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divineerdrick · 8 months ago

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Grinding Gear Games Live Stream for March 21, 2024

So I wasn't the biggest fan of the Adepticon live stream from last night. I'm hoping Grinding Gear Games can make up for that a bit with new details on Path of Exile 2 and Necropolis. While not the first time I've reacted to a League announcement (I think that was Synthesis?) this will be my first live reaction on this blog.

I absolutely love Path of Exile. When I was trying to do the YouTube thing, I tried my hand at making some PoE content. Unfortunately I hate editing, especially sound editing (does not go well with migraines). So that put an end to that. This is one of the reasons I've tried to move to a blog format, despite the fact that blogs get far less attention. But somehow, it never occurred to me to do blog posts about Path of Exile!

I might also try putting some content on here about Last Epoch, since I'm falling in love with that game as well. Don't know if it will replace PoE as my favorite ARPG, but it's definitely a ton of fun!

With that preamble out of the way, let's do some predictions!

Predictions

For Path of Exile 2, we know they're probably going to be giving us some Ranger gameplay. Johnathan has also talked about the Witch, but I'm gonna guess she's not ready based on things he said in a recent interview. So, for my prediction, I'm going to say we'll also finally see a reveal of one of the itemization systems.

As for Necropolis, that sounds so much like it would be a dungeon League. But we just had one, so I'm thinking this will mostly be a map mechanic. Judging from the preview, I'm betting we're going to have to dig up relics, as in bones and possessions, of heroes of The Eternal Empire. We'll then probably have to earn the respect and favor of these heroes through combat. But that still seems like easy predictions, so I'm gonna go a step further. We will be fighting alongside these heroes in special, juiced, boss encounters.

This League is also turning out to be quite the QoL patch too. Though, if you've been following the teasers and reveals, not all of the changes are actually beneficial. There have been some pretty heavy nerfs revealed, probably to bring the game more in line with design intent. The big one is that we can no longer bind skills on click to move. Instead, we will have to use the new support gems to automate those skills for us. This not only takes away a popular feature, but also takes away some of the control that click to move auto-casting gave us while also increasing socket pressure. My guess is that there will be some more grinding of teeth after the patch notes as well.

I'm gonna guess we're not done with new features yet though. The reveal of a separate PoE2 means that many of the announced features are now up in the air for PoE1. I'm guessing we'll hear some more about features coming back to PoE, even if we don't get them this patch.

I'm also gonna guess we're not gonna get any new transfigured gems, despite how popular that feature is. I'm thinking a great deal of the patch notes will be dedicated to balance changes on these gems.

And I think that's where I'm gonna stand for my predictions!

Announcement Stream

Oh nice! Simultaneous expansion release! While this doesn't affect me as I don't enjoy trying to play PoE on console, it's nice that development and developer tools seem to have caught up to the point where they can release the expansion on all platforms at once.

Oo! I heard deep crafting system~

Jumping right into Path of Exile 2! Here we go with that Ranger preview! We're really focusing on the bow it seems for this preview. For those of you not familiar, your class in Path of Exile does not come with a fixed playstyle, just things the class might be better at. So, for example, melee and grenade rangers are a thing. But for these previews they've been trying to focus on specific things to demonstrate.

Oh! Mounted combat! Diablo 4 eat your heart out!

We have some NPC villain reveals too! They're slowly giving us teasers for the story and setting of this new campaign.

Rangers are getting that move and shoot like the Mercenary. This is huge! One current problem with PoE is that you almost always have to plant your feet to use your skills. This means the difference between being a bow build or spellcaster is whether you're scaling attack damage or spell damage. And the less said about melee the better. Giving bow users the ability to move and shoot helps make the playstyle feel different, instead of just casting AoE spells from a bow.

Speaking of, it's smart to have the finisher have a bit of AoE. Melee already has a little bit of built in AoE, but arrows are still just pure hit or miss. Especially with that wind up on Sniper Shot, hitting multiple enemies and making sure you hit your target will be important.

Johnathan then starts going through the skill system for all the new people who have become interested in PoE2. Thanks again, Blizzard! All you sweet summer children, waiting for the sequel to play PoE for the first time, will never understand just the incredible upgrade this is. I love it so much!

You'll also be starting with such a better looking game! These new lightning effects are so good!

