League "Secrets of the Atlas" 3.26

My conclusion, from this 3.26 league
In my opinion, it's very good
- the city of Kingsmarch is still there
- bringing mercenaries doesn't make you feel so alone, plus you can equip them and fight for their loot (oh yeah)
- and the memory maps give good loot
8/10

It was good to have a league after such a long break. I think it was a good league, without being anything amazing. I think QOL improvements was one of the good things about the league. They should keep improving those things, there is a lot more they can do with that.

Probably the biggest question for me was the new bosses. They seamed a bit strange, and not particularly intuitive or challenging. In particular the one with returning the roses. I found that they looked the same as the damage that you were trying to avoid. Most everything seemed to do very little if any damage, then all of a sudden one of them one shot me by something I didn't even see. I read someone describe them as being a bit rushed. I haven't played poe2 yet, but it looked like they may of been a bit in the direction of some of the bosses in that game. Having a new style off bosses might be alright, but I'm not sure they got these particularly right. Katarina as well. That doesn't seem like a boss fight anymore. I assume that they thought that fight was too long, but I don't think the new fight is better. An example of a recent fight that has been implemented that I do think is pretty good, is the pirate boss from settlers.

The mercenaries mechanic was interesting and overall fairly good. The new memory strand system was fine, seems like they are looking for a way to help players get higher end rolls and have some ground loot worth picking up beyond just the base. While having a bridge between t16 and t17. I don't think it was seamless, but it basically works.

Typical in Poe, death from a blow and you don't know where it came from or why

3.26 was fine, mercs aren't my favorite, but you can't love every league mechanic.

Kingsmarch/Faustus went core, and removed alot of the QoL pain.

Recombination changes were much needed (was too OP), but they should have listed the mechanic changes in the patch notes instead of leaving us guessing.

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3.26 and the Secrets of the Atlas expansion are two different events.

SotA was great.

T16.5's are literally exactly what the player base asked for. End-game level content, without being locked into the same 4 shitty map layouts.

Memory Tears are a bit clunky, but good idea and in line with the other concepts of play for the NPCs.

Memory crafting was a great addition to the crafting pool IMO.

New pinnacle bosses were a bit too easy, but the loot is good and the stages not too painful, which is honestly all we care about xD

I just found the bosses a bit weird and also underwhelming in difficulty for the expansion. If they were also 16.5 difficulty, compared with t17 bosses, that would of been good, but they were much closer to t16 than t17 difficulty. The memory guardians were fine, and of a good relative difficulty. The incarnation "pinnacle bosses" did not feel like pinnacle bosses, and had strange mechanics, that might of worked if they were more dangerous, but didn't seem to need to be avoided and were not intuitive, and visually unclear. The loot was good, but same as they changed Catarina, the fight was no longer good, so it is just doing it to get a loot reward, not overcoming a challenge with your build.

Some of those fights were not much shorter than the old Catarina either. It felt like there was a lot of down time, rather than engaging game play, where you just want the reward and are waiting for the phases of the fight to be done. At least with bosses like endless hunger, you can blast it down if the build is strong enough and there are challenges to overcome if you can't. That is one of the worst designed bosses in the game, largely because of unfair mechanics and loot. So if I'm putting these new ones below endless hunger, I do not have the best opinion of them.

I think they can be improved. The bosses themselves and having them in the game progression is fine. The mechanics and visual indicators should be altered. I didn't run incantation of fear that much, maybe that one is fine, though it seemed a bit easy, just don't stand in the Degen circles. The other two, I did not think the mechanics or difficulty was great. They didn't seem to be an improvement on existing bosses in the game. Which overall seems to be a bit of a challenge for the developers.

There was a lot of map bosses added relatively recently that attempted to add difficulty, but didn't quite work. Partly because they were unbalanced with existing map boss difficult. I'm talking about Crimson township, foundry etc. (3.13). They end up completely nerfing foundry boss. Which was needed, but it was really only one mechanic that they needed to remove. Now the boss is just a loot piñata, a bit like the new Catarina. These new bosses are on the other end of that scale. They need to find the right difficulty, in-between, for these intermediate bosses. There are some bosses in maps that are of this correct difficult in my opinion. Like Canyon. For the most part map bosses are fine, but there should be some intermediate bosses after that, of which Catarina was a good one, but has been gutted. They also removed pale court a while back. Guardian type bosses are fine, but I think there is room to have more of these middle bosses. Atziri is a good one. These incarnations should be looking at being relative to Atziri in the game, and throw in some others like restoring Catarina in some form. Maybe the incarnations can be made a bit similar to that mechanically and visually.

Pirate boss is a good one that the have added in, so they can do it. Visually completely clear, fair mechanics. Not completely trivial for intermediate builds. Relative useful reward, as apposed to the in between eldritch bosses which often drop nothing. The main aggravation people have with that one is the ransoming mechanic and not the boss fight itself. Black knight and expedition bosses were fine. Sassan seemed too have some visual problems, but i've only done it a few times so can't really comment. So I think they should look at having more like that pirate fight and Catarina. Not so much removing, completely nerfing bosses, or adding ones with low difficult or bad reward tables.


The league itself as a whole was fine. I found it more enjoyable than Settlers, less interesting than Phrecia. It probably needed another aspect to go along with the Mercenaries, but with the atlas changes and inclusion of settlers and some balance changes, there was enough things to interact with. Good to be back on a regular a league regardless.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

The league itself as a whole was fine. I found it more enjoyable than Settlers, less interesting than Phrecia. It probably needed another aspect to go along with the Mercenaries, but with the atlas changes and inclusion of settlers and some balance changes, there was enough things to interact with. Good to be back on a regular a league regardless.

The league was light on mechanics for sure, they definitely leaned on the SotA expansion to do the heavy lifting for new content this time around, but I think that is fair.

I wouldnt be surprised if we felt the leagues were a little light for awhile. They are trying to stick to the new release schedule for both games, and I think depth of content per release will suffer, at least until they are able to get into a grove.