KeepingItSortaGucci Private League

Since the dream of a Phrecia holiday league is more than dead, I decided I wanted a private league to kill some time now that the family portion of the holidays are over. I figured we would go with a different set up just to keep things interesting and settled on a (mostly) Gucci set up. For those unfamiliar, a Gucci league is one where you have UNIQUE ITEMS ONLY(mostly). It's a minor challenge set up to test what you can come up with based on the items the game decides to bless you(or maybe someone else) with.

https://www.pathofexile.com/private-leagues/league/KeepingItSortaGucci

That said, I figured folks would be more likely to wanna give it a shot with some less restrictive "rules", so the league set up as I see it in my head is this.

- The only added modifier on league creation is "No magic or rare items drop"
- As stated you have to use uniques in all slots, but we're going to add a couple of exceptions. Most importantly will be you can use ONE rare weapon or gear item. Use it because you need a mod, for damage, for easier links, movespeed, whatever you want. But know that people will respect you more if you don't
- You can use magic items. If you wanna look poor and sacrifice by wearing a blue items, you can. This also solves a couple of other issues, as you get full access to flasks, and at least partial access to jewels and cluster jewels. I know some leagues have done clusters can be full rares and others don't, so this splits the middle there.
- Edited note: someone brought up Grafts to me, and how them being yellow would potentially be good for the economy of generating more blood for more foulborn uniques, so rare Grafts are on the menu with no restrictions.

I don't have much else to say set up wise. It'll start later tonight, roughly three hours from posting. Anyone who wants even more respect from strangers on the internet can use this randomizer wheel to pick their class for them https://wheelofnames.com/zvf-yrw . One step above that would be to pick a skill that falls under 1% usage on PoENinja.

The league is funded for 30 players+20 days to start, if it looks like we need more we will open it up. Created a discord if people wanna use it to organize what they want others to keep an eye out for https://discord.gg/3qu99Tu5 . And then lets go with Global 1967 for chat. If folks want any adjustments to the ruleset we can chat about it here, or on discord, or just play it and mostly follow it since you're an adult playing a video game.

https://redd.it/1px6v16
@GGPoE

Just how rare is Mageblood?

When I first started playing PoE however many years ago, I had no idea what I was doing and I heard people talk about uniques and just didn't really think about them. I heard a lot of buzz about Mageblood but never really thought it sounded very good. As I learned the game more I understood just how ridiculous it is, but how rare exactly is it?

I've never been rich enough to afford it in a league (and combining all my leagues so far, still not rich enough to buy it off-league) but just as a game loop stand-point, is it worth trying to get it to drop or is it better to do something that makes me money (even if it's slowly) and repeat ad infinitum until I can afford it. I'm still not exactly the best at this game skill wise, or knowledge wise but I can make anywhere from 20-40 chaos per map with harvests, essences and incursions and such.

Is it worth doing activities like getting the Apex of Ascension in temples or getting ancient wombgifts with belt specialising to aim for the mageblood drop? Or should I just earn the 30 or so chaos per map for the 600 something maps until I can afford it? People with magebloods, how did you get your first? And just how much difference did it make to your gameplay (if you use it, and if you don't, why not?).

https://redd.it/1px7kbg
@GGPoE

Improving/Optimizing PhysDoT Herald Elementalist

https://poe.ninja/poe1/pob/853a0

Looking for ways to improve this build for potentially handling Ubers and finishing out challenges efficiently.

Current upgrades that are pricey but in-mind:
Getting FF jewel combos and swapping to Lycia Herald node
Mirrored Life/Gem Level/Ailment amulet (Using Ashes because I missed the last attempt)
Getting 3 great node Megalomaniac Jewels

Are there any other suggestions for improving this beyond what I have? Am I missing anything obvious?

https://redd.it/1pxbf5c
@GGPoE

Tanking Uber Maven Brain Bomb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dWWosV8CrU

https://redd.it/1pxd37o
@GGPoE

How I made money in keepers

Now that the league is pretty dead I will share how I made some of my money (1 mirror ± 1.5 in gear). I stumbled into this and wanted to share for people who struggle to earn currency. Basically the strat is fracturing high value items for popular builds. I will give my best 2 examples.

