Atlas - are we being even more bottle-necked to meta only builds?

Just a few ever get to T15 maps. And these are basically the meta builds and the meta oriented players. "Common" builds just can't get you there, especially in the temp leagues. It's slightly different in perma ones, especially standard, due to the wealth accumulation and, respectively, access to top tier items. There you are able to compete with "trash" skills through items.

So, even current top tier content is bottle necked to meta only. Atlas will push it further. Does it really matter? Obviously, not at all.
Unless you don't abuse the next imba meta skill/mechanic, you are out of the lategame anyway.

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e1337donkey wrote:

Slightly off topic... why do people keep throwing juggernaut into this category of uber tank? Seen a bunch of people in this thread label jugg as the go to class to deal with all these mechanics.

The only thing tanky about it is the increased Fort Effect node. You can get tons of armor with any character, and you can tons of end charges with any char. Can't be stunned can be obtained else where.

I played a few juggernaut builds since it came out. But that was primarily for the can't be slowed node. Not caring about temp chains or chill is so nice.. so nice. But I never felt any tankier then any other character I made with Armor and End Charges.

Partly because Aim_Deep wrote a popular guide for a mjolner juggernaut which attracted a lot of attention, partly because the jugger does have the best tools for building a life-based flat mitigation tank. You can do it with another class too, the jugger would simply be a bit more effective.

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Nephalim wrote:

what's hilarious are players who use him as benchmark even though they will never step in a t15 map more than once or twice in their entire poe career.

Well, I built a pretty good glass cannon build in Prophecy SC, I was killing any boss I could get my hands on in a second, had to dodge stuff of course, so I wanted to test my build vs. Core and Uber.... oh wait, they are gated. Didn't feel like paying for them, so I just mapped. Destroyed all maps I could get my hands on... I got ONE t15 map drop before I quit the league - I almost had the 300 map drops challenge by that point. Luckily, it was a Core. I rolled it twinned, waltzed until Malachai's chamber, entered it... my screen froze and I died. Tried again and again, same result.

Let's hope the performance improvements actually improve performance for next league, because Prophecy was a disaster for me.

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eragon1111 wrote:

Either they:

1) rebalance a shit tone of skills and mechanics to make them on pair with current meta builds (VERY UNLIKELY - GGG only nerfs)

2) nerf poison and destroy most of current meta so people will have to find new shit introduced in 2.4 (very likely)

3) nerf poison and not rebalance or intruduce shit in 2.4 = all play juggern(a/o)ut or 12k es shit with most possible OP skill for that moment + curses

this.

sigh,

I love it when GGG goes "our end game bosses are designed to be the most difficult content for only the best players" which directly translates to "so go on everyone, go make that 1 build (best players?) that can do it and have fun"

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Unless you don't abuse the next imba meta skill/mechanic, you are out of the lategame anyway.

yeah, I am sick of this now. aren't you? If it was always like this I'm not sure I'd have a problem, but it wasn't always like this, not anywhere close to this extent. There has always been the "current most meta build" but there was a time where a lot of other builds could compete nearly evenly and it actually could come down to player skill, how they handled and played their build.

PoE has turned into a statistics vs statistics game. Your statistics vs monster statistics, like Pokemon lmao

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Z_Fighters wrote:

but now they are going to feel like an intrinsic part of PoE's story and you wont feel complete without challenging them.

Malachai is as intrinsic to the story as it gets and he goes untouched in merciless by me every character, every league. Shaper won't be any different than Atziri or merc Malachai for me.

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innervation wrote:

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Z_Fighters wrote:

but now they are going to feel like an intrinsic part of PoE's story and you wont feel complete without challenging them.

Malachai is as intrinsic to the story as it gets and he goes untouched in merciless by me every character, every league. Shaper won't be any different than Atziri or merc Malachai for me.

hmm kind of, merci mala leads nowhere and has no incentive to do it, just a dead end is why (most) people ignore him. I guess I could have added that line in my OP

Well at least d3 has class leaderboards, so there remains at least some illusion of build diversity to end game (usually 2 viable meta builds per class, 6 classes, etc).

Now with atlas and a new 'end game', with no competitive class-based leaderboards, I expect there will be a much more line ball debate about whether d3 or poe has better build diversity at 'end game'.

Fire away.

Shaper will be much more gated than Atziri. She requires just a dedicated build, which can be powerleveled, fragments are, and were, also easy to get.

I'm fairly sure most of the people don't even realize what kind of grind it'll be to fight the Shaper once, without heavy trading. And without the meta skill/s of the league and a meta build able to do safely all of the content up to him, him included.

So he can't be compared even to Atziri. Amass of effective runs will be gated behind meta trading, meta skills, meta builds.
Be sure just a few will be able to. Not saying that it's a bad thing, just saying.

Inb4 first build to down Shapper is an elemental hit miner.

The only ones enforcing the bottle-neck are the players themselves.

You can get extremely quirky builds into high end-game, specially since the introduction of ascendancy.

What you won't be able to do is keep up with the speed players. So the choice is simply

fun vs speed

The content will be harder with a quirky build, but that's self imposed if you go that route and makes for a lousy argument.

Generally meta builds incorporate defenses that make 95% of the content sleep inducing, again a choice the players themselves make.

Peace,

-Boem-