Ongoing Feedback - Returning to Forsaken Masters

Background
I played POE mainly during Open Beta, but stuck around to level a Scion in Domination when she was added. After that I switched to races but my activity gradually dwindled into non-existence. I left with one of each classes up to about 60-69 (all in Standard at this point).

One reason I was abandoning characters in the 60s was because, at the time, maps had such a negative reputation for being grindy and hard. The game already felt like it was pushing my limits on grindy and hard so why even bother.

My main complaint was that it's just too grindy to progress. I actually like the game's difficulty, but I hate repeating zones over and over to make my character stronger which is why I gravitated to races in the end.

My hope is that all the new content and balance changes since I left (v1.0) have smoothed progression and mitigated the grind. I will be chronicling my experiences here as I progress.


Week 1 - Return to POE
With Forsaken Masters I figured my main goal would be to rank them up so the best way to do that would be to stick with the league where I already had some leveled characters. My secondary goal is to get all my characters up to L65; that's about 50 levels across 4 characters, most of them are close except 1 who is still in Cruel. Not knowing anyone else who still plays, I guess it's solo self-found going forward.

I started by pushing the low 60s characters through A3M, but their DPS was too poor so I went to farm up some new gear on the better characters. I went with Docks runs because that's what I used to do. The new Invader boss was pretty tough and slowed progress enough that I soon switched to Piety runs. It was worth the risk for the improved XP and items. Eventually I could do the whole run without dying or portaling (to refill potions for boss fight).

POE seems to have a lot of new stuff that's worth exploring, but I expect to tire of it quickly again.




Week 2~3 - Over the Horizon
Once I found this I decided it was time to give maps a try, horror stories be damned. My best character at this point is a Duelist, with 5k DPS Cleave and 3.5k Life (the new weapon added over 1k DPS). The first couple maps I would run plain and once I got the hang of it I will Transmute/Aug them.

Reports of player demise in maps were greatly exaggerated. Once I figured out the bosses (and decided Dungeon Maps were just Chisels in disguise, using the Stone Hammer recipe) I feel like L66 maps are actually easier than Piety runs, and far less repetitive/grindy! I'm already prepared for L67, maybe higher.

After running the L67 gamut, I realize this character is probably already prepared for L68 maps as well. But I only have a couple, and I want to compare them to each other so it wouldn't do to start now and finish later. I have a ton of L66 maps though (about half a stash tab) so I start running other characters through the gamut to upgrade my supply. I move 2 more characters through L66 maps, a Frozen Pulse Shadow and a Double Strike Ranger. Neither is quite as good as my Duelist, but the Shadow is pretty close.

I must also add that GGG deserves special credit for how well maps re-use old tile-sets to new effect. With nothing more than a mere title to create the sense of place for the player, it's surprising to me how well GGG can create new places without anything new. Dried Lake is my favorite example of this. I've seen all this before: light-colored beach, dark-colored beach, the same poop-like rock craggs. Yet this place is new-- it's a dried lake. And then at the far end, it turns out to still have a little water left. That just makes it feel even more desolate, like this was recently a lake. Not all the maps capture this sense of novelty or place, but I appreciate that GGG took the effort where they could.

POE is growing on me again.


Week 2.5~3.5 - Leveling Out
After bringing 3 characters through L66 maps, I got a bit burned out on them, so I switch to my character in A2C, an L39 Bow Ranger. I had some twink gear, or so I thought until I found a Death's Harp with natural 20% quality while at the minimum level to equip it. This weapon is quite strong up until A2M, where it's just average. A3M it's getting weak but I still haven't found an upgrade. I had been experimenting with different Bow skills and had settled on Rain of Arrows, but it wasn't leveraged well by Death's Harp so I had to re-evaluate all the skills again.

Leveling is much better than it used to be. It feels smooth until the low 50s now (my opinion, it used to be upper 30s back in OB). I think the difference can be attributed to the additional zones and content, changes in life growth, and more sockets in gear.

One thing that bothered me was that I find a Cartographer's Strongbox in Merciless Sarn Court and it contained... absolutely nothing. Come on guys, Strongboxes should always contain at least 1 item!

