Budget Builds are a TRAP

What was amazing about harvest was that it opened up a new tier of content, crafting content. As a filthy casual, I really only dabble in crafting, I never have the currency needed to overcome the RNG of it all. But with Harvest, suddenly content creators were actually doing full on crafting guides, you could craft a build defining item.

You still see a shadow of what those were today, but they are mostly "repeat this until RNG works" lulz there goes 20ex off screen

I personally prefer that it takes a bit of investment to get builds going. I don't believe that all content in the game should be available to you on an absolute "budget". To me, this lessens the value of completing difficult content. I think picking up any skill, spending little currency, then being able to do all bosses and 60%+ delirium really makes those build milestones meaningless.

As for currency-making, and how not all skills can work on a lower budget, I do believe that making currency is part of the skill of the game, and a creative and skilled build creator can figure out how to put together their dream <insert build here> within the constraints of their money.

I agree that builds are often more expensive to get going now, and the vast majority of skills are hard to make viable. But many skills are simply designed to have hurdles to overcome, and no amount of balancing will help. Winter Orb will always lack cast speed, thus Badge. Earthshatter will always require a Warcry, making it inherently clunky. Divine Ire, Crackling Lance, or Blade Flurry force you to stand still, which means you simply need higher defenses to stay alive. If you absolutely love a skill with built-in hurdles, then you need to employ the game knowledge, build creativity, and often currency required to do so. And solving these hurdles in elegant, original, and hopefully budget friendly-ways is one of the things that make PoE an unbelievably satisfying and continually evolving game.

As for Harvest, it's still really powerful, just less insane. I mainly craft for profit, so I have a whole lot to say about that, but I will gladly chat on Discord if you're up for it and spare you the rant now.

And ssf players might be in a totally opposite situation when it is more accessible than ever.

t16 content is the end game for 99% of players.

Too much of power is in items nowadays. Back in the day a good build meant you would finish the game with a 6 link (most people didnt even have that) and life + triple res rares. That was the shit, build mattered, not items. I dont know why but now if you dont have a phd in crafting and item recipies you aint gonna get past UE for most builds. And most uniques are noob traps because good rares are so powerfull. Since I was never was good with making money (in poe and in real life too lol) so getting that kind of gear is out of the question for me... Welp, I have been playing this game long enough (HELLO MERCILESS DOCKS FARM), time to quit anyway.

the last part got me. I play like 1-3hrs a day. do gg's.

A game should stay a game, not a second work.

Hi, thanks for your opinion. To me, all leveling and early mapping should be made more accessible to any build, and all well crafted builds with minimal investment (rares with life and resists + <5c uniques) should be able to run T16s without using 6 portals, and get the four watchstones. Though, I appreciate the addition of aspirational content (simulacrum high waves, uber bosses and content, extreme juicing, deep delve...) because they are to me a great incentive to play the game longer, and I like the fact I have to grind tens of hours to afford the required gear.

tl;dr: make the game easier to play, but keep making it harder to master

The goal for me every league is to play a build that destroys all content the game has to offer. The problem with that is now, by the time I've farmed 600ex I'm totally burnt out and don't wanna play until next league. And if I'm not gonna enjoy the fruits of my grind what's the point of playing at all? Outside of a few leagues GGG has always been on the wrong side of risk/time/reward.

Just stop being poor

i hated old harvest as a casual player, even with the good gear. harvest crafts were so good and valuable that you had to use it, and using it efficiently as a casual player took forever, since you didn't want to abandon good crafts. so it became a ridiculous time drain clicking menus instead of you know playing the game. the grove's specialized 'exalts' were so valuable in early that most of your time was spent there or the alienating TFT discord (which is a good discord but man can i just play the game sometimes, or sell harvest crafts on trade???). and because the grove was randomly present you never knew if the next map would take half an hour. i actually got tired of the game because of harvest and quit for a while.

expedition is currently the way to go for me. the action itself is quite fast and the resources can be spent on your own time, not randomly in the last map you chose to do before bed at 11 pm.

