new bloodline ascendancies: mostly garbage?

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Death's Oath grants an Aura that scales with aura effect (essentially a more damage multiplier for the skill) and chaos damage, but not spell damage. I can get up to 240% chaos damage from dual-weilding those, which is then turned into aura effect for Death's Oath (with a better roll and catalysts it's 18% of chaos damage as aura effect).

You can go with global damage scaling for more damage. You don't need the Warcry explosions on an Occultist anyway. The Grey Spire with 300% is one example.

Global damage does not give me aura effect on DO. So if I get to choose between just chaos damage and global damage, chaos damage will be way stronger for scaling. I'll also be somewhat starved for sockets so Grey Spire will cut into the gem socket economy quite deeply.

Ideally I'd like a Cane of Kulemak with Chaos Damage and Chaos Dot Multi roll which would be of some significance (2.6m total dps to 3.2m), and I could also swap my secondary DPS setup (ED of Desperation trap) into the 6-link.

More of an accessibility choice there, really. We don't have one like that in our private league and I'm getting very unlucky with finding Mastermind (0 medallions in 50 something safehouses lol)

Didn't really post it to open discussion about this build but to give an example on how people should approach bloodlines instead of calling everything bad but thanks for your suggestion

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Global damage does not give me aura effect on DO. So if I get to choose between just chaos damage and global damage, chaos damage will be way stronger for scaling.

? Global damage applies to everything. DoTs, ailments, Hit damage. It's additive with increases to Chaos Damage in your case.

Though I figured you might not approve due to lack of sockets. One of the reasons nobody ever cares about this item, even though it can also give +4% all max res. Niche, but I figured Death's Oath is also niche.

But yeah, Cane of Kulemak can get higher damage. Anyways, just my 2 cents. Cheers.

Well, read the effect of the ring. Global damage doesn't give aura effect. Again, point wasn't to discuss my build but to show that by thinking outside the box, you can come up with unique, cool, yet viable build ideas

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Well, read the effect of the ring. Global damage doesn't give aura effect. Again, point wasn't to discuss my build but to show that by thinking outside the box, you can come up with unique, cool, yet viable build ideas

yes....but.....what does ANY of that have to do with this thread?

The point is the ascendancies. I am ALL FOR the foulborns. I think they are an absolutely fantastic and overdue addition to this game.

The ascendancies, not so much.



And...man Void....we have agreed in other threads but your take on this is so condescending and wrong its actually pretty incredible. And your willful "rewriting" and reframing of my post to its absolute extreme example shows this. And was there something in that post that was supposed to add to the conversation? Because I asked some genuinely simple questions.....and you just went for full blanket attack for the third time without offering anything. "Only popular builds are viable": seems like you have a bone to pick and just want to fight that one......even when it has pretty much no relation to anything I have said. Nor does it represent what I play. It has been years since I have played any "top 10 meta" build in any form (except for a singular armor stacker during Phrecia because I had simply never made one before).

While it was unrelated to the thread topic, at least Art supplied some cool food for thought. At least Baumis conversation about the ascendancy earlier (albeit proven to be a wrong interpretation, and kind of completely nixing his entire point against my thread) was a decent point to make.


I am not a slouch when it comes to build creation. I am not a novice when it comes to combining things to make GOOD things happen. Because of this experience, I can glean a lot of information from simply READING the mods that exist on the ascendancies. The "popularity" and actual quantifiable usage of the new ascendancies I pointed to serves as a reinforcement, not a explanation. There may be some things I haven't thought about, but the point is the GENERAL design of the ascendancies and the fact that MOST are terrible or downright unusable. Why introduce a MASSIVE system....when only a teeny tiny sliver of it is actually ever going to be used? That is my point.

Just because a handful of singular nodes might break that pattern......doesn't change anything I have said. And if you are specifically arguing that my take is simply that I "don't know enough" as you imply, then freaking show me what YOU seem to know that I do not. What YOU seem to know that the majority of those playing the game RIGHT NOW are showing they don't agree with.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Well, read the effect of the ring. Global damage doesn't give aura effect. Again, point wasn't to discuss my build but to show that by thinking outside the box, you can come up with unique, cool, yet viable build ideas

yes....but.....what does ANY of that have to do with this thread?

The point is the ascendancies. I am ALL FOR the foulborns. I think they are an absolutely fantastic and overdue addition to this game.

The ascendancies, not so much.

They're not ascendancies, they're bloodlines. They are additions to character customization that fill in gaps where just your ascendancy wouldn't be as efficient. If you had read the post you'd have seen I mention how the build has DPS, but was lacking defence, and that's where the Breach bloodline came in. All part of the grander point I keep reiterating that people need to get more creative.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

They're not ascendancies, they're bloodlines. They are additions to character customization that fill in gaps where just your ascendancy wouldn't be as efficient. If you had read the post you'd have seen I mention how the build has DPS, but was lacking defence, and that's where the Breach bloodline came in. All part of the grander point I keep reiterating that people need to get more creative.

splitting hairs a bit right there.....they absolutely ARE ascendancies. They take ascendancy points. They are called bloodlines but in PoE they function as ascendancies. Secondary ascendancies, but ascendancies nonetheless. The term is interchangeable. A different name doesn't change a decade of PoE design.

Yes I read what you wrote. The Breach "bloodline" is used by about 60% of ALL PLAYERS that are using bloodlines at all because it is an outlier, and each one of the nodes greatly outperform many, if not most, of the other possible bloodlines across almost any build "hole" that you describe. Like the spectre nodes. And it is certainly not an accident that the breachlord bloodlines has the three most straightforward nodes in the entirety of the new system....along with zero tradeoffs on any of them. But that's an aside more about "popularity" than usefulness and good design: more people will always choose the easier, more clear option.

