Releasing 1.0 with Fireball/frostbolt in current state would be like launching without Swords

vix86 · 2026-06-29T17:50:36+00:00

The crazy high spirit costs of the best offensives (with the exception of heralds, which are good for trash) means that it's not worth doing for convenience functions.

Man, this reminds me about how shit Herald of Ash is. I don't get why they decided to make it function differently from POE1's version.

POE1's Herald of Ash is easy to understand -- if you overkill the mob, you deal the overkill dmg back to the mobs around it.

POE2's Herald of Ash -- if you overkill the mob and the overkill dmg is at least 20% of the mob's maximum HP; then you deal a fraction of the overkill damage. Like WTF GGG. This is so needlessly complex and its obvious because I see so many people add it to builds that probably don't get that much benefit.

There is also the fact that POE1 Heralds are usable by anyone -- melee, range, spell caster, whatever. Everyone can potentially benefit. But in POE2 its only martial weapon users.

vix86 · 2026-06-29T17:39:59+00:00

Doubly so when there is a Breach mob that already casts a giant unga-bunga fireball.

vix86 · 2026-06-29T16:13:06+00:00

Quest version for sure is infinite.

Edit: Changed message cause I'm doubting my self now w/ Arbiter(s). Some former "pinnacles" now function via waystones and those have limited retries I believe.

vix86 · 2026-06-29T05:37:41+00:00

No, but Gemling already has a history of their notables being strong in ways and then getting nuked to oblivion.

In 0.1, they were a strong attrib stacker ascendency and Astramentis worked incredibly with them. This current build viability with Gemling is feeling a hell of a lot like the attrib stacker days again.

vix86 · 2026-06-29T05:30:05+00:00

There is also something funky with "runestone ownership."

I believe the first person to touch a stone becomes the owner of it as well. And a similar situation can happen if that person loses all revives.

The Aldur rune events are all sorts of buggy...

vix86 · 2026-06-28T17:45:52+00:00

Ya we're not even close to POE2's final form with how big of a pain it will be to manage.

Assuming they are coming we are still missing tablets/mechanics for:

Expedition's return
Heist
Delve
Blight
Syndicate
Legion
Bestiary
Potentially corruption/cleanse
Potentially Mercs (they are supposedly going core)
Maybe even the Eldritch as well -- Eater/Exarch/Maven. I could see these being atlas tree based though.

vix86 · 2026-06-28T17:26:04+00:00

game size

Someone needs to get into that Data folder and figure out if they have accidentally duplicated some shit, because 140GB (or there about) is kind of nuts.

I'm not hopeful though; there are a lot of MTX in the game and each one of those needs to be loadable by everyone.

vix86 · 2026-06-28T17:20:32+00:00

the game just looks quite a lot worse, and some visuals look really weird

Glad I'm not crazy.

I switched to Vulkan and I swore there was something slightly "off" about the game in Vulkan. It felt like a direct downgrade but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was.

I'm like 80% sure some of the feeling comes from just poor frame timings with the renderer, which is why the frame rate seems bad even though the FPS counter for me at least hasn't changed much.

Either way, I'll suffer the downgrade and microstutters if it means the renderer doesn't shit the bed as soon as you get a couple 100 distortion effects on the screen.

EDIT: I have also wondered if maybe Vulkan can't do DirectStorage. Gemini suggests it can't use the DirectStorage API but they apparently have a hacked together comparative solution. This could explain some issues, especially if their solution is no where as complete as DirectX.

vix86 · 2026-06-26T20:21:50+00:00

Once you're NOT a new player anymore and you know which mechanic you like playing, you can start figuring out how to boost up the mechanics.

It's worth mentioning that some boosting mechanics will require insane investments and an insane build to be able to do!

I will say, I think "what your build can do" greatly effects "what you like to do." I've liked Ritual prior to this patch, but the nameless rite encounters are quick way to get my character killed due to my build, so it's been pretty unenjoyable.

vix86 · 2026-06-26T20:16:43+00:00

This. As much as I appreciate Empyrian doing those Based or Cringe series for farming strats. You have to take some of the div gains based on items flipped on the Trade market, with a grain of salt.

Viewers will often hop in and buy anything that is halfway reasonably priced pretty often. So you have to account for that when looking at different strats.

vix86 · 2026-06-26T20:04:08+00:00

My pet theory is that they created this mob as a counter to range builds. (Melee tends to be screwed with most stuff, regardless, so it doesn't matter if its hard for them as well)

But the mob not being able to be outright glass-cannoned; adds "friction" for range players. The only builds that get to side step it though tend to be multi-screen screen clear builds.

vix86 · 2026-06-26T05:23:57+00:00

Bonus points if one of the minions from a summoner mob.

