pal Moana Exiles, welcome to a very special Path of Exile 1 video. I had the pleasure of remaining off the grid for the first 3 days of Settlers of Kelgar League. However, I broke the beautiful respite to survey the battleground of the pee community in the immediate aftermath of 3.25 groundbreaking launch on July 26th, 2024. This analysis of the present-day pee World includes the meta report, public reception Reddit versus YouTube versus Twitch, the great, The Good, the meh, the ugly, future reports, and a day three report conclusion. Exiles, I know you want to get into this initial installment of the state of rake last so let's delve right in. Subscribe for future reports and hit the like button if you think this is sad, silly, Rad, or compelling. My fellow Exiles, there has been some breaking news, so I am going to interrupt this report. This is recorded far after I recorded the rest of the report, so basically everything in it still stands, but I have to address this right away.

there was a big divination card abuse case exploit mechanic that wasn't properly tested because it's very hard to test all the mechanics in Path of Exile with these tremendous updates. Essentially, it allowed one primary group to completely blow up the league economy on day three. These people were able to farm dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of divine orbs, get mirrors, Mage Bloods, and all the like. It has caused an unprecedented soaring of the economy. Inflation is at an all-time high. This sounds like an actual news report right now, but it's about the same as last league with necropolis on day three. Now I'm getting it right here. These people have been banned, the top abusers from the game, probably for this exploit, although that's not exactly clear right now. The story is still developing, but as you can see, everything's prices has gone up. It ENT what had to do with divination cards and this scrying mechanic with the nameless sear. People were able to force the brother's gift to spawn on tier one maps.

and they were able to get loot explosions of the brother's gift, which gives you a set of divine orbs. They were able to get, you know, 100 plus Divine orbs per map, which is absolutely insane. We're not quite sure if Grinding Gear Games will do anything about this. We do know that the people have been banned once again who were primarily abusing this mechanic. We don't know if it's because of the abuse or some other case right now. Like I said, the story is still developing, but for now, this exploit or abuse case is gone. I will repeat, while the story is developing and even in the future, there's no hate needed for Grinding Gear Games or even the abusers in this scenario. Remember, Path of Exile is a game, and even though this is greatly going to affect the rest of us, just debate it, just critique it, talk about it, no need to make hate threads or hate bomb them or anything else, okay, remain civil, all is well. Hopefully the economy will recover, it probably will.

a few days' time, but for now inflation is at an all-time high. I'm not sure if Grinding Gear Games will do anything once New Zealanders wake up. Stuff has already been hotfixed, but I don't know if there will be any greater repercussions. That's about it to the story. Divination cards are strong abuse cases early on do happen in these tremendously game-changing leagues. Let's get back to the rest of the state of Rayclast. I thank you for listening to this breaking news report, Exiles. We move to the meta report, which is looking at the state of Path of Exile and its meta 3 days into the league. We know this league was supposed to be the melee League. Melee skills received a bunch of changes, as did weapons and a plethora of other systems, including defenses. Did this work? Are the players actually playing melee? Well, we're going to move over to our first-party source, which is PoE Ninja. It scrapes a bunch of Path of Exile characters.

and conglomerates them into one area where you can see exactly what is happening with character builds, item progression, Atlas progression, and the like. At the very top of the ascendancies right now, as you can see, is the Slayer. And of course, most of the Slayer builds are in fact melee. Then we have hant, which is a historically safe League starter choice that spell-based casting. That's normal. And then we have the Gladiator at 12% of players who are on Peewee ninja. They have picked this ascendency, and a lot of them, almost all of them, are going melee. Then we have the trickster at 12%, the deadeye at 8%, and the warden at 6%. Most of these builds, everyone, are melee builds. I see that as a success. This is quite a diverse pool on day three of the league. The biggest two losers right now appear to be the sabur and the guardian, even though the guardian has a few pretty strong builds, and the sabat tour is the master of