1. The main one I found due to my build (POEGuy shrapnel ballista str stacker). I was buying ilvl 84+ penetrating arrow quivers with bow attacks fire an additional arrow already on and annul/crafting them to 4 mods and fracturing. Bases were 50-100c and fracture were anywhere from 2-4 divs and the resulting hits (fractured bow attacks fire additional arrows) sold for 18-30 divs based on level of crafting done after fracture. I was averaging 1.5/4 hits over the league and made several hundred divines off these.

2. The second item had slightly less profit due to more expensive bases but this was minions are aggressive fractured convoking wands. Bases ran 3‐5divs and fractures were 2-4divs with resulting hits selling for 25± divines uncrafted.

I'm sure there are many more items like this but I was barely crafting my hits and making 10-20divs profit on sales per item. It's super uninvolved and doesn't take too much currency to start. I usually saved and crafted in batches of 4-8. You can hit unusually unlucky streaks so I would supplement this on top of a farming method. My worst dry streak was 24 misses in a row but I hit a few jackpots in ritual/ultimatum.

Feel free to ask any questions or provide feedback! Thank you exiles and good luck next league!

Edited to eliminate confusing wording.

https://redd.it/1pxfmfu
@GGPoE

Loot from 10 Rain of Chaos sets.
https://redd.it/1pxhop4
@GGPoE

Questions Thread - December 28, 2025

This is a general question thread. You can find the previous question threads here.

Remember to check the community wiki first.

You can also ask questions in any of the questions channels under the "help" category in our official Discord.

For other discussions, please find the Megathread Directory at this link.

The idea is for anyone to be able to ask anything related to PoE 1:

New player questions
Mechanics
Build Advice - please include a link to your [Path of Building](https://pathofbuilding.community/)
League related questions
Trading
Endgame
Price checks
Etc.

For questions related to PoE 2, please go to r/PathOfExile2

No question is too big or too small!

We encourage experienced players to sort this thread by new.

We'd like to thank those who answered questions in the last thread! You guys are the best.

https://redd.it/1pxit3g
@GGPoE

Tanky, all-rounder under 100 divs?

Hi folks,

I've been playing exsanguinate / reap miner trickster from fearlessdumb0. So far it's a really good mapper and single target damage feels good, though pob says it's less than 30m. But... it feels squish against t17 bosses. I often get one-shotted and I die at least 3 times for any bosses.


Do you have any suggestions for tanky, sort of all-rounder under 100 divs? Any input will be much appreciated. Thanks!

https://redd.it/1pxjq1r
@GGPoE

Hard Drive = BOOM! So here's my findings from 5000+ Uber Shaper

Since my hard drive broke down and I feel like I wont be able get to my goal of finishing 10,000 Uber Shaper runs in one league. Here's my drops from 5410 runs.

Uber Shaper | 5410 | %
-----------|----|----
Sublime Vision | 98 | 1.81%
Starforge | 92 | 1.70%
Orb of Dominance | 165 | 3.05%
Cosmic Key | 58 | 1.07%

Builds I used that I farmed Uber Shaper with.


1. First 1-400 was done with a Kinetic Fusillade Elementalist with "budget" gear: https://pobb.in/gfi7NDe0Seq

1. Runs 401 to 1800 was done with a Icicle Mine of Fanning Occultist also with budget gear but I decided to stack ES and add Vaal Arctic Armour for the Bullet Hell Phase: https://pobb.in/iP22mUTZQ2vl

1. Lastly, I just saved up for a vanilla Armour Stacker from the the last 1200 runs and all of my extra currency I make is to farm more runs and also to save up for standard since I only have 1 character there-which is from my first league(TotA) because I've voided others from Affliction - Mercenaries: https://pobb.in/7q91utrDjZLW

Note #1: I started farming Uber Shaper at around 18th of November and sorry for having no currency breakdown as I don't really care that much currency I make but I consistently overpayed for the frags(30-34c) as I hate downtime.