Interesting . . . Barrage has been changed to a cooldown skill. This support skill currently just greatly reduces your damage while rapidly firing our 4 shots. Now they want you to set it up a bit first. It feels a little like another support that exists called Unleash that lets you build up repeated castings over time. So this does feel to me like cooldown finishers will be a thing, but maybe you'll have to choose to opt into them by using a support gem.

But man! Sitting here watching this I just love all the skill and combo interactions in this game! Path of Exile 2 is going to become a theory crafter's dream! I mean detonating gas clouds! That's awesome!

Of course we end the preview with an epic looking boss fight. This boss appears to have a few bullet hell mechanics. I wonder how rolling interacts with these sections.

Wait! Not the end of the preview! Here's that mount, and it's a Roa! I wonder how much of the game you get to use it for.

Oh man! Beta delay . . . Oh well, I prefer they delay and make the game as polished as they can. Even if this does mean we have to wait till the end of the year. But hey! Now it won't be competing with Shadow of the Erdtree!

With that, we're onto Necropolis!

Oh! This does look like a dungeon League! Possibly more Rogue-lite mechanics too! I honestly didn't think they'd do two in a row.

Woah! New Tier of Maps and new bosses. I though we weren't going to see endgame reworks of this nature yet. I guess PoE2 is getting to the point they can divert more resources back to the original.

Yes! There's one I'm glad to be wrong about! New transfigured gems! Can't wait to see what we get!

Oh! No it's not a dungeon League or a Rogue-lite! This is definitely an in map mechanic. I like these modification manipulations, though it might slow things down a bit. I also really like that this is much more control over difficulty than last League.

This is a lot of information we're getting here too! New players can potentially use this to make more informed decisions on how to move through the game.

Oh wow! Cool rewards here! Though this is a weird collection mechanic. But hey! I knew bodies were involved somehow. And talk about a wonderfully morbid form of deterministic crafting. I love it! They keep revealing more and more you can do too! The reveals don't stop keep happening! You can even use these to craft and get better rolls on Uniques!

Oh that's an awesome jewel!

And the corpses are tradeable! I love this league so far!

What! There's even more to the mechanic! You can modify the monsters in the maps! That's so cool! This can help get rid of problem monsters!

And Tattoos are back! This is insane!

Oh interesting! We're getting direct Atlas Tree support during the league! Pretty good, since I'm betting this mechanic isn't going core.

Okay, this is an interesting way to get to Ubers. Now the value of these maps won't be determined by your Atlas Passives. You unlock the original bosses the same way you always did. But then, you move onto a new Tier of maps. You farm those for shards to make your attempts on the pinnacle bosses. These maps also make good intermediate content to gear up on before the attempts.

Oh wow! Nice way to rework some Uniques that have fallen behind. Instead of just improving some and making them rarer, they're going to some of the new bosses.

Looks like they're adding almost all the optional content to Scarabs. Not sure how I feel about this, though it does give a lot of control if you can get the Scarabs you need.

Oh! I love that Divination Scarab! I hate farming the same maps over and over! See this is one of things I love about this game. They're always trying to find ways to allow you to progress the content you want to progress. And to that end, they're also increasing our ability to get content into our maps.

Oh wow! They easily saved the best QoL change for this reveal. We now get three Atlas Trees we can swap between! Again, this gives us more control what content we experience.

Oh! New campaign improvements, huh? Nice! I think that settles it. I'll be playing this League.

Here's the note again on the new and reworked transfigured gems, plus our two most controversial inclusions, Automation and Call to Arms. We're also getting a new support gem for wanders.

Okay! I wasn't sure if I was going to comment on the supporter packs, but I really like the turtle hideout. And wow most of these are still just fun and silly, between that and the mimic pet I might have to see if I can find some money for PoE this League.

All and all, a very impressive live stream!

Interview Stream

I'm gonna follow right on over to the interview with ZiggyD. The amount of extra detail and discussion this always gives us is so worth it. I'm wondering why we're not getting more of Chris this time though.

Interesting. We won't be getting a new monsters or bosses for this the League mechanic. They focused on the new maps instead. This League will instead be all about augmenting our existing content and getting these new crafting mechanics.

