THE biggest issue with endgame loot (quantity and rarity shouldn't be explicit map mods)

I think the biggest issue with endgame loot is the fact that quantity and rarity are explicit modifiers. Instead, they should be implicit and scale with the difficulty of the map. Here are the reasons why:

1. They are mandatory stats - almost feels worthless to run maps without them, the difference between maps rolled with rarity/quantity and those without them is insane

2. The risk-reward ratio is bad - running 6 mod maps with hard modifiers does not feel rewarding, having rarity/quantity implicit scale with the difficulty of modifiers would solve that

3. It is expensive to reroll mods on a map - if you get unlucky you will have a bad time with drops

4. It widens the gap between noobs and experienced players - In poe1 you can just "alch and go" and have a good time as a casual, this is far less efficient in poe2

Last bumped on May 25, 2025, 11:24:57 AM
in poe 1 each map modifier would give quantity and rarity based on the difficulty

separate quantity/rarity modifier is peak stupid, it also renders all maps without it as vendor trash, which is even more silly

as it goes now, I do believe they will reverse it eventually, in 3.31 patch or 4.45 patch
I could be wrong, but I believe they designed endgame to where waystones are an investment. You get what you put into them. I invest heavily into waystones (dozens of divines worth of exalts, plus delirium and vaals) and using complementary tablets to increase loot. I actually have too much loot at times even using a very strict loot filter. I'm not an experienced player. I had a single level 9 character on POE 1 before trying POE 2.

I think once people sufficiently invest in their waystones and towers, loot becomes abundant.
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I could be wrong, but I believe they designed endgame to where waystones are an investment. You get what you put into them. I invest heavily into waystones (dozens of divines worth of exalts, plus delirium and vaals) and using complementary tablets to increase loot. I actually have too much loot at times even using a very strict loot filter. I'm not an experienced player. I had a single level 9 character on POE 1 before trying POE 2.

I think once people sufficiently invest in their waystones and towers, loot becomes abundant.


Correct, and it sucks.
Players don't want to gamble on the chance that maps may be rewarding, they should have a decent baseline and a moderate ceiling to juice
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I could be wrong, but I believe they designed endgame to where waystones are an investment. You get what you put into them. I invest heavily into waystones (dozens of divines worth of exalts, plus delirium and vaals) and using complementary tablets to increase loot. I actually have too much loot at times even using a very strict loot filter. I'm not an experienced player. I had a single level 9 character on POE 1 before trying POE 2.

I think once people sufficiently invest in their waystones and towers, loot becomes abundant.


Correct, and it sucks.
Players don't want to gamble on the chance that maps may be rewarding, they should have a decent baseline and a moderate ceiling to juice



Let me just preface this with saying I'm aware that I probably have an unpopular opinion, and I'm okay with that.

It's to my understanding that gear rarity and waystone rarity are multiplicative of each other. I think the sweet spot for rarity is 100%-150%. If you're running rarity on gear, having waystone rarity becomes less necessary. And vice versa.

I don't think anything is inherently wrong with loot or waystones. I also enjoy the idea of investing in my potential to get better loot and it actually being worth it. I've been playing warrior since the start and I move through maps slowly, picking up a large portion of my loot drops and identifying things. I have the unpopular opinion because it seems as though more players want to get better loot without having to do much of anything besides speed run through maps, which usually entails spamming one button (aka spark/lightning spear). Players seem to want to zoom around clearing the screen with little to no investment in rarity, but still have exciting loot just dropping like candy. Using that model for the game would likely result in less longevity and replay value. All my friends who were raving about Last Epoch ended up getting bored of it super quick because it was too easy to get the best gear.
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Players seem to want to zoom around clearing the screen with little to no investment in rarity, but still have exciting loot just dropping like candy. Using that model for the game would likely result in less longevity and replay value. All my friends who were raving about Last Epoch ended up getting bored of it super quick because it was too easy to get the best gear.


Slower builds have no extra rarity, either innate or through gearing, and the opportunity cost for rarity stacking hits them way harder.

You'd be better served doing your current strat on a LS insta-map clearer, and that's the sad state the current balance sits at regarding juice.
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Slower builds have no extra rarity, either innate or through gearing, and the opportunity cost for rarity stacking hits them way harder.

You'd be better served doing your current strat on a LS insta-map clearer, and that's the sad state the current balance sits at regarding juice.


I wasn't suggesting that the speed of one's build is directly correlated with their ability to stack rarity. The accessibility of rarity stacking has quite a few variables, I don't believe it's reasonable to say with certainty that stacking rarity negatively impacts slower builds more than fast ones (if that's what you were saying, I don't intend to strawman you).

My current strat has served me really well, and my warbringer build is worth more than I ever imagined being able to have when I first started. Most of the currency I've made has been via identifying and rolling on dropped gear, eventually having something worth selling for enough currency to give me a big boost.

I'm thinking that another issue some may be facing is they are prioritizing experience tablets over loot-boosting tablets with modifiers like rarity/quantity/rare monsters. Those, in my opinion, are more important than stacking gear rarity alone especially because the atlas skill tree allows for a further boost on the effects of precursors on maps. After I invested into boosting my maps with towers, the return on investment was more than worth it. Maybe my experience is an anomaly, but it really doesn't have to be. There's nothing stopping anyone from prioritizing loot if that's what they're after.


Speaking about tablets, I think they should also not have explicit quantity/rarity modifiers as they also feel mandatory, and instead have more interesting mods with quant/rarity being either completely removed or added as implicit.
The whole endgame loop of trying to roll rarity/quantity on both maps and tablets feels just boring to me.
Last edited by Foozenberg#2833 on May 25, 2025, 11:25:45 AM

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