new bloodline ascendancies: mostly garbage?

Is it just me and my lack of in-depth analysis yet, or do most of these seem like instantly skippable nonsense?

There are a few standout nodes in there, but I'm disappointed. Especially considering how Phrecia ascendancies were somewhat the opposite (few bad, mostly good). And 3.23 ascendancies were just....overall better and more creative.

They seem gung-ho on creating upside/downside elements and "new" interactions....but at a glance at many of these, I can't see how they would play at all in modern PoE.

Take the stupid Catarina nodes for instance:
1) Umbral Army: 3 out of the 5 nodes here are almost DoA as they buff YOU in ways nobody investing in minions would ever or COULD ever play. Nor are the buffs strong enough to warrant creating such a new archetype.

2) Prolonged Servitude: I mean...the minion builds this would be mostly useful for are anti-synergistic with it.

3) Death Offering: just plain odd.



Many others are very much designed like this.

IMO, most of the ones as of 10/26 have downsides and niche conditional dependencies that do not make much sense for the player base given that even without the conditional dependencies the "power creep" that the developers were talking about dont even exist... you are taking away from your primary ascendancy to even consider one of these, and the numbers on the bloodline nodes are just appear very lack luster given the complexity and weird "synergies" (or lack thereof).

As I mentioned in the bloodline announcement thread, they probably are in need of numerically buffing all the numbers by a factor of 3-4x to make this any sense outside of the fringe/edge builds that they were thinking about.

Lets take Lycia for example, which some say is great for chaos builds with the least number of downsides, but I dont really see it that way:


Sinner Saint: even with 50% conversion, that does not get you to 100% with most unique items being nerfed to 30-40% conversion.

Bitter Heresy: This is a jumbled mess of modifiers that mostly target wands/melee (e.g. chatoic might)

Farewell to Flesh: clearly a herald buff, yet, I do not see many adopting this node --- even wanders. Back in the day, this would have been a fun node for a herald autobomber, but those don't exist nowadays meaningfully

Lastly, for someone who is spec'd into chaos, they are most likely running Occultist, and of the 8 ascendancy points I currently utilize, none of them are worth giving up for any of these bloodlines. Even if you decide to a pair of forbidden jewels, those themselves have a huge downside on a point starved passive skill tree.

im excited for feral.

playing pure spectres I believe

"

Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

im excited for feral.

playing pure spectres I believe

Right. Farrul is the biggest outlier of basically everything being good. But its...kinda the only one.

"

fuxxnuts2#3126 wrote:

none of them are worth giving up for any of these bloodlines.

whoawhoawhoa.....who said you give up ascendancy points for these?!?!?! If that were true that would instantly make ALL OF THEM dead on arrival.

Did I completely miss that? Because that is ABSURD!!! Especially considering....3.23 happened already.

They gonna present us with ascendancies with tons of downsides and weird mechancis....and then ALSO tie them to an absurd downside of costing you ascendancy points from your MAIN ascendancy?!

From the patchnotes:

"

Bloodline Classes can be paired with any Ascendancy Class and are allocated with your normal Ascendancy Passive Skill Points. You can decide how many points to allocate to your original Ascendancy Class, and how many to allocate to your Bloodline.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3869068

There are plenty of good ones in there that'll be worth taking.

"

Scarletsword#4354 wrote:

There are plenty of good ones in there that'll be worth taking.

plenty of good ones? That won't cost you in terms of your normal ascendancy?

I'm not seeing it.

I'd almost sooner just grab two of the SMALL nodes on some of these bloodlines if I don't have a 4th important ascendancy skill in my normal tree.


Even Farrul, which I see as being the current "best"....is a significant sacrifice for a moderately better singular spectre. Losing two OTHER specters could mean losing two full auras, or charge generation, or other things....and I'm not entirely sure the 3 random mods / auras will make up for that downside in all scenarios. Combine that with losing an ascendancy from the normal tree and its a pretty enormous tradeoff for....not much, if anything, back.


The chaos conversion one is powerful.....but chaos builds ALSO have pretty darn powerful mods in the NORMAL ascendancies, almost to the point of being mandatory. So you'd end up trading off a defensive option for this, while also requiring some really....weird....gearing and tree. And then of course you get the chaos ring and completely negate the entire thing anyway.

Melee builds forgotten. Minion players rejoice.

All I will be giving up is commander of darkness

"

mnieradko#6070 wrote:

Melee builds forgotten. Minion players rejoice.

Well here's the weird thing though.....most of the minion nodes seem designed to try and imply a hybrid minion / melee fighter. Which is ridiculous.