traps. Most people have bought into the melee hype, and it seems to be going well, at least when we look at the stats. Themselves, we'll talk about the actual Community reception in good time. Next, let's look at the most popular skill of the league, and that is lightning strike. This skill is attached to both the Slayer and the warden, and a slew of other ascendancies, including the Dead Eye, the champion, and the trickster. Lightning strike received Buffs, even though it was already strong leagues before, and one of the biggest lightning strike creators, locol, is having one of his best leagues ever. Very happy for him. Tinctures are busted on this build. If you want to check out some expert lightning strike advice, I'll link his channel below. Number two and number three are both spells, ice Nova, frost bolts, and hex blast, but almost everything else on that list, except for power siphon, poisonous concoction, and righteous Fire, that's melee. Lots of people are going melee. You can see that.

this is the bulk of the builds in Path of Exile in the first 3 days of the league so far. That is phenomenal to see. We can also see this in the weapon get up of characters that are on peeee ninja. Looking at this list right here, you can see wand and shield and then Bower at the top, and then the rest are just a combination of melee-based weapons. I never thought I would live to see the day. Let's quickly check in on two non-character or skill-based things, and those are the bandits which received a huge overhaul this season. We know in past leagues almost 99% of players chose arir, which was two passive skill points. Before now it's only one, and it looks like the split is much better. Arir is still at the top, closely followed by Aira, then oak, then kryon. That is a much more even split than before, and that is wonderful to see some diversity in the picks there. I do imagine as the league drags on, people

will realize that Oak, which is Plus maximum life right now, is a bit of a bait option because life is so available on gear, and even the tree. Now let's move on over to the atlas node popularity, and we can see at the top, almost everybody is taking those Atlas progression nodes, the shaping nodes, which are helping with map drops and the like. Then we can see very quickly, people are also speccing into KY nodes to get a lot of those reports, and below that, a really big batch of other strategies that people are pursuing. There's not a lot of diversity in the atlas in the first 3 days of the League. This is something for future reports that we really can dive into and observe. So, by the stats on peee ninja, that is the meta report so far. Looking at it, it does seem like Melee is doing well. It seems like a lot of people are playing melee scales. They probably are powerful. They probably are having a good reception. But let's actually go ahead and find out from the community.

Community itself. This is the testimonial part of the report. Everyone, the state of Rayclast is strong right now, and many people are enjoying melee. Well, not the people at the top. Lots of people at the top believe that melee still isn't in the greatest spot, and while lower pans like me are enjoying melee to a great degree, people who push t7s and Ubers on day one and day two still think melee could use some buffs. And this comes to a breaking point, everyone, because we need to understand that melee, the fact that it's reaching t7s and Ubers on day two, that is an absolute gift we have to be happy about. That is a success. And the fact that so many people are just trying out melee for the first time and enjoying it is a testament to Grinding Gear Games and their success on these melee-based buffs. It's a combination of many different factors here causing this tremendous success. It's the addition of retaliation skills and them basically

replacing totems. It's the way that banners work and how they don't actually die like old totems used to. It's the buffing of weapons. It's the buffing of power on the tree. It's the buffing of the numbers on the gems themselves. All of this is leading melee players to have a smoother level experience than ever before and a smoother progression through endgame. Remember, lots of power from melee skills still comes from the items themselves. Unlike spell-based builds where a lot of that power is still derived from the gem, more of the power from melee builds is now on the gem than before, but not all of the power. We still need to upgrade our gear. It takes a little bit longer than spell-based builds and other builds to really get in that amazing spot for t7s and Ubers. And I don't know about you, but killing Ubers, killing t17 Maps is a weak two, three, four, five goal for myself. I'm not necessarily in the camp where I'm killing Uber and t7s on Days 1 and two.