I'm also leveling some other characters during this time, and try maps with them. The L66 map stockpile continues to grow as I bring characters through A3M. The characters that weren't good when I started are still not good, as I generally find no upgrades for anybody. I pick up and identify all yellows, store 5L items in stash to see if Alch can make it better than what the corresponding character is using, even keep some highly rolled blank jewelry for Alch. Number of gear upgrades for characters already working on L66 maps during this week: zero. But I also focused mainly on characters who were still progressing the story so it's not entirely surprising, even though they're all up to A3M now. The glorious Duelist who started all this is sitting bored as I still don't have high enough maps to feed him yet.

POE seems much less frustrating than before, and I'm looking forward to see how far I can push it.


Week 3 - Sharpening the Grindstone
Map storage is becoming a problem. I have a growing mountain of L66 and a starting supply of L67s, but higher than that is sparse to absent. Nobody does anything but maps; if they're not ready for it then they're not gonna get played. Unfortunately, the lack of gear upgrades means pretty much the characters that could do maps before are the same ones that can do maps now, and they're starting to level past the point where L66 is viable. I stopped transmuting maps for the weakest characters just so they can work down the supply some.

Light is darkest just before the dawn sun. Finally I found something! I didn't write down stats upon gear switch, but the increases was nearly double DPS and her gems were still leveling so many little boosts remained. Now it's a 3.2k Tornado Shot and 3.2k life, but that's at L75.

Anyway, I had left her stranded partway through A3M, but this new bow means she's map ready. I just gotta do Piety for the Skill Points and then get the Dominus Waypoint to get rid of the key. Well, I might as well do the Hedge Maze since I already know the layout to Imperial Gardens. And get the Waypoint in the Library for the same reason. Fuck, I just did the whole A3M! Supposed to be destroying maps here, not adding more!

Anyway, I can tell right off the bat this character is probably going to be better than the Cleave Duelist. She'll swim right through the L66s so I better put some Item Rarity on her, which I get to 86% along with 16% quantity (legacy amulet). She runs my supply of unidentified and yellow L66 maps, and focuses mainly on harder archetypes like Overgrown Ruin. By level 70 I figure it's time to upgrade map level. By level 73 it's time for another upgrade. By level 75 it's time for another upgrade, but whoops, I only have 3x L69 maps. I found an Aurseize along the way which slotted easily into her gear and added a secondary skill with IIR gem for boss kills, pushing IIR over 180%. Still nothin'

So now I'm at an impasse. I wish I had written down my L66 maps at peak, but currently I have 54 in stash (not counting quality maps or Dungeons because recipes will consume those faster than running them will). Here I have linked the map in 3rd to last position for each type assuming I don't reorganize. Let's see how long those remain Verified, shall we? Especially Dunes, Crypt, and Grotto are like weeds-- every time I use one up, more grow back in their place. They're not hard, but I'm getting exhausted of them because I don't have any characters properly positioned to do them anymore, I have a few characters that are too strong for them and its just trivial, and the rest are too weak making them a long slog.

It's grindy just as I always heard, but not in the way that I expected. It's being held back at low-value content despite feeling like I could move past if only given the chance. And not getting the chance unless I grind... and grind... and grind. Although I wrote mainly about the changes where characters were advancing past something, I assure you I actually spent much more time on L66 maps than anything else. The map supply is just treading water, it's still mostly composed of L66. There's just not a lot to write about on that topic, so I didn't.

Well I started all this for the Masters and I've hardly mentioned them. They're OK. Some of their missions, particularly timed ones, are absurd and it really sucks to struggle hard only to fail so the master gives zilch for the effort. All my masters are up to L5 except Vorici and Zana. Once I get my hideout masters (Elreon and Haku) to L6 for the currency exchanges I'm going to switch them out for the other 2. It'll probably be about 2 more days.

To summarize, as far as I've gone in maps it's not the challenge that stops me from progressing, it's the grind. POE continues to improve, but grinding remains the bane of my persistence. I'm ready for a new race season.