Note #2: Most of the gold i made is from VertolkaExiled guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPl9NWITDg&t=117s. But I payed for gold runs before they were 10d+

Note #3: I farmed my initial currency by selling Alva Temples + Selling Blueprints/Deception Contracts + Selling Exarch Invitations. I made them on the T16 Beach Map to save up for my MB + Gear for my budget Kinetic Fusillade Elementalist. This is how I farmed because I'm bad, my build is bad and I was busy with univ.

https://redd.it/1pxmh1l
@GGPoE

First time I got a Mirror Shard from a Harbinger

https://preview.redd.it/dx2aaustdx9g1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=15a64a75c7a12a361530907c34ff1cae0a65bb9c

My main farm this patch is harbinger+beyond, but focused on scarabs. After hundreds of maps, it's the first time I got a mirror shard from a harbinger.

https://redd.it/1pxooqt
@GGPoE

What are your expectations, wishes, hopes and all going into 3.28?

Hey everyone, happy holiday season.

Just wanted to see what are people's hopes & expectations in the upcoming league, I think it's confirmed some ground loot and endgame changes are planned for 3.28 but I am curious what exactly are people expecting, what is your "make it or break its"?

I personally would love to see some new chase uniques being added to the game and honestly some rewarding league mechanic aswell.

https://redd.it/1pxrymt
@GGPoE

It finally happened after 11k+ hours....
https://redd.it/1pxtbt3
@GGPoE

First League to reach lvl 100

Been playing since Synthesis league and on and off some leagues. And big thanks to Async being a thing, i managed to more easily make currency. Usually got stuck around lvl 94 with 1-10 divine builds. But this league i managed to reach lvl 100 for the first time and bought my first mageblood!!! :D


Just wanted to share my success story even though people say this was a poor league, can't imagine making alot during a juiced league!

https://redd.it/1pxsrg8
@GGPoE

100 Uber Exarch Results

100x Uber Exarch - 90d Investment

Runs:

Total runs: 100
Cost per run: 135c (27c per frag)
Time per run: 30 sec
Total time: 50 minutes

Loot Breakdown:

5x Forbidden Jewels (unID): 120d
14x Exceptional Ember: 7.5d
9x Eldritch Exalts: 90c
2x Eldritch Chaos: 60c
2x Eldritch Annuls: 50c
1x Archive Reliquary Key: 2d
1x Celestial Brace: 2d
24x Boots: 14.4d
32x Omni (not counted)
43x Staves (not counted)
2x Curio: 90c

Final Results:

Total Revenue: 148d
Total Profit: 58d
Profit per hour: 69d/hr

Just a little experiment since the price of fragments seemed very low.

I wouldn't pay too much attention about the div/hr unless you run a much bigger sample size, since it varies a lot with a single additional jewel drop.
Also i was taking 30s counting the drops but it can definitely be done faster.

Judging by the wiki drop rates, this looks average.
Obviously the sample size is quite small, but i think 5 jewels is what you can expect.
Which is very lucrative with these prices.

Buying the fragments was quite easy overnight with a buy order
The loot is also quite easy to liquidate since i'm dusting the boots and everything else sells fast, even faster if you gamble the jewels xD

Loot



https://redd.it/1pxs9dj
@GGPoE

Assassin's "Deathmarked" node is actually good and some people have miss-understood it

This is a write up of why the Assassin's "Deathmarked" ascendancy node is actually strong, perhaps a B-A tier choice (not over-powered) and how the current perception of what it does has left it under-appreciated. I don't expect some people to fully agree with this post, but as someone who has played this skill, I hope I can give people ideas on how to use this in the future. I also want to give a post for future players to read, since there has been little positive discussion in the community about this node.

