POE 3.24 - T17s - How Did The Uber Boss Overhaul & What Should Change - Path of Exile Necropolis

#poe #necropolis #pathofexile

It's been 50 days and change since 3.24 shook up bosses and uber bosses, solving a lot of old problems and creating some new ones.

0:00 Intro
0:25 This is an opinion video & is positive with reservations.
0:56 Something I learned writing this video: 'Uber Elder' is a naming nightmare GGG need to fix
2:26 How Bossing Worked From 3.18 To 3.23
3:34 A Stat I'd Love To See From That Era - Professionalization Of Boss Killing
3:51 What Were The Issues With The Old System? Huge numbers of entry tokens in circulation required low drop rates, leadign to hyper-professionalization of boss killing
7:28 What Were The 3.24 Changes? Splitting of loot pools, splitting of access keys, fragment systems, massive drop rate increases e.g. Progenesis 1.5% to 10-12%
8:27 Hidden T17 Mechanics - rigging fragment drops in your favour
9:40 Hidden T17 Mechanics - rigging T17 map drops in your favour
10:12 Hidden T17 Mechanics - How many fragments drop
10:37 Which T17 Drops Which Boss Tokens? How Big Is This Bias (it's BIG)?
11:03 T17 Map Mods - Some Are Over The Top, But Back To Basics Is The Real Issue
13:12 Is This Better Or Worse Than The Old Boss System?
16:29 Addressing Ideas For Improvements Other Players Have Raised - Reverting
17:19 Addressing Ideas For Improvements Other Players Have Raised - Reverting But Keeping 3.24's High Drop Rates On Uber Exclusives
18:18 Addressing Ideas For Improvements Other Players Have Raised - Adopting the Beachhead Model Onto Pinnacle Bosses
19:26 Addressing Ideas For Improvements Other Players Have Raised - 'Messing With' Bulk Runners - Trade and/or time restrictions on trading content
22:24 Players are good at optimizing the fun out of certain systems...
22:52 My Own Suggestions - allow alternatives to T17s, move some loot out of Maven/Uber Maven toward other pinnacle bosses.

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[chriscarollo]

T17s *without* Back to Basics are still really, really hard, and there are a TON of map mods that are very difficult. It took me a long time to be able to complete a T17. It's not just a Back to Basics issue.

[erutherford]

In my perspective the league did a perfect job of leaving a bad taste in my mouth by promising content to fill the gap between "basic T16 / pinnacle" content and the elite content in the game. Instead of filling that gap the T17s actually became the new elite content in the game and the gap between basic & elite content has never felt wider ..

[SliceMusik]

"Uber Elder" is already something that GGG didn't come up with, but the community. They have since adopted the naming in posts/videos/livestreams to fit with the community.
The official name is "The Elder in the Shaper's Realm". No "uber" in there.

[killuahsmathetricks]

My problem currently is, that the opportunity cost (and general cost) to even try the uber versions of the bosses even once is so incredibly high.
I would argue something like "if you kill the normal boss you get a chance to drop the uber fragment to try the boss". But right now T17 maps are so incredibly hard, that it is nearly impossible to "train" the uber bosses again.

I would consider myself to be like in the top 1-5% of players (MB, HH and about 500 Div each league in other gear) and I am currently saying, that I don't even bother with the uber bosses. Which is sad, since I got the farming for currency down and wanted to start doing and learning the uber bosses (normal ones are easy).

So my suggestion would be to guard the Uber Fragments with a somewhat low drop chance (like 5-10%) behind the normal boss. Then you could still somewhat farm it, but its not entirely impossible for some builds to even get it once (T17 are no joke, even without back to basics <.<)

[Mejker]

I think adding Uber frags to standard variants of the bosses would be a good change. This would trickle down value of uber versions down to standard versions and make them more valuable to farm and more viable way to target specific Uber bosses. If the rarity of fragments is the issue, make them non-guaranteed drop but this would make T17s not the only source.

[backonawednesday]

Really love the suggestion of gems dropping from all bosses as well as uber fragments coming from "side content" bosses. In fact, I love that suggestion so much that I will now be very sad if that's not exactly what happens next patch. Thanks Gog!

