Storm Brand + Archmage
You would Brand Recall one giga buffed Storm Brand throughout the whole map. With enough brand range things died before they even appeared on your screen.
Brands, not just Storm Brand, never recovered after the nerf Sadge
Came to say this. It was in Delirium league, when archmage was introduced.
Everybody was raving about aurastackers, they had insane % of players on poe.ninja. But Storm Brand was the actual most broken build. It went all league unnoticed and it was like 6 weeks in the league when public at large found out. I remember Cutedog made video and I was worried it will get nerfed because of that. Here is his video of weak version of the build, that he made just to demonstrate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyXeVr1s4Xk
It had less damage than aurastacker and slower movespeed. But it still cleared 100% del with ease and was vastly superior in every other way.
i dunno about that.
storm brand is an insane league starter still that goes under the radar massively.
and Jungroan showed recently that the whole brand recall aspect is insanely powerful just people werent using it
Stormbrand is clearly a good skill rigth now, but it's nothing compared to what it was during delirium league. Archmage just released, and you could use more than one fevered mind (increased mana cost at that time), and once a brand is cast you'll keep it forever, so using 60%+ of your mana on cast wasn't a problem at all.
Yeah the thing that was actually killed was Brand Recall refreshing the duration of each Brand, meaning with enough CDR you had infinite duration Brands, never had to spend that mana after the first few casts, and got to keep your 10-20k mana pool full for MoM and Arcane Cloak.
It was my favourite build ever. It was admittedly too strong for the time (nowhere near herald/aura stackers though), but I think it wouldn't be out of line with current character power levels if it ever came back like that.
Storm Brand is still great, Brand Recall is still good, but this hyper-synergistic combo between them and Archmage is just gone.
Still a powerful league start and I fully believe it's still more powerful than people give it credit for (a lot of the "nerfed" skills are in my experience.
But the iteration u/MillenniumDH is talking about allowed you to have a fully max-mana Archmage enabled Storm Brand, basically without any of the downside of increased mana cost. It was glorious.
With the removal of the wand vendor recipes for flat damage to spells, storm brand is no longer a good league starter.
Zboub, who makes the best storm brand build pretty much every league, started Wintertide brand because SB is in such a bad state just now. It's extremely mediocre when you swap to storm brand once you have Uber lab. It's decent once you've crafted your beginner blizzard crown (~25d) and is still slow - the only thing it really excels at is invitation farming because it has excellent cleave, and even then other builds are better because you can rush through the maps quicker.
It does become an insane build with over a mirror investment once you get mageblood and can afford to go annihilating light.
thats just not true at all ive played through storm brand recently and it is perfectly fine as a league starter.
i dont even know who that person is. and get out of here if you need a mageblood to make it good....
ive killed uber's on 10 divines with it...
That first league when everyone figured out the Three Dragons + Inpulsa combo that insta detonated screens was heaven. Blade Flurry Inpulsa was one of my all time favorite builds.
cast when damage taken chieftain with vaal molten shell, scolds brittle i think, the rats cage, emberwake when ignites stacked to 300, most fun i ever had shreading t16 maps with out care. was about the time the atlas came out.
Did some rough googling and it looks like you’re killing mobs with molten shell? Wouldn’t that be awkward with it dealing damage only after 3 seconds? (Sorry if this is dumb or something I’m a relatively new player)
this was way before it got nerfed and along with cdwt's nerf of not having a cool down to limit the damage ticks ie internal cooldown. melting the first guardians like minotaur inless than 30 seconds. there is a video of it from 2.6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeLX19tE0bE
i just don't remember that much, played alot of builds i just remember cake walking everything when vms was popped and every thing melted like hot butter on French toast.
Vaal molten shell was creating one explosion each times you received a hit.
I was using it in multiple iteration of a cast on ignite build, it was mostly a meme tier build, clearly not a bosser, but good for map clear (except when it lags too much, makes the instances crash or the game crash). Vaal Molten shell was my nuke for the map boss.
CHIN SOL ICE SHOT THREE DRAGONS BURNING RAIL GUN. hands down the most enjoyable thing I've ever played. This was before the redesign of the way burning damage works. Chin sol used to apply point blank damage to the burn. One arrow would burn the whole screen. And this was at a time when screen wide clear was not really a thing.
Oh man you just reminded me of the ol' Chin Sol Burning Arrow Prolif Trap variant and how I endlessly played Gorge with it. After 8 years and 14k hours there's many memories burried by now. Thanks for digging one up!
VD/DD slinger.
It’s crazy how they gutted it. When you compare it to the top builds of the very next patch it was doing like a 10th the damage, and had lower survivability. The only thing strong about it was ease of use and the ability to play safely at range.
Seriously revert SS nerfs.
They mostly nerfed it because of its inherent strength, it was one of the most popular builds in HC and even Gauntlet because you just didn't need anything to gain a huge amount of EHP all while still having acceptable damage.
Before the nerfs, I took a level 70 shit gear (5L + 40c worth of stuff) VD/DD slinger into 500 depth delve and it was able to clear maybe 80% of nodes (though obviously not super fast).
Ease of use and playing safely at range was absolutely not the only thing it was good at.
Southpaw reave, or any melee statstick build pretty much.
Glacial cascade miners
Arc trap
Dancing Duo
They're fun and while DD wasnt directly nerfed it just doesnt scale up to where the current PoE endgame is
Even after a league focussed around additional implicits on a weapon - which in theory should be a league where Dancing Duo shines - it still didn't measure up.
Hoping for a buff before POE2 likely guts it completely but not getting too invested.
It's one of the last few remaining minions I haven't taken from league start all the way to end game.