Week 4 - The Future is Now
Coming in about a week.

I hope you find that you enjoy the game for a long period of time. This is great feedback. Thanks for the read.

Week 3.5
It's only been a couple days, but the server's down for a patch so I figured I may as well write an update.

I figured out why I had so many L66 maps-- it's because of Cartographer's boxes. Yesterday I was making good progress through the supply and then found a Cartographer which just undid all my stash space savings. Since the maps are never higher level than the one I'm on, I'm not going to be able to go all the way through one tier, then the next and so on. The bottom tiers dissipate more slowly than the upper tiers populate. Guess I need to change my strategy! Since my last post, though, I'm now down to 45x L66 maps... Mostly due to Gavels. I've eradicated my Dungeon supply and am now working on Orchard.

I'm noticing all the items that enable progression for a different character are weapons. I guess I was too conservative and went for all the life nodes too early. The armor I already had from before, but figured I would show it as its another key item for this character. Anyway, this guy is a 1H Lightning Strike Templar. I don't really like the build, but I guess I'll get to try a new one whenever there's a passive reset. Anyway the weapon boosted him from 3.5k to 4.8k DPS (also some support gem shuffling as I chromed the 6L), accompanied by 3.2k life and 700 Energy Shield. But despite having good numbers in both offense and defense, he really kind of sucks.

I will say his stats look great. High life and high DPS. But in practice he gets stunlocked the most of any of my characters. I guess Multistrike is just a really dumb gem to use- great stats on paper aren't enough to save stand-n-plant on a melee gem. I'm flighty; I like to shake my booty in combat. This guy desyncs back to the same spot every time I dance. With Searing Totem and Elemental Weakness support, somehow 4k+ DPS manages to still feel like molasses against Yellow quality mobs. I tried L67 maps with him and he just can't handle it. Despite all this incredible gear and amazing stats he is forsaken to the bottom rung of the ladder. At least I figured out who is going to chew through the burgeoning L66 supply.

Haku and Elreon are now L6. Zana is L3. The rest are L5. Now that I've got daily maps for when I'm running low, I might just be able to vendor up the bottom tiers. The thing that makes me cautious about doing so is that Zana's daily mission is too high of a level. All the other masters have missions L60 or below, hers are L70. Thank god for my OP Ranger!

The rest of the week I'm going to focus on 67s and 68s to increase my level. Trying to empty my supply of 66s was a futile endeavour that has been abandoned.

Nice read, thanks for that.

Just an obvious question: If you have so many low level maps, why don't you combine them to upgrade? It's how I keep my stash manageable and progress the levels. See http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Maps

BTW: I find that yellow maps and strongboxes yield muuuuch worse returns than blue ones. Is that just me or do you feel the same? Example: all 3 yellow carto boxes I have found so far yielded 0 maps, while I usually get 4-8 maps from blue cartos. Example 2: Not a single unique in all the yellow maps I ran up to now, but about 1 unique in 2-3 blue maps on average.
Very strange, but does let me save on currency :)

Thanks Treffnix, I'll do that!

I just found a Yellow Cartographer Box in Mountain Ledge and it's another one that yielded nothing so you may be on to something there.

I am also a resurrected beta member. It has been very slow going for me as apparently my laptop isn't capable of playing PoE much anymore (which is a joke tbh). All the new content kills my PC when it shouldn't. I am running on lowest settings and still getting regularly dc'd with internet that is fine. My poor templar is level 28 in normal A2 because I have to run through zones multiple times (bonus points for getting dc'd before finding the waypoint!).

Other than that, I have found the new stuff pretty fun. It at least makes leveling fun to find masters and corrupted zones. I haven't really played maps in awhile since they revamped them, so I can't comment on that. But I will say that the map struggle was real. At least with the map recipes it shouldn't be so horrid nowadays. Gear upgrades are hard to come by, but that is where trading comes in. I generally found that spending 1-3 chaos is doable for most pre-70 items, at least back in the day.

Week 4 - Freedom
I'm sticking with the blog format since that seems fairly popular. Much happened this week.