Again.....MOST being garbage, not ALL being garbage. There are 10 bloodlines (right?), each with 3 or 4 major nodes. And currently the vast majority of the playerbase is talking about 3 of them, and within those 3...only Breach has all the nodes seeing some attention.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

They're not ascendancies, they're bloodlines. They are additions to character customization that fill in gaps where just your ascendancy wouldn't be as efficient. If you had read the post you'd have seen I mention how the build has DPS, but was lacking defence, and that's where the Breach bloodline came in. All part of the grander point I keep reiterating that people need to get more creative.

splitting hairs a bit right there.....they absolutely ARE ascendancies. They take ascendancy points. They are called bloodlines but in PoE they function as ascendancies. Secondary ascendancies, but ascendancies nonetheless. The term is interchangeable. A different name doesn't change a decade of PoE design.

Yes I read what you wrote. The Breach "bloodline" is used by about 60% of ALL PLAYERS that are using bloodlines at all because it is an outlier, and each one of the nodes greatly outperform many, if not most, of the other possible bloodlines across almost any build "hole" that you describe. Like the spectre nodes.

Again.....MOST being garbage, not ALL being garbage. There are 10 bloodlines (right?), each with 3 or 4 major nodes. And currently the vast majority of the playerbase is talking about 3 of them, and within those 3...only Breach has all the nodes seeing some attention.

It's a relevant distinction.

Interesting, so you chose to ignore it and instead claim I'm talking about something else, when you seem aware that it ties in with the point I iterated in the post before you responded to me... hard to take you as arguing in good faith while demonstrating such.

None of them are just "garbage", you just haven't found a use for them yet. The difference between your perspective and mine is simply being optimistic versus... the opposite.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

It's a relevant distinction.

Interesting, so you chose to ignore it and instead claim I'm talking about something else, when you seem aware that it ties in with the point I iterated in the post before you responded to me... hard to take you as arguing in good faith while demonstrating such.

None of them are just "garbage", you just haven't found a use for them yet. The difference between your perspective and mine is simply being optimistic versus... the opposite.

You are right, it was unfair of me to write off what you wrote is being entirely disconnected. I apologize. You made a valid point that this bloodline offered more to you than the possible other occultist one you might take.

I disagree with your optimism: I am not interesting in Gerry-rigging these ascendancy points to "fit" into a build for the sake of "creativity" or simple "hole fillage". That kind of design IS garbage to me. Optimism to me is something truly NEW, such as your Death's Oath example. But your usage of Breachlord is NOT something new. It's as you said: simply a better defensive option numerically than your 4th ascendancy point. It offers nothing to suggest you are suddenly doing anything breachlord-y, or even functionally different than if you just took the 4th occultist ascendancy point.

I disagree that bloodline vs. ascendancy is a "relevant distinction": when you literally have to give up ascendancy points to use them in bloodlines. Same pool. Same usage. I would only argue they are distinct if they were separate systems, which they very easily could have been (and should have been, similar to 3.23).


The whole foulborn system is a great example of what the bloodlines frankly SHOULD have been: game-changing options to play with. And so very very few of them actually do anything of the sort.

See it this way: players are given incredibly powerful tools in the form of Grafts for absolutely free (like in 3.23). They come in many variations and there's one for every build. These are the free player power this league.

Bloodlines are a new system GGG is testing out as part of the league content. It is clear to me that they built 3.27 around the reworked Breach and that it is here to stay. They'll be reviewing the stats visible to them (different from what you see on the ladder by the way which only shows the top x characters from private profiles).

I should add: I do play around with otherwise underrated skills and items because it's interesting to see if you can make cool stuff happen with it, and I have learned a lot more from doing that than I would watching random youtuber xyz's build guide.

Appreciate the apology by the way. Shows character!

I am no fan of just "power": thats boring. That's why I hated mercenaries with a passion. It's why I hated (and still hate) Kingsmarch. Just straight up "More power / more loot" is lazy design.

Yes....the new bloodlines are not designed with just straight power in mind. But I STILL feel, apart from a FEW nodes, they do not succeed at EITHER point they are trying to make: new mechanical behavior OR new power. Breachlord is just straight power. That's what make it popular. Farrul is popular and actually useful because the tradeoff of going from more max spectres to less, yet more powerful unique spectres with a pretty sweet randomizer attached is actually COOL to think about.

But then you have Umbral Army: a node NOT designed for anything that exists in PoE. You have the low life minion node: designed for the archetype that would benefit the most for choosing it.....yet tying a downside that completely negates its usage. The other node with the death seal that....just straight up doesn't make sense. To anyone. You have the extra ring ascendancy where you can take a node that gives you immunity to poison or bleed.....but you give up utility flasks or your freaking belt slot. Go ahead: show me where that is good design...

My pessimism is not because they aren't giving us borrowed power, nor is it because there aren't powerful options available. It's because they are CLEARLY designed as ways to customize character building, just as Void and you obviously want (I do too),.... but they overwhelmingly FAIL at doing that.

I have yet to SEE anything, including from within this thread on the bloodline staunch defenders, that even begins to change my mind. Instead I get blanket attacked by one who offers nothing in return, and (with respect) your example that is just kind of a better example of what makes foulborns GOOD, and not necessarily what makes bloodlines GOOD. Your example highlights why I think bloodlines AREN'T good.

I will admit, and I think I did earlier in this thread, that I have basically zero experience with ward. And I've heard the ward ascendancy is STRONK. Part of that though has to be because.....there exists no ward ascendancy that it can be compared to. It is totally NEW (which is GOOD).


But this is still....mainly 3 nodes pulling all the creative weight, out of 30.

I looked at all of the posts so far, and none of them really answered the question.

Answer: yes its mostly garbage.