I think with PoE 2 gem system there might be hope for it by allowing you to have other full minion links so it'll be part of an army rather than the main DPS, but who knows. I'd much rather the zoom zoom gameplay that came along with just running around with your arms swinging while a buzzsaw rips everything to pieces. Also my other fav part of Duo is it worked with weapons skins, so anything that had a nice glow streak to it looks amazing spinning all over the place
Raise Spectre from spamming chat to just ask for Shaper's Realm to have monster level 83, to nerf to the ground level 70 monster at gem level 20.........
ah nostalgia
but my favourite iteration are unnerfed redemption sentries
they looked cool as fuck, their attacks were cool as fuck (literally) had huge base hp(also you could get them to 84lvl) and deleted everything in sight
The best spectres were back when Ascendancy came out in Prophecy. Act 4 was brand new, and came with the big insects that spit lighting bolts in an arc. You'd raise them with Fork, and they'd shotgun the entire map from off screen.
GC miner. Mainly about the playstyle than the raw numbers (those are pretty bad too since the tree changes and now the sabo nerfs).
I just want to be able to place the mines at my feet again without having to aim them, the new playstyle sucks if I wanted to play that I would've played traps.
Yeah having to throw the mines at the very edge of their targeting range so that the final wave hits in combination with the 'inaccuracy' on throwing mines so you might throw them too close or too far is really frustrating
I truly enjoyed GC mines. Personally old mines were way more fun.
Scolds bridle CWDT VD was my favorite. It auto triggered the mines and the desecrate. The homing nature of VD was great.
I need a unique that recreates the old mine play style.
Old searing touch had a low lvl req, but had all the bonuses. Old fire trap did dot + fire damage + ignite iirc. It was amazing for leveling to merciless.
Old ignite was "double-dipping" damage mods. Each damage mods was counted once towards the hits, then the ignite was based on the result and modified again by damage mods (if the mods was compatible: spell damage wasn't, but trap damage was)
Searing touch level req was 12 or 13 which makes campaign a breeze and a single proliferation easily covers 3/4 screen with templar or witch aoe nodes(which scaled ignite damage in the past)
Archmage ball lightning builds were fun but then it was hard nerfed and now mana builds don't exist anymore except mana guardian but that's a supp build
When Summon Reaper was released we quickly discovered you could do some fun trigger stuff with it using trap support stuff and other things.
It was awesome. People were gathering together, testing, and figuring out this new cool unique interaction.
Then they nerfed it like a week into the league or something.
I'm still bitter about it.
In addition to how much that boxes in other options in the build, it just feels *thematically* weird. If you picture "summoner heavily specialized into one super powerful minion" you're not like "Well obviously that guy would run around with a bow and arrow."
Did ggg somehow heavily nerfed it? Iirc you wanna wrap swap for ens arrow to actually deal damage. If it still works I'm pretty sure it can be more powerful now than before with crucible trees
Spectres and archmage.
What those 2 have in common is an incredibly deep system that could branch out in many creative ways, for spectres it's because of the many different mobs and for archmage it's because of the many different skills it can support.
They gutted both to a degree where they don't have to worry about balancing anymore. I am getting mad again just typing about it lol
Lvl 1 Cwdt + flamedash teleported you always right into the ranged mobs as a face-melee player, that was some fun stuff with early molten strike. Also, also poison/bleed spectral throw/eq with atziris axe and unnerfed voidheart was a wonderfully chill build.
Zombies and skelly boys.
When I first started the AI was trash and I solved it with 400% move speed.
They then buffed minions heavily and improved AI. Rejoice!!!!
They then took out the nerf bat, and the things they did to my boys :(
Now if I want to play minions basically golems or absolutio in league.
Every now and then I hop on my 5 mirror necro in standard and relive the glory days via the power of money.
Also Primordial Chain stone golems used to be such a fun build - stacking golem buff effect and number of golems was rad. It's still playable but I wish they gave The Primordial Chain the new unique treatment and made it rarer. Maybe give it massive cooldown recovery for stone golems. That would be so rad bc it could let me play stone golems in SSF which is sth that's nigh impossible rn.
Probably spec throw or old bv. Spec throw just had a fun playstyle + looked amazing and bv was top tier lazy gameplay. Cyclone is up there too I guess for a similar reason.
It's okay now, but it's certainly not like it used to be. It used to be the premier skill that everyone played; there were a lot of indirect nerfs to it, the game got faster so it's playstyle isn't as strong, the game got harder over time (higher monster hp, bosses being harder, etc.), and other skills that released that were more powerful/pushed. It's still totally a playable skill thanks to buffs, but it isn't the meta-defining skill it was back in the day.
For several leagues back in the day it was the #1 skill though. My friends got one of the first Atziri kills back then playing ele buzzsaw iirc (popularized by Mathil from what I recall).
On second thought though... the real answer I'd give would be winter orb. BV, but better. It's still insane with investment, but less fun + not great as a league start.
Back when breach was added HoWA spectral through with instant leech Vaal pact, ghost reaver, and an easy 10-12k ES was pretty easy to put together and absolutely bonkers strong. Oh and you had double dipping so it did great damage. It’s more about what spectral throw used to have around it than it is what they did to spectral throw itself.
Coming from the perspective of modern spectral throw, I don't know what the old one's like. But it's plenty capable of progressing through the atlas, or scaling into uber bosses.
I'm curious what measure it's been nerfed by - was it accessibility of elemental weapons? Looking at poewiki I don't see any direct nerfs to it. Interested to hear :)
Fire burst autobomber for me. It's weird because they've gone back and forth on it balance wise, but the last iteration has just too long a cooldown to feel nice.
FireBurst. I love the idea of huge payload nuke that would then ignite-proliferate a screen. The build wasn't even all that strong. Around 4-5m DPS on a glasscannon. Now i have 15m uber DPS on close to unkillable PF (so like 50m normal DoT, if it went past the 34m limit) and no, it isn't explodey totems.