Chris has stated multiple times, ESPECIALLY during expedition league, that ''Making the game harder through stat boosting is just boring''.

Yet that is literally every difficulty change they do in a nutshell.

3.9: Quadrupled boss health
3.9 - Today: Normal monsters deal more damage with their autoattacks than some uber bosses do.
3.18. Archnemesis gives monsters ridiculous resist and health boosts, while cranking up their damage to RIDICULOUS levels.

Super cool video, i dont get bored of listening to you in many videos, and i like these kind of videos where you explain things about the game.

5-10 hrs to farm an ashes? Thats gigaluck.

nice background music

I haven't played PoE for two and a half years so i missed all this, holy sh*t.

Lol i have only seen 3 maybe 4 exalts drop in the time i have played this game. let alone spend 20-30 for a build.

I would love for GGG to get away from heist as a currency maker, it's so boring. I loathe it.

i consider myself regular, but not hardcore player...i probably wont play next league. They changed this game to total grind. I started playing in 3.11, but recently it feels the only goal of GG is to makes player life more difficult.

TRADE... trade is what is ruining the game, remove it!

You sir are 💯 % correct!! I was wondering why my build where not getting to the next level. I started playing on sentinel league and it has been a drag. The league it’s almost done I have not been able to finish the quest line. Not only that my knowledge of the game is very little. It is frustrating not to be able to progress on a steady pase and is like you said I don’t have the time to spend 5 hours in a game to get one or two items needs in order to progress for endgame.

I play ssf and the "currency gain to buy upgrades" design model has pushed me into playing other games. I'll play poe for a month maybe and then wait for the next patch

The lack of build diversity just made me quit the league after a few days. I started with a build that historically has been a great league starter, FP totems, and not only did it not feel as powerful, it was completely useless. All the senseless nerfs over time from the first snow jewel to hiero to soul mantle made it now even worth investing in. I'm sure many others felt the same thing.

TLDR : The game got a lot more smooth in it's power curve so everyone get more money, but at the same time more items are available because you can craft them easier. So it pretty much cancels out and everything becomes "budget" from a clean league or starter perspective... And everything is out of control from an hardcore veteran wanting to play multiple builds (because their conception of what is powerful enought isn't the same as game starters).

The way GGG has taken PoE to, is very disturbing to me. They lost me, at 3.14 ultimatum. Damn shame, since I have been buying supporter packs and playing the game since 1.0. I played for 7 years and supported GGG through good and bad. But nowadays the game just doesn't respect my time anymore. Ritual league was the last, good league that has been released. RIP

Its really sad agree to you but, yea, thats the point. Not sure if I will play it anymore. Bad mood Man.

GGG hate hipster for sure.

In over 1000 hours I have gotten total of 5 ex

I blame the game for becoming harder so you can't budget

That explains why I suck more than usual now

what was the point of the video? just to piss on whoever releasing guides for budget builds?

that's what happens when the game expects people to have lots of stuff maxed out not to get one shotted, and then add more stuff that can ignore all that and still one shot you. and no, all those "muh beld dun dieh to uno shot!" if that was the case there wouldnt be so many alt f4s during hardcore runs.

budget are not "worth it", now because you have to invest so heavily on so many diferent defensive layers, it gets very expensive. and, like it or not, many players will get discouraged by that. me included. this is one of the biggest problem with poe, they want this "dificulty" and "encounters that matter", but all that is thrown out of the window when i can just get a 5 seconds screen freeze, that will down my character no matter how immortal he is.

subbed for the cavestory music

Agree. I get to yellow maps (4-5 days normally) and since I go slowly I can't get the currency necessary to make the next upgrade purchases. So normally I just leave. Once in awhile I will try a 2nd character but results are generally the same. I have been playing POE for several years and yes prior leagues I could get to red maps pretty easy. The outcome was same however, never enough currency to afford the upgrades for end game bosses. I come back though because POE gives me several weeks of enjoyment until I fall behind.

