Ultimate task from masters

hello exiles, I'd like to share some ideas about the masters system in Path of Exile. I like how it works and it's a lot of fun to do different kinds of tasks with different masters. But after hitting level 8 with the master, there is not much reason to continue doing them. Maybe if you want to help others level their masters or if you hope to find a special unique sold by one of them you would still do the missions but the incentives are very low. Which is understandable of course.

But what if there was something like end-game with masters to keep players doing their missions constantly? I had an idea of "final ultimate task" with each master, which becomes available only after hitting level 8. For example with Haku the ultimate task could be to defeat Kitava! To finally free all the spirits. With Vagan it could be some badass fight, maybe with Daresso! Which would be something like PvP fight. And so on...

So, what I came up with was that master missions (after level 6) drop fragments which are similar to sacrifice fragments. But there are only 2 parts and when you talk with the level 8 master there could be a new option saying "attempt the ultimate mission" or something like that. Then you give 2 parts to the master and he/she opens the portal to the area.

So, these would be different versions of end-game activity, maybe little bit easier than Atziri, and they could have specific items which drop only in those areas. These would require different kinds of builds and everybody wouldn't ask whether your build is Atziri viable or not.

This way you keep doing master mission to farm for the fragments and do some of the master ultimate mission runs instead of Atziri runs. Vagan and Vorici final boss fight could be in a spirit of PvP and could be a lot of fun for PvP fans.


What do you think? I really would love to see in the game something, maybe not in this way, but close to this idea.

Nice idea.

These ultimate missions should have wildly differing boss specs so "one trick pony" builds cannot do them all. Maybe they should be balanced specifically to showcase some of the cool game mechanics (dmg over time vs on-hit dmg, each element, etc...). Or they could have area mods which totally switch off specific mechanics, like "player has no block chance", "boss cannot be hit with critical strikes", "boss reflects 200% of a specific element dmg", etc...

Even if it means people will have to have a different build for each master, this would be fantastic to get people to think about the many damage/defense mechanics.

/Edit: Some more ideas
- "Boss can only take dmg when ignited, but is then 100% resistant to fire dmg". So you need to ignite him and then do other damage to drop him. Dito other elements.
- "Boss can take no damage, except from reflect".
- "Reverse blood magic: If you run out of mana, you die. Use life for your spells instead of mana".
- "Boss can only be damaged by 2H melee weapons, and not from a distance".
- "Boss regen increases with the distance between you and the boss".
etc...

"

treffnix wrote:

Nice idea.

These ultimate missions should have wildly differing boss specs so "one trick pony" builds cannot do them all. Maybe they should be balanced specifically to showcase some of the cool game mechanics (dmg over time vs on-hit dmg, each element, etc...). Or they could have area mods which totally switch off specific mechanics, like "player has no block chance", "boss cannot be hit with critical strikes", "boss reflects 200% of a specific element dmg", etc...

Even if it means people will have to have a different build for each master, this would be fantastic to get people to think about the many damage/defense mechanics.

/Edit: Some more ideas
- "Boss can only take dmg when ignited, but is then 100% resistant to fire dmg". So you need to ignite him and then do other damage to drop him. Dito other elements.
- "Boss can take no damage, except from reflect".
- "Reverse blood magic: If you run out of mana, you die. Use life for your spells instead of mana".
- "Boss can only be damaged by 2H melee weapons, and not from a distance".
- "Boss regen increases with the distance between you and the boss".
etc...

Exactly, my idea was to make it so that there is no unique build to do the end-game better than others and you will maybe choose to do only few of the final bosses because different ones would need different approaches.

Nice ideas, these would increase the variety of builds and boss fight approaches.
About the ignited one: maybe boss fight would be designed so that it would be very hard to fight alone and you would need a party of at least 2 players. If the boss can only be damaged while ignited. But even then he takes only physical or only cold/lightning damage. So one would take care of keeping him ignited while other would dps. In theory this would work while facing alone too but fight would take longer.

Also, one boss mod could be
-doesn't take physical damage

Since it's some kind of a spirit and not a physical enemy or something. Or even more extreme
-takes only chaos damage



One more idea: Tora final mission could be to hunt down a huge beast, the source of corruption in animals. Something like hydra. And chaos damage regenerates it's life. And you attack heads one by one, while killing each head revamps the hydra.


P.S. I think reflect builds are becoming a thing now after the coming patch xD

I agree, I mean after they are level 8 the only reason to do the missions is to renew the items they sell and for that you don't need to succeed, you could just start and abbandon a mission.
Ok you can use their missions then for gaining xp but the only master for which this is really worth is Zana.

I'm mixed. We have to figure out what the purpose of the masters is.

In many ways, I feel the masters are intended to give us benefits as we play through multiple characters, particularly for the purpose of opening up low level crafting.

If this is a game with 10 Acts (eventually), then it is possible masters only get us started on the journey.


Personally, I don't really like seeing masters being used for high level crafting, and I'm not really a big fan of Atziri style content. I'd like to see every boss have a good reason to farm them (or at least their map versions.)


I'm also very much in opposition to Daily Master chaining. This is just not fun.

"

I'm mixed. We have to figure out what the purpose of the masters is.

In many ways, I feel the masters are intended to give us benefits as we play through multiple characters, particularly for the purpose of opening up low level crafting.

If this is a game with 10 Acts (eventually), then it is possible masters only get us started on the journey.


Personally, I don't really like seeing masters being used for high level crafting, and I'm not really a big fan of Atziri style content. I'd like to see every boss have a good reason to farm them (or at least their map versions.)


I'm also very much in opposition to Daily Master chaining. This is just not fun.

This game is awesome because different people find different things fun and there's something for everyone in PoE. Some people find it fun to do Atziri, some people prefer mapping and some people like master missions. You can concentrate on the aspect which you find more interesting and do less or ignore other aspect (e.g. Atziri).

I, personally, enjoy daily master rotations. I would agree though that master crafting is too strong right now. They allow for very powerful items to be created, more powerful than most uniques. So, i don't think masters will be just for the beginning of the game. If there will be 10 acts GGG will just scale masters to fit with it. I believe they intend masters to be something you do throughout the whole game.

And maybe it would be even better for scaling masters to include the end-game quest that will be much harder than regular quests.