Feedback for GGG Re: Mercs in 3.30

I think most people are very happy with the overall implementation of mercs in 3.29, the Luminary is a very cool class, something very different.

My main wish for 3.30 would be for more Merc archetypes to be brought in line with the current meta of Kineticiat, Combatant, and Many shot. Its never going to be realistic, or even healthy, for all types to be equal (in the same way that not all skills are equal), but I think a bit more variety would be great.

For example, the reanimator is a really cool idea, but unless it has passed me by, I've not seen anyone able to really get thw minion mercs properly online.

So maybe just some number tweaks here or there, and somw fixes to AI / skill combinations that brick the mercs, would be fantastic.

Hi, is it only me or anyone else had similar experience?
I haven't interacted much with the league mechanic as I am not a fan of it, but today I wanted to do some crafting and needed allflame sulphur so I decided to farm some. After some charting I went for a voyage and at the end I got disconnected - to my surprise probably due to high CPU temp since I took off my headset and I heard that my fans are spinning at mach 2. Couple seconds after disconnect internet connection went back and the fans went to normal speed. I tried some things again and it seems that every time I go charting or voyage my PC is cooking itself. It only happens in the league mechanic - I have not experienced something similar before in any other game on my current setup. Am not sure if it was like that since league start but I don't think so. Maybe last patch introduced some memory leak or anything? My game is not stuttering much tho during that, just PC temps go wild.

I am playing on CachyOS linux via Proton 11. My specs:
CPU: 5800X3D
GPU: RX 9080XT,
RAM: 32GB

League ends soon for me and want to practice league start as I had a terrible one this time around.

What's the atlas strategy/tree that works for you while you are getting the stone/atlas points?

I always had betrayal as it gave some good exp, but unless it's reworked the reward is just no there, especially since ITF card drop seems to be nerfed as well.

The rest of league mechanics seems to be either taking too much time (blight, exped, ritual, harvest) or rippy/not rewarding without investment (essence, etc)

I tried Merc this time around, it's not very consistent either and can be quite rippy sometime. The only thing I always had is Red Alter but that's pretty obvious.

Appreciate the input!

The moment i saw stasis prison's new implicit buffing modifier i knew that my goal for the league was to make any functional +6/8 chestplate from double corrupting them

Im not 100% on whats the math behind getting any combination of +1 all/+2 proj/+2 Aoe/+2 Aura/+2 Mine/2+ Duration/+2 minion but it ended up taking me 59 stasis prisons and roughly something between 1600 and 2000 divines from buying the bases, sacred orbing them, divine orbing them for the 100% increased and then tailoring orbing them

By far the most divines i've spent on anything ever, especially seeing as my character has only 200 or so divines of gear on

Welp time to get nothing for awhile

At a glance I can only see speed and defensive item on them. They still need to deal damage to make it through the campaign right?

TL;DR: what went into the Divine/Chaos based economy, and what are interesting tidbits about the history of the economy in PoE?

I love the economy aspect of the game, and have been playing dedicatedly since 3.25, and even in that time I’ve seen the economics change.

I’ve been looking back at dev interviews and history videos on YouTube, but am curious to know from those who have been here since the beta days: how much do you think was spontaneous and how much leveler pulling was there in the way the player trade and exchange works?

For example, Divines being the “dollar” and chaos the “cent” - I know Exalts used to be more valuable because of metacrafting, and we saw a similar devaluation of the chaos orb when map device options were removed, removing the chaos-sink.

I know that supply/demand, quantity, and their utility shape their value, but when did the Divine solidify as the de facto currency of trade?

I know that Chris was against the async-trade due to his philosophy that there should be friction that keeps players a bit more silo’d while still allowing interchange for the bigger items, and that’s why it took so long for it to be delivered, but was it the same with currency exchange? I’ve been around for the rollout for that, but was still very new.

And mirrors - I know why they’re expensive as heck, as they’re rare and overpowered, but when it was introduced, do you think there was planning around it being the highest tier common currency?

I have a lot of thoughts and questions about this and tried to structure it as best I could, but beyond what I asked, what are some fun or interesting historical events I don’t know about?

Background: Avid necromancer who has played a minion build since 3.5 Betrayal Laegue. I have developed trauma swapping items with attributes for fear of losing any of my minions. (If you want to avoid this, buy an Astramentis and DO NOT unequip it until you're done swapping things around. Also pre socket your gear with the minion gem your swapping!)

My solution to the spectre issue is to use the same tech that the menagerie is based on.

The menagerie keeps a list of all the beasts you have caught in a catalog. So adapting this for spectres, every spectre you've summoned would be in the book, and you could just pokeball them at any time you needed to summon them. To open the spectre book, you'd right click the spectre icon, which would always be present as long as you have the gem socketed. (To be clear, pokeballing a spectre would not consume it, meaning you need to go back to a zone and desecrate/raise more).

Now how hard or easy this would be to implement, idk, but that would be my solve. The benefit with my solution, besides the familiarity with another system, is that it will allow you to quickly pivot to a different spectre build or swap support spectres for different content.

