I really miss Affliction League, and not because of the Loot...

That league is now 2 years old, and it delivered so much content without being a major expansion. I miss the days where we got plenty of new (different!) skills or reworked gems for different archetypes. Feels like nowadays it's a forced meta shift and a trickle of new gems, when new gems are (to me, at least) what make the game the most interesting.

Mob loot pinata aside, Affliction had so much going for it: Tons of new/changed gems, new Ascendancies, plenty of buffs to underutilized items/mechanics, so on and so forth. Transfigured gems alone were a game changer (until most of them were removed later).

I mean, just look at it: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3451455

Compared to the last leagues we've gotten since then, Affliction was god tier. I miss the days where we got so many new options for character builds. The game has felt pretty stale since Settlers league...

Well, you know when we can expect something like that for 1 right?

Hint: it rhymes with "never"

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Affliction had so much going for it: Tons of new/changed gems, new Ascendancies, plenty of buffs to underutilized items/mechanics, so on and so forth.

You did get new Ascendancies with bloodlines this league, tons of "new" items via foulborn uniques this league same as various other buffs and changes? lol

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Mob loot pinata aside, Affliction had so much going for it: Tons of new/changed gems, new Ascendancies, plenty of buffs to underutilized items/mechanics, so on and so forth. Transfigured gems alone were a game changer (until most of them were removed later).

You can just say you loved the loot.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Affliction had so much going for it: Tons of new/changed gems, new Ascendancies, plenty of buffs to underutilized items/mechanics, so on and so forth.

You did get new Ascendancies with bloodlines this league, tons of "new" items via foulborn uniques this league same as various other buffs and changes? lol

I want new skills. Affliction League also added Charms to the game, which could change how a build functioned. Most of the Foulborn make no sense or are just straight up trash that nobody wants to use. Just more filler to balance out the tree mechanic's item pool.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

I want new skills. Affliction League also added Charms to the game, which could change how a build functioned.

So pretty much the same bloodlines do.

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Most of the Foulborn make no sense or are just straight up trash that nobody wants to use. Just more filler to balance out the tree mechanic's item pool.

Some of them are pretty much straight forward and enable interesting builds, or buff existing builds. But of course a new player might not see the freshness in the patch right away, after all this league does not rain divines like Affliction did or handout total free power creep :)

After all this league just introduced tons of shit as well, just not in the form of total free extra power creep

If 3.27 proved anything, it's that a loud part of the community is very tink-brained

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

If 3.27 proved anything, it's that a loud part of the community is very tink-brained

Hi, I'm tink-brained. I need those dopamine hits, 2-5 times every map, otherwise I'm not getting out of bed. :)

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

After all this league just introduced tons of shit as well, just not in the form of total free extra power creep

Well, that is quite true. This league alone has introduced an impressive variety of new toys to explore, offering fresh possibilities for nearly every build. Affliction, while undeniably fun, was essentially a pure exercise in power creep. It provided extraordinarily generous loot with no real drawbacks and granted players immense additional strength without requiring any meaningful tradeoffs.

Naturally, a new player who began their journey during such an unusually generous league may feel confused when later leagues return to normal loot levels and introduce new sources of power that come with actual decisions and consequences. That is often the moment when someone unfamiliar with the broader balance of the game begins to struggle, because the familiar comfort they experienced in their first league is no longer present.

In reality, what this league offers is equal to, if not greater than, what Affliction provided, precisely because it is not operating in full power-creep mode.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

If 3.27 proved anything, it's that a loud part of the community is very tink-brained

Pretty much this

+1 for affliction 2.0

-100 for trying to convince us (and maybe yourself) that it is not about the loot.