TLDR:

It’s a mapping node, aimed to replace mark on hit support and enables 100% uptime of marks on every rare
This gives a massive real-world damage up time increase vs mark on hit, which cannot be shown on paper
You then also get a bunch of passive benefits like life on kill, ignoring some map/monster mods, more effect and no mana cost
Some mark masteries/wheels become really strong and have nearly 100% up time
People have under-valued the damage which you get from essentially getting to spam your mark skill on every rare

https://preview.redd.it/38efv58nsz9g1.png?width=722&format=png&auto=webp&s=17260b13234efbf58d484317c0477da7deb6449a

Deathmark is for mapping

Deathmarked's power is in its mapping impact not in bossing power. This is because it gives a minimal impact to crit multi and if you are bossing, it would be optimal to manually cast the skill (the cannot evade attacks line will be discussed later). Therefore, from here on out I will only discuss mapping. If you are mapping then you have three options on how to apply this mark:

1. Manually cast the mark against every tanky rare
2. Use mark on hit support to passively apply the mark
3. Use Deathmarked

Option 1 is very in-efficient for mapping. Rares are not easy to spot all the time and sometimes you only realise a rare is very tanky once you have started fighting it. You then have to stop attacking and apply the mark. Worse case this can get you killed, best case your mapping speed (and therefore damage up time) is reduced.

Option 2 is ok, but is actually quite janky and I want to discuss this in detail. Mark on hit has a 4sec cooldown: this is a very big deal. It also has 16% less mark effect at 20/20. When you are mapping and you have to kill multiple rares over and over again, trying to have your mark applied at the right time is simply unrealistic. What will end up happening is that you apply the mark to a rare which dies quick, then you have a 4sec cooldown in which time you could face a tanky rare without this extra damage. This is something POB cannot show you, but in reality, mark on hit has a notably large impact to your damage up time of the mark during mapping.

This leads us into Option 3, in which I will discuss why Deathmark can be very good.

The layers of power from Deathmark

Deathmark gives multiple layers of power, which when combined, provides a big real-world impact to damage in maps.

Auto triggered like mark on hit, but without the cooldown giving near 100% up time
Avoids the 16% less mark effect and gives an extra 10% crit multi over level 20: this equates to +18% crit multi vs a 20/20 mark on hit.
Gives 832 life on kill (vs 600 at lvl20). But, since the mark is being constantly triggered against all rares, this life on kill becomes a real recovery stat which rivals the trickster's "Polymath" life on kill benefits. It also gives mana on kill.
Has no mana cost allowing for very low/zero mana builds to use it
The "cannot evade" line gives protection against map and archnemesis mods, as well as supplementing any missing accuracy that you have
Free's up 1-3 gem slots (the mark on its own, vs mark on hit + enhance)
Mark wheels become powerful choices now that we essentially have 100% mark up time. Before mark effects or mark notables could be used to inflate DPS numbers, given the fact their real world up time was low (4sec cooldown with mark on hit). Now they are 100% real and provide big benefits. Mark

masteries can also be reliably used in maps. Frenzy charge generation, crit immunity and monster regen prevention are all benefits which you can reasonably rely on.

The biggest benefit is the damage up time here which POB cannot display. Having no cooldown between triggers vs a 4sec cooldown is night and day in maps. In addition to this damage bonus, you get the other bullets I mentioned, which further provide incremental damage and damage up time bonuses. All adding up to a big QOL and damage reliability improvement, which cannot be shown on paper.