[asluckdespairs]

Majority of the t17 specific mods are the issue, not back to basics.
I *can* clear double nemesis, union of souls, 300% more life on back to basics. But why would I spend 30 minutes to clear 1 map?
While simultaneously I probably can't clear no damage 40% of the time. And I cant even walk if my action speed is reduced per action. Marked for death is a very literal name since no build in the game can counter it to my knowledge. (I dont consider stopping gameplay to sit and wait as a gameplay counter. NOT playing the game should never be the solution to a problem in the game.)
The number of mods where the solution is to just sit and wait afk is not fun.
Elder tentacles when all the t17s are narrow hallways? Its literally kill a mob, wait for 30 seconds to be allowed to walk safely. Runes of the exarch and awakeners desolation are the same. Sit and wait for visual clutter to clear you you can walk. If you have a lot of loot expect to waste multiple minutes trying to loot safely over sirus ground shit.

[WCFactBreak]

Bossing was by far the most enjoyable thing for me for the last 5 years. This experience was absolutely destroyed this pach, to say that everything they did to bossing is horrible is absolute underestimation.
Putting the fragments behind the HORRIBLY balanced T17 maps is EASILY the worst decision I have seen GGG making, or at least with the worst implementation. To say those ar epretty similar to 3.18-3.23 is absolutely inaccurate.

1. T17 are MUCH MUCH rarer than the guardian maps before, This made the fragments MUCH MUCH rarer and expensive to the point where we have Uber maven is 12 div to run, .
This made the Uber boss farming, which is very very satisfying and actually, together with Sanctum, is one of the few things in the game that IMO actually require learning mechanics, reacting, and not just moving and occasionalyl clicking right click to explode the screen.

Solution - T17 should either not be the only place to farm fragments from (e.g. the normal bosses can trop fragments) or/and the T17 fragment drop numbers should be doubled

2. T17 are dropping a set of random fragments from 3 available for each map, this makes the problem in p.1 even bigger. Not only T17 are quite rare for them to be the only source of fragments, the fact that some of them cannot drop the more valuable fragments makes the demand for T17 quite squed and thus in even more demand than others.

Solusion - Similar to p.1 but also the fragments should be fully randomized with a compensatory mecahnicsm (so you get close to even amount of each fragment). Or you can make the uber fragments general and being able to open every Uber fight. There are many solutions for this, it is just makeing the 1st problem even bigger.

3. T17 are still a HUGE problem with their absolutely imbalanced modifiers.

Solution - I hope everyone agrees that those will have to be altered before the next patch and rebalanced

4. T17 SHOULD NOT BE the best place to farm and ALSO give fragments - This again makes the problem in p.1 even more significant. Previously we had maps that are best to farm if you farm currency/scarabs/etc. and boss maps you farm for fragments. Now, those are combined into 1 and this makes the T17 by far the best and the ONLY thing to farm if you want keep up with other players doing that.
So what they did was - now you have to get your uber fragments from a different place (nice variety), but also, they made this same place absolutely the best place to farm everything (except some strats that are relying on white or yellow T maps). They did not add variety to the game, they did exactly the opposite.

In a nutshell, I have never seen a bigger step in the wrong direction and more horribly balanced contend released by GGG ever.
Not even slightly surpriced this league had horrible retention and I expect it to get much much worse if GGG does not make significant changes.

I am a proson tha played the game in the Beta, than returned 5-6 years ago and for first time since then, I feel the game is getting worse, although the idea behind the changes was great, the implementation seemed like it was done by toddlers.

I like your suggestion for reshuffling the uber boss drops

[forcefulstorm]

Timed lockouts would lead to a PoE offshoot of split raiding: making multiple accounts and/or characters to farm the same boss
I know that's actually somewhat of a player problem, but making game design decisions that lead to actively unfun gameplay are bad game design decisions. Any other solution is preferred.

[xasrai]

Call it the "Shelder" encounter.

[MandruDuce]

B2B should be made a separate multiplier, changed to only affect pack size and adjusted numerically so on average you get more mobs in your map than people juicing league mechanics on an identical map. Giving up league mechanics that have their own reward pool and better quality rares/magic mobs is a big downside which is why I think its important to have more monsters on average otherwise the keystone is completely useless. I think that overall the design of a keystone that gives you benefits for giving up league mechanics is better than one that makes you run the league mechanics without notables but it sure needs some more iterating on it.
T17 maps having implicits that give more multipliers to specific type of loot is imo a huge mistake and the more experienced devs should have known that based on what happened in the early days when quant and rarity were affixes and everyone would spam for them on every map.
I am unsure as to what the solution to fixing T17s to fit the role they were meant to have instead of becoming the best place to run 90% of your strategies is, but between some of the mods, the implicits and back to basics, having a meta of chaos spamming thousands of chaos orbs on rolling maps is just not fun.
I also hope they remove curation scarab completely. The functionality on paper sounds very cool in terms of fixing the "we are stuck in Crimson Prison" feeling, but paying divines to turn the X most valuable cards in the game into global drops is imo too game warping and kind of completely defeats the purpose of having cards like unrequited love be gated behind annoying maps like Vaal Temple or Maze. Farming div cards is very fun and being able to add 2-3 divination cards you want to your favorite layout (maybe with a reduced drop chance) would be the sweetspot imo as long as the system is global and available via an unlock and not a scarab, but paying divines to make every mob in your map eligible to drop loot that normally cannot drop in that area AND getting a 120% more multiplier on div cards is imo borderline bad game design.

[kkonaklap]

Have not finished the vid yet so might miss it if you have mentioned it but I think one way to 'fix' it on the Eldritch altar end of the maps is to remove the useless mini-boss invites and make it 12 altars = Normal Exarch/Eater and 24 altars = Uber Exarch/Eater (but you have to kill the map boss so you can skip the non-uber invitation if you want like with the mini-bosses). I think gating Shaper, Elder, Maven and Uber Elder behind T17's is less tedious than getting their non-Uber counterparts so I'm fine with it. With Uber Cortex, I am not entirely sure.


UPDATE: Agreed with most points, would be nice to make it less oppressive by widening fragment drops to other endgame content (and letting us get the 5th map device slot through Legion OR through T17's)

[duskymage]

I'd be happier if ggg just added a "non-map boss monster don't drop loot" modifier to all t17s. During the reveal, ggg stated they didn't want t17 to replace t16 farming, and since t17s are necessary for ubers people would do them anyway.

[Dizturbdwun]

I really liked your idea there at the end on what to do. I also really fucking want them to delete back to basics from the atlas tree. They removed wandering path and put B2b on the tree? D:

[ruibarian]

I'd really like to see the other aspirational mid-tier content get boss shards. It would be even better if, over time, those pieces of content led to their own, new boss encounters, and had biases toward their specific encounter. A Blight-based Pinnacle boss seems like an exceptionally cool boss design playground.

[kujabuja]

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I REALLY enjoy the T17 system and back to basics, because it's a really fun/additional layer of challenge that I can't get anywhere else.

But, I play PoE for a long time each league and invest massively (4-600 divs is what I consider the minimum cost for when I'm happy with a build) into the builds I put together.

I've never done more endgame content than what I've done this league, and it still feels both challenging and rewarding

[AlexanderBukh]

Big thanks for also stating how it was before, not everyone is walking poewiki out here)

[Shadowquacker]

I think that a hybrid of the timed lock-out and token based entry schemes would be best: I think that after you’ve unlocked the aspirational content by getting its access tokens once then you should be able to try the content for no cost once per week (or some other non-trivial time) but you can also use the tokens as normal if you want to spam. That would allow people to test out the encounters but wouldn’t make any practical difference to dedicated boss killers.

There’s little as disheartening to me as a player as when I think it’s worth trying something only to learn after I’ve wasted the expensive access method that I just get absolutely smashed.

[voswouter]

Why not nerf T17 maps? Ubers should be harder than the T17's.

[zotha]

I will be extremely surprised if B2B survives. It is just way too much.