Weekly Anecdote
The firecracker was Zana's daily quest- kill the boss of Poorjoy's Asylum. I'm in disbelief. So she can make unique maps, can she? OK, then. Hmm, should read a guide first? Nope' YOLO! Behind the first door are 2 packs of turbo blue mobs for near instant death. I'm not ready for this L71 shit. It cost me 3 deaths to get on the other side of that door. But what's this I see? One of them dropped a unique Sinner Tricorne (Alpha's Howl). Even if this is the end, at least that was cool. Time to make a few gear changes trading IIR for Life while I'm exiled to town.

Now that I've got some kiting room its a slow and difficult slog, carefully toteming forward, Tornado Shotting into the void, hoping to draw a small enough group that they can all target the totem and die before they reach me. If the whippers touch me it's pretty much another death. Rather than clear the whole place in an ordered fashion like normal, my strategy is just to get as far away from the start point as possible. I at least want to see what the boss is, but it better not be Kole! Another death, this time to desync. Not sure I'll have enough lives to make it. Can't even read all the map mods because the text "Complete Zana's mission" is written over it, so I'm flying blind. At least it's obvious where I've explored-- the walls have a thick coating of arrows.

Finally see the red dot on the map. Found it! Just 1 more death now. It's in a big room which looks like a good place to fight. I start clearing the room so there's no unexpected adds for a circular kiting tactic. Death. Didn't even see the boss yet and it's my last life now. It can't end like this! I go in and just pull the boss immediately. Tentacle Miscreation is not Kole. The boss is not Kole! After all this stress working through the difficult maze, the boss is the easiest thing in the whole place. Reward is 12 rare amulets, according to my subsequent research one of the best possible results.

My POE career has just peaked. You don't always know when you reach the top, but sometimes you do. This is one of those times. Will that ever happen again? Not likely. But at least I did it once! Oh, and Zana seemed to enjoy her 10k XP.

Character & Gear Progression
Alch'd this since I have a lot of armor wearers so decent odds somebody can use it. Most useful for the 2H Spectral Throw Scion, who was able to do some gear shuffling as this offered a more needed resist and also another socket over her old armor (yes, I'm cheating with an Item Quantity gem). Along with some passive resets to get rid of some life for 2H physical dmg she is good to go. I find I am giving Aurseize to anybody who doesn't really need their gloves, for both IIR and leveling an Enhance and Enlighten gem stored inside. Scion is one of 'em.

Wouldn't you know it, after I just respecced her for physical damage.

Dual Strike Ranger takes Alpha's Howl. With Grace she now has 16k Evasion. Frenzy's in there because she can't use 3 auras, and I use it like a combat buff against mobs that have high durability and regenerate.

A minor change, I found a Mana Leech ring with good resists that allowed my Bow Ranger to swap out her (very) out-of-date Wyrm's Molt for a Perandus Blazon. Anything for more IIR/IIQ.

What should I do with this?

In the beginning I said I was doing self-found and I still am, but I have filled 2 empty stash tabs with lowbie currencies since I returned to Forsaken Masters. Since I don't have any forseeable use for these I traded them away into more manageable units. I exchanged 740 chromes, 300 alts, and 80 alchs for 6 exalts. Dunno if that's a good deal, but it reclaimed about half a stash tab. Getting Vorici to L6 will also help.

I stopped doing L66s and am focusing on L67-L68. Best character does dailys. One thing keeping me from going even higher on maps is the master missions become too hard, and I still need to level them at least to 6.

Here is my character breakdown:
L69+ maps
.Tornado Shot Ranger
.DW Cleave Duelist
L67-68 maps
.Frozen Pulse Shadow
.2H Spectral Throw Scion
.Dual Strike Ranger
L66 maps or below
.1H Lightning Strike Templar
.2H Groundslam Marauder
.Summoning Witch

I need to make some casters.

Reflections
The main thing that has facilitated my progress is that I don't mind grinding maps as much as I mind grinding campaign. Maps are always a new experience. The mods on the map make it play differently, and that keeps the boredom out of the grind. POE really shines best in the maps phase of the game.