Hmm. Not sure I like the fact that you can't sustain T17s. Still because the drops are tradeable, they need to gate them somehow.

And here's some of that conversation I mentioned. I noticed right away that this was probably gonna slow things down a little, as you'll want to try and optimize your monsters in each area. While Mark does suggest that some people might just ignore the mechanic and select whatever they get dealt, and we're even getting a Atlas Passive for mapping that way, they definitely want us to slow down and think it over.

Interesting! They've also made it so that you only get the best modifiers the first time you clear an area in the campaign. And the more of the campaign you do, the better your potential rewards. Combined with campaign improvements and new secrets to find, this is another reason I'll want to play this League.

And while I was impressed with all the information we're getting in game now, it looks like they're not done. They're going to try and add more information to the UI on release. So we'll potentially be able to prepare or min/max a lot.

Okay! Looks like we're going into binding click to move.

It looks like they're making changes to this. The bad news is, they're not ready to revert yet. The good news is that it seems that when they changed this, they suddenly discovered everything the community has been using it to fix. This means that even if they revert, I hope they continue to address these things and make the game better. At the end of the day, this is a lot of annoying stuff that, as Ziggy puts it, we've been using left mouse button as a band-aid for.

Okay! That's not a bad fix for mines. But I'm not sure about the passive changes. We'll need to see the changes directly to see if they're any good.

"Oh, he's doing it again!" Thank you, Ziggy! Pausing coming to PoE1! Doo eet!

They're definitely still trying to come up with systems so you don't have to trust people with your items. Again, in their world we wouldn't use trade for clears or bossing either. But anything they can do to provide tools to keep us safe from scammers is good.

For more on the economy, it feels like they're moving a bit away from the idea of how drops should feel or the economy should feel, and just paying attention to the community and how the game feels. This is obviously the correct choice. First, you won't be able to please everyone. I know plenty of people who hated how easy it was to get gear last League, especially those who enjoy juicing maps. But I know builders like Ziggy loved it.

Bye bye rucksack. F's in chat . . .

But hello Town Portal button!

Moving onto Path of Exile 2!

Woot! Active block! Can't wait to see the new Souls comparisons that will come from that! I love the sound of it personally. Being able to walk forward with your shield raised might be a huge boon to melee.

Oh no! More monsters with tracking! That's going to be fun! Again, Elden Ring says "Hi!" But still, this will be much more engaging than running around in circles.

Still, I wonder if they ramped difficulty for the people they invited to test the game again. I think a lot of people are still very curious as to how difficult this game is going to be.

Oh nice! Multistory dungeons! Wonder if we'll get some scene transition boss fights? Get some Mortal Kombat style beatdowns going.

Sounds like they're trying to make the Beta the entire game, though we might not get all the classes or the full endgame. They definitely want to know if the campaign is good to go before release. If possible, it sounds like they want changes in the beta to be just bug fixes and balance changes. So we'll be getting all the content they can give us.

Finally, we get a little mention on the life globe changing color. I'm surprised they'd never thought to put poison on the life globe before. It's a classic ARPG mechanic.

I honestly feel this was a great interview. I know some people are insisting on being salty about "LMB" right now, and I'm already seeing people take Mark's "deal with it" out of context. Again, I do think this has revealed some real mechanical flaws that need to be addressed. If it comes back, it should be because it's a feature players like and not because we need it for our builds.

Patch Notes

I'm following along with Zizaran for the patch notes on this. I'm a huge fan of his content and He'll catch way more than I ever could.

It's RAW!

Ziz thought this was going to be a Vampire Survivors League! Oh man! A bullet heaven league would be great! I do hope we get something like that in the future. Bet they're already trying something out along the lines of Blight.

"Added a new Intelligence Support Gem - Sacred Wisps:"

Definitely need to see how those wisps play out. I've always enjoyed Wanders and have been wanting to try one again. I'm also curious about Elemental Hit and Tornado transfigured gems.

"The following currency items now have a stack size of 20:"

Woot! QOL stacks!

"Added a myriad of small improvements and surprises to the Campaign."

Again, the campaign changes demand I come back.

"Alternate-art Unique Items can now be converted to account-bound microtransactions . . ."

Oh wow! Very nice! You can now make account bound alternate art items! This . . . probably doesn't affect me? I don't think I have any alternate art items. Nearly all of them have been from races, and I don't think I ever did well enough to get one. You'd think I'd remember if I had, but migraines often make things fuzzy.

"The Dark Seer Unique Sceptre now has +2 to Level of All Spell Skill Gems . . ."

Dark Seer is +2 to Level of All Spell Skill Gems! Wow! That's gonna be a chase item.

But I'm with Ziz here. Not sure that's a good enough change on Malachai's Endurance.

"The Manastorm Unique Shield now has 1-100% increased Mana Recovery from . . ."

This sounds like a blast!

"The Wraithlord Unique Helmet now has 4 Abyssal Sockets . . ."

And this just seems completely amazing! To be fair, minion builds often have to deal with a lot of a socket pressure, and this kills a full 4 of your sockets. But this is so powerful and they're taking steps to bring some needed QoL to minions too.

"The Yoke of Suffering Unique Amulet now has Enemies take 5-10% increased Damage . . ."

Yoke of Suffering seems fail at first, as the buff has only increased by up to 5%, and nothing else. But that extra 5% can stack up pretty quick with all the ailments you can inflict in this game.

"The fifth slot in the Map Device is now unlocked upon completing a non-Valdo's Tier 17 Map."

Oh nice! We no longer have to do Legion for this. Again, we get to do the content we want.

"You can no longer earn Einhar, Alva, Jun or Niko Master Missions . . ."

Yeah, I'm not sure on the Master Missions. But if you can target farm the Scarabs properly, this should be an improvement.

"Added a new Atlas Keystone Passive to the Necropolis Atlas Tree . . ."

As Ziz points out, we can't know how good the Necropolis keystones will be. They all depend on how good the mechanic turns out. If the mechanic is garbage all around, no one will care about these. If the rewards from the maps are good, but not the crafting, then all we'll care about is improving those and vice versa.

"Added a new Atlas Keystone Passive, Thorough Exploration . . ."

If you like clearing your maps the way I do, this will be great. If you just run to bosses you'll pass on this. Again, helping you to play the way you want.

But there's a lot of changes here. I mean, a lot of changes! Like many of the passives around the League content really change a lot!

"The Amplified Energies Atlas Notable Passive now causes . . ."

Looks like a bit of an Essence nerf here. To be fair, Essences are a powerful mechanic for both farming and gearing. But they're so useful for when you're trying to get your build going, especially in SSF. I kind think this first change is okay, but the second one seems pretty bad.

"Essence Monoliths in White Maps can now spawn up to a maximum tier of Screaming . . ."

Okay, that's a better change for Essences. I never liked White Map Essence farming.

"Vorici's Research Safehouse reward is now a stash of Harvest Scarabs."

RIP white sockets.

"The Unique Cortex Synthesised Map can no longer drop from Atlas Map Bosses . . ."

Did we just lose Cortex? Okay, there it is.

Here's the part of the Patch Notes where we get the map changes for the League. And I agree with Ziz that these are mostly good map changes. There's a few we've gotten that I'm really not fond of (Cells and Dungeon), and a few we lost I really like (City Square, Mesa, and Racecourse). But overall this seems like a pretty good pool.

And wow! They took away Seventh Gate and just gave us all the map options! That's a totally worth while trade! Again, it's about letting us pick how we want to play the end game.

And now for the big list of gem changes! I'm honestly seeing a lot of buffs here. There were only a handful of gems that seemed really over tuned, so it seems like they're happy to bring up more options in power while only nerfing a few.

"Essence Drain of Desperation: Now deals 50% more Damage over Time at all gem levels."

Hee! GGG's gonna force Ziz to run ED again . . .

"Sniper's Mark: Now causes Cursed Enemies to take 10% increased Damage from Projectile Hits at gem level 1 (unchanged), scaling up to 29% at gem level 20 (previously 35%) . . ."

Big nerf on Sniper's Mark! That will affect a lot of builds.

"Summon Raging Spirit: The Raging Spirit's melee attack no longer naturally gains 0-38% more Damage as it levels."

RIP vanilla SRS. But as Ziz points out, minion instability will still be very good.

"The Ralakesh's Impatience Unique Boots no longer provide 30% increased Movement Speed."

Ralakesh no longer that impatient.

"The Void is now considered a Boss-exclusive Divination Card."

That's an interesting change to The Void. Ziz is wondering if that means Void can grab boss exclusives.

"Scrolls of Wisdom can now be used on items that are Corrupted. As a result of this, most items that previously dropped identified now drop unidentified."

As Ziz, says, "Oh no!" And yeah, I'm just gonna hide any non-six link corrupted items. The only advantage these had was you knew what they were when you saw them.

"The Veiled modifier that provides reduced Mana Cost of Skills during Effect can no longer be unveiled or crafted on Flasks."

Massive nerf to Pathfinder!

"The Jewel Suffix modifier that grants 3-5% reduced Mana Cost can no longer roll."

Yeah, I'm with Ziz on this. Not sure why they killed the Jewel Mana Cost mod.

Wow! This is a lot of changes for Tattoos and many of them are really good! It's great to have these back!

"Rare Monster item bonus mechanics are now rarer, and the following item bonus mechanics have been removed: Items dropped are converted to Gems, Items dropped are converted to Scarabs, Items dropped have all White Sockets . . ."

RIP white sockets! Why are they reducing them like this? How were they a bad socket fixing mechanic? The whole of PoE2's skill rework is socket fixing! Why does PoE need to have vanilla socket fixing?

Also, I really don't like the changes to Rares. The drop mechanics made Rares feel so much better. They made me want to engage with the Rares in my maps instead of just boss. And they definitely didn't feel overly generous to me. They do remember this was offsetting a drop in loot, right?

Well that was not the best way to end the patch notes section. There are definitely some bitter pills in all of this. But as Ziz keeps pointing out, we're getting so much! But that is GGG for you. They're not afraid to take harsh measures to fix things, but they do fix things. The click to move binding is probably still the harshest thing, but I'm willing to give them a league or two to fix the mechanics it was propping up. At the very least, they've got as long as it took them to realize Archnemesis was a bad idea.

Final Thoughts

That was definitely a nasty way to end the patch notes, but it's not souring me on this. This League looks like it's going to be a ton of fun! Obviously, click to move casting is going to continue to be contentious until they either fix everything or end up reverting. Other than that here are my primary concerns.

1. Scarabs are doing a lot of work.

They've shoved a ton of mechanics that were all previously separated onto Scarabs. Want sextant modifiers? Scarabs. League content? Scarabs. Master missions? Scarabs! Plus they're even adding new and interesting modifiers to them to top it off. If getting the Scarabs we want is too inconsistent or we just can't get enough from drops, then we're just vanilla mapping.

2. Pressure to Run Tier 17

Right now it often feels like you need to get to the point you can run Tier 16s as soon as you can, and there isn't any point running anything less. This often causes newer players to wait to do certain content until they've geared up to running those maps, making progressing their gear harder. I even catch myself doing it! I'm hoping the way they drop will incentivize players to engage with content instead holding off until they can do the highest tier maps.

3. Drops

This has been a concern for a while now, with some not being happy about it since Expedition. It didn't help that Leagues had gotten way wealthier previously, with many players forgetting how lean drops could be originally. But especially given how wealthy Affliction was, players might be feel poorer this League. And now they've made Rare drop mods, um, rarer. Even though this is a crafting League, that could cause some problems.

However, even with those bad things let's look at what we're getting.

1. More control over the endgame than ever before!

They just keep knocking down barriers to experiencing the end game the way we want to experience it. Well, except maybe if you're playing SSF. But if you're playing any form of trade league, you can probably make money farming the content you want and trading for anything you need.

2. So much QoL!

Just so much! So many little things we've been asking for or that are sources of friction are gone!

3. More build diversity than ever before!

Transfigured gems really did cause a ton of new builds to pop up. Yeah, some have gotten nerfs. But for the most part, it's all broken stuff. And some of that looks like it survived pretty much intact. Add in new gems and buffs to older ones, and hopefully theory crafters like myself will have content to chew on for months!

4. An honestly awesome looking League!

I'm still a little concerned with fiddling with monsters between maps, but I think many builds will eventually get to the point where you just grab random enhancement for increased rewards. The changes to the campaign seem really interesting though. And the potential crafting power might lead to some awesome items. We obviously won't know until next week, but I'm honestly really excited to log in!

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