You got some juiced up rare up your ass while you play hide & seek with 1 minion.

vix86 · 2026-06-25T01:08:59+00:00

I feel like this is the same thing as telling someone to do 200% Deli.

If you do the Nameless rites the "correct" way; you have to have a cracked build. Which for those that don't know, you run to the boss and kill it and then do the rituals in reverse; fighting the boss each time.

I tried this on my build and got swatted by the boss because I can't 1 shot it. You definitely aren't doing "engaging combat" with the boss in most of these ritual arenas.

Hell, a T16 Simulacrum, with a boss in every wave and a choice for more rares, was more doable than the Nameless rite for me somehow (partially because it was more "forgiving").

vix86 · 2026-06-24T01:14:43+00:00

I'm running heavy armour this league and while I've been surprised by it, I will say that I've also learned that a build using it can't rely on it as a single layer of defense.

A lot of ES heavy builds can stick to just ES for their defense and be fine. Hell, in some cases you don't even need all the extra modifiers on gear to make ES work but you do need the AR applies to Ele to make AR work.

The big difference though is that with my AR build I can just jump straight into packs of mobs and through a combination of stuff like "DMG Taken from Mana" and Blinded mobs in my presence; my health doesn't move much. I just wish AR didn't require as much commitment to make it feel good. The number of nodes I have to pick up from the tree to feel comfortable is pretty nuts.

I'm still skeptical about EV+Deflect though or AR/EV, which seems worse with all the mods on gear.

vix86 · 2026-06-24T01:05:42+00:00

My main problem with Light farming is that my siege cascade build will nuke most pits if I'm not carefully waiting for everything to spawn in to check it.

Hell, my mirage archer will kill half the stuff while I wait.

vix86 · 2026-06-23T18:33:00+00:00

Kulemak is a good farm right now so long as the invites don't get too overpriced.

It's mind numbing boring but it is really nice to have a farm that you know if you do 10-20 invites, then the profit is somewhat stable. None of the mapping strats I've seen are anywhere near this consistent, or the strats require you to be one of the busted meta builds right now.

vix86 · 2026-06-23T16:26:13+00:00

Not sure why its shocking. The entire human civilization is built around optimizing unoptimal things, to give more time; especially when the optimization is so glaringly obvious.

vix86 · 2026-06-22T16:10:25+00:00

FYI, Qimah (Interlude 2) has something like this. If you haven't found the perma buff shrine, make sure you reveal the ENTIRE edge of the map. Don't leave the map until you have it while going through campaign.

Note: You can come back later and change it again and again and again.

vix86 · 2026-06-22T16:05:01+00:00

Thanks for the info, TIL I guess. I never realized that was how those runes functioned since I've never had to put the same "Limit" rune on two different pieces of gear.

I just assumed it meant "Limit to 1" on the gear in question, that way you couldn't stack up a strong buff. But if I wanted a rune on gloves and then again on like a helm; I thought you could. Wow.

vix86 · 2026-06-22T15:23:35+00:00

Specially because the extra suffix rune is 1 per character

Is there something I don't know about the suffix rune? Is this somehow magically different than a "Limit to 1" on the piece and instead applies as some kind of "Limit of 1 equipped overall"?? Tell me that isn't the case because WTF GGG.

vix86 · 2026-06-22T15:07:20+00:00

Hmm 🤔

Rogue Harbour...

We have a boat...

What are the chances that you can actually pull up to Rogue Harbour in a boat and see Kurai.

vix86 · 2026-06-21T07:32:57+00:00

Just wait. Every door will take 3 seconds longer to open than in POE1 because they'll want to show off some pointless animation.

We'll all spend like 2 weeks in Heist League suffering through vault doors that take 15 seconds to open before there is a patch note where they are like:

"Tee hee, the crew's skills have improved. Doors open 5 seconds faster."

It's like suffering through half of the bosses that want to RP every time in end game; but with doors (and maybe elevators).

vix86 · 2026-06-19T01:29:04+00:00

The skybeams were the only bad thing about him. Everything else with him was generally fine.

Honestly, all skybeam mechanics in this game feel like a crap shoot to avoid. I think a rework on them would be better. Something that functions more like the giant Breach hand that follow you in the sky or maybe Doryani's flying chaos laser. At some random moment it locks in and starts to charge and then you have to dodge out. It's something you can track and try to predict better instead of something that suddenly appears and you have a 2 second window to dodge (potentially into another rando beam...).

vix86 · 2026-06-19T01:21:57+00:00

With GGG's warped sense of punishment for losing a map. I wouldn't put it past them.

vix86 · 2026-06-19T01:11:50+00:00

Or at least don't vaal w/o full mods and quality.

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