There is an annoying sound clipping issue mainly with Tornado Shot but sometimes other skills that hit many targets where a high pitch sound effect quickly cuts out. This never used to happen back in Open Beta. Not sure if it's the new motherboard (new=Realtek HD, old=Via HD) or something in POE, but something's up.

Strongboxes should always contain at least 1 something. Looking at you Cartographers!

UI text is overwhelming. Item tooltips coat the ground so thoroughly monsters sometimes burrow under for a sneak attack. It's worst at strongboxes when a guy gets stuck behind the box description. The mission text also interferes with viewing map mods (Quest Tracking does not disable Daily mission UI).

I'm up to 22 stash tabs now (20 custom). Keeping them organized is a bigger problem than having enough space for things. GGG is going to have to find something else to sell me besides stash tabs at this point; I don't think I want any more.

Week 4.5 - Ever Onward

Map & Master Progression
I dismissed Zana before she leveled because her Daily Quests were getting too hard to complete, and I also needed to get all the crafting benches. The Masters require a spot in the hideout before they will give me a bench and I had never invited some of them. I still need to get Tora's bench, but all the current masters are level 5 (quests in the mid 50s) so they need to gain a level before dismissal or it would take forever to recoup the lost exp. The thing that made it a tough call was that Zana was my main source of L70+ maps. But it will only be about 3-4 days of dailys to recover her lost exp, whereas the other masters would lose a lot more time because their quest levels are too low.

Zana is L4, all the remaining masters are the same level since my last summary (Week 3.5).

I'm now focusing on L68-L69 maps. I'm starting to face a little bit of a sustain problem on the L69s, even though I have some that are higher (from Zana). I use Transmute & Aug for maps, Alter if it's too hard. I'll probably start using Chisels on the L70s once I decide which of those is the best. I'm thinking 1x Chisel on L70, 3x Chisel on L71, 4x Chisel beyond. At least as long as the corresponding map level is the highest for me.

Character & Gear Progression
After all the cool new gear last time, I hoped maybe the floodgates had opened. They hadn't. So I decided to give crafting a try.

Crafting was a nice boost for my Scion who was getting stuck. She had several items with empty mods. I made a mistake though; I thought I had Aurseize equipped when I was checking my character sheet but they weren't. So I added a cold resist that I didn't need. Oh the humiliation, I wish I could remove it!

The best enchant was probably the item I linked in Post #1. It's now up to 329 DPS, that'll be hard to replace.

Enchanting seems like it'll be a good currency sink, and I'll need to evaluate items for the vendors a bit differently in light of it. Instead of looking for the complete package, something with one missing piece can be just as good. This should give me a solid avenue for continued progression, which was starting to feel like it was ending.

Reflections
It would be nice to have some QOL on Master benches, such as ctrl+click to move items back and forth from bench to inventory. For Zana's bench it should auto-enable the free mod. Next, a simpler way of organizing the Master mods would be useful, perhaps the bench UI left-aligns prefixs, right-aligning suffixes, and have mini-icons for gear slots the mod can apply to.

A bug with ground loot tooltips: they change z-height under certain conditions. The best way to reproduce it is to have a huge mess of items near a staircase, then walk up and down the staircase (also change direction midway through the stairs). The tooltip z-height rises higher and higher, which gives the appearance of the tooltip "following" you as you travel.

Farshot seems counterintuive as all the enemies that have it are much more dangerous up close than from a distance, contrary to the suggestion of the ability description.

I've been meaning to mention this one for a while but kept forgetting: Lit Thorns seems to have been removed from the game, or maybe it's just weak enough that it's not noticed anymore. It's sad to see something go, but I guess it's good because that was a particularly annoying spell.

Re-using map bosses, why do you do that? The Blacksmith is in Spider Forest and Dunes, he does the same stuff in both maps. Seems like there are plenty of bosses in the game, why this guy getting reused? If you just need an idea, how about the 3 banners in Solaris Temple, except they're mini-spiders for the Spider Forest.

I had some computer problems which delayed the posting of this update. Hopefully they are now fixed. If not then this may be my last entry.

Week 5 - What else is new?
Whew 5 weeks, I didn't expect to last this long! When I started this I was planning on making a longitudinal chronicle to show how POE shifts player mindset from interested to infuriated, but POE improved so much it's taking a lot longer to make the transition than I was prepared for. As long as this account remains honest I hope everyone can learn a lesson from this journal, be it a reminder of what is great about POE or support for arguments indicating what should change.

Progression
Finally got my last crafting bench, and she leveled fast so all masters are 6 except Zana. My hideout has Elreon and Vorici for their currency conversions and Zana for her daily quest.

My main characters are now at:
Ranger - 4k Tornado Shot DPS, 3.5k life - no specific needs
Duelist - 6.5k Cleave DPS, 3.7k life - needs more DPS
Scion - 2.8k 2H Spectral Throw DPS, 3.5k life - needs more defenses

I got my first L18 gems, and also halfway up with Enhance and Enlighten. The reason Enhance/Enlighten are so far ahead is because I use the gloves that store those gems (Aurseize) on every character. That should give you an idea of how much time I spent on L66-L69 maps. This is the only item I switch between characters.

The L70 maps seems like they're gonna be a show-stopper because the bosses are crazy. Merveil (Graveyard) is just a total skip. Even with multiple suicides I can't kill her. Imperatix (Villa) is a probable death. Good thing Underground Sea is super easy and I had a lot of copies of it. I only have 3x L70 maps left though, and that's in spite of starting in on the chisels (except for Graveyards and Villas). Disappointingly, the maps are also turning into repeats of each other-- Wharf and Pier are virtually indistinguishable, same for Cemetary and Graveyard (btw, I think GGG missed an opportunity to call one of them something different like "Ancient Estate" or "Haunted Ruins" since the only particularly Graveyard-y thing in the environment are the fences). This contributes to the "been there, done that" feeling that maps were supposed to overcome.

Seeing as I'm closing in on my peak in Standard, I decided to try out the new leagues. I made a Lightning Witch in Rampage. Honestly, the Rampage mechanic is kind of dumb. It doesn't add much of anything to the gameplay, nor do the various explosions make sense. Anyway, I'm focusing on offensive passives for her since my Standard characters all ran into DPS problems transitioning into maps. I'm going to try coming at it from the other side and see how that compares. I will fill out her defenses eventually, but the bias will be more offensive than what I had done before. Her main skill has been Shock up to the Bandit Quests. I don't have a support gem for Arc yet, and Stormcall is underleveled because I claimed the gem a little late.

Reflections
The game is starting to feel formulaic again, mainly working on Master XP because characters aren't advancing much anymore. Hoping for something new to looking forward to, like a patch, races, Act 4, etc. I might try Onslaught since the Rampage mod is so dull, but I don't have a plan for any more character builds yet.

The long delay is because the past couple weeks my ISP (Verizon) declared war on POE manifested as constant disconnections resulting in progress wipes any time I tried to accomplish anything. Even getting daily quests done was a challenge so for about 2 weeks I just gave up trying. Things seem to have stabilized now and I'm getting back into it.

Week 6 - Hunting Season
Race Season 9 started so I tried a couple races. Before talking about that let me just say that between doing daily quests in 2 leagues and the long race durations its just too much. I can't do all this stuff!

Anyway I forgot how to go fast and spending so much time with map chars really messed up my rhythm for races. It'll be tough to switch between the two styles each day since I don't have time for practice runs. Guess I'll just have a bad season.

Finally the reward targets seem a bit... high. So if I read correctly, this season is shorter but we need the same amount of points to get less items. Sounds crazy- do the same amount of work in less time and get paid less.

Progress
All that time I spent doing maps the first 5 weeks was wasted. That just got my map pool up to L70. Zana daily quests have single handedly given me a pool of maps up to L73. Of course I had been doing dailies ONLY for some time, but the point remains that she has outpaced my own grinding. I wonder how it would be if her progression were something like this:
Master 1, Map 66
Master 2, Map 67
Master 3, Map 68
Master 4, Map 68-70
Master 5, Map 69-71
Master 6, Map 70-72

Once again, the highlight of the week is a weapon. It cost about 10 jewelers and 50 fuse to make the sockets, marking the first time I intentionally 5-socketed an item with fuses. She now has 3.9k DPS, 4.1k life, and 28/138 IIQ/IIR. If you're keeping track from my last post that's less DPS, but I upgraded LMP to GMP, so it's actually a large increase. The Bow Ranger continues to be my best character, and she is expanding that lead. I think what makes her so much better is the tight clustering of bow nodes on the passive tree, particularly Lethality and Deadly Draw, which I think are a tad too strong for how easy they are to pair.

I also redid the sockets on my Marauder, gave him a bunch of miscellaneous DPS-oriented uniques (notably Abyssus and Gang's Momentum), and allocated the Templar crit cluster. The redone sockets include a Cast-On-Damage Temporal Chains + Enduring Cry + Molten Armor and more supports for the DPS skills. That made him map capable so I'm moving him up. His health is a little low (under 3k due to an Eye of Chayula) so I'm sticking with L68 maps for him (he is currently L69). He doesn't have maxed cold resist either since so many of his gear slots are reserved for DPS boosting uniques. Oh well.

Reflections
Back when I started mapping I had to use totems and Enduring Cry and kiting. Now that my characters- particularly Ranger- are better geared I don't have to do any of that and its much simpler. I'm finding items much quicker this way but its also changed from a survival game to an efficiency game. The efficiency game is more grindy and a chore even though it is more rewarding from an in-game perspective. It's fun at first to be able to mow down things that gave me lots of trouble before, but now what? Just keep mowing things down? In the hopes that I get another character up to this level I keep going, but so far nobody else is even getting close beside that one character. She's even got space to use some junk like Perandus Blazon and an amulet that has no combat stats just some IIR/IIQ. The irony is it feels like a waste whenever I try another character now. The characters that are fun are too inefficient. Catch 22. GGG, make things harder!

In the first post I congratulated GGG for rethinking the maps to make them feel different. It seems this was only done for maps in the Act 1 tileset. I dunno if that one is just more versatile than the others or if there has been a shift in philosophy/personnel, but it's disappointing this wasn't carried through to all the maps. The ones that I think do the best job of feeling like a new place not visited in the campaign are (L73 and below only):
Tier 1) Dried Lake (perfect), Canyon (excellent), Jungle Valley (too bad I hate this map)
Tier 2) Mountain Ledge (no-mountain layouts ONLY), Springs (the enclosing walls made a good contrast to the way A2 used mainly water or trees), Mud Geyser (another map I don't like)
Tier 3) Promenade (nothing special, but not derivative either), Dry Wood (this map I always forget which one it is; I just don't get how it matches the title, but at least its unique)
And the ones that feel most derivative/similar:
Tier 1) Any Fellshrine Ruins, Chamber of Sins, Brutus Prison, Vaal Pyramid tileset
Tier 2) Weaver Chamber and Sewers maps
Tier 3) Docks variants
The rest are in between, decent but not exceptional. I can see how the interior tilesets are hard to do differently, but I think there should be some more effort for exterior ones.

Masters are seeming to take way too long to upgrade. I still don't have any L7s, this just seems hopeless. In new leagues it seems like it would always be worth it to pick Elreon and maybe Vorici (as long as one plans to continue in permanent league), as completing their daily is essentially worth 8 Alts and 16 Jewelers, respectively. Vorici will eventually run out of supplies, but Elreon never does. He also feeds Vorici to get that bigger reward. I kinda wish Tora had the same recipe as Elreon just to give another option on how to get it. I picked Elreon and 2 masters not in my Standard hideout for my temp league, to maximize XP gains.

What do you think about changing the race reward tiers (Season 9):
10/40/100/250/500/1000
To be like this for Season 10:
8/30/75/200/400/800
Or even better, it just counts your best 50 results from the season and the tiers look like this:
8/30/75/150/300/500