Anyone still play Path of Exile? Thoughts on the Expansion/Beta?

Often feels like its keeping me in through Stockholm Syndrome

I'll be playin when this new patch will come out, now it's pointless to play.

Expansion looks great- best feature is the supposed desync solution. Get rid of that and I won't ever touch D3 again.

Never really had a problem with desync. Maybe it's because I only stick to softcore and don't bother playing past level ~75-85?

The main reason I don't play PoE all the time is that I run out of builds to play. Not that I haven't played all the builds, it's just that a lot of them bore me, and some of the fun ones require a lot of grinding that I don't have the time or patience for. Plus since I drop my builds so quickly (I usually don't even bother going past level 73 maps) I end up burning through a lot of characters and waiting for new content patches. I've come back for every patch so far and the new one will be no exception

No idea what I'll be playing yet, though.

I don't know what you mean about "running out of builds to play". Path has a nearly endless number of characters that can pretty easily level to the mid-70's. I'll agree that most of the "good ones" are boring as piss (Arc is the worst offender here, probably followed by Tornado Shot), but a lot of fun ones are cheap (not every "fun build" uses Mjolner)

For example, I'm currently leveling a staff Marauder using Pillar of the Caged God along with massive +stat gear (Meginord's Vise and Astramentis, mainly). Then I'm using flat phys gear (Abyssus), since it scales so absurdly with 500 strength and Pillar. Finally, for extra style points, I'm stacking +charges on the tree, using The Blood Dance boots corrupted with +1 Frenzy Charge, and Power Charge on Critical Strike on my main attack... all so that my Cast on Melee Kill + Discharge can go off for piles of damage.

Currenly in A3 Merc.

This isn't even a "build"- this is a pile of random crap I thought would be hilarious. If I want to hit 100, sure- I'll need to make changes. Pillar turns into Hegemony's Era, I drop Cast on Melee Kill, my points in +Charge nodes go into life/damage nodes. But right now what I'm doing is hilarious, and I'm killing things at a pretty decent clip (main attack does 4k dps, Discharge is nearly 6k).

This is why I like Path more than D3.

Oh, PS- if you ever want some gear to test with, let me know, I'm happy to loan you stuff. No Windripper/Mjolner/Shav's yet, but closing in on that level.

Oh believe me, I know. I must have made 50+ characters by now (went over the max char limit long long ago, kept deleting old ones). PoE has terrific build diversity, but you get to a point where you don't want to play through the same content with the same skills, even if your passive tree and gear are different every time. I hit that point with every season eventually and then wait for the next patch.

My last build was a simple Detonate Dead prolif, but the one before that was a CoMK Arc Hyaon's Fury (3% increased Damage taken/12% increased Lightning Damage/+20 Life gained on Kill per Frenzy Charge)  Static Striker with corrupted Darkray Vector boots (+2 frenzy charges, +3% dodge per Frenzy charge) and a corrupted rare amulet for a total of 10 frenzy charges, running Bloodrage to generate charges and HoT for more lightning. My life pool was bouncing up and down as I cleared maps spitting lightning everywhere, it was great.

I like weird builds like that. Sounds fun.

To me, Path is only boring because it has that archaic "three difficulties" thing. If all the content was stuffed into a single difficulty (with maybe a second difficulty for "end-game" and maps), it'd be way less irritating. Slogging through the same boring low-level areas is what's lame, not the lack of character differences.

I always find it funny to me because a lot of ppl talking about "im not doing maps 75+" or "i usually end with champs on lvl 80" and i always can't get pass lvl 55-60 (is super max for me) because i always hit a wall where i just can't farm certain zones (for better drops) and i deal to low dmg and have to low survi that i dont get pass a certain bosses (like Piety on cruel or Dominius) that i've alwys had to ask for help. Im trying to follow some builds on poe forum and still can't get "the stuff". I pay attention for items or gems in those guide that are super rare or u need "6L this and 4L this" for this biuld to work or require a high amount of currency to reroll items that are "essential" for build.

Do you only play self-found, hellgrind? the website poe.trade is immensely helpful, as there is an absurd amount of very good gear you can buy for one chaos orb or less. I've geared characters entirely with items bought for 1c or less!

Self-found in Path is nearly impossible and I don't recommend it. Get familiar with poe.trade, Procurement, and trade chat, and you'll save yourself a LOT of time and headache- and get some cool items!

The new patch looks good , if they can really fix desync maybe ill play more than i did before.