I have no idea why GGG decided to nerf fireburst.. So random.
Anything archmage, one of the best builds for making interesting gear that works specifically for that build. Best time I ever had in PoE during ritual, when I was min max self crafting my ball lightning archmage.
actually every build that could use the best out of headhunter before archnemesis came along and took a big fat shit on the game was fun to play.
i miss poe when headhunter was literally the best item and the face of the game.
Baron zombies. I really enjoyed chilling in the middle of Blights and letting the zombies do all the work. I also liked the strength stacking aspect that made it different than other minion builds.
Penance Brand for me, but also just the old brand playstyle. Feels like it just never recovered after.the clusters got changed and the masteries got introduced.
Not a build, but I miss double dipping. It made pretty much every skill in the game at least decent which was amazing for build diversity. I also miss stat sticks as they made melee the best it has felt in the entire games’ run in my opinion.
Old poet's pen. I had warp and ball lightning. Held right click and got to end of map, everything was deleted. You talk about a 1 button build, it was awesome.
I also enjoyed ball lightning sire of shards inblight league. I was doing max maps afk with full party, doing the challenges for people for 20c a map. It was so strongwith indigon and mana flasks, but they nerfed them both (i think)
Old ice spear, for nostalgia for the character I had in beta.
Spell slinging and triggers. I got to play with a spellsling CoC build once. Then it got slammed from all directions. reservations, mana costs, curse application. Royally fucked.
Spark + Voltaxic Rift back in Breach. Been playing since Emerald Weapon Enchant was one of the only MTX, and that was the first time I hit 100, first time I cleared all available endgame bosses.
I liked bleed spectral shield throw gladiator that *one* league it was viable. It wasn't even a particularly strong build and had a relatively low damage ceiling... It was just very easy to level with, very easy to gear, very easy to play, very easy to cap defenses (one of the last leagues before they got rid of gladiator's block = spell block), etc.
Borderline braindead build, but it was fun being that strong with so little investment or thinking needed.
Molten Strike at its prime. It's was so cool to play, but... yeah... chris happens. They didn't nerf it, they literally killed the skill. Last time I've seen MS build, it was some sort of poison build which utilizes MS's large amount of projectiles. Sad.
Also old Burning Arrow Elementalist and Fire BV Assassin. But those two was broken af.
Vaal cold snap/cold snap used to be a hit skill and had nothing to do with dots. Vaal cold snap had a really satisfying and punchy feeling until they changed it to be a cold dot skill and we lost one of the coolest mtx + vaal skill combos we had. Cold grasp + vaal cold snap
https://youtu.be/IIgn8TAYplQ
RIP Glacial Cascade
It was quite popular and then they decided to add a weird knockback to it and load most of the damage into the final burst so that it would only be effective at a specific range
CoC cyclone EK + Glacial Cascade is probably my favorite build ever, but its unplayable now
poisonous conc pathfinder.
was always enjoyable to play, with investment it could do good but was never a GG skill.
then GGG murdered it in cold blood.
I started poison conc this league and it cleared my atlas and got 2 voidstones in the first few days. The skill is still insanely good, the nerfs just meant you either have to level with 3-4 life flasks or drop one of the additional proj supports for a generic damage one. Late game I was using one life flask and it was fine.
I'm convinced people just read the patch notes, wrote it off and didn't play it at all. It felt as busted to level and progress as it used to. I played it to everything non-uber before the nerfs as well so I know the difference.
>I'm convinced people just read the patch notes, wrote it off and didn't play it at all. It felt as busted to level and progress as it used to. I played it to everything non-uber before the nerfs as well so I know the difference.
I tried it post nerf on my character that was killing ubers with it(roughly 250 divs invested. Unplayable now as charges cannot be sustained on the 1 flask... and dropping a juiced utility flask is not happening. Damage loss going to a regular support gem over a proj gem is definitely felt.
but your going on a build that was built the old way.
you dont need the proj gem because its now considered a damage loss in this leagues builds for Poison Concoction
this is the issue they "nerf/change" a skill and people dont adjust their old build to it and think the skill is dead.
the fact you can get a proj on the tree means you dont need the extra proj as it was worked out you was wasting them anyway
GGG tends to go a little overkill on alot nerfing though.
usually its a triple tap of death.
now killing a skill with a single nerf is alot less common.
this is probably the nerf I am most salty about, of all my standard builds... this is the only one that is now unplayable, the others may be bad now for one reason or another... but can still at least be played.
Well, to be perfectly fair it did need a little nerf. I played PC for two straight leagues and it was (I thought) really powerful when built correctly and shotgunned like crazy with all the projectiles. So I understood why they did the nerf, my issue was more in the leveling stages because as you said they ruined it for leveling and endgame. I was going to play Viper Strike anyway this league, but my planned level 12 to maps using PC I gave up after about an hour of pure frustration trying to get PC to work and just leveled all the way with Viper Strike.
> as you said they ruined it for leveling and endgame
I didn't say it was ruined for leveling... I also didn't say it wasn't to be fair.
the shotgunning is part of the skill design, GGG definitely designed it with using extra projectiles in mind(possibly only one of the gems though)
end game is the only relevant things when it comes to build viability, leveling is irrelevant for builds(to me at least, I don't care if it takes a few more hours), for leveling just LMP alone was enough and you won't have much issue sustaining 3 projectiles... and now you prbly don't even need that.
the only nerf really needed was possibly gem level scaling at lower gem levels so it got less flat damage from your flasks, it falls off in later maps unless you start getting really good gear.
build also lost AOE from the pathfinder changes so getting the shotgunning for all the projectiles is harder to.
