⭐ Your Scourge Final Impressions? ⭐ ⋆Updated⋆

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PaganDK wrote:

It has to be the worst league mechanic ever (?). No rewards (as in the few rewards you get are useless) and no currency drops. It feels pointless, unrewarding and rippy on top!

The general changes in 3.16 are nice, but when league mechanic fails so much.. I expect many will leave in the first week.

This 100%.

This is my least favorite league. It boggles my mind how they keep repeating fail, over and over again.

So far from "worst" it's getting annoying hearing it.

Remember the leagues at the start? Remember Tempest? Get off your "worst" nonsense. You just don't like it. That's fine.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

Not to mention broken toxic rain and how it stays between scourge and normal maps. Welcome back insane power creep?

Traps do this too.
I'm liking it so far, should be in maps by end of today.

Well, since we're talking impressions, mine so far are that the league mechanic is good for "alching" whites during levelling and throwing cheap uniques that would be trash vendor anyway. But now that I've reached maps, it feels very rippy.

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DoubleU wrote:

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Johny_Snow wrote:

Not to mention broken toxic rain and how it stays between scourge and normal maps. Welcome back insane power creep?

Traps do this too.
I'm liking it so far, should be in maps by end of today.

Just for the record... Brands do too.

On the subject of "rippy", it gets harder and harder with the growing number. The first couple activations should be easy. The game allows you to push the content far beyond what is good for your character. Simply choose not to.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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DoubleU wrote:

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Johny_Snow wrote:

Not to mention broken toxic rain and how it stays between scourge and normal maps. Welcome back insane power creep?

Traps do this too.
I'm liking it so far, should be in maps by end of today.

Just for the record... Brands do too.

It's funny because I've seen my skeletons swinging their weapons and fighting nothing after leaving scourge lol.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

On the subject of "rippy", it gets harder and harder with the growing number. The first couple activations should be easy. The game allows you to push the content far beyond what is good for your character. Simply choose not to.

Well, yes. It says as much with the debuff you get. I meant as you progress in the campaign and from the campaign to maps: It's noticeable. At least that was my "impression". With what I currently have (trash), I can manage around 60 of debuff counter thingie and be okish.

I've found something that kinda works to not get inta gibbed in those stages is to enter from a corner or close to a wall, so I don't find myself surrounded by mobs. I don't know if that's a useful tip, but it seems to work well with minions this far.

The theme, the music, the visuals, the monster design are all top notch. Transitioning between realms is smooth and seemless. Being able to transition in places we never could before (e.g. Lab) is pretty cool.
Overall the implementation is, as far as I can tell (haven't encountered a bug so far) pretty much flawless. Sure there is some balancing issues and some mods on scourged maps are kinda game breaking but this is gonna be patched out soon and stuff like this will always happen without extensive playtesting in the first few days/weeks of a new league, so that is to be expected. Only thing I dislike about the game mechanic idea is that its kinda backtracky or basically having to clear a path twice, with being able to constantly shift (5-6 times per map so far) it feels a little too choreish.

With that being said. I don't like the delayed single reward system at all. I gotta say, I knew it when it was announced so it doesn't come as a surprise but it still feels bad.

Just trying so scourge some white items works while leveling through act 1 and 2 but once you target resistances and life it just won't cut it anymore even with a better scourge mod like charge generation or whatever.

This mechanic seems to be focussing on basically finished gear pieces, to top them off with a nice scourge mod. When do we ever corrupt our gear? Right when it's pretty much a done item, that would include "enchanted, qualitied (catalyst) up, divined, etc.". How many of those items do you have laying around ready to be corrupted?

Pretty much none is my answer, especially as I play in SSF. Maybe ultra late game, during the last few weeks of a league I have juicy stuff laying around.

But what about up until that point? The cratfs/corrupts are so underwhelming so far and it doesn't help that there is no other reward during the mechanic.

I mean sure, you could get a lucky 6 link, a lucky white to rare craft with a nice mod. I am sure people have gotten lucky and got something useful but those are rare moments and to be honest, not even that impactful on your game or economy. Once people start to gear up with some more solid stuff the mechanic will just be pointless most of the time. Even worse, shifting into the nightmare during your playtime will feel pointless, because you either don't have anything useful to scourge or it will turn into some junk. Subsequently, trying to scourge something that you know will be trash, also takes too long.

Scourged maps are fine I guess (they also take to long to scourge though). Have tried 2 maps and they where cool but mainly because I got some guaranteed rewards off of them.

This is my first impression.

Lvl'in I find the mechanic good for side projects. Its easy enough to just get lvl'in gear off of the ground or vendors. Bricked some good lvl'in rares so I just done the mechanic to lvl up the skill tree using spares. Have the map nodes before maps so absorption is increased and extra slots too.

The new passive skill tree is great and opens up easier options with things like Masteries. Have already seen plenty of YT vids showing juiced Scourge maps etc. Will find out for myself.

So far pretty chill and good changes with a nice launch too. Was getting some DCs last night but able to get back in quick enough.

It's a mixed bag.

General changes feel good. Refreshed tree, something new to try and find the best path with, masteries.

Better level design for many maps during levelling, better graphics, lightning etc.

League mechanic itself combines nicely into mapping experience with fast transition and it's generally fine.

Unfortunately, it's quite unbalanced. I have 3,5k combined HP, Blasphemy+Enfeeble and several minions to take hits for me and still die in about a second in Scourge in Act 9 unless it's a corridor or I hide myself - but then I don't really get enough pixel kills to justify entering it in the first place.

My dps is obscene for my level but since I can't kill all mobs at once, then there is no chance. A white melee mob takes me from 100% to a margin of health, removing Energy Shield completely as well and this is well before counter goes above 100.

Post-damage mechanics like leeching or recoup don't even have a chance to kick in.

I'm pretty certain this is the most rippy league since I Play PoE (started on Harbinger).


Since it drops little and the corruptions are gimmicks for PoE no-lifes having copies of great gear to risk on only, I consider not doing it at all - no point, experience alone is going to be more valuable that this orgy of rips.

It was actually ok way of gearing my char in early Acts (1-5).

I'd been able to scourge a very good 2h axe at level 18 and a 275dps 2h sword at level 32, making up for the time till I could truly spec in 1h and shield style(these are drops). However to make a good item requires so much effort that I barely can say the league mechanic is "rewarding" at this point. In fact it is more tiring than micro-management of expedition explosives in the last league...