Atlas and progression critique

I’ve played about 200 hours on my SSF Chaos/Contagion Lich and finally reached what I’d call the true endgame: the Tier 4 bosses. I’ve beaten a few of them, and I wanted to give a general rundown of my thoughts on this league.

Personally, I haven’t found their difficulty to be a major pain point, which I think is great. They’ve got challenging health pools—20 million HP isn’t something I can just walk over—so I think my build feels pretty balanced. That said, the damage they deal is quite significant. I have almost 12,000 Energy Shield, and I haven’t died to any Tier 4 bosses yet, but it’s still tough to manage everything without good Spirit skill timing usage the one that starts ES regen and precise dodging. The mechanics are difficult, so I think maybe the bosses need to be brought down a little bit because I imagine playing them on other classes could be extremely challenging. I’m running a setup with 25% damage reduction from everything as well, and I’m still close to losing sometimes. I can’t imagine trying to beat them as, say, a Warrior with health. Sure, they’ll have armor to reduce incoming damage, but it doesn’t mitigate all the mechanics—and I imagine some of them are just straight-up one-shot Warriors.

There needs to be some kind of option or consideration for health-based builds, especially since not all boss mechanics are fully dodgeable. At Tier 4, mechanics start to layer and overlap, and bosses begin using multiple abilities at once. That becomes a real problem—you simply can’t dodge everything. And it leads to a one shot or lose situation. Since I can’t reliable one shot on ssf where huge upgrades like unique jewel for +3 levels aren’t really obtainable and perfect gear is very impossible to find regularly I’m glad I can play something tanky enough to live big moves but alas I do feel they would be too hard if say 5000 energy shield was the cap or I couldn’t get the flat 25% dr.

Let’s talk about the bosses I haven’t reached t4 yet. Maybe it’s just my build not leaning into Ritual, but the Ritual boss has been really hard to reach. Ritual in general doesn’t seem to scale well with Delirium, for example. The Ritual mechanic appears to “take” the Delirium mobs, which results in fewer favor points instead of more, making it harder to buy an audience with the King. It's like there is a certain amount of ritual mobs limit instead of an overall range and it’s like monster quality matters way more than density. this feels like counter intuitive with the way the ritual works after you start it where all the enemies you’ve killed in previous ones come back again. It’s like it should lean you towards more is always better when it works like that. It’s been taking a lot longer to work toward that because of this.

On top of that, Simulacrum splinters are really hard to obtain. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the reward systems don’t really scale unless you hit very specific breakpoints. For example, with Delirium, once you have enough increased chance for splinter drops, you suddenly start earning two per drop instead of one—but any amount of increase before that does nothing for you? This system is extremely punishing for newer players.

I’d rather see a decimal-based system, where, say, a 20% increased chance actually matters—like one in every five drops gives you two splinters instead. The current system is far more rewarding only if you hit those breakpoints—like 251% rounding up to 300% to get four splinters. I think we’d all benefit more from a smoother curve, where 250% gives you three, and you get a fourth splinter half of the time as it should be mathematically.

This leads into item quantity—where I would hope getting 10% more quantity really does mean I get 10% more items by the end of a map and it’s not some breakpoint rounding system similar to delirium—but it’s confusing that some systems round and others don’t.
Overall, these points have made Delirium and Ritual both hard to interact with effectively since I am a relatively new player.

Expedition, on the other hand, I’ve gotten to do quite a bit—probably because I focused so heavily on it since the recombinator is extremely useful in SSF.

And breach, while the nerfs hit hard all I’ll say. I understand why, but yeah no white rings, less quality increases on the rings themselves and most the loot coming from breachstone… yeah feels bad man.

As for the Atlas Tree, here are some changes I’d love to see, based on my experience:
Essences:
Right now, if you spec into Essence nodes, you end up with a ton of essences but not enough white items to use them on—especially for your class. I’d love to see options to improve this. The item-related nodes—like increased rarity and quantity—are good but kind of bland. I’d love to see more interesting nodes, like increased drops of white items that doesn’t take away from other drops, or increased drop rates for items of certain attributes.