Miss-conceptions about its downsides

"The single target damage bonus is minimal" - This skill is designed to improve your mapping speed and real-world damage; it will not give much value against bosses or in extended fights.
"Level 30 gives you basically no extra damage vs level 20" - True. But as discussed, the value of this node is in its real-world damage uptime in maps and lack of a cooldown. Translating to your mapping DPS being significantly more reliable and thus higher in practice. On paper you cannot show this.
"You need to crit to apply it, this is bad" - If you are using Assassin's mark you are already a crit build, you have already passed through the "Unstable Infusion" node to get here, giving you 4 power charges (default 3 +1). You probably also have a high attack speed, as its natural for Assassin's to do so. It’s not like you have no crit and applying this skill is hard.
"The cannot evade line is unreliable" - GGG did not design this so that you run around with 50% accuracy, but against rares you have 100%. This line is not a primary benefit to be built around (it could be though), but a QOL feature giving passive value against map mods, rare mods and other active downsides in game.

Don't get me wrong there are downsides to this node, but this is the case with nearly all ascendancies in POE. Overall, the value which you get from this node makes it a B-A tier node for mapping.

Summary

Deathmarked is designed for mapping not bossing and it competes against mark on hit support or manually casting the mark. The auto application on crit which this skill provides, coupled with the lack of a cooldown (vs mark on hit support; 4sec), provides a significant and very real damage increases in the form of damage up time in maps. This node also provides multiple passives benefits which layer together to form a strong overall package. The criticisms of the skill have focussed the lack of raw additional damage and its passive benefits being the main star. These critiques are somewhat valid, but miss-understand the true value which you get out of Deathmark.

https://redd.it/1pxzibj
@GGPoE

PoE is far more fun than any other ARPG.

I think the 40/40 challenges can actually make someone who isn’t interested in PoE endgame want to play it. I’m basically a case study for this.

I completed all 40 challenges and, honestly, I fell in love with the Blight mechanic. I love how extremely craft driven the game is when it comes to builds and player choice, especially through the Atlas.

Try this: pick the node that makes rogue exiles possessed from the start, then add the node that gives five rare mobs possession in the instance. Oh boy… that map becomes absolutely hilarious. Those five-mod, tormented rares clap cheeks 😭

Anyway, I went back to PoE 2, and the endgame feels very plain right now. It’s missing a soul. Maybe we’ll get there by version 1.0.0, but I’m honestly shocked by how fun the Blight mechanic was in comparison. GGG did a great job introducing older league mechanics and making them feel engaging again with 40/40 challenges.

https://redd.it/1py6dfd
@GGPoE

x6 50M shipments Standard + Keepers

First time interacting with shipments. Was playing standard during settlers and I just put gold in for farmers/disenchant and forget about it. I bought 24M worth of dust on keepers to send x3 ships (rest was obtained throughout the league).

std
setup
ship1
ship2
ship3
$$

keepers (missing shipment 2&3, forgot to screenshot)
setup
ship1
$$

TL:DR

standard x15 mirror shards 23divs 12 sacred 16 exalteds 1 block tattoo

keepers x7 mirror shards 26divs 11 sacred 21 exalteds 3 block tattoo

0 herald tattoo ;)

https://redd.it/1py5ow4
@GGPoE

I clearly don’t know what I’m doing
https://redd.it/1pyaw88
@GGPoE

Questions Thread - December 29, 2025

This is a general question thread. You can find the previous question threads here.

Remember to check the community wiki first.

You can also ask questions in any of the questions channels under the "help" category in our official Discord.

For other discussions, please find the Megathread Directory at this link.

The idea is for anyone to be able to ask anything related to PoE 1:

New player questions
Mechanics
Build Advice - please include a link to your [Path of Building](https://pathofbuilding.community/)
League related questions
Trading
Endgame
Price checks
Etc.

For questions related to PoE 2, please go to r/PathOfExile2

No question is too big or too small!

We encourage experienced players to sort this thread by new.

We'd like to thank those who answered questions in the last thread! You guys are the best.

https://redd.it/1pyd8yj
@GGPoE