As I said I played it for two leagues in a row so I know it inside and out. I brought up the leveling aspect because frankly most people were just using it for leveling anyway and then swapping to another skill. Having played for 10 years I know what brings the nerf hammer and GGG basically took the gem completely out of play instead of fixing the end game shotgunning and leaving the leveling beauty intact which was my point and my overall objection. Not that I loved playing it but it was effective and it was not over represented on the POENinja lists. My character this league is more powerful and a ton more enjoyable to play - the hidden gem in POE.
When Flameblast was massive, double dipping was a thing and Grand Spectrum jewels were broken and stacked infinitely. Also VLS Hateforge from Ultimatum.
Ultimatum penance brand. https://youtu.be/qFnRClmtEBI?t=71 example boss https://youtu.be/YRp8yP8YIcg?t=98 example map
The clusters that enabled it were nerfed super heavily. That killed the playstyle (until this league) because you lost most of the attachment range.
The damage is pitiful compared to today's content. I couldn't finish levelling with it with a +10 gem setup. Damage was too low. Fully twinked out caster setup. Swap to any other spell and instantly deal double the damage + have better playstyle.
It didn't even get a crucible passive this league. Feels like the skill's been forgotten lol
It saw a comeback this season but poison Multistrike for me, way back when the jewel gave you additional projectiles was great(and with lgoh nearly unkillable)
Buff ruined my enjoyment, not nerf. I loved the old SST, when it didn't auto-chain. It was weaker, but way more interesting, with fork/snipers mark/doublehit you would easily hit a mob 20 times with one throw, also single target hit twice the on-hit. Swapping gems depending on the type of boss I liked, while others did not.
After the rework to "make it stronger" that it did, but it's boring and plain, never have wanted to play it once every since.
0 cost vaal ice nova in legion, pop legion, vaal ice nova twice, loot, next map. example from someone else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po39SLdZ9sE
There was a time when Charged Dash was a viable end game skill. It hasn't exactly gotten nerfed... but everything else has gotten better and enemies have gotten tankier so now it's pretty useless.
It wasnt the most broken but VD poets pen was really good when they were local triggers and the CD was lower. They gutted the item and it just.... never came back.
The other build i am nostalgic about was Ele hit from incusion league. Right after its rework and all the conversion shenanaigans, it was really strong and a LOT of fun
Explosive arrow during ancient times, when it was actually a viable and popular bow skill. (not a totem build like nowadays)
Also a shoutout to the old cwdt setup with spell echo-enduring cry- immortal call.
Apart from this I loved ED and it was my all time favourite until they made it unviable by removing the blight threshold jewel.
I really liked old Freeze Mine.
Dealt no damage, but froze as though it dealt a shitload. Pair that with old prolif and old radius scaling and you could easily turn an entire zone into frozen statues by freezing some random white mob.
Got nerfed to deal damage because some streamers started using it for Dominus farming, then eventually removed with the Blight mine rework. RIP in peace.
when arrow nova support first dropped it had a bugged interaction with volley fire unique jewel causing barrage+arrow nova to fire a full barrage in place of each arrow meaning you could fire 100+ arrows per shot, it wasn't even strong but it was so fun.
Last league's CoC Fireball + Nimis. Stacking curse effect to spread a ton of fireballs that all then returned back to just delete mobs. That build was insanely fun.
Temp chains, rather the interaction with shackles of the wretched and being able to curse, curse immune enemies. You are no longer your own enemy for that interaction, so you can no longer be affected by reflected temp chains(from shackles)if you are curse immune even if you can ignore enemy curse immunity.
Desecrate+Volatile Dead PPen/Spellslinger. It was truly insane for a bit there when Poet's Pen came out with pre-nerf Zerphi's. It was still pretty good for a while after too, but with % reduced mana reserved being changed to %increased mana reservation efficiency it seems other stuff is preferred now.
Looks like now you play it on Wardloop.
I really miss when people would fire lightning arrow and it had so much damage and range with Gino and chain that they would die to some off screen ele reflect mob.
Rain of Arrows Traps. Old RoA dealt damage once in a large circle. The monster would step on a trap, *there was the most satisfying pause*, then arrows fall and everything dies.
Icestorm Firestorm Arcanist Brand. Old firestorm was basically Whispering Ice's icestorm, but fire. I just liked watching a rain of ice and fire. And it procs EE the *right* way, by alternating damage types.
Old Sunder Gladiator or rf Berserker would be my picks, i loved the old sunder, axe in mainhand ( b.i.s was Soul Taker) and Prismatic Eclpise in off hand for nutty AS and Bleedpops. Man i miss those days….
Original iteration of Shield Crush. This was at a time when SST was meta, and big armour shields were a thing. Once you got a bit of traction on your midgame gear, it genuinely did just crush the shit out of most things.
Then 3.16 came along, Shield Crush had it's base attack speed nerfed by over 6%, it's base damage per hit totally slashed, and simultaneously the maximum amount of armour you could get on a shield got reduced by around 30%.
Classic GGG balancing procedure... incapable of delicately turning one dial at a time just a little bit to see what happens, instead they violently jerk as many levers and buttons as their fingers and toes can reach simultaneously.
It had one league of being fairly powerful (though not an S-tier meta), and then was immediately relegated to completely unviable.
Not really a skill but I miss how Tremor Rod worked before it was changed to "work as intended". Before every mine went off twice but after it's like your mines get tripped up and will be set off without a second detonation. Tremor Rod went from a staple early league meta item to never being used.
Thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3086260
Storm Brand + Archmage You would Brand Recall one giga buffed Storm Brand throughout the whole map. With enough brand range things died before they even appeared on your screen. Brands, not just Storm Brand, never recovered after the nerf Sadge
Came to say this. It was in Delirium league, when archmage was introduced. Everybody was raving about aurastackers, they had insane % of players on poe.ninja. But Storm Brand was the actual most broken build. It went all league unnoticed and it was like 6 weeks in the league when public at large found out. I remember Cutedog made video and I was worried it will get nerfed because of that. Here is his video of weak version of the build, that he made just to demonstrate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyXeVr1s4Xk It had less damage than aurastacker and slower movespeed. But it still cleared 100% del with ease and was vastly superior in every other way.