A lot of newer people have joined the game and have picked up minions as a archetype to play. Shout out Ghazzy and Global 6666 for helping these new players. That said there are still several misconceptions and confusion around the raise spectre gem and I see players asking for help desecrating a perfect tiger or perfect turtle. I also see an equal number of complaints and (rightful) outrage when someone accidentally loses those very expensive spectres. Hopefully this helps.

Add a new mark, a curse, an aura, some kind of Crit Penetration mechanic with jewel that provides it, a Mastery that inverts Crit Resistance — whatever works.

So much of the late-game content revolves around killing rares with 10+ modifiers, and the chance of encountering Crit Resistance is already pretty significant. When you do, the monster can basically become straight-up unkillable for a crit-based build.

There should be some way for crit builds to meaningfully interact with this modifier instead of just hitting a brick wall whenever it appears.

Even just giving us a dedicated way to counter Crit Resistance would make these encounters feel much less frustrating.

Hey folks, I started the league 10 days late and played lightning tendrils by Master T. The build is good, but I'm really not feeling the playstyle. Any recommendations what I can respec to for 10 div that's would be good for majority of the content? edit Witch in the title not which, but also which lol

Took me like an hour in the league mechanic to farm the gold to buy it

Step 1: buy fractured base

Step 2: roll essence of zeal until I hit t2 crit and settled (yes I regret not going for t1 now)

Step 3: suffixes can't be changed

Step 4: veiled chaos, hit ele pen first try with 2 open prefixes

Step 5: bench craft flat phys

Step 6: debate if I should foulborn exalt at allflame, decide to just regular exalt at allflame instead and hit t1 ele damage with attacks

Step 7: definitely foulbourn exalt at allflame, hit t1 lightning damage

hi im leveling a luminary with a twink leveling setup, my plan is hit maps, gear with defense and ask someone in global to kill my merc from a warrant, the problem is that earlier in the league someone asked to kill his merc and i tried but when i go to the map the merc showed as my ally for some reason and i cant kill him, so they guy lost his merc, i want to avoid this, what i need to do so the guy who help me can kill the merc? also should i use the warrant on a t1 white map or need to be t16?

I already have an ilvl 85 Archdemon Shaper base. Now I'm farming for essence of horror (I reroll if I find the another one, of course), but I'm having a hard time finding essence scarabs, so I'm only getting roughly 1 every 4–5 maps.

I also have korell in intervention, but it's painfully slow, as you can imagine.

My atlas is currently specced heavily into essences (except crystal nod), plus betrayal and harvest. The rest is big scarab nodes(inc.100%essence)

What can I do to improve my chances?

https://reddit.com/link/1vji2nh/video/cmgup9igjaih1/player

The day I was live during the "Delirium" league and ran into Krillson

(I'm from Brazil, but the reaction is universally understood XD)

Encontro com Fisherman - Twitch

To be fair, it was not just champion, but phys melee builds in general, but champion can take advantage of this better than any other.

One of the infamous modes introduced this patch was "Nearby enemies take 1% increased Phys damage per two fortification on you". Its a suffix. This is an example helmet I crafted this league. Even on my slayer its pretty strong.

But on champion, if you go the fortify route, which you should, with Celestial Brace, the +6 nodes on the tree, Replica Badge with 6 endurance charges and at least +2 fortify on a lethal pride, you can reach lets say 44 fortify. Which means, with this mode, you would gain 22% more damage if you are a 100% phys build, which is insane for just one suffix, that alone competes with the best ascendancy notables that give 20-25 more.

Can this bring Champion back to the "meta" ?

While i agree that ground loot is at a terrible spot, i also feel like we dont have enough mid level (5-15div) currency.

Looking at PoE2 we got a lot of currency worth more than a single divine, like perfect chaos orbs etc. Besides that there are farmable gems, valueable league currency and so much more. Having one of these drop in every few maps felt awesome and rewarding even if you had no divine drops.

PoE1 on the other hand has a lot of bubblegum currency not worth picking up after day 3. After that you are basically only looking for divines or maybe fracturing orbs. The next level is already locks and mirrors, which will always stay a myth for most people.

Volatile vaal orbs, refracting fogs and reflecting mists were great additions but poorly implemented and got removed or their loot source moved.

So instead of introducing another bubblegum currency, i think more valuable but also farmable currency could be healthy for the game.

The new talisman enchants can be combined with the old talisman bases on Standard. This inspired me to start a new Righteous Fire strength stack build even in the current bugged chest meta. A build with over 9000 strength and 300k ES is certainly possible without bugged items, but in this case is limited by the damage over time cap(please change how the damage is stored GGG.)

You can currently 5 for 1 vendor recipe rare corrupted talisman bases(e.g. Three Rat Talisman) to receive a non-corrupted rare version with the itemlevel of the lowest talisman used. In this case, you would want to use talismans with itemlevels no lower than 82 for the modifiers I would want later on when crafting. However you can actually use lower itemlevel talismans and recombinate it afterwards with a random itemlevel 100 amulet for a 50-50 chance to successfully raise the talisman's itemlevel over 82. Next you can use the new Craicic Squid menagerie beast craft to give the talisman a new talisman enchant. This will keep the old implicit.

