emattera6391: Defences are dicted by a single scarab : risk. Remove risk scarab and defences go back to "normal"

icecastle7: Pretty crazy that you didn't even mention one step ahead for trickster. This is a huge reason why trickster is so popular. If the T17 map mod pool was changed it would not be so mandatory

salehjehad9068: i think what happening with elementals is the big W , this how a class should be , tons of build variety , tons of playability and re-playability , with each build providing fresh feel , from DOT to self cast freeze to totems to chaos builds, I never liked witch side , but with element. it feels right at home

Ilyak1986: Honestly, I think things are a bit of a disaster as far as defenses go. ES stacking will always be king since nothing blanks "you have 40k raw HP", but bottom side defenses are a mess.

Left side at least can address this via a number of options (guard skills, petrified blood, block wheels, max res, endurance charges), but right side builds are left completely in the dust. Spell suppress is nice, but then there's nothing afterwards. 1-hit bubble type stuff (ward, kintsugi, windward, wind dancer) is basically nonsense because of how many different sources of damage there are coming at once, and plenty of ranger ascendancy nodes are utter junk (nature's adrenaline, master alchemist, master distiller, half of deadeye, warden Barkskin route), and on top of that, the change to Vaal Pact obliterated Mahuxotl as an option outside of 1H melee attack builds.

It honestly feels like the same meta as way back when ES was king when ascendancies first came out. ES is king, left side can layer some defenses, and right side is garbage.

MrLAMTRIET: you forgot to include 2 of the strongest mechanic of trickster : hard set action speed and over leech. Hard set action speed can completely nullify at least 2 of the most annoy tier 17 mods, slow from maven, slow from drowning orbs and slow from delirium ( which even jugg got slowed). And the over leech to counter the after death dot effect. They completely counter the saw modify, which pop out of now where when you are looting.

TaikuShikami: Really unfortunate that youtube auto adds PoE RMT site advertisement to PoE videos

ryy1704: Just another energy shield stacking league in both poe 1 and 2, energy shield needs to be 2:1 to life or can’t be leeched or something. It really sucks life builds at similar investment are just straight up weaker in the endgame.

frogov99: The most used ascendancy classes have versatility and some source of "free" scaling for something (defences, charges, dmg, etc). Least used ones might be powerful but have a narrower selection of builds available because of how specific their mechanics are.

MandruDuce: In my oppinion the discussions should be centered more on map mods. We are back in a state were defences for the most part feel like shit, but not because they are inherently weak but they get completely removed by oppressive map mods and poor scaling of said mods via map effect modifier. You rely on auras you loose.. block, armour, evasion, supress... all are shit cause they get "turned off". the only things that feel good are ways of "abosrbing" as much punishment as possible unconditionally (DR, fortify, insane es numbers, etc...).

I don't feel like the goal of make better characters to farm harder more rewarding content has been achieved at all. We build pepega frankenstein creations that have in-built ways of just cheezing or completely bypassing map modifiers. You play trickster or you give up a gem slot, a jewel socket and commit to spaming a curse that does nothing for your build so you don't get slowed to a halt or petrified. That is not something that feels good in terms of character upgrades.

I don't even think trickster is this busted powerhouse ascendancy. it's a generic bland uninteresting ascendancy that has existed for several leagues before t17 were added in mostly the same form and had nowhere near the popularity it sees now. It is now the most played ascendancy solely because it is the best suited to completely bypass modifiers.

On top of it, not only are some modifiers inherently unfun, there are others that in a vaccum are "fair" and manageable that turn the game into a clown fiesta when scaled with map mod effect. AoE, minus max res, reduced recovery, etc.

I think if ggg did nothing else but remove all map effect mod scaling and reworked a few modifiers, trickster would loose a lot of steam without being nerfed one bit and defences would feel 100x better and more varied in options/layering.

magi_stricide: Trickster about to get quadruple tapped next league

Scyanyde666: "The nerfs weren't enough."

I swear if Trickster gets nerfed again....

riktorGaming: After playing Ephemeral edge trickster last season, I promised myself I was going to do something different this time around, I started out as Elementalist and although quite strong from the get-go it was clearly lacking in defensive prowess, at least with early league gear.

Since I've been wanting to play FRoSS for a while once your video on the interaction of whispers came out I immediately put together a char with a very similar setup to what was used on the Ephemeral edge build, after clearing all the content the game has to offer on essentially a less than 50 div budget (at the time) I moved on to try other things.

I found that the only thing that came close but ultimately still failed to deliver in the defensive and offensive department was Slayer, Marauder, even as jugg suffers from the fact that the game throws so much damage at you so fast that lacking a way to avoid it is just a death sentence (only made better once you can acquire the 100div flask), even champion with 40 stacks of fortification felt like paper when compared to a trickster with a Meaguer 10k es which you can achieve with mediocre rolls on your bases.

The fact that gladiators are coming all the way up to use Energy shield instead of Life to do the highest endgame content should tell you the current state of defenses in POE.

Primaeva: LE Ward stackers know that "ES stacking" is a quick way to make the game boring

MercerWing1: The current state of map mods is actively hurting the game

malikborgna707: I've never played trickster, so i dont really know how op it feels. But i hate that in pve games the nerfs completely destroys the viability of builds or ascendacies. Why not buff other gems etc or add ways to mitigate action speed reduction. Its crazy how op and annoying action speed reduction is on t17s

mastery7901: I can confirm that Berserker defense are lacking.

Im hitting like a truck with Volcanic Fissure but have to sacrifice life or attack just to get suppression. Its very difficult to do end game bosses or mobs with high spell damage without dying.

Now I could get suppression cluster jewels but I'd have to have the perfect rolls and sacrifice key passives to make it viable.

Katze822228: I keep hearing people say "multiplicative damage reduction" as if the multiplicative part was something good or special. But multiplicative damage reduction actually the worst type of damage reduction. For damage reductions you want as much addtive stacking as you can get because the EHP gains are exponential. If you already are at 50% damage reduction with additive stacking defenses and add 4% to that from an endurance charge it will have the same effect as an 8% less damage taken multiplier so twice the value.

If you want to sensationalize what type of damage reduction endurance charges are then say that they stack additively with other endurance charges. It's the opposite of damage increases where you want to stack many multipliers.

eternalbread-d1f: I wonder how many years it'll be before people realize that Poe ninja charts only reflect whatever is the hottest shit, and not objectively the best shit.

yammoto148: I am enjoying this league a lot but I do have some complaints.

1. Warden is kinda feeling a bit bad imo, not that its weak or anything but the class has few skill synergies especially with the way its changes to ailments work, like Scorch still requiring big hits forcing you to play like a left side build with low attack speed since you need big hits to shred a high amount of resistances and the fact that its anti-synergistic with Rakiata's dance or the Shock node which requires pathing upwards or an anoint or unique to get maximum shock chance to reach the 50 shocks you need since I don't want to run a shock tincture. Like I can get decent results with Frostblades and Ice Crash because the Ice aspect is at least decent the rest of the potential skills that should would with Warden just don't. But I did try a consecrated path build this league and its doing okay its just consecrated path is a fundamentally flawed skill. Also the fact that Barkskin just feels worse than a Armor/Evasion gear setup with Grace and Determination despite both being nerfed and the only benefit to Barkskin is that it feels slightly better as you are starting maps and it reserves less mana. The only good thing for Warden overall is the Tinctures being used on bows and thats still sorta getting beaten out by Deadeye and Pathfinder builds. Its feeling like Raider all over again imo.

2. I have said this once and I will say it again, I really miss the Scavenger from the Legacy of Phrecia should have become a permanent ascendancy for the Scion and the Ascendant has needed a rework for so long. I play Scion every league and I always run into the same issue of unlike other classes which feel like they get a significant boost after Lab Scion feels like they get barely nothing until their 2nd lab and even that boost is not that good and it only starts to feel complete with a forbitten Flesh and flame. I think the Scion needing Forbitten flesh and flame to be complete is a design mistake so I do hope for a targeted change to the ascendant.

SilentButDudley: Evasion is still too weak due to the binary existence of it. Evade needs to not be guaranteed to fail at a set point to make it potent.

sneakysneakthief2051: AS a HC player this is the first time in recent memory I've felt like a witch build can get the levels of tank required to not explode randomly in a map which has been a great feeling, after Settlers left me wondering if there was any point in playing something that couldn't get down to the endurance charge nodes in the Duelist area easily.

Ranger builds still feel like a struggle without decent levels of gear investment, which is kind of sad.

OLApplin: The thing is, ES and CI is also so much stronger than Life. It is not too hard to gear for it and it makes gearing easier without the need for chaos res. You can easily gain massive amount of raw EHP just using dense fossils on good ES bases. There is also lot of %ES on the tree, but there is MUCH more ES recovery support on the tree, with Divine Shield, Ghost Dance, Armour ES mastery for phys recovered, Wicked Ward, etc. Then, what does Life has? Defiance of Destiny? Thats your whole amulet slot! Dissolution of the Flesh? Thats the opposite of recovery! There was the Immutable Force recovery on stun trick, but GGG stopped it. Life on block? OK, but ES on block also exists... It is so much easier to survive with ES than with life, so any mechanic that lets you build damage with ES is gonna be busted. Are you surprised I'm playing Energy Blade Inquisitor? lol

Jsharpeone: Mercs are doing a lot of heavy lifting for casters right now. Being able to juice up Grace on a merc in addition to defensive uniques like Kaom's binding opens up so many options on my elementalist. Likewise the soul-eater ring makes casting feel great (OP) to play. Without these I am not sure what caster will look like next league if there are no major defensive changes.

SilentButDudley: Whispers of Infinity should have been a life based version of what we got. As an archetype it needs more, and having an amulet that enables scaling of stacked life would have been much more beneficial to build variety.

PopersIRL: im currently copying dariidar's rage vortext apple build and seeing how deep i can take it in delve

edit: yes its on beserker but im tanky as hell IN delve. t17s are kinda rippy but i never planned to map with it anyway

Jul 15 2025

Buy POE Currency