and just because you can't comfortably do it on a melee build on a fresh build that you just theorycrafted and didn't actually hone throughout the course of a league, the fact that you can even attempt those and do those and progress to those is a success for melee. So I think the state of melee in Path of Exile is strong, and most players in the public seem to agree with me. Reading Twitch chat, I checked out Reddit, that seems to be going well too. Looking at YouTube comments, reading Twitter threads, and the like, everyone seems to be very happy with it, except people who have blasted to the top in the span of a day or two. And even some of those people do think melee is strong. Moving on from melee, let's take a look at the state of how people are actually enjoying the league. I put up two polls, one on Twitter and one on YouTube, and I gave people a few options where they could decide whether they thought this was the best league ever, a good league, a great league, an

okay League a bad League the worst League ever or you know maybe they haven't played it yet and they want to give their opinions below well I can safely report that people do think the majority of people think that this is the best Path of Exile League of all time and some people some of these polls I mean nobody's even saying it's a bad League or the worst League usually you have some memesters voting in the poll no they want to make their voice known they want to make sure G understands that this is a banger League they enjoy it and they want more of these in the future the public reception to this Path of Exile league has been tremendously positive and we can even see that in the steam player charts this was a record-breaking league for Path of Exile which reached almost 229,000 concurrent players on launch day and even on day two on Sunday there were over 200,000 people playing how Wild is that and then earlier today grinding your games released the statistic saying

that this was the most popular League of all time. It broke their concurrent player record. Phenomenal congratulations to GGG. And this is a perfect lead-up to the release of Path of Exile 2 later this year. Good work. Moving on from public reception and just looking at the various aspects of the league and how people are thinking about them right now, including myself. We're looking at the great first and we're going to start with the league mechanic, the Kings March mechanic, and building up the town is almost entirely positively received. Whether it's the Currency Exchange Market, whether it's respecing with gold, whether it's actually managing the town's people and having boats go out on shipments and returning with inventories of items, almost everything is pristine with this mechanic. Even the UI is well-designed and understandable to most people. Some are still confused, especially those who haven't played a game like this before, but it's easily explainable by other players, and you're seeing that in the popularity of some of these League start explanation videos.

from the likes of Ziggy D. In addition, we've already gone over the melee changes. Those are great. In addition, the pickup range change is also phenomenal. People are loving that. Everything to do with the big sweeping changes this league have basically been positively affirmed, and everybody loves them. So, I'd say those are the great of this league so far. Now on to the good. The secrets added in the campaign is probably one of the top things in the good. The secrets added were pretty darn cool, and they're spattered throughout the entirety of the Path of Exile 1 campaign. Now, Promax 1210, there's some cool stuff there like a boss from The Forbidden Sanctum spawning outside the Fell Shrine Crips. How cool was that? I really enjoyed seeing that on my hardcore character. Almost got one-tapped. There's also a plethora of other secrets throughout the game. Some of them don't seem as rewarding, especially to more experienced players, as something like the Flask, the Chemist's Chest in the Lower Prison, but they're still rewards nonetheless, and they're little bits and

pieces that people on their first Beret into Path of Exile will come to know and love talking about the meh. I'd say the UI of the league mechanic, which I think is great, still is meth for a lot of players who seem to be confused by it. So maybe there could be a little bit more explanation here, something along the lines of a video in-game, kind of like what Path of Exile 2 has with its skills for mechanics like this that are quite complicated. Some sort of stronger tutorial than what's in the game might be necessary for a vast majority of people who are just playing ARPGs to kill monsters. Maybe that's something that they can learn for in the future. In addition, in the meh category, there were a few changes that weren't noted in the patch notes, which I would say as a meth. Grinding Gear Games typically doesn't add every single thing in the patch notes, and it's not malicious or anything. I don't think it's usually probably just due to it being forgotten by the