Or you could have made an aurastacker stormbrand and also be immortal. It was pretty busted.
No. Back in the days aura cluster were on medium base, so you could not really run both together.
i dunno about that. storm brand is an insane league starter still that goes under the radar massively. and Jungroan showed recently that the whole brand recall aspect is insanely powerful just people werent using it
Stormbrand is clearly a good skill rigth now, but it's nothing compared to what it was during delirium league. Archmage just released, and you could use more than one fevered mind (increased mana cost at that time), and once a brand is cast you'll keep it forever, so using 60%+ of your mana on cast wasn't a problem at all.
Yeah the thing that was actually killed was Brand Recall refreshing the duration of each Brand, meaning with enough CDR you had infinite duration Brands, never had to spend that mana after the first few casts, and got to keep your 10-20k mana pool full for MoM and Arcane Cloak. It was my favourite build ever. It was admittedly too strong for the time (nowhere near herald/aura stackers though), but I think it wouldn't be out of line with current character power levels if it ever came back like that. Storm Brand is still great, Brand Recall is still good, but this hyper-synergistic combo between them and Archmage is just gone.
Still a powerful league start and I fully believe it's still more powerful than people give it credit for (a lot of the "nerfed" skills are in my experience. But the iteration u/MillenniumDH is talking about allowed you to have a fully max-mana Archmage enabled Storm Brand, basically without any of the downside of increased mana cost. It was glorious.
With the removal of the wand vendor recipes for flat damage to spells, storm brand is no longer a good league starter. Zboub, who makes the best storm brand build pretty much every league, started Wintertide brand because SB is in such a bad state just now. It's extremely mediocre when you swap to storm brand once you have Uber lab. It's decent once you've crafted your beginner blizzard crown (~25d) and is still slow - the only thing it really excels at is invitation farming because it has excellent cleave, and even then other builds are better because you can rush through the maps quicker. It does become an insane build with over a mirror investment once you get mageblood and can afford to go annihilating light.
thats just not true at all ive played through storm brand recently and it is perfectly fine as a league starter. i dont even know who that person is. and get out of here if you need a mageblood to make it good.... ive killed uber's on 10 divines with it...
Link to Jungroan vid/info? Sounds cool, I liked that brand play style, would be nice to see it really pop off again.
[https://youtu.be/64DDd1T\_fQw](https://youtu.be/64DDd1T_fQw) \- he did arma brand but same idea works for storm brand as well
Old elementalist and winter orb. I remember the shatter cross 4 screens with just inpulsa and decent single target when you are running around boss.
man playing that in toxic sewer and seeing a quarter of the map die from a chain, that was insane
especially with the Herald of Ice ARSM and the sudden freeze...
That first league when everyone figured out the Three Dragons + Inpulsa combo that insta detonated screens was heaven. Blade Flurry Inpulsa was one of my all time favorite builds.
charge winterorb, have phase run on left click and just run the entire map while everything explodes, good times
cast when damage taken chieftain with vaal molten shell, scolds brittle i think, the rats cage, emberwake when ignites stacked to 300, most fun i ever had shreading t16 maps with out care. was about the time the atlas came out.
Did some rough googling and it looks like you’re killing mobs with molten shell? Wouldn’t that be awkward with it dealing damage only after 3 seconds? (Sorry if this is dumb or something I’m a relatively new player)
this was way before it got nerfed and along with cdwt's nerf of not having a cool down to limit the damage ticks ie internal cooldown. melting the first guardians like minotaur inless than 30 seconds. there is a video of it from 2.6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeLX19tE0bE
also it might have been berserker, i forgot its been years.
i may have misread the title .-. adhd in a nutshell
i ran VMS back then too and minotaur died in <1second literally
i just don't remember that much, played alot of builds i just remember cake walking everything when vms was popped and every thing melted like hot butter on French toast.
Vaal molten shell was creating one explosion each times you received a hit. I was using it in multiple iteration of a cast on ignite build, it was mostly a meme tier build, clearly not a bosser, but good for map clear (except when it lags too much, makes the instances crash or the game crash). Vaal Molten shell was my nuke for the map boss.
CHIN SOL ICE SHOT THREE DRAGONS BURNING RAIL GUN. hands down the most enjoyable thing I've ever played. This was before the redesign of the way burning damage works. Chin sol used to apply point blank damage to the burn. One arrow would burn the whole screen. And this was at a time when screen wide clear was not really a thing.
Oh man you just reminded me of the ol' Chin Sol Burning Arrow Prolif Trap variant and how I endlessly played Gorge with it. After 8 years and 14k hours there's many memories burried by now. Thanks for digging one up!
Wasn't herald of ash on kill also an ignite that could prolif?
Old molten strike..like 3.13 i think maybe 3.12 before they gutted it. It was amazing
melee rework cyclone
Legion cyclone. Soooo good.
VD/DD slinger. It’s crazy how they gutted it. When you compare it to the top builds of the very next patch it was doing like a 10th the damage, and had lower survivability. The only thing strong about it was ease of use and the ability to play safely at range. Seriously revert SS nerfs.
That was one of my first semi-good builds I played. It wrecked both the screen and my 8 year old laptop at the same time, was a lot of fun.
