Last best league in your opinion?

Any league that adds mechanics you can use from the very first door out of Lions. Lake of Kalandra for example, takes the boredom out of 10 acts that we've all done 20,000 times. I'm sure the hardcores can choose to skip this and race to the end to max level on day one but for the average joe it's a nice change. New zone, interactive challenges that add good experience as you level. TOTA wasn't it~ lol

sentinel hands down

delirium

started at ritual/ulti.

would say scourge.

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DichotomousThree wrote:

ToTA was indeed very out of genre but it was also fresh and interesting as a mini game within PoE. If I played a game that was only ToTA I would probably put about 50 hours into it before bailing. I’ve played many thousands of hours of PoE.

You are very wrong in your criticisms. Gear 100% mattered for ToTA, I was tanking hits in rank 2000 matches by the end of the league. I could not do that without the right gear. There were also some very cool loot items and it was a pretty reliable source of divines in SSF. Tattoos were also massive power creep for certain builds(notably TS).

I will also add that Sanctum was very accessible in ToTA and is also quite a good time if you have the right build.

I don't need something fresh and interesting....if it is a completely different game. I don't play PoE because I want to play chess, I don't play PoE because I want to play a MoBA, etc. Even as an optional minigame it just had no place.

And no....gearing didn't matter at all. Perhaps because you were unable (or unwilling) to dodge things it mattered for you, but it was widely accepted during the league that all you really needed was stall tactics and dodging, which you can do on any type of gearing. Damage didn't matter at all in a game where dps is pretty much EVERYONE's #1 goal.

I felt the same about Sanctum before that: yet again a minigame that was basically a completely different genre of game stuffed into a PoE-box that just didn't quite work. Extremely build limiting, more than any other mechanic that had existed before it, and like Lab 2.0.

Like you, I have played PoE for thousands of hours. Tens of thousands of hours. Not once have I felt that I needed a "MOBA minigame" or a "rogue-lite minigame" to keep it new and fresh. IF that were the case, I would have quit about 8 years ago.

The best leagues are the leagues where GGG incorporates all of the core of PoE into the league mechanic: monsters, loot, crafting, bossing, etc. The most recent "good" league mechanic for me was actually AN and Sentinel. I know folks didn't like AN AFTER it was forced upon everyone everywhere, but the actual league itself was awesome and simple. Storage was a mess but hey you can't have everything.

I also find it completely useless to "justify" a league by saying that the GAME was in its best state. The league is the league mechanic. The rest of the game is completely separate from the league because it works on both Standard and Temp League play. So when discussing the last best "league", isolating the league mechanic itself is very important: the rest of the game improvements have little to do with it.

TBH, league mechanics like TOTA and Ancestor (and others) are almost like GGG admitting that their game simply isn't good enough anymore to stand on its own merits, and so they have to create "new games" within PoE to keep it going. I wholeheartedly disagree with this, and just wish they would sit down and address the core of the game rather than continuously trying to branch out the game in wild directions.

Imagine playing tetris and getting rewarded with PoE-divines each level. That's ToTA in a nutshell.

Tetris-lover casuals loved ToTA. Others, not so.

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hasatt0 wrote:

Tetris-lover casuals loved ToTA. Others, not so.

Tetris requires skill, ToTa did not.

It's kind of impossible to separate the league experience from the state of the game because the second drastically impacts the first. In terms of mechanics ToTA was terribly executed autochess with obscenely powerful but obnoxiously rare rewards and sanctum is a build limited money printer, doesn't change that ToTA was the least league before they decided to start deleting builds and ripping out even more loot because they cannot be bothered to actually put real effort into balancing things for everyone, not just the top streamers who spend the entire time doing party MF.

Affliction was mechanically uninteresting but had a lot of borrowed power that was fun to work with due to how modular charms were and had enough loot thanks to wisps to make up for everything.

Necropolis has just been awful, every single remotely decent means of getting a decent amount of loot without grinding ridiculously set up t17s in a party has gotten nerfed, on top of them functionally deleting t16 and invitation boss loot entirely. Now functionally every drop worth anything aside from watchers is gated behind t17s because you have terrible odds of seeing them anywhere else, maximally juiced extremely archeology expeditions in 120 quant t16 maps pay out basically nothing, that is a serious problem.

[Removed by Support] ToTa was nice because it was something new, something additional. League that is just mapping with mobs of different tint is just lame for me. If i wanted such shit i would be playing standard. From leagues i expect an actual mechanic. Thats really just that. Such leagues will always be superior for me. Maps will always be there.

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CarbotZergling123 wrote:

It's kind of impossible to separate the league experience from the state of the game because the second drastically impacts the first.

In fact, its the opposite of what you said here. It is rare that the state of the game drastically impacts the NEW mechanic being released. Rather, it is the NEW mechanic that may or may not have a huge impact on the state of the game. Just like your example with tattoos: a byproduct of the league mechanic having an effect on the state of the game, not the other way around.

With the exception of AN mobs of course, and their impact everywhere.

Power creep is just that: power creep. Just straight up additional power. It doesn't change anything about the raw game. The only time that really ever happened was Crucible. All other fundamental "state of game" changes have been almost purely game-wide and in every single mode available, not just the league. Excess power from a league isn't a game changer to me. Excess loot is also not a game changer. It just adds or subtracts TIME from the equation of the path of exile.

It is actually very easy to isolate the league mechanic and talk about it: you did it yourself in your post. The "power" you felt from ToTA tattoos could have easily been replicated by old standard crazy items. It "felt" new but really....it wasn't. It was making up for things that were previously removed in the guise of being "new".

But all that is completely beside the point....if I don't want to interact with the league mechanic because its terrible, then what really has changed? Fundamentally, its exactly the same game.


Basically, my opinion is that a successful league does everything that people tangentially love about sanctum and tota (the loot, the new toys, etc.) BUT thinks about incorporating that INTO the game loop we have all come to know and love, and the reason for playing PoE. If it is essentially separate, such as Sanctum and TOTA, then it does not belong and needs to be looked at.

And to clarify: I'm not saying that all league mechanics should be in-map mechanics. Two of my absolute favorite leagues of all time were Betrayal and Synthesis. Both took real thinking, both took you OUT of the mapping loop, and yet both also stayed within the bounds of PoE gameplay and did it with aplomb.