A cool idea: a node that gives a small chance for tiered items to tier up one level making more 4-5 tiered items drop when they do drop, with a downside ofc. Or nodes that just make tiered items drop more often—again, with some kind of drawback to balance it. Tiered items are super powerful—especially 5-tier ones, which cull so many bad affixes. I think it’d be awesome if we had ways to chase those more consistently through the Atlas Tree.

Target Farming:
I’ve been using the Essence target-farming node nearly the entire time I’ve been playing, and I’ve only gotten one Greater Essence of each type I’ve targeted—except for Increased Physical. That sucks. I’d rather have certain essences not show up at all, or reduce the total number of essences if it meant I could get the specific greater one I want more often. I’ve run 200 maps probably now maybe I am unlucky but god damn the odds are bad on this and the odds of calling into greater is also bad. Like they are good don’t get me wrong but god damn they don’t help with affix 3-6 anyways why not let me get more. Like when a tier 5 item can drop with such insane rolls why are essence so weak in comparison idk.

This applies to all target farming. I like that the tree now supports it more in the dawn of the hunt, but for me, it’s still not enough. I’d love to see a node that lets you choose one specific type of Wisp or Essence. Yes, that’s powerful, but maybe make it cost four points instead of one. Or make it require significant trade-offs.

Currently, you’ve added a “preliminary” node—the 40% increased chance, that increases the cost to 2 then you unlock the target node itsealf—but what if it just costs more points to get too? I don’t see why such isn’t possible like I feel like it’s not targeting enough.

Ritual Mechanics:
The Ritual system is very hard to understand. I came at it thinking “the more monsters I kill inside the circles, the better,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ve tried stacking Breach and Delirium percentage into Rituals to increase favor, but it feels random whether I actually end up with enough to buy anything regardless.im starting to think that the delirious amount has NO impact on favors which is very uncool.
Sometimes it even feels like doing that hinders Rituals instead. This is due to the fact I get the little bad round delirium mobs to spawn more and they take up my ritual spawns. Should they be tackled on their own instead? I genuinely don’t understand.

The main issue here is that there’s no transparency. What gives more favor? Do rare mobs and magic give more if I kill them in the ring before, thus making them spawn back as rare or magic? Is it just the enemy type that matters? Do map affixes matter? What about atlas passives? Does not deferring lose you the item? If not, when does not deferring lose you the item? It’s hard to say. And without that knowledge, you can’t really make informed choices. If you don’t hit the required favor number, you just don’t get the item anyways. There’s nothing you can do to improve your chances. So the only real optimization comes from prior knowledge—understanding how to maximize favor gain in the first place.

Sometimes all I can do is to defer all the items. If you play enough rituals and get unlucky you will end up with only enough to continue deferring only. Like the atlas nodes want me to have enough to defer for less and then reroll twice like bitch after 3-4 rituals I walk away with under 2000 sometimes I can’t defer then reroll because I won’t be able to defer again. Without more clarity or tools to affect favor income, it just feels bad. Not to mention the costs of rerolling and deferring is quite high to begin with. some items cost like 4000 and a defer for that is 600 like if I had 2000 I defer and what cry:(.

I also find the Ritual Atlas nodes confusing. For example, the one that says “your maps have two more Wildwood monster packs”—is that good? Are those monsters better for Ritual? Do they give more favor? Do they even spawn in the rituals and if they do what if I kill 25 delirium monsters first do I just not get them to respawn into my next rituals? Again, not clear or the other two rely on you getting enough favor to begin with. Like making my rerolling cost less is useful but if I only get 2000 the difference between defer something for 600 then reroll for 750 and 1000 doesn’t really make that big of a difference. Like if I could consistently get 4000-5000 then those numbers start to matter a lot but yeah I have no clue how to begin to get that high.

We need more transparency—maybe even a Ritual tutorial in the campaign. Right now, it’s hard to understand how to manipulate the mechanic for better results in my experience as a new to Poe player.

Jewels & Passive Tree Design:
Let’s talk about time-lost jewels and how they interact with the passive tree. There are fewer jewel sockets overall, and the ones that do exist are often poorly positioned—especially for Witch and Monk builds, where the top-right section of the tree lacks good access to high traffic areas with many notables or small passives in range that are reachable with Time-lost jewels.

That would be fine if we had a system to mess with the sockets more —but currently, we don’t. The flexibility just isn’t there.