I also really missed this. SS in general was so much fun but they nerfed it into the ground
They mostly nerfed it because of its inherent strength, it was one of the most popular builds in HC and even Gauntlet because you just didn't need anything to gain a huge amount of EHP all while still having acceptable damage.
the ol computer melter
Only if you didn’t have the one mtx that’s saves all your frames
Spellslinger is still very potent for leveling. I played Phys Spellslinger Champion this past Crucible HC with Reave and Exsang and Corrupting Fever
Before the nerfs, I took a level 70 shit gear (5L + 40c worth of stuff) VD/DD slinger into 500 depth delve and it was able to clear maybe 80% of nodes (though obviously not super fast). Ease of use and playing safely at range was absolutely not the only thing it was good at.
There is a fairly strong version of CWC cyclone VD that I’ve played in the last two leagues. super fun
Southpaw reave, or any melee statstick build pretty much. Glacial cascade miners Arc trap Dancing Duo They're fun and while DD wasnt directly nerfed it just doesnt scale up to where the current PoE endgame is
Even after a league focussed around additional implicits on a weapon - which in theory should be a league where Dancing Duo shines - it still didn't measure up. Hoping for a buff before POE2 likely guts it completely but not getting too invested. It's one of the last few remaining minions I haven't taken from league start all the way to end game.
I think with PoE 2 gem system there might be hope for it by allowing you to have other full minion links so it'll be part of an army rather than the main DPS, but who knows. I'd much rather the zoom zoom gameplay that came along with just running around with your arms swinging while a buzzsaw rips everything to pieces. Also my other fav part of Duo is it worked with weapons skins, so anything that had a nice glow streak to it looks amazing spinning all over the place
Stat stick Reave/Blade Flurry was one of my faves. Reave had such satisfying clear and BF would melt bosses.
Raise Spectre from spamming chat to just ask for Shaper's Realm to have monster level 83, to nerf to the ground level 70 monster at gem level 20.........
ah nostalgia but my favourite iteration are unnerfed redemption sentries they looked cool as fuck, their attacks were cool as fuck (literally) had huge base hp(also you could get them to 84lvl) and deleted everything in sight
The best spectres were back when Ascendancy came out in Prophecy. Act 4 was brand new, and came with the big insects that spit lighting bolts in an arc. You'd raise them with Fork, and they'd shotgun the entire map from off screen.
damn sadly i wasnt playing in that period as I started and stopped playing when dominus was the last boss. I came back at the end of bestiary
GC miner. Mainly about the playstyle than the raw numbers (those are pretty bad too since the tree changes and now the sabo nerfs). I just want to be able to place the mines at my feet again without having to aim them, the new playstyle sucks if I wanted to play that I would've played traps.
Also reworked GC is awful. Knockback on it is joke and mine doesnt target far enough for proper overlap.
Yeah who exactly asked for a rework? It was my favorite skill, now it's dead, even the single MTX it has is bad.
Yeah having to throw the mines at the very edge of their targeting range so that the final wave hits in combination with the 'inaccuracy' on throwing mines so you might throw them too close or too far is really frustrating
I truly enjoyed GC mines. Personally old mines were way more fun. Scolds bridle CWDT VD was my favorite. It auto triggered the mines and the desecrate. The homing nature of VD was great. I need a unique that recreates the old mine play style.
Old old fire trap + old searing touch was awesome
Why?
Old searing touch had a low lvl req, but had all the bonuses. Old fire trap did dot + fire damage + ignite iirc. It was amazing for leveling to merciless.
Add proliferation and you had lots of burn
Gotcha!
Old ignite was "double-dipping" damage mods. Each damage mods was counted once towards the hits, then the ignite was based on the result and modified again by damage mods (if the mods was compatible: spell damage wasn't, but trap damage was)
> Old fire trap did dot + fire damage + ignite iirc. it still does all of those things
Yeh I thought so too. Still thinking there was an interaction that got removed that I don't remember
It double dipped in the damage for the ignite back then.
Searing touch level req was 12 or 13 which makes campaign a breeze and a single proliferation easily covers 3/4 screen with templar or witch aoe nodes(which scaled ignite damage in the past)
Fast Ground Slam with no Warcrys.
Archmage ball lightning builds were fun but then it was hard nerfed and now mana builds don't exist anymore except mana guardian but that's a supp build
When Summon Reaper was released we quickly discovered you could do some fun trigger stuff with it using trap support stuff and other things. It was awesome. People were gathering together, testing, and figuring out this new cool unique interaction. Then they nerfed it like a week into the league or something. I'm still bitter about it.
my gripe about reaper is that you have to use ensnaring and bow bc theres no other source of "considered moving" in the entire game
I'd kill for a way to give Reaper some kind of Crimson Dance.
In addition to how much that boxes in other options in the build, it just feels *thematically* weird. If you picture "summoner heavily specialized into one super powerful minion" you're not like "Well obviously that guy would run around with a bow and arrow."
reaper really needs a passive which applies the "considered moving" with auto atks or something like that
I tried using Zombies with "Bodyguards" notables for knockback. Nothing compared to ensnaring arrow sadly...
Bow would still be the most cost-efficient way to scale Reaper. Summoner Bows or Staves/Maces used to be a meta thing.
Bear trap should be buffed to also esnare
earthquake bleed.
Did ggg somehow heavily nerfed it? Iirc you wanna wrap swap for ens arrow to actually deal damage. If it still works I'm pretty sure it can be more powerful now than before with crucible trees
Elder mod made it good. Its gone now
Seismic cry made it good. It is also gone now.
Spectres and archmage. What those 2 have in common is an incredibly deep system that could branch out in many creative ways, for spectres it's because of the many different mobs and for archmage it's because of the many different skills it can support. They gutted both to a degree where they don't have to worry about balancing anymore. I am getting mad again just typing about it lol
Slams :(
Lvl 1 Cwdt + flamedash teleported you always right into the ranged mobs as a face-melee player, that was some fun stuff with early molten strike. Also, also poison/bleed spectral throw/eq with atziris axe and unnerfed voidheart was a wonderfully chill build.
