Some thoughts after using Headhunter in 3.18

To preface, I absolutely LOVE Headhunter as an item. It's the item that got me hooked onto PoE, as I'm sure is the case for many other players. This post isn't veiled aggression against GGG or anything, just some pros/cons for anyone curious about the "new" Headhunter. This is also BEFORE any tentative buff, maybe a GGG dev sees this and gains another perspective.

PROS:
+ Extra projectile mods seem very common, moreso than before
+ Chaos resist often gets close to capped, even with negative Chaos resist in hideout
+ Access to a lot of defensive buffs like flat Physical damage mitigation, reduced damage over time taken, etc.
+ Soul Eater no longer requires zone to have Nemesis monsters
+ More affordable than ever

CONS:
- Taking "Valley of Darkness" Atlas node is a minimum of 2 points to fully juice the rares in your maps
- Taking "Valley of Darkness" also means you are dodging Toxic/Molten volatiles more often than ever, especially with Beyond
- Stealing Arakaali/Innocence/Kitava-touched etc. adds unnecessary visual clutter
- There is now a hard ceiling on the amount of power gained from the item

Overall, despite the hard cap on power from stolen mods compared to before, it's still a really fun item to use. It can obviously be stronger, but is nowhere near as bad as people are making it out to be. It's now a "win more" item, as opposed to being a straight up "win" item.

How about combine "shrine setup" with HH and be unkillable god again (echoing shrine with acceleration shrine and disgusting amount of defense from AN mods)

HH was only chase item worth playing for. I found them SSF but same rule applies...you "win" game when you got one. I for one want a god mode hack after 100s of hours of toil....it's like someday you can retire on a beach with a dime piece by your side after working hard... Oh well just adds to reasons to quit with no rewards.

LOL seems I'm not alone in this mindset. literally zero friends online right now at start of new league

HH is not and has never been a win item.. it's a situational item, for characters built around the belt, it's not like.. you buy a HH, you put it on any character and that's that, you kill the entire game.

HH was mainly a fun item, but not any more, you steal ice prison mod and make ice prisons around you for god sakes.. and the knock back mod, the animation and sound for that is just epilepsy inducing, no more speed modes etc etc etc.

Yes, you can play with shrines, but it's not the same, the mods on shrines are random and you mainly get increased life/res, crit, skeletons etc.. the speed one is rare, you get it maybe once in 3-4 maps

HH is reduced to a jewel.. cause Inspired Learning can do the exact same thing as HH, 30% damage and some stats and life... you can get A LOT more than that combining a crafted belt with an Inspired Learning - at this point HH can be removed from the game, cause it's poitless.

They took the most iconic item in POE and turned it into hot trash in just one patch - that must be a record of some sorts.

And the thing that bothers me the most is the communication on GGGs side - you want to make the game very hard.. fine, you want to implement a ton of on death effects.. fine, you want to kill HH.. again, fine etc etc - but tell us:

"We will implement a patch that will change all mob mods, this will make the game extremely difficult, this change was made to align the game wih our vision for POE2. This changes also impact the usability of HH, and it was removed from the game (or changed in whatever way)" - this is owning your decisions, but no, GGG is.. ohh there are no changes, no buffs or nurfs, we tested extensively - they implement the patch and a lot of players, for good reson, get upset, then GGG implements like a milion patches to try to fix the clusterf*ck that the archnemesis mods are (instead of reverting to the old ones), and the game is just as bad as it was at the start of the league - amateur hour!

It let (non totem non minion builds) do insane maps like triple beyond w/ deli and such. Maps almost all complete toons get wrecked in or at least took 30 min to complete. did nothing for bossing though. Either way was only item I cared enough to play past like 92-93 for.