Feedback and Suggestions - Fundamental Problems with Breach (long time coming) - Forum - Path of Exile (2024)

***Disclaimers***
1) I don't claim to be the end-all/be-all expert on Breach. If I am missing something, PLEASE point it out to me
2) This post assumes competency of clearing and completing the mentioned content
3) This post compares multiple iterations of breach, including current AND sextant
4) This post assumes the OPTIMAL atlas trees for specified content

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Breach feels absolutely terrible to run. I love breach, I love breachstones, I love the unique items and alterability of said uniques. But I'll repeat: breach feels absolutely terrible to run.

Lets start with BASIC breach, no atlas points, no scarabs, nothing.
1) No monsters
2) no density
3) slow
4) no rewards, not even a guaranteed singular splinter

Now lets add atlas passives
1) more consistent splinters, yet STILL low
**the double splinter nodes doesn't even appear to work as I still drop single splinters**
2) even with %increased chance of specific breach, still very low
3) full breachstone drop is rare
4) special hands are STILL rare even with all nodes
5) Compare this to the most direct content: Legion. Legion RAINS splinters and full emblems. Legion RAINS secondary rewards. Breach by comparison is almost like running no content at all.

Now lets add secondary juicing (previously sextants, now scarabs)
1) First the obvious: with the current system, far less overall breaches to begin with. A single winged scarab previously gave 5 extra breaches. This now needs THREE scarabs
2) To even remotely make breach feel good, you are pretty much required to use Lordship. Now this is a REALLY good scarab. Resonant Cascade on the other hand...
3) Even with Lordship, you still need to get more breaches using breach scarabs: otherwise even Lordship is almost useless unless you get REALLY lucky with the 8 breach node.

Now lets talk about the breachstones themselves:
1) Why the HECK are breach uniques not a guaranteed drop? For the time it actually takes to make a breachstone, the build requirements to clear a breachstone reliably, and the actual power of 99% of those uniques.....they should be guaranteed. Blessings can remain rare. Not even FLAWLESS has guaranteed drops!
2) Why is there no chance for the boss to drop flawless breachstones raw? Compare again to Legion...massive rewards difference AND the chance for upgraded stone/emblem.
3) Why are the "uber" breaches not anywhere near comparable to the other "uber" content such as Blight and Legion?

Sidenote: Blessings
These should have more uses. Maybe similar to incubators, they can "bless" gearslots to offer certain map benefits for a specified number of maps or kills?

In my eyes, these seem to be such easy things for them to tweak. There have been posts and talks about how bad Breach is for years, and yet only the OTHER content ends up getting adjusted and (mostly) buffed, while breach languishes.

Bring Breach back into 2024 PoE!!

Blame the "rework".

Breach has felt like absolute garbage since that happened.

Also, the loss of 'four sextant slots' (being reduced from 8 modifier slots to just 4) kinda killed Breach farming.

Let's not forget the overall loot nerfs to all league mechanics some time ago due to keeping drops in line with PoE2 (which isn't being merged with PoE1 anymore btw).

Breach is overall just bad.

^believe me....I know all that.

Even still, even after all of that: compare and contrast Breach to almost any other league mechanic post-global nerfs.

It has been hit incomparably harder. Let's not forget that all the changes you mention were global changes, not breach-specific.

It can be extrapolated that breach was in a poor state even before all the global nerfs, which only made it worse.

Talking purely about profit: breach for years before the nerfs only had profit in farming Chayula stones and It That Fled upgrades. That's simply too narrow, even if it used to be profitable.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Lets start with BASIC breach, no atlas points, no scarabs, nothing.
1) No monsters
2) no density
3) slow
4) no rewards, not even a guaranteed singular splinter

1. it's not main league content as such it has been greatly nerfed (though i agree, too much), this covers the rest of the points really

I'm ok with how fast they open (placement can kinda suck sometimes though) and can't it be sped up via atlas passives? (also fine with that option being there)

I would love to see the high density it used to have

But yes, there NEEDS to be more splinters dropping.

Ancestral Bond. It's a thing that does stuff. -Vipermagi

He who controls the pants controls the galaxy. - Rick & Morty S3E1

Appreciate the responses but I'd like to reiterate:

The nerfs were global, not Breach-specific. Pointing out global nerfs as the "issue" here isn't really meaningful because they affected ALL of the extra content equally. The real issue is comparison with existing extra content, and the underpowered atlas passives and content itself.

Consider the whole rework to monster density and drops from 3.14 (?). Sure, this had a major effect on Breach, but presumably it ALSO had the same effect on strongboxes, harbingers, legion, etc. However, the difference is that all of those feel great to play even now post-nerf. Yet Breach is languishing.

They even went out of their way to "rework" breachstones to make them "more rewarding". Upping the level, introducing uber variants. And yet....they are still incomparable. When an entire breachstone gives you the same meaningful loot as a SINGLE strongbox, there's a bit of a problem here.

Furthermore, this thread isn't really about hindsight....its about the current issues and what can or should be done to FIX breach. Those experienced with Breach farming already know the history, there isn't really a need to re-hash.

this pretty much describes any 'content'

the basic version (no atlas investment, no scarabs) is pure waste of time.

i get that they want to make investment 'worth it' - they moved the gameplay loop from 'killing mobs' to 'tree planning' for a reason (they think it is a good reason, i kinda disagree)

most of the 'contents' share the same caveat - there is no planning. you pick all the nodes or you pick nothing (with very, very few exceptions like 'double cards from boxes' or Niko follower if you pass by. functionally the big atlas tree could be shrank to 40 nodes - each 'content' given 3-4, removing that faux complexity POE is so bloated with

then there are the 'mandatory' nodes - altars/maven, scarabs, map-effect/quant. you ~can ignore them, but it is 99% of the time very wrong choice

it all leads to all-or-nothing strategies, so varied that i can draw your atlas tree if you name me 2 mechanics youve specced into. it is boring at this point

same with scarabs - there are good scarabs, sh*t scarabs, and scarabs people use because they cannot afford good scarabs. no variety, no choice, nothing.

using basic scarabs to proc a mechanic is a waste of slot - you are wasting a slot potentially occupied with good scarab AND proccing a mechanic with 0 atlas support. why bother?

making a big circle to Breach - content is good for one of three things: generic loot, content-specific-loot, xp

breachstones are great for xp - easy, safe, you can chain them with brain off and no loot management (loot bomb at the end), you dont even need to kill the boss. this is breach' selling point. the generic loot is acceptable, the -specific loot is.. fine? half of the uniques are useless (not even worthless, just useless completely), the good ones have obscene drop chance so you wont see them (uuls amulet anyone?)

Empyrian did Breach div/hr evaluation - it was 'ok'. it was also kinda fun to kill stuff, looting was revolting.

but it was the 101% investment breach (well rolled map, all scarabs). once you skip even one scarab or atlas cluster it ends up like white map mapping. too much compound multipliers and a tiny base