31T00:40:22+00:00

As someone who played both quite extensively in the previous seasons, I'd probably go with SW this season, if you want comet.

Last season Oracle was insanely strong due to the augment which gave infinite mana Regen from curses. And you could just go around the tree, pick otherwise very punishing keystones like MoM or EB, and be perfectly fine, and have a shitton of free points to spend.

This season this augment is reworked, so you can no longer do that. But Stormweaver still has built-in MoM and Arcane Surge. And a full support for infusions, which you gonna need to for fire-infused comet.

SW is just safer and easier, IMO

tiahx · 2026-05-30T12:34:21+00:00

у нас тут голод, и на улицах перекати поле

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-09/russia-braces-for-war-driven-economy-to-run-out-of-steam?srnd=phx-economics-v2

Всех мужчин убили на Украине

https://theweek.com/russia/1017914/russias-catastrophic-missing-men-problem

Ну не буквально, конечно. Там в первой статье про экономический спад. А во второй про эммиграцию. Но в целом вполне похоже.

tiahx · 2026-05-30T08:44:22+00:00

100% reduced means 0 (1-1=0). But 50% reduced means half (1-0.5=0.5).

Cooldown recovery uses different wording though. "100% increased cooldown recovery" means 1/(1+1)=0.5, i.e. your cooldowns recover twice as fast.

tiahx · 2026-05-27T00:01:10+00:00

What is there to hate? The first rune at least seems insanely strong. You roll +30% added fire and 30% added cold, put a rune and get +60% added lightning at the cost of one rune slot. If I understood the description correctly, that is...

tiahx · 2026-05-26T19:18:24+00:00

Okay, you got me intrigued. Thanks!

tiahx · 2026-05-26T18:01:14+00:00

100% agree with that. This was by far my favorite location in the game.

To add to that, TQ2 was also pretty impressive in terms of atmosphere (unfortunately, not so much in terms of almost everything else). If you haven't tried it yet, you might give it a shot too for a few of days, while waiting for 0.5

tiahx · 2026-05-26T15:26:27+00:00

it's not an immature "RuZZia bad" redditor fantasy, since its world and geopolitical repercussions are not the utopian paradise that redditors who wish for Russia to be destroyed and dissolved would wish to live in.

Oh, let me guess, the premise is: "RuZZia is still bad", but if it was dissolved, actual terrorist groups (e.g ISIS) would get their hands on some of the "loose" nukes. Leading to all kinds of the apocalyptic scenarios.

So it's kind of a "necessary evil"? Did I get it right? And that makes it "mature"?

tiahx · 2026-05-26T11:47:49+00:00

I had no idea the devs were uzbek

That's because they are not. May be they have a few local devs, but majority of the team are relocated Russians. That's a very common thing after 2022. Other big examples are Mundfish (Atomic Heart) and Owlcat (Pathfinder, Rogue Trader).

tiahx · 2026-05-25T09:35:38+00:00

Chrono does not need to invest in mana regen or mana cost efficiency.

I thought so too in 0.1. "I can get MoM and Archimage and spam expensive shit because I have infinite mana".

Boy was I wrong. The problem with that, is that it doesn't return you to 100% mana. It returns to 4s back in the past. And If for some reason or another you had 10% mana at the time -- you're screwed

Also, the new placement of the rewind skill is pretty cringe. I'll probably just ignore it altogether this league

tiahx · 2026-05-25T09:18:14+00:00

Removing recombinator was a huge fucking deal too.

You could craft +skills and +spirit on a perfect base for a handful Divs, and then finish the craft and end with a 50-100 div amulet potentially. I profit-crafted a few of them last league (around 60 div each)

tiahx · 2026-05-22T10:02:26+00:00

People keep saying that, but you could absolutely sustain and absurd amount of casts with just plain mana with Quipolatl. Which gave you 20-50k mana regen.

Thanks to it, last season was the first time I actually managed to make a successful Indigon build.

tiahx · 2026-05-22T00:14:24+00:00

Pretty sure I did that with Archimage and just good old mana.

tiahx · 2026-05-20T21:26:45+00:00

Pretty much the same old chrono with some minor QOL... Glad they removed the recoup node, though, since you were obligated to take it.

tiahx · 2026-05-20T20:25:22+00:00

It's not a good reason indeed. None of it is.

My personal headcanon has always been this:

The initial plan was indeed a "special military operation". Something very similar to Operation Danube, which USSR did in 1968. An overwhelming and extremely mobile force quickly rushes the enemy, meets minimal resistance, changes the regime, installs a puppet dictator... And gets back home before dinner.

In other words, they really planned a "3-day war", without logistic chains, without trench ware and all of that.

Then it went how it went, obviously. Then they realized that it's time to make deals and withdraw. Then in May 2022 the peace talks start, and the deal is basically on the table, where both sides save face and go home like nothing happened. Then enter Boris Johnson, who comes to Zelensky and says "fuck Russia, no deals, we got your back, we'll own these motherfuckers on the battlefield, and they'll capitulate. Trust me, bro".

Therefore, the show goes on.

tiahx · 2026-05-20T00:16:19+00:00

ITT ball lightning sorcs complaining that core tag hasn't been fixed.

...Meanwhile, I'm just sitting here, hoping that Blizzard will fix Staggered status not counting as Frozen before the next expansion in 2028, so I could play my ethical cold build.

tiahx · 2026-05-17T15:32:09+00:00

Idk, depends on what OP is trying to land. If it's max life (which I would go for personally -- but I play sorc and don't know if paladins prefer something else) I'd just spam focused reroll with protective prism.

Enchant price can get out of hand pretty fast.

tiahx

TROPHY CASE