My affliction experience

i've never hit 40/40 before and i've always been stubborn. i never wanted to get 40/40 via carries, but this league was very profitable, i paid for carries left and right but stuff that i could complete myself i completed em.

i no longer care about "if i dont clear it myself it doesnt mean anything", i know what i cant clear and i will challenge myself on those challenges on std when i feel i m ready enough.

and thus in affliction league, its the first time i hit 40/40 in 10 years of playing.

i think one major factor is the economy. in my many years of playing, before sanctum, anything sold at 10-20 divines are stuff that i normally consider "VERY DIFFICULT" to get. but i think its primarily because i didnt learn how to utilize trade enough. starting with sanctum i started to flip and sell things as much as i could.

the reason i m bringing this up is because in affliction, the top players are rich. in fact most players are rich.

i've always considered myself as a weaker player and i've always resented that i cant do magic find, but this league it changed my perception somewhat.

when the good players are rich, trickle down effect takes place where content that the rich players avoid become more desirable and they have the divines to pay for em. EFFORT taken by weaker players are paid off much better. its easier to farm divines.

in sanctum, i managed to get more divines/wealth than my entire "POE Career" combined. in affliction i managed to get more divine/wealth than my entire "POE career" AND including what i have got from sanctum.

i think i got maybe 1k divines? a lot of it was spent on gear but i returned to std with 690 divines.

i would attribute this to 2 factors:

1. the magic find boost that affliction wisps provide. i honestly entered the forest after clearing the maps every time so i did not benefit from this, BUT as mentioned, the players that do manage to get a lot of value and the value trickles down to weaker players like me.

2. selling TWWT lottery. at 10ish divs a pop, its quite a good way to build up wealth.

with that, i ENJOYED my time playing in affliction league as i quickly built up wealth and got my gear up to a point i could enjoy myself.

besides the 40/40 achievement, it was also the first time i hit 97 in a temp league. i'm pretty sure that if i chose to ignore farming/harder content, i could have reached 99 or even 100, but i know damn well i m playing hard this league because i want to earn divines to bring to STD so i just kept alc and go. dying was of little consequence. its annoying but i get rewarded in the end. thats not all tho, i managed to farm my first Mageblood, and double corrupted shiny on top of that.

that said i ENJOYED my time in affliction overall, but that doesnt answer a specific question.

did i enjoy affliction?

if we're going to ask that question, i need to be very specific. I LOVE the new ascendency classes and the charms that came with it. i RESENT that it's borrowed power and got poofed.

as for the league mechanic itself, i would say affliction is like delve 2.0. you didnt need sulphite, and you couldnt cheese the encounter with immortal builds. its INTERESTING for sure but i downright DISLIKE it. i dont hate it, but i DISLIKE it.

theres a few reasons.

1. RNGSUS HEAVY. FR FR. sometimes i run into the forest and barely find 1 encounter. i actually leveled 3 alts and getting each of their ascendencies up was a god damn chore. whenever i was in the forest the ONLY encounter i was looking for was KOTM. everything else was inconsequential. tho the spider eggs and experimental harvests were a nice thing to have. at times i had KOTM 3 times in a row, at times i failed to find him even tho i dropped 2-3 eater invites.

not even stopping there, kotm's maze phase can be frustrating. if you lose the way, you're simply fucked. most of the time i dont, but the time i do, i really cant do anything. its just so random.

2. no way to "remove the wisps". as mentioned i always did the forest last because i knew that having a wisp buffed map, the monsters would get too tough or too damaging. if i was allowed to just forego the buff, i think my experience would be much more enjoyable. at times i would get dark powers from the forest which were bonkers but seeing that i already cleared the map, those powers were practically meaningless. i am a huge proponent of player choice. GGG did not give players enough choice to deal with this.

tbh this is going to be an issue with necropolis as players are forced to engage with the monster buffing mechanic whether they like it or not.

i would also like to mention that they have interesting encounters like black morrigan, the 3 skeletal mages but in these 2 encounters i always felt it was.... unrewarding. as mentioned i complete the map before going thru the forest so these 2 encounters practically dropped nothing for me.

then we have the screamer unique. i think it's GGG's take on the butcher.

i think if i was stronger i would enjoy encountering it, but seeing that i m weaker, i FUCKING HATE IT. it technically just wrecks the enjoyment as i have to actually pay attention and run away.

for sure some people are gonna say "git gud" or "cant you pay attention to the screams that she makes?"

you're right that players could and should "git gud" but honestly, i play games to CHILL. not stress myself out. in a different post i had mentioned that i believe POE can be very triggering to people like me, in fact i would even go as far as to say POE's frustrating moments could have contributed to my real life heart problems.

poe CAN be fun and chilling where i can zoom zoom maps. i cant do so comfortable for 10-30 minutes or more, but the way POE works currently is by luck some fucking piece of shit is gonna turn up out of nowhere and give me a challenge that i didnt ask for. fuck this challenge. GGG talks about making a memorable encounter. i have many but i forgot most of them. and thanks to GGG all most of my memorable encounters are FUCKING SOUR.

the screamer in the forest is one of such encounters. i could be breezing through everything, vapourizing enemies. sometimes i would need to focus on tougher enemies to take them down but i do kill them. then once in a while i get the screamer and most often than not, i just die because i m in the mindset that i'll kill everything with no issue. the sudden spike of difficulty is not something i enjoy. i m pretty sure its by design. its what ggg likes.

but i dont like it one bit.

the ascendencies are really good. a major reason why i performed so well in this league is probably thanks to this borrowed power.

tbh, i DISLIKE borrowed power, but i guess i enjoyed it in the temp leaegue. if i could make a request regarding this borrowed power, i would just request GGG let us know earlier, as early as possible, whether anything is to be voided by the end of the league.

to clarify, my definition of borrowed power is if the power is removed from the game would your character immediately become perform weaker in combat as a result. for example, crucible is NOT borrowed power nor is harvest/sentinel. we lost the ability to have those crafting options but with the removal of the mechanics, our characters that have those gear still get to keep their gear and do not get any weaker with the removal of the league mechanics.

on the flipside in POE history, only 2 leagues fit my definition of borrowed power, which is sanctum (sanctified relics) and affliction (ww ascendencies). by the end of the league, the characters from those leagues lost power. they were weaker in combat. and in both cases GGG only announced/confirmed them being void VERY LATE into the league on official channels. i am aware that for sanctum, chris did mention its going to be voided but he said that in a podcast/stream which is NOT an official channel.

that said i want to clarify, i DO see the VALUE of borrowed power. and i think i really need to thank GGG for the borrowed power. if i had been any weaker i might have not enjoyed the game enough to continue and thus lose out on the wealth that can be acrued.

so do i like affliction league's encounters?

NO. too much RNG. i'm very aware of WHY i m playing this league (answer: currency/wealth). i DO NOT LIKE running around in the forest like a headless chicken, and i dont like running around in kotm's maze phase (tho the rest of the encounter is interesting).

NGL the borrowed power helped a huge lot, but all i was doing was playing the game for currency but not the enjoyment.

Affliction has been the best league since Harvest.