Endgame Mapping Feedback

I'm just stating the process of end game either for feedback or for others to fully understand endgame and the issues/non issues. And I have about 2-4 hours of gameplay a night so I am at/above the average player (not average hardcore POE player) with play time and accessibility. If I'm missing anything, you're more than welcome to correct or add.

Right now, the reward for running T15's with basic tower juicing is OK, currency wise, to grind through and you will get decent endgame gear. With the right rarity on your build you will see decent iLvl 80/81 gear. End game you want to be running T16 with +2 to maps for the very end game drops.

+1 is easy enough, its a precursor or atlas boss passive +1 to area with a boss on the map point. The other +1 is from cleansed corruption. I've seen maybe 1 per corrupted area on average that has the +1 to monster level. This is theoretically T18 maps with both +1's.

T16's are like 20% chance to corrupt through T15 waystones. Given they are being corrupted, you might lose some T16 waystones to bad modifiers. This is Ok, fine, but sucks if you run a bunch of waystones since like 80-90% of your corrupted T15's will be decent T16 waystones.

Are you making the multi divines an hour? Probably not, but you will have fun mapping, make some currency and get items to get stronger eventually. This is where the average player coming home from work and has an hour or two of gameplay sits at. Roll some T15's, travel the atlas map and pray for a good drop. You will get burnt out and be disappointed though because you aren't making a lot, and you will probably go 20 maps with junk drops. Maybe find a raw divine in 10-20 waystones.

*** Right now there is zero upside of rolling waystones past max prefixes and no suffixes. So you only need to theoretically only omen on prefixes for the waystones and there is zero upside of juicing that waystone past that point with suffixes. **** Actually not factually true, see below posts that explain. Thanks Feather and LeFlesh****

The prep grind really sucks if you want to do anything past T15 waystones though, and its already a lot to prep grind the T15's. It's a huge time sink to roll 50-100 white T15 waystones, buy all the omens, sort, ect. It takes me about an hour to get them all rolled and sorted for 100 waystones. Out of those 100 waystones I have maybe 10+ that have quantity/rarity which is what I am looking for ideally, and a bunch of travel waystones with just rarity or something else. Then I sort through my dropped waystones for anything good, sell anything with temporal/ignited for gold. And then corrupt any T15's that aren't useful for exp/quant/rarity for T16 chances. That gives me maybe 1-3 good T16's with max prefix/low suffix.

Any other bonuses/juicing to drops are directly through quant/rarity you juice through towers and cleansed bonuses.

Tablet drops feel really low, and a lot harder to buy/roll through TFT or the trade site. The last set of precursors I rolled was a batch of 20 tablets and I ended up with 2 that had quantity, and I was reforging them. The others really depend on what you are farming and want out of the tablets. But a full stash tab of tablets all random turns into maybe 10-15 of usable but kinds Meh tablets. Maybe get 1-2 good ones.

Now, all of that said, this is a massive undertaking for an average player that comes home from work and wants to just blow some steam off playing a game and having fun. This is a TON of work to play something for enjoyment. And no I am not saying the fix is to make the very end game more accessible.

Even grasping the understanding of all of this and why is a massive undertaking. And it's not something you can have someone figure out, template out and say just plug this stuff into your towers and it will work to 95%. A lot of it is reactionary to your towers/maps that get uncovered on the atlas. I feel like I'm problem solving all the time like I'm trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle that's missing pieces. Not having 3+ towers in range really affects the drop outcome on maps, and the time spend to find those tower nodes takes a long time of nothing. If I'm going out 10+ maps and still don't see something worthwhile I'll stop playing and go do something else.

I jumped into settlers/phrecia where the end game was T17 map farming and that was way more accessible to do than any of this. At least someone was able to tell you "throw in these scarabs and a T17 map and you will get divines dropping" and "here is a build that can reliably clear T17's"

Overall I think the atlas map system is pretty fun/interesting. But there has to be an easier system for all of this to get people to a midpoint of having fun mapping and feeling fulfilled with the option to go further/juice harder to get that very end game stuff.

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Right now there is zero upside of rolling waystones past max prefixes and no suffixes.

This is factually untrue; there is a corruption outcome that converts all suffixes to prefixes. On a 6 mod waystone that results in 6 prefixes. On a 4-5 mod waystone that results in 4-5 prefixes.

The best corrupted T15 waystones in the game have 6 useful prefixes. If you aren't interested in experience or item level 83/84 bases (these are true for me as I play SSF and have levelled as far as I care to already), these are technically more rewarding than T16 waystones.

Also, in SSF where buying waystones isn't an option, extra suffixes for more waystone drops means you get a better selection of quant and rarity mod waystones to start your crafts.

As well as what the user below said. More modifiers on the waystone means more prefix effect via the atlas tree.

There are atlas nodes that amplify waystone affixes based on how many modifiers are on it. Max prefix+suffix stones will get the largest boost from such effects.

Thank you, both of these replies are correct. You can juice past the max prefixes for an extra 12-16% juice (2% per explicit modifier). Forgot about that atlas point.

So you do want to max out prefix/suffix if you want to max drops.

And because now you "want" to be maxing out explicit modifiers on your waystones for that 12+% amount of juice, you will have to now corrupt all waystones. And now you are throwing away another large chunk of wasted maps that might be unplayable or just too hard to actually run due to the corruption.

Its just a ton of effort.