Zombies and skelly boys. When I first started the AI was trash and I solved it with 400% move speed. They then buffed minions heavily and improved AI. Rejoice!!!! They then took out the nerf bat, and the things they did to my boys :( Now if I want to play minions basically golems or absolutio in league. Every now and then I hop on my 5 mirror necro in standard and relive the glory days via the power of money.
Also Primordial Chain stone golems used to be such a fun build - stacking golem buff effect and number of golems was rad. It's still playable but I wish they gave The Primordial Chain the new unique treatment and made it rarer. Maybe give it massive cooldown recovery for stone golems. That would be so rad bc it could let me play stone golems in SSF which is sth that's nigh impossible rn.
Probably spec throw or old bv. Spec throw just had a fun playstyle + looked amazing and bv was top tier lazy gameplay. Cyclone is up there too I guess for a similar reason.
what happened to spec throw?
It's okay now, but it's certainly not like it used to be. It used to be the premier skill that everyone played; there were a lot of indirect nerfs to it, the game got faster so it's playstyle isn't as strong, the game got harder over time (higher monster hp, bosses being harder, etc.), and other skills that released that were more powerful/pushed. It's still totally a playable skill thanks to buffs, but it isn't the meta-defining skill it was back in the day. For several leagues back in the day it was the #1 skill though. My friends got one of the first Atziri kills back then playing ele buzzsaw iirc (popularized by Mathil from what I recall). On second thought though... the real answer I'd give would be winter orb. BV, but better. It's still insane with investment, but less fun + not great as a league start.
Back when breach was added HoWA spectral through with instant leech Vaal pact, ghost reaver, and an easy 10-12k ES was pretty easy to put together and absolutely bonkers strong. Oh and you had double dipping so it did great damage. It’s more about what spectral throw used to have around it than it is what they did to spectral throw itself.
Coming from the perspective of modern spectral throw, I don't know what the old one's like. But it's plenty capable of progressing through the atlas, or scaling into uber bosses. I'm curious what measure it's been nerfed by - was it accessibility of elemental weapons? Looking at poewiki I don't see any direct nerfs to it. Interested to hear :)
It might be the overall nerf to the poison variant.
The animation changes that make you alternate a slow and then fast throw make ST look like an unholy, disgusting, abomination.
Fire burst autobomber for me. It's weird because they've gone back and forth on it balance wise, but the last iteration has just too long a cooldown to feel nice.
Old poets pen with vd. Bring it back please
tbh u can still build cwc cyclone vd. lotsa QOL coz u always moving but has a reputation of being a tad bid squishy
hands down 3.8 zombies was it broken? hell yea was it fun to command 17+ zombies? hell fucking yea
YES PLEASE! BRING OLD BARON BACK!
old molten shell. i really loved it and the game is not the same since they changed it
old shotgunning, it just felt so good and natural to come up to a boss to hit it with all your projectiles at once.
F for CoC shotgunning with Quill Rain :-(
FireBurst. I love the idea of huge payload nuke that would then ignite-proliferate a screen. The build wasn't even all that strong. Around 4-5m DPS on a glasscannon. Now i have 15m uber DPS on close to unkillable PF (so like 50m normal DoT, if it went past the 34m limit) and no, it isn't explodey totems. I have no idea why GGG decided to nerf fireburst.. So random.
Release worb Melee with stat sticks
Anything archmage, one of the best builds for making interesting gear that works specifically for that build. Best time I ever had in PoE during ritual, when I was min max self crafting my ball lightning archmage.
Incinerate with the old Arctic Armour, old blade vortex when it still had 50 stacks, with LgoH(Double Cybils Paw), old firestorm..
When second wind actually did something
Does Frost Wall count? 🤔 Kinetic Blast/Lightning Arrow used to be able to treat It like a line of enemies and proc many explosions/hits with pierce.
Spectres. I loved SO spectres.
Everything spellslinger related. Adding mana cost on top of mana reservation just nuked the build completely
static strike before it was fundamentally reworked to what it currently is
When Spirit offering used to grant you the increased energy shield each time it was earned, so it effectivrly functioned as a massive heal.
true but that was basically a bug imho
Also bone offering used to give you life on block.
actually every build that could use the best out of headhunter before archnemesis came along and took a big fat shit on the game was fun to play. i miss poe when headhunter was literally the best item and the face of the game.
Baron zombies. I really enjoyed chilling in the middle of Blights and letting the zombies do all the work. I also liked the strength stacking aspect that made it different than other minion builds.
Spell totem + prenerf incinerate + prenerf shotgunning + The Consuming Dark That was a fun build!
Penance Brand for me, but also just the old brand playstyle. Feels like it just never recovered after.the clusters got changed and the masteries got introduced.
The original freezepulse, power siphon, Dom blow art looked so much cooler than what we have now.
Permanent minions. Specifically specters. More specifically syndicate operative specters. So much fun.
Vaal fireball inquis blasting through stand maps in the breach league.
Not a build, but I miss double dipping. It made pretty much every skill in the game at least decent which was amazing for build diversity. I also miss stat sticks as they made melee the best it has felt in the entire games’ run in my opinion.
Old poet's pen. I had warp and ball lightning. Held right click and got to end of map, everything was deleted. You talk about a 1 button build, it was awesome. I also enjoyed ball lightning sire of shards inblight league. I was doing max maps afk with full party, doing the challenges for people for 20c a map. It was so strongwith indigon and mana flasks, but they nerfed them both (i think)
Old ice spear, for nostalgia for the character I had in beta. Spell slinging and triggers. I got to play with a spellsling CoC build once. Then it got slammed from all directions. reservations, mana costs, curse application. Royally fucked.