developers themselves. Stuff like attack and cast speed no longer rolling on flasks is a math thing, and it wasn't included in the patch notes. It's a Nerf to high-end players, especially those who use Mage blood. It's still a very strong item, but that not being in the patch notes definitely did upset some people. And I put things like that under the meh category. Here and Now, on to the ugly. It's the only thing that people have really been complaining about on Reddit, on Twitter, on YouTube, on my streams. And that is the power of the bmth or tornadoes. They seem to be absolutely destroying people, following them around when they're open inventories of items like in ritual. And they make the area change its coloring, so everything has a much higher contrast, and it's harder to see mechanics and even your character. That seems to be the only thing that people are complaining about here, in addition to a few minor bugs that me who's played for 20 plus hours has not yet encountered. So I'd put

all that under the ugly category. Here this is a lot less than usual. If we would go back to Necropolis and talk about the ugly, oh my goodness, there would be quite the long list of things to talk about on day three of the league. In future reports of the state of Ray class, especially for Settlers of Kelgar, we're likely going to talk about how the mechanic itself feels after two, three, four weeks into the league and not three days. We're going to talk about how the meta evolves and changes, what builds shine out on top, which builds are completely broken, which are trash, and who are the true winners and losers of the patch, not only in terms of ascendancies but skills and unique items too. These future reports are going to be on this channel, and if you really like them, they might come out more frequently than I'm currently planning. I can also recommend at least one other reporter who does something very similar to what I'm attempting to do here, and that's Sir Gog.

he usually puts out an excellent meta report about 10 days into the then one a little bit later. Where he talks about all the ascendancies, the breakdowns in the lake in a very statistically oriented fashion via a PowerPoint. If you enjoy that sort of stuff, I highly recommend sirgog. I love the guy. I've been watching his videos ever since I started playing back right when exile count 2019 was ongoing. So all in all, my fellow Exiles, Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of kker has been a tremendous success. The positive reception is unlike any other in any recent memory. People are loving this league. They're calling it the best League of all time. The meta seems diverse and fast, and there are lots of options that people still haven't figured out yet. There are lots of great things going on with the league, whether it's the actual mechanic itself to those additions that will likely go core like the respect for gold, like the currency exchange system, and a few other awesome mechanics. And we've also had

very few bad things ongoing. They can be counted on one hand, which honestly usually doesn't happen. When a Path of Exile one League releases, it's quite the relief. As a personal note, I would say this is one of my favorite League launches of all time. Not only because I'm having fun in the game itself, but it appears that the community is giving Grinding Gear Games a proper kudos here. Grinding Gear Games has done a stellar job with the release of this league. The mechanics are clean, any bugs are being fixed very quickly, and there are actually very few bugs in the game itself. With a game with so many moving parts like Path of Exile, it is a wonder that they are able to put out updates every 3 to 4 months, especially while working on this sequel and standalone game, Path of Exile 2, at the same time. If they can truly continue to deliver on this cadence, on this scale, I believe they will have two of the best ARPGs and just flat out games on the market.

that is quite the feat to achieve so no matter what you think about settlers of kelker, whether you think it's the best league together or just a good League, I know there's nobody who thinks it's a bad lead out there. No matter what you think, just give everyone some Kudos, you know, whether it's a comment, whether it's a like, whether it's you going and purchasing a supporter pack, show grinding your games, that this type of League, this type of amazing mechanic and level of Polish, will make you support the game, will make you play pu1 in the future when pu2 comes out, when they see that, when they see that Financial bump, and they see the player numbers remain steady in week one, week 2, week three, and Beyond, they'll know that there is a massive interest in Path of Exile 1, and of course, their future game Path of Exile 2. This has been the very first state of Ray class, thank you all so much for watching. If you like the video, make

sure to hit the like button. Make sure you subscribe to the channel for any future Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2 videos, some of them being in this very professional style. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out some of my future or past videos. Anyways, that is all for this video. Thank you all very much for watching. I will see you in the next report, takakura my fellow exiles.

The CRAZY State of PoE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League on DAY 3!

Path of Exile's most positive and unhinged content creator.