GCP needs a buff in drop rate, Ill explain why.

I remember very, very, very early in PoE. I would complete normal act 2 and have 7xGCPs.
Today I can lvl 5 characters to cruel and be lucky to find maybe 2-3 GCPs. Its pretty obvious that GCP droprate received a heavy nerf in drops.

Now. I spent maybe 30+ hours in the beyond league so far (approximate guess) and I can - from that playtime to drop ratio - say that to level a single gem from 1-20 would take 200+ hours of playing on average. Meanwhile - strongboxes can drop quality gems, regular mobs CAN drop quality gems, and trading a lvl20 gem gives a lvl1 Q20 gem.

You see the problem here GGG? If you want 20Q gems - you are WAAAY more likely to get them as random drops or leveling them to lvl20.

What does this mean? It means GCPs, meant to level up the quality of gems - completely loses their usage because you will NEVER find enough GCPs to get all your gems to Q20 in any remote timespan close to grinding them up in lvls or finding them as drops instead.

When you have to play like 200+ hours minimum (especially on HC) to get a SINGLE q20 gem - then something is wrong.

There is a vast difference between reasonable drop chance and insanity. At this point, GCPs might aswell not be in the game at all.

Suggestion is simple: Increase droprate of GCP to a sane rate, which would mean that on average - every 10-20 hours of playing would net you a single Q20 gem.

At this point GCP are simply not useful at all unless you find a Q17+ gem and want to use your GCPs to "finnish it up". As it stands now, GCPs are kinda absolete. Playing 200+ hours on average for 1 x 20Q gem ESPECIALLY on hardcore - is simply not fun, not balanced, not reasonable, not logical and frankly makes no sense.

10-20 hours worth of play for a q20 is a bit to much but i do agree that GCP are way to rare to be worth using at all.

their drop should be slighly better than chaos.

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Just do the recipe, with boxes and lots of Q gems around, hell even masters sell Q gems. Do the recipe, its there for a reason.

They don't yield much Dirk.

If I had to guess how many hours I've put into Path of Exile, I'd guess around 400. 300 of which are actually farming.

In the entire time I've played, I've gotten maybe 15 GCPs. This is counting ones I've traded for, be it with players or vendors.

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Natharias wrote:

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Just do the recipe, with boxes and lots of Q gems around, hell even masters sell Q gems. Do the recipe, its there for a reason.

They don't yield much Dirk.

If I had to guess how many hours I've put into Path of Exile, I'd guess around 400. 300 of which are actually farming.

In the entire time I've played, I've gotten maybe 15 GCPs. This is counting ones I've traded for, be it with players or vendors.

Well, the recipe gave me more than what i thought i ever get in terms of the GCPs. I dont use them at all so i dont really pursue them much but the 40% recipe is easy as is i think the other one, might be mistaken on there being another though.


PS: Gotta lvl up your gems to max and then vendor with a GCP, thats easy to get max Q gems.

Level it to 20 is an "easy" q20? I must disagree.

I agree with OP. GCP is worthless as it stands now. You can't even use it to trade, cause people don't want them (unless they are specifically looking for them).

Up'ing the quality improved from 1 to 2 % + a slight increase in drop chance is what's needed, imo.

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Natharias wrote:

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Just do the recipe, with boxes and lots of Q gems around, hell even masters sell Q gems. Do the recipe, its there for a reason.

They don't yield much Dirk.

If I had to guess how many hours I've put into Path of Exile, I'd guess around 400. 300 of which are actually farming.

In the entire time I've played, I've gotten maybe 15 GCPs. This is counting ones I've traded for, be it with players or vendors.

Well, the recipe gave me more than what i thought i ever get in terms of the GCPs. I dont use them at all so i dont really pursue them much but the 40% recipe is easy as is i think the other one, might be mistaken on there being another though.


PS: Gotta lvl up your gems to max and then vendor with a GCP, thats easy to get max Q gems.

I know how it works.

It's also nice that it works well for you. It works well for me too.

I can't remember the last time I found a GCP. I certainly used to find them, though. The best way to get them now seems to be to keep an eye on your Masters (they often sell superior gems) and use the 40Q -> 1 GCP recipe. It's a similar story with Glassblower's baubles (except that superior flasks drop much more frequently than superior gems).

I think people using the lvl 20 gem + 1 GCP recipe are still working through their stock of GCPs from back when they were somewhat common. If lots of people start getting lvl20 gems in the new leagues, we may start to see demand for GCPs just for this recipe.

It's a bit sad that GCPs are now almost unusable for their basic crafting purpose, though. A buff to drop rates of either GCPs themselves or superior gems would indeed be a good idea.

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Incompetent wrote:

I can't remember the last time I found a GCP.

Before the patch... can't remember too. Found 3 or 4 in 3 days right after patch, though. But in that time all low orbs (up to chaos) were dropping like crazy :) It seems now droprates are back to normal (read abysmal), so i suspect that were my last GCPs for a long time.

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caboom wrote:

10-20 hours worth of play for a q20 is a bit to much but i do agree that GCP are way to rare to be worth using at all.

their drop should be slighly better than chaos.

This. Droprate somewhere between fusing and chaos. (don't know how - I always get more chaos than fusings, depsite I know the chaos drops are muchr arer. RNG,w tf)