This is exactly why I like to play on standard! so I can use all my saved up currency.

My main problem with Arch nem is that it bleeds into everything, especially since they've nerfed the average rewards from other league content. Say, Heist as a direct example. I used to love throwing together a hybrid version of the build I wanted and spending 8 to 10 hours a day grinding heist. I'd throw on a series I'd probably seen before and zone out. Get my gear, my levels and call it a day. So long as my build was properly tanky and medium fast. I don't agree with arch new at all, but I really want it out of content, especially if it's not in the atlas and modifiable by the passives

oh boy did this age well.
I got to tier 3 maps yesterday, a random archnemesis dude killed all 12 of my minions in about 3 seconds, and can kill my absolution minions in 1-2 hits, then owned all 6 of my portals.

Watching this in 3.19... lmao

3.13 was as good as it has ever been OMEGALUL k

There is no perfect way to play this game because every time we find fun ways to play the game they nerf the shit to hell. They are the reason why people are leaving the game because they come out content then nerf the content for the last 6 seasons and get mad when people call them out.

kinda sucks since i usually play standard league and cant port my items over to whatever league is on

Ive been loving the game but im running into the issue where every build I try (especially the budget builds) leads to me getting to around level 60 and unable to progress because I need gear upgrades so I look up currency new player guides and all I'm met with is go do x so you can get y but I have no idea wtf x is or how to do it and then that leads into a research loop that burns me out so I hop to another build just for the same thing to happen and then I find myself staring at my huge character list wanting to play the game but unable to do so because I'm afraid im going to loop into more pointless character level grinds and its super discouraging

These days you basically play certain builds or you're forced to drop a shit ton of dps to try and get those defensive layers that allow you not to get one shot by anything(looking at you, suppress).
Been playing rf for a couple seasons and I noticed there's so many things that just gut hp regen that make it unthinkable to clear specific encounters, meaning that if I want to clear ubers on my own I'm forced to quit out of a build I enjoy just because gearing towards defenses would delete my already barely acceptable damage. I don't wanna take an hour to clear a boss just because I have to spend 90% of the time dodging mechanics that rended my character useless or straight up oneshot a build that's supposed to be tanky, just because I lack ONE layer.

At this point in time other than guardians, slayers, atziri, catarina and all the 'old' bosses throughout mechanics rf can't really do shit without going insane wasting half a day in the fight, or building those 30k ehp currency drain guardians. It costs basically nothing(maybe 1 divine for a timeless) to get to this point where you can t16 kid of juiced maps and do all the shit bosses, but you can't go beyond that because what defines the build turns against you with most of what's beyond that.
Forget about ubers since they all require spell suppress which is on the opposite side of the tree. You better make a bottom right side character if you wanna enjoy all content.

game is in a terrible spot. i play ssf since trading is ... we all know what it is. in last little while i came back to the game after probably a year. league mechanic is ass. mobs are insane they are very tanky and very one shoty. my rf jugg dies all the time one shotty and not to bosses never to bosses but constantly to map bs. out of 3 characters i've played to maps the only one that is doins sorta ok is rf jugg with ~80k armor/regen/max res in 80s basically everything was invested into defense. its slow its boring i hate it hence 2 other characters. I've droped annihilating light and storm secret and decided to play herald clear build with everything thrown into damage. nop. campaign I 1 shot bosses white maps without any mods I cannot do anything. same with my summoner. campaign bosses die before i blink - maps all my minions are dead at first tanky rare.
uninstalled see you in year if ever

At the end of the day... Path of Exile is a worse game than it used to be. It's designed for streamers and no-lifers to such an extent that anyone who has a full-time job can't help but look at this game as a full-time job. Play Last Epoch or Grim Dawn instead. You'll be happier.

What build is he using on the video? Is it SRS Guardian?

I kinda miss the way things were, but what we have now is good too... as long as they do something about Archnemesis mods...