Thoughts from a long-time sceptic

I have been an ARPG player since I discovered a demo version of Diablo (1) in a gaming magazine way back when. I've played them ever since, with the various incarnations of Diablo being far and away my most played games and I've tried pretty much everything else from the genre. That said, I still consider myself on the casual side of things, mainly due to a lack of good intuition for game mechanics and builds, therefore relying on guides quite a bit.

I actually registered a PoE-account back when it was still in beta and have dabbled a little bit over the years but was never quite hooked. A lot of the game was very janky, in particular compared to the famous Blizzard polish, and I was kind of repulsed by how trading works. Betrayal has been the first season I've put any significant amount of time into - I'll readily admit the Diablo Immortal debacle did help in that regard. And I have been very pleasantly surprised! The game has come a long way, even compared to when I last tried it around two years ago. The build diversity is simply awesome and I actually like that there are several intricate aspects to learn.

At least Arc and Storm Brand are. I started following Enki's Arc Witch guide (thx, by the way!) and pretty much facerolled my way through the game. Of course, at this time I didn't fully appreciate how powerful Arc really is, that came with additional characters. I spent most of my time with just a Tabula Rasa, managed red maps easily and even got one Guardian kill (Minotaur, first try though not deathless) - on a fully juiced-up corrupted map, because that's what you do on red maps, right? At some point I upgraded to a 5-link Queen's Hunger and eventually managed to chance an Inpulsas's (although only 5-linked it as well). Though to be honest, I do not think Inpulsa's is much of an advantage for Arc outside of maybe end-game bosses. I managed to kill red Elder on my second try - the first got scuppered by being affected by Temporal Chains...

Aferwards I leveled an Armageddon Brand Elementalist following one of Mathil's builds. It was decent enough but I was a little bit underwhelmed so respecced it to Storm Brand. That thing might be even more broken than (self-cast) Arc, especially for clearing maps. The ability to drive-by gimp everything by pressing Brand Recall is insane. (It makes leveling through the acts a breeze as well.) Although my perception might be somewhat skewed because I was able to jump-start the build after finishing act 10 with gear and currency (around 50 c) from the Arc witch. Here the Inpulsa's really shines, in my opinion. Killed Minotaur again and killed Elder a couple of times, which honestly wasn't too hard anymore.

(For completeness' sake: After Storm Brand I played an Elemental Hit Deadeye up to lvl 82 which I did not like very much, then brought a Reave Champion to lvl 73 [actually quite fun, but got distracted] and then respecced the Deadeye to a Caustic Arrow Raider, which I consider to be my most successful character --> shoutout to DankawSL for the excellent guide!)

Both the Arc and the Storm Brand Witch utilize Mind over Matter. As far as I can tell the approach there is basically to have enough EHP to survive the occasional big hit and then obliterate everything before it can hit again. That was very frustrating on several occasions, notably against the Guardians (failed a Hydra attempt) and the Syndicate - playing these characters I was fully on board with the hate-train towards the encounters. (And by the way, I still think some of it is BS, although I now consider the adds a greater problem than the Syndicate members themselves.) Particularly galling was when incoming damage drained my mana and I therefore couldn't even use movement skills to get out of the situation. So yeah, no real idea how to handle that. The Reave Champion utilizes instant leeching (through Bloodseeker) and Armour, which I liked considerably more. Finally, the CA Raider has (very) high evasion, and that I can get behind. Even better, I read somewhere that evade chance is entropy-based, meaning getting hit consecutively is very unlikely, making incoming damage somewhat predictable and reasonably easy to handle. Vaal Grace basically enables god-mode (slight hyperbole, but still - currently 91% evade chance with flasks + 75% dodge chance for attacks and spells during Vaal Grace). I really do worry, though, because although I very much like the Raider I want to try out yet a different build next league, and I can see myself becoming frustrated if it is not evasion-based.

I mean, I've gotten a rough feel for what is a good rare (at least for the standard combination of high res + life) and managed to sell some of them. In the end I accumulated around 5 Ex through playing/trading + was lucky enough to find 2 Ex in pure drops. That afforded me enough currency to kit out my characters with nice gear, but I'm obviously far away from really high-end stuff - and it took me 200 hours to get to this point. Plus I made 2 of the Ex by buying a cheap 6-link Bow and enchanting it with +3 (through fossils, it's all in the guide), and another for 1 Ex with just +2 Bow gems - this was already in February and I very much suspect people had a lot of currency to burn at this point. I honestly cannot even remember how I earned, say, the first 100 c - I reckon mostly pure drops. I'm still somewhat baffled by youtube guides that recommend one if not several multi-crafted items as "easy" options - you first have to even get the recipe and it's a 2 Ex+ investment upfront??!! The only "real" trading I did was flipping Breach Stones to pure the two times I managed to get It That Fled into research... I know about exploiting League content, i.e. farming shallow Delve and Harbour Bridge Syndicate - but that can't be the only decent way, right?

I generally consider myself pretty unlucky in gambling situations and this game is here to prove me right. However, apart from personal gripes I still think the cost for a 6-link is too high, considering how large of a power spike it can be compared to a 5-link. I mean, the additional link easily is a 40% more multiplier! I found a thread deducing that the chance for 6-linking a 20% quality item is roughly 1 in 1000. That means, statistically you'll need almost 700 tries to have a 50% chance to 6-link the item. For (again, statistically) an almost guaranteed 6-link (95%) you'll need almost 3000 tries. That is simply ludicrous. The problem here is that most players won't get a reasonable amount of 6-link attempts (even only 10+ seems highly unlikely) where the statistics can even out. I understand the reasoning that it is balanced across the player base, but that means that 6-link uniques are out of reach for many, if not most, players (because they are appropriately expensive). That would be alright if 6-links were only a pure luxury upgrade and 5-links did just fine - to some extent that seems to be true, particularly for the op skills like Arc and Storm Brand. But my impression is that you really want 6-links for higher end content and they might even be necessary/build-enabling in some (many?) cases. The crafting bench really isn't a reasonable alternative either, because the recipe is hard to come by in the first place and is also very expensive. I mean, across all my play-time I managed to accumulate maybe 1000 Fusion Orbs, and that is if I were to exchange the majority of my Jeweller's for Fusion (and I picked up every 6-socket item I came across). I guess this "problem" could be fixed by knowing how to make currency, but for me it effectively means I'll only play builds that get by on a 5-link and/or only need 6-link on a rare (which I've come to realise is much cheaper to acquire if the craft isn't too outlandish). Builds with two 6-links I can only shake my head at in wonderment.

I'm thinking of Elder-drops in particular. I'm not entirely certain how many times I've killed tier 6+ Elder, but it's probably been around 10 times. From these I got one belt (Cyclopean Coil), one bow (Hopeshredder) and a lot of gloves (Blasphemer's Grasp). Not a single Watcher's Eye (with the exception of one time I successfully protected the Shaper). It's mildly discouraging when you're killing a high-end boss and all you get are drops that are worth 0.5 c. I realize that this is only a semi-legitimate complaint at best, but I nevertheless feel there is some potential to rebalance the risk/reward structure compared with low-level farming. I really enjoy the challenge of killing difficult bosses, but this enjoyment carries only so far when the rewards are so mediocre in a game like this. I'll attempt a Shaper kill to round off the Season on my CA Raider, but the chances of getting something decent off him do not seem much better.