Citadels vs Precursor Tablets Tension

I've been thinking a bit about the end game systems, and I wanted to share my thoughts on Citadels and Precursor Tablets.

Citadels

In isolation, I like the idea of exploring the map for points of interest. In PoE 1 I enjoy delving, seeing the edge of a city, and heading towards it to see if there is a boss inside. It's a little harder for me to parse "exciting areas that I've found the edge of" in the new atlas, but I feel like the core idea is good if it's polished a little more.

Tablets

Again, in isolation, I like the idea of using the Precursor Tablets. Find a couple of towers that are close together, slap some tablets in there, and now you can run a bunch of maps with buffed rewards.

Tension

Unfortunately, these two primary motivations feel like they are in conflict to me. If I want to engage with the tablets, then I'm being heavily incentivized to stay in one place and clear all the nodes that I invested in juicing. If I want to find citadels, then I am heavily incentivized to travel in straight lines and cover as much ground as I can. I can't do both, and it feels like I have to give up having satisfying maps or making progress towards my goals of defeating the pinnacle boss.

This might be a very intentional choice, where we are supposed to have to choose to farm good maps or hunt for boss fights. However, It is not a choice that I'm enjoying making. It feels different to me than choosing if I want to farm Expedition or Breach. I wish I could be making progress towards citadels without having to sacrifice the benefits of tablets.

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Ash927#4710 wrote:

This might be a very intentional choice, where we are supposed to have to choose to farm good maps or hunt for boss fights. However, It is not a choice that I'm enjoying making. It feels different to me than choosing if I want to farm Expedition or Breach. I wish I could be making progress towards citadels without having to sacrifice the benefits of tablets.

This is exactly it. You've described two different playstyles, the mapper and the bosser.

You can play middle of the road, and path to towers that are sort of in the direction you are going, so you get some of the bonus of using towers.

Or, which is what I mostly do, I just path around hitting towers until I see a good spot I like. It could be a citadel, or it could be a nice bunch of map boss nodes, or whatever other content I feel like running. Then I run the towers that cover that patch and then the now buffed nodes.

It's all up to you.