Thank-You, from Wrecker of Days

I love Path of Exile. Ever since the game “clicked” for me, I haven’t been able to put it down. Despite the fact that I have some pretty severe physical restrictions, which of course greatly limits the way I can play any game, Path provides so many different options to create efficient characters, that I never really felt pigeonholed into one or two playstyles. Once I started making builds that could properly tackle harsh endgame content, I decided to share them with the community in case there were a few others out there that wanted to play Path but couldn't quite figure out how to get past their own limitations (or for someone who wanted a relaxing build to play/gear).

It's now 4.5 years later and there are over 15'000 accounts that have followed/copied my guide-specific filters. I know most users, including those that play my guides, use Neversink's filters (which are amazing & thanks for all you do for us, Neversink!), so combining those numbers of potential players together...it's truly humbling and encouraging to have helped so many people enjoy the game when the goal was to just help a few.

Fellow guide writers will know how much time and effort go into creating and supporting a guide: Creating an "error-free" guide between patch notes and league launch, answering questions and comments all league long, and keeping a gameplay example up to date...guides could/would take hours out of each and every day. (Guide writers! Make sure you Sabbath! Take a day off each week for yourself!) Despite the amount of time guide writing takes out of all guide writers' days, it is something I love doing! Sure there are a lot of moron's that pipe up with "if you don't play/write my way, you're an idiot", but there have always been so many of you that have posted encouragement on a guide's thread, forums, Reddit, or with PMs. That encouragement has always been louder than the pointless criticisms and I'm so very thankful for all of it!

Unfortunately, my medical situation has determined that it’s time for me to stop guide writing.

For those that don’t know, I deal with Post Concussion Syndrome. Some who get concussed, get better quickly, for others it takes quite a while, but they still get better. Yet there are others, like myself, where the symptoms are likely permanent. Now, that's not new news at all. Over the past two decades, I've found some great ways to manage my life around the many symptoms I have. Having the most wonderful and supportive wife in the world helps too. Recently, though, (the last 6 months?) my health has been declining more rapidly. Much more than I'm used to or expected. The basic day-to-day requirements of a stay-at-home-dad are all I can muster these days. If I was to continue guide writing through 3.18 and beyond, as I want to, I wouldn’t have time or energy for the things in my life that are obviously more important. I'm slowing down too much. It's actually really sad for me, as silly as that sounds. Communicating with so many different people over the years has led to many edifying opportunities where Path of Exile was simply the means of getting to a much more valuable conversation or interaction that was edifying for everyone involved. It's also, one of the last "things" in my life that I can cut out. It's been easy to cut other hobbies or pleasures out of my life as my circumstance have slowly demanded more and more of me and my family. But now I'm down to just guide writing and the podcast. Cutting guide writing is really hard for me. I'll miss it a lot. I really enjoyed every aspect of it. But cutting guide writing puts me only one step away from a state of health that I was hoping to postpone for a good long while.

Now, I don't mean for this to be a pity party or anything. I trust God and know that what I go through is for the best, for myself and others. I'm in good loving hands. I meant for this to be a thank-you note. I just wanted those who've been following my content to know where I was coming from.

Builds:
My Bone Zombie and Righteous Incinerator builds will be updated and ready to go for 3.18. If you were hoping to use them for 3.18's launch, don't worry, they'll be ready. They just won't be in guide format, they'll be in the PoEPlanner links. I'll keep them updated from league to league too. I love those builds. I'll play them lots. I'm not sure how they'll change from league to league, but they'll be around for sure.

The builds I play I will make public but I won't be posting them as a guide. PoEPlanner lets me make my personal builds public. If you follow or bookmark a link, any changes I make to that build will be updated for you (you may have to refresh the browser or even clear your cache on occasion). So you'll always have the most up-to-date version of my build. So I can use my personal build planner the way I normally would by myself, but others can see it too. Unfortunately, there isn't currently a way to share all of my public builds under one link without getting back into the guide writing mentality. But if something like that comes up, I'll let you know. (I'll do my best not to change builds around mid-league (unless I really screwed up with something).)

In the meantime, I'll continue to use my "One-Stop-Shop" page. I'll modify the page over the next week to reflect what I'm talking about here. All of the PoE Planner links that I have public will be in there (if/until PoEPlanner let's people share their PoEPlanner profile publicly).

Obviously, all these builds will have the same mentality of SSF stress-free item requirements and playstyle that I've always had. So, feel free to follow or bookmark the links to get the updated versions of these builds. I'll include the league number (ie. 3.18) in the title of the build so you know if it's up to date for the current league or not. (Oh! If you follow them, and love the version of the build you're playing, be sure to make your own save file of the build as a backup. It would suck to love the RF build as a Chief but then to have it all of a sudden change to a Scion or Elementalist with a totally different tree and gems.)


Filters:
I'll still have my filters updated on all platforms for each league. I play on both PC and Xbox. So it's easy to include Playstation with a quick copy-and-paste. They'll be the same (with updates) that they've always been. I use both my Everyone filter and my Guide-Specific filter. I bounce between them all the time. So my filters will still be updated properly and punctually every league.

The guide-specific filters, for now, are going to stay focused on my Bone Zombies and Righteous Incinerator builds. I'll tweet something out if that ever changes.

What IS going to happen before 3.18 is that the Guide-Specific filter will turn into the Everyone filter, and the Everyone filter will turn into the Guide-Specific filter. (It'll make life easier for me going forward with how filter sharing works on PoE's website.) If you follow both, that's an insignificant change. If you only follow one, be sure to make the swap here sometime after the league has launched (I'll have the filters ready for league launch).