From the looks of it, it seems like everything they're doing for the endgame of PoE 2 is a refinement and improvement over PoE 1. It'll have less in terms of overall things to do, but what will be there at launch will be its best implementation. Super excited to try my hands at it.

To start off with the map system, it seems that they took a lot of redundancy out of it and instead of a billion different maps to collect you'll now have tiered waystones that can be placed inside of map points on a more improved atlas that's somewhat reminiscent of delve, maybe why it's not included on launch, with its infinitely expanding nature. And the tablets that influence the map points from towers seem to help reduce redundancy of needing a billion different items for influencing what appears inside of your maps and it can now all be done with tablets.

The carryover leagues from PoE1 seem to be Breach, Expedition, Ritual, and Delirium in their more normal forms with some revisions. Then in place of ascendancy trials they're bringing back Sanctum, Ultimatum, and some unknown (maybe new?) mechanic to serve as the trials for ascendancy. So thankfully lab is dead, but in its place I fear what we'll see with Sanctum ascendancy... But instead of a huge atlas passive tree you need to navigate it's a lot more compact in the center around normal random small events you can find and then the league mechanics all have their own smaller trees around the main one that level independently of the atlas passive tree. Each of them getting their skill points from beating the pinnacle bosses of the mechanic, and then subsequent points from doing it at a higher difficulty. This is really revolutionizing the atlas tree since you can actually spec into everything at once instead of focusing yourself on only a few facets of a massive tree and selling off stuff from other mechanics because you aren't specced into them to take advantage of it in any worthwhile manner.

I can't wait to get my hands on this and try it out myself.

>>135452
Seems kind of interesting, although having not played PoE I have no idea what some of the words mean. (don't bother explaining)
The endgame of these games are generally where I lose interest, but if there's enough variety and respeccing then maybe I could participate. The last Diablo clone game I played for a while was Grim Dawn? Pretty good, but I did need to "cheat" by changing my class every 10 or so hours to keep things fun. +2% DPS just isn't as exciting as new abilities.

>>135454
poe is so hardcore you'd probably lose interest by act 5 out of 10, then the endgame is another wall if you get past that

>>135454
I'd definitely recommend looking at 22:40 on >>135414 to get a bit of a better understanding of the new tree. In addition to making respec easier, they're also giving some really nice additions like some amazing keystone nodes (dual-wielding 2handers) and having weapon skill points that you'll be able to allocate for your two weapon specs. Based on all the available info it should be really fun instead of daunting to level up and try new things.

Also it seems like co-op is going to be a blast, with how they explained skill synergy. Since they've also said in a Q&A that these skill synergies won't apply to your character alone, but will also interact with others' skills in your party. So you'll probably be able to build a party around boosting each others strengths to create an invincible team.

>>135456
They're somewhat streamlining PoE 2 in comparison to the original with a lot of QoL inclusions and also cutting a lot of the fat of the original that manifested into a billion different systems that overwhelm new players. It's good that they went with keeping the league mechanics they did for the initial release because, in addition to being pretty fun, all of them are quite simple to grasp and understand. It should be a much better experience starting up PoE 2 as a new player than it was starting up PoE 1, even when it first came out really.

>>135460
It can't be the same game yet also accessible for a casual audience. Don't get hype drunk

>>135457
Hmm, yeah I watched that video and the respeccing doesn't seem too bad. Interesting. I kept watching that that Blood Mage specialization looks fun. I guess we'll see if it's varied enough to keep me interested.

>>135464
>Blood Mage
Yeah, I'm seriously torn myself after watching the witch ascendancies. A fiery witch of hell sounds perfectly fitting, but then they showed off the blood mage and that sounds like a blast to play too. Though both seem very interesting gameplay-wise since there's a mechanic to each that harms you while doing moves you need to manage.

>>135414
The opening cinematic is pretty good, but GGG still seems to be lacking the kind of creative grandmastery that Blizzard used to have when they made D2. Not sure how they'd fix that since really great storytellers are pretty hard to come by. Maybe they'll start to grow better as they start to put more focus into story.

I might have 1-2 or more early access keys left, I'll see after tomorrow and how many of my friends use the ones I sent them. Then I'll probably give whatever's leftover to whoever else wants one. If multiple people respond to this post I'll give them out at random probably as according to my biases.

>>135567
might be out now actually

I've never played this game, but just wanted to share that my high school physics teacher knew the founder and a bunch of the staff. Apparently the company was funded when starting up with money earned from selling items from a Diablo 2 (?) item duplication glitch, or something like that.

How much do you have to spend total to get a key?
My lifetime total is like $1000 and I didn't get a key.

>>135588
by all accounts you should have one
if it's not in spam or somewhere else i'd contact support

Path of Exile doesn't really seem like a game you can idle in, no? I don't think I could devote a lot of time to it if I have to be doing something.

>>135590
Well if you count doing the economy as gameplay then you sorta can treat it as an idling game.

Kinda feeling really giddy about the fact that people will be going in, for the most part, blind. Can't wait to experiment with all different kinds of builds that seem fun (especially with the easy respec!) while testing out each and every corner of the Early Access.