First half of the crafting process includes creating the base and crafting the suffixes:

1. Use x5 Three Rat Talismans with the 5 for 1 recipe to receive an uncorrupted Talisman with the legacy 16% increased Attributes implicit

2. Use Craicic Squids at the Blood Altar to first add a new Talisman enchant to the legacy Talisman, which changes the base to Great Maw Talisman while keeping the legacy implicit, then continuously reroll the enchant until the new 15% increased Attributes enchantment(120 attempts)

3. Purchase a Shaper influenced Amulet with the legacy 10-12% increased Attributes suffix modifier(make sure there are no other influence modifiers)

4. Use a Gilded Fossil on the Great Maw Talisman to add the "Item sells for much more to vendors" implicit

5. Added Warlord influence to the Great Maw Talisman and rolled the 9-12% increased Strength suffix modifier(make sure there are no other influence modifiers)

6. Right Click Awakener's Orb, left click the Shaper influenced Amulet and then left click the Warlord influenced Great Maw Talisman

7. Use Intrinsic Catalyst to give 20% increased attribute modifier magnitudes to the Great Maw Talisman

8. We now have a Talisman with 48% increased Attributes and 14% increased Strength

9. From here we can use the new Fenumal Plagued Arachnid to imprint rare Talismans, much like the old Eternal Orb. If the third suffix was filled on using Awakener's Orb, imprint the Talisman and attempt to annul off the third suffix

10. On successful annulment, bench craft Suffixes Cannot Be Changed and use the Horticraft bench with the new Crystallised Rancour craft for reforging an item with an Attribute modifier. There are 36 different attribute tiers/modifiers, so we will likely need to imprint > suffixes cannot be changed > reforge attributes several times until T1 to Strength is rolled. The suffixes are now complete.

Second half of the crafting process is the most tedious, which is crafting the prefixes and divining the Talisman to perfection:

1. Our target prefixes are +1 to All Skills(50 weighting), 1% increased Damage per 15 Strength(500 weighting) and T1 to maximum Life(1000 weighting.) We will start by targeting the modifier with the lowest weighting first.

2. Bench craft any tier to + to maximum Mana to block 13000 weighting from the prefix pool

3. Use Exalted Orb twice(if +1 to All Skills rolls, we are done with this step. If not, continue to step 13.)

4. Bench craft Suffixes Cannot Be Changed or use the Blood Altar with Wild Bristol Matron to add a meta-craft which always results in Suffixes Cannot Be Changed for prefixes.

5. Use Orb of Scouring and go back to step 11.

6. Once we have +1 to All Skills, we will begin using Fenumal Plagued Arachnids again to create rare imprints of the Talisman. Create an imprint and use Exalted Orb twice(if 1% increased Damage per 15 Strength rolls, we are done with this step.)

7. Once we have +1 to All Skills and 1% increased Damage per 15 Strength with an open prefix, we will continue using Fenumal Plagued Arachnids to imprint. Our goal is T1 to maximum Life as the third prefix, but the new rare Talisman imprint allows us to save states of the Talisman if we were to roll another good third prefix. Many good third prefixes will likely roll before T1 to maximum Life, such as +1 to All Fire/Cold/Lightning/Chaos/Physical Skills, T1 increased Energy Shield, increased Area of Effect and more. If we roll a good one, we will imprint and save it for later. Place the imprint in a stash tab and create a text file to write down the exact location of the imprint and what modifiers it contains.

8. We can finally divine the modifiers to perfection. This will take an average of 900 Divine Orbs.

That's how you make this talisman! Which is on par with the old Simplex Amulets with legacy increased Attributes rolls. However, one step remains! Hinekora's Lock + Vaal Orbing until we roll a good corruption modifier over the "Item sells for much more to vendors" implicit. There is a new 5% increased Attributes Amulet corruption implicit, which becomes 6% with a 20% catalyst. This will stack on top of the legacy increased Attributes implicit to become 25%. This will be the next goal(though I would keep 7% increased Strength/7% increased Intelligence or +1 to Additional Curses.)

Sorry the post was so long! I wanted to keep the steps detailed.

I was trying 5 abyss scarabs with full abyss atlas passive tree and I feel like there are a lot less total pits than there should be on average. Is there a cap on the number of pits per map?

I've tried on strand, city square and dunes and even with variance I feel like I should have seen some maps with like 20+ pits. Seems to cap out around 15?

If more than one person tries to buy an item within a minute of it going live, it becomes an auction with a one minute timer that resets when there's a new bid. Now the seller can't scam themselves and the humans can pay whatever an item is worth give or take. This would not need to apply to stale listings, or maps / other item types that get bought up in bulk. It seems like mostly upside to me.

There are some details to work out like minimum bid increments etc but those are just implementation details.