What I’d love to see is a more integrated system that combines several ideas:
First, imagine a tree that clusters themed notables (like fire-based nodes or ES-focused nodes) around certain areas with sockets. That would immediately make Time-lost jewel types more viable if sockets were placed around them. Like take the very top of the tree. The three elements all have their own boosting areas now why shouldn’t it be each on has a jewel socket available nearby to put a time lost into. It would be great because you likely want to put several points into the element of you type and the others are not useful to the build likely anyways. Sure many more sockets is a problem but there are many solutions to fix that possible.

Because the sockets would become more powerful and more importantly ,plentiful, for time-lost jewels you would likely have to find a way to limit the sockets. To not repeat season 1. For example allow sockets to be unlocked or added through gameplay—something equivalent to crafting like with the special Vaal orb essences. Maybe you trade off affix space on gear, in exchange for adding a jewel socket point like a charm slot for example. maybe force a certain amount of points to be taken in the area to allow the socket to work like mastery from poe1 sorta. Maybe make them time-lost only sockets with a maximum limit per character like historic. Options are endless but would rather see more agency. Perhaps allowing us as players to dynamically place our OWN sockets to min-max instead of moving where everything is placed on the tree. The point is I want the rarer item to feel stronger than the regular jewels.

Finally, this would allow you to treat this whole system as modular and dynamic. Giving players control over creativity a little more. More options without just like in season one allowing them all to be filled endlessly and abused for stats. Making use of space where players are expected to put many points if their build is a specific way. Like you already have these really cool designs on the edge of the tree for weapon types or minion damages that are designed to look a certain way to match them. Like man let me put a jewel into those areas I already pathed there and WANT to spend a lot of points over there let me as a player get even more out of spending all my points there:/ by searching for a rare item that doubles down and goes with it. Could even have special visuals when a time-lost is socketed in those areas vs when not:/
Could feel a bit more like jewel sockets are poe2’s mastery system. And time losts are the ultimate piece for min-maxing them.

Right now, Time-lost jewels in particular just don’t feel worth it. ideally I want them, as they are quite a bit more rare, to be upgrades to regular jewels in way more circumstances than currently. like it has to roll perfect and match perfect your build is high traffic around the jewel socket. Their bonuses are too narrow, or too weak numerically right now. And the socket nerfed hurt opportunities for them a TON. Increased AoE on notables sounds good—until you realize you’re only getting 2% per node, and you’re only using two nodes total because the area you can place it in is just not accessible enough for your build. Or 3% increased effect of withered. The normal jewel gets up to 10% as a chaos build; there is not a single jewel socket that you can get 4 notables out of to make this actually pop off. Not to mention that effect or withered rounds so 3% is like worthless on its own anyways since it scales based of the original 5% per stack the amount has to reach 20% to even begin to have an effect. Compare that to the Historic jewel from the uber and it’s not close. It restructures the entire section of your tree around it and provides meaningful gains—like chaos resistance whilst getting totem damage or spell damage and flask charm gain. Max Resistances and aliment protection. Those are powerful and they replace what otherwise might have been WORTHLESS for your build nodes anyways making it sometimes worth to travel to it instead. That’s real value.

In general, regular rare jewels feel great when you land 4 good affix’s usually they are better than a notable. That’s strong. But Time-lost are too situational and the number values are too low. Give up an affix to improve the range as well:/ like it’s not even like that will usually mean I get another notable because the tree is already so spread. They just don’t make the cut unless your build uses literally ALL stats and you can just grab anything and everything in their range which I haven’t seen a build that does.

One last request:
It would be great if our character stats page could reflect Atlas stats as well—like current increased chance to spawn wisps, or pack size increase. I know I can do the math, but the game already calculates it—it’s just hidden. Exposing those stats in the UI would go a long way in helping players understand how their Atlas Tree choices are actually affecting the game. Because they can see the numbers and relate them to the feelings. I know you can press tab and click the drop down but intentionally unless the waystone or towers also increase it the atlas specific increases remain hidden. I find this annoying and wish the ui just had a slot for atlas bonuses somewhere so that you could just pan to it read oh yeah 15% pack size and be like has that felt good for my loot in the last x maps. Yeah ok I keep it.