I think first I'll probably try and get into maps using the Witch, and hopefully get all the way up to pinnacle bosses on my own wits. If that fails I think the next class I'm trying is the Gemling Legionaire since that's the most unique new class of PoE2. Wonder if the bosses really will be the hardest content that PoE has ever seen, or if the addition of WASD controls will actually help to make the game a shitload easier.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3592012

So the Devs decided that ahead of the Early Access releasing tomorrow, they'd give everyone a look at all the different ascendancy classes. And some of these nodes are pretty insane. Thought that the Gemling Merc would've been my primary choice if I was thinking just pure quality that would boost any build, but now taking a good look at them all I think the Titan fits the bill nicely as well. Maybe even more depending on how broken 5 is on the tree, it seems absolutely insane.

https://www.pathofexile.com/

I've got a bad feeling about tomorrow if the website crashed today...

>>135744
oh yeah steam preload is up now

lol

Game is even better than I was hoping for so far, really just a straight upgrade over PoE1. Only a few minor issues that I have with it that will probably be ironed out by the time the game fully releases.

Having a lot of fun and I'm happy about that.

Stay a while and listen

guild stash is UP

Dug up my old 2015 character to give it a spin and see if I should get into the sequel, from back when there were three difficulty modes and ascendancy and Act 5 weren't a thing yet. It was a witch that tried to pull off general elemental damage and minions alongside some other random shit, wasn't working very well so I tweaked it a bit and then played through most of Act 3 until it was 6 in the morning. Even after deciding to not play anymore and deleting the witch, still I watched pic and kept looking up stuff to better understand it.
A harsh but crucial reminder to not do videogames. (´･ω･｀)

So is this anyone can play now or is it still some closed beta thing?

>>135801
Anyone can play, but it's a paid early access beta, so you'd need to pay 30$ to get in (although it does reward you with 30$ worth of mtx currency too so it's pretty worth it to get currency/gems/other stash tabs and such)

The game is a bit unbalanced with the melee classes having to work hard, but they've streamlined the campaign so that it doesn't take a lot of investment to experiment with builds. My tri-element chronomaster(I guess that makes it quad elemental) has switched a lot of configurations as new skill gems become available.

>>135802
Oh. Huh. Well, I guess I might try it later, maybe.

Were there ever actually queues. I always connect to Canada East and never had an issue

>>135805
On the first day yeah, not since.

pretty good damage for level 45 i think
having real fun figuring out something on my own instead of a build guide

>>135829
is that poe2? it looks pretty cool i thought the gameplay would be much slower from the trailer or whatever

>>135833
Yeah, it's pretty slow still, but a lot faster nearing endgame than PoE2's early game looked.

I would play poe2 with /qa/ if I wasn't completely jaded towards poe and online games in general already. And if my computer could even run it, since graphic updates basically broke poe1 when I tried it out again a few years back. Maybe in another lifetime.....

>>135843
you'll grow out of it

So here's my current setup, which I think is doing pretty well. Since I got my second set of ascendancy points I specced into Demon Form again to keep trying at it with bosses to see if I'm able to make it viable, but really it's a pain and keeps killing me so I'll need to make sure I have recoup allocated to it by maps or it's going to be too dangerous to play with.

Aside from that though, my current setup without any of the extra damage modifiers I have planned is pretty simple. I want infinite mana from the infernal flame skill, so I need to be ready to take damage whenever I cap out my flame. It does 100% of life and ES as flame damage, so the easiest way of dealing with it is maxing out my fire res to 76% so I only take 24% of that. Then I've specced into a bunch of ES and also ES recharge rate and start time buffs. For the damage I've currently taken a good bit of fire/ignite damage modifiers alongside a good bit of ignite chance so that I can proc some % increased damage on ignite. The skills I'm using are Ember Fusillade for my single target and Fireball for AoE and finishing my single target. The fireball is really magical because I've got a good bit of %chance to add 2 additional projectiles and on scattershot that means I shoot 5 fireballs. Then when my wildshards procs, it shoots "8 projectiles in a circle", which actually is a single cast for each so at max it can shoot 5*8 fireballs that all split into smaller firebolts to flood the screen and kill anything on it. Also does some pretty nice stun buildup too.

Recently just specced into crit chance and then 70% increased damage after you crit for 4 secs, coupling that with more crit bonus should be insane.

Pyromatic Pact kills me too much and the self-ignite is unbearable, plus the Demon Form just isn't that good without a really good setup for it so that you can prolong it infinitely.

So I'm rerolling as a shock sorc.

Why are you playing at all the endgame is absolute garbage once I got to the slog that is maps I threw the game in the trash

>>135911
Because I think it'll be more fun once I have a build that can actually run maps and not immediately die. And also I'm determined to make my dream of a Demon Form+Infernal Flame infinite demonflame via life recoup build work, but I need gear to make it possible.

llllllllllll

I've got some good stats now. Just need to figure out the secret to sustaining high level maps because this shit is fucking retarded. I do a juiced up T9 and drop T6s and T8s, it's so awful.

Eventually I really do hope to make that Infernal Flame Demon Form build work, but as long as it gets ignited I dunno how to deal with the damage.

>>135567
>>135575
Oh yeah, update on this.

One of my friends can't play because they haven't resolved a certain CPU bug, so I've got one extra key lying around if anyone wants to try it out.

this shit is

not going to survive

the day

is it....