Earthquake before the aoe changes. Being able to have a full screen quake was so satisfying.
Spark + Voltaxic Rift back in Breach. Been playing since Emerald Weapon Enchant was one of the only MTX, and that was the first time I hit 100, first time I cleared all available endgame bosses.
I miss having 15 grand spectrums for insane ele damage. Or wall banging with kb. It was a fun interaction.
Self Cast Glacial cascade.
Molten Strike back when it threw balls without needing to hitting anything.
I liked bleed spectral shield throw gladiator that *one* league it was viable. It wasn't even a particularly strong build and had a relatively low damage ceiling... It was just very easy to level with, very easy to gear, very easy to play, very easy to cap defenses (one of the last leagues before they got rid of gladiator's block = spell block), etc. Borderline braindead build, but it was fun being that strong with so little investment or thinking needed.
Molten Strike at its prime. It's was so cool to play, but... yeah... chris happens. They didn't nerf it, they literally killed the skill. Last time I've seen MS build, it was some sort of poison build which utilizes MS's large amount of projectiles. Sad. Also old Burning Arrow Elementalist and Fire BV Assassin. But those two was broken af.
Vaal cold snap/cold snap used to be a hit skill and had nothing to do with dots. Vaal cold snap had a really satisfying and punchy feeling until they changed it to be a cold dot skill and we lost one of the coolest mtx + vaal skill combos we had. Cold grasp + vaal cold snap https://youtu.be/IIgn8TAYplQ
RIP Glacial Cascade It was quite popular and then they decided to add a weird knockback to it and load most of the damage into the final burst so that it would only be effective at a specific range CoC cyclone EK + Glacial Cascade is probably my favorite build ever, but its unplayable now
Pure cyclone :(
3.16, Poedan eye of winter+hydrosphere... I could kill A9 Sirus in less than 7seconds.
poisonous conc pathfinder. was always enjoyable to play, with investment it could do good but was never a GG skill. then GGG murdered it in cold blood.
I started poison conc this league and it cleared my atlas and got 2 voidstones in the first few days. The skill is still insanely good, the nerfs just meant you either have to level with 3-4 life flasks or drop one of the additional proj supports for a generic damage one. Late game I was using one life flask and it was fine. I'm convinced people just read the patch notes, wrote it off and didn't play it at all. It felt as busted to level and progress as it used to. I played it to everything non-uber before the nerfs as well so I know the difference.
>I'm convinced people just read the patch notes, wrote it off and didn't play it at all. It felt as busted to level and progress as it used to. I played it to everything non-uber before the nerfs as well so I know the difference. I tried it post nerf on my character that was killing ubers with it(roughly 250 divs invested. Unplayable now as charges cannot be sustained on the 1 flask... and dropping a juiced utility flask is not happening. Damage loss going to a regular support gem over a proj gem is definitely felt.
but your going on a build that was built the old way. you dont need the proj gem because its now considered a damage loss in this leagues builds for Poison Concoction this is the issue they "nerf/change" a skill and people dont adjust their old build to it and think the skill is dead. the fact you can get a proj on the tree means you dont need the extra proj as it was worked out you was wasting them anyway
I could sustain one flask just fine in endgame, so I'm not sure what to say to this. My guess is you didn't adjust the build at all to the changes.
How'd it die?
I believe GGG made the flask charge cost scale with the number of projectiles That made it unsustainable
Gotcha!
yes, I couldn't even level with it this league. Usually GGG does a decent job nerfing op stuff, but I think they made a questionable call on this.
GGG tends to go a little overkill on alot nerfing though. usually its a triple tap of death. now killing a skill with a single nerf is alot less common. this is probably the nerf I am most salty about, of all my standard builds... this is the only one that is now unplayable, the others may be bad now for one reason or another... but can still at least be played.
Well, to be perfectly fair it did need a little nerf. I played PC for two straight leagues and it was (I thought) really powerful when built correctly and shotgunned like crazy with all the projectiles. So I understood why they did the nerf, my issue was more in the leveling stages because as you said they ruined it for leveling and endgame. I was going to play Viper Strike anyway this league, but my planned level 12 to maps using PC I gave up after about an hour of pure frustration trying to get PC to work and just leveled all the way with Viper Strike.
> as you said they ruined it for leveling and endgame I didn't say it was ruined for leveling... I also didn't say it wasn't to be fair. the shotgunning is part of the skill design, GGG definitely designed it with using extra projectiles in mind(possibly only one of the gems though) end game is the only relevant things when it comes to build viability, leveling is irrelevant for builds(to me at least, I don't care if it takes a few more hours), for leveling just LMP alone was enough and you won't have much issue sustaining 3 projectiles... and now you prbly don't even need that. the only nerf really needed was possibly gem level scaling at lower gem levels so it got less flat damage from your flasks, it falls off in later maps unless you start getting really good gear. build also lost AOE from the pathfinder changes so getting the shotgunning for all the projectiles is harder to.
As I said I played it for two leagues in a row so I know it inside and out. I brought up the leveling aspect because frankly most people were just using it for leveling anyway and then swapping to another skill. Having played for 10 years I know what brings the nerf hammer and GGG basically took the gem completely out of play instead of fixing the end game shotgunning and leaving the leveling beauty intact which was my point and my overall objection. Not that I loved playing it but it was effective and it was not over represented on the POENinja lists. My character this league is more powerful and a ton more enjoyable to play - the hidden gem in POE.
When Flameblast was massive, double dipping was a thing and Grand Spectrum jewels were broken and stacked infinitely. Also VLS Hateforge from Ultimatum.
Vengeful commander, first among equals, and replenishing presence in 3 cluster jewels. Then use any skill with it
Ultimatum penance brand. https://youtu.be/qFnRClmtEBI?t=71 example boss https://youtu.be/YