Compilation of the fails of current Delve League : The Sulphite Bambaloo

I came for the popcorn, but I actually have a question now :

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

3. 4 Socket resonators were super rare and for some players they weren't. GGG's fix was to make them non-existent to everyone.

Is this actually a thing ?
What do you base this statement on ?

I know that one player from my guild got one from a Resonator trove, not hidden behind a wall, the other day.

"

demon9675 wrote:

It does sound amazing. Too bad 99.99% of players never get to have this amazing experience!

Delves should get way harder way earlier. I do worry this would create a trend towards dedicated delving builds, which might become limited to strategies that out-regen darkness, but we can address that issue when we get to it. At least the content/challenge would be accessible.

I think that is fair though. Streamers (in basically every game) push the boundaries of the game more than regular players. I watch a ton of SC2 streams for example and have no problem with the fact that I will never play at that level. I personally, am excited to watch people with way more time than me do things that, to be honest, I couldn't/wouldn't do even if I had time.

How many people, if they had time, would put in the kind of effort it takes to do what they are doing? Its 6 people coordinating constantly in an extremely time consuming and frustrating exercise while one person gets the only indicator of progress/leaderboard spot.

If there is ever anything that is theoretically infinite, there will ALWAYS be one absolutely optimal way to do it. There isn't an alternative. If every approach was equal, every approach would be boring. Even by watching these guys you can see that what was working for them at 1.5k stops working eventually and they have to try new things constantly to keep up. For the extreme end-game, what they are doing is the most interesting thing there has ever been for PoE imo.

As for the out-regen darkness, there are already multiple versions of a build that can tank 5k stacks of darkness and is used for farming rooms fast in darkness. Ziggy has done a breakdown of the build as has Ghudda.

"

demon9675 wrote:

Delves should get way harder way earlier. I do worry this would create a trend towards dedicated delving builds, which might become limited to strategies that out-regen darkness, but we can address that issue when we get to it. At least the content/challenge would be accessible.

To be honest, if there become delve-specific builds, this would just be a means of improving build diversity, which is already pretty anemic. (a relative small handful of specific builds, NOT just skills, account for ~90% of the endgame)

I mean, Uber Lab pushes for a SMALL degree of diversity, at least for those who can't afford a super-speed character that can do it all. (e.g, a QotF ranger's gonna do great everywhere, but at least any player can throw together a melee jugg and still get appreciable farming in) However, the difficulty ceiling on Uber Izaro isn't that high, so there's a limit to how much diversity Lab can inject in.

The nigh-infinite scaling of Delves (current depth cap is what, 3k? 6k?) means there's more chances here, but yeah, if there's no means of readily reaching it, what's the point.

My standing recommendation (that I've mentioned a few times) would be a true price adjustment: valuable treasure nodes should have their price go WAY up, while most of the lower-value nodes (e.g, azurite, armour, weapons, etc.) would become much, much cheaper. So you'd be able to blitz down really quickly if you just took garbage nodes (which aren't that rewarding anyway) but the real cost-gating would be for the juicy ones with the shot at big rewards. I'm talking like, say, at depth 300, spending as little as 150-300 for an armour/weapon node, a bit more for azurite, scaling up to >10,000 for a Crystal Throne.

"

Mythkiller wrote:

"

demon9675 wrote:

It does sound amazing. Too bad 99.99% of players never get to have this amazing experience!

Delves should get way harder way earlier. I do worry this would create a trend towards dedicated delving builds, which might become limited to strategies that out-regen darkness, but we can address that issue when we get to it. At least the content/challenge would be accessible.

I think that is fair though. Streamers (in basically every game) push the boundaries of the game more than regular players. I watch a ton of SC2 streams for example and have no problem with the fact that I will never play at that level. I personally, am excited to watch people with way more time than me do things that, to be honest, I couldn't/wouldn't do even if I had time.

How many people, if they had time, would put in the kind of effort it takes to do what they are doing? Its 6 people coordinating constantly in an extremely time consuming and frustrating exercise while one person gets the only indicator of progress/leaderboard spot.

If there is ever anything that is theoretically infinite, there will ALWAYS be one absolutely optimal way to do it. There isn't an alternative. If every approach was equal, every approach would be boring. Even by watching these guys you can see that what was working for them at 1.5k stops working eventually and they have to try new things constantly to keep up. For the extreme end-game, what they are doing is the most interesting thing there has ever been for PoE imo.

As for the out-regen darkness, there are already multiple versions of a build that can tank 5k stacks of darkness and is used for farming rooms fast in darkness. Ziggy has done a breakdown of the build as has Ghudda.

This can't be compared with SC2 in any way and I'm not sure what you're even trying to explain here. It's not like these top position players are doing anything extraordinary, it's just ultra nolife / forcing through boring steps to finally get challenged. Empyrian's team is group play and a different world that again 99% of the players don't practice.

I'm at 450 with full MF gear, farming Uber Elder deathless on same 71% IIQ gear and I could push this game to crazy levels but I can't because Sulphite made me quit.

Weapon/armor nodes can be pretty good if they are below 270. Also at all level if they happen to have a light version because of divination cards.

Azurite nodes however are trash, pure trash.

"

Fruz wrote:

I came for the popcorn, but I actually have a question now :

"

Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

3. 4 Socket resonators were super rare and for some players they weren't. GGG's fix was to make them non-existent to everyone.

Is this actually a thing ?
What do you base this statement on ?

I know that one player from my guild got one from a Resonator trove, not hidden behind a wall, the other day.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/9f5a5g/prime_resonator_scarcity_seems_very_strange/

Just one of the threads.

I agree with OP.

"

Mythkiller wrote:

I think that is fair though. Streamers (in basically every game) push the boundaries of the game more than regular players. I watch a ton of SC2 streams for example and have no problem with the fact that I will never play at that level.

Yeah... No. Sorry not sorry, but it looks like you need a lesson in game design here.

You're making a false equivalence here between PvE content access... And competitive PvP. There's no equivalence there.

Competitive PvP, by NATURE, requires stratification. Accessing content does not.

The difference should be in how WELL players can do going through. This is more equivalent to "can you play SC2 on every map in the game?" Obviously, the answer is "yes!" I mean, it'd be pretty dumb if some of the game's maps weren't accessible unless you were in the top 100 competitive players in the world, wouldn't it?

The same thing applies here: good content should be ACCESSIBLE to all, but difficult to MASTER. An example of this done well (some WILL disagree with me!) is The Eternal Labyrinth. It's actually pretty accessible to just about any player, and with some skill, pretty much any build CAN manage to complete it. But where people ACTUALLY separate themselves is whether they can reliably and quickly clear it and Uber Izaro, even with gimmicks, and hence reap the best rewards.

So through that prism, it's fair to look at a someone clearing uber lab in under 5 minutes and be okay with never being able to reach that level. But if Uberlab was not available ENTIRELY? Yeah, that'd be wasted content. Same applies for Delves. It shouldn't be a "no-lifer-only" thing to have the chance to push deep. But right now, 300+ and 600+ aren't THAT hard, but it's not difficulty that stops players from reaching the thousands. No, the wall is simply sulphite and azurite farm. And THAT is gating content in a bad way.

You are forgetting one extremely important part - rewards. Right now anybody can chain 270+ delves which means they have infinite tier 16 map source without paying for them, rolling them or even looking at affixes because you can choose to do easy tier 16 nodes down in the delve.

This is insane, everybody suddenly gets access to the highest possible content for free. How the hell do you think this is going to work?

"

Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/9f5a5g/prime_resonator_scarcity_seems_very_strange/

Just one of the threads.

I mean, I knew that there were very suspicious things regarding Prime resonators as some coudl get plenty while other none, I was asking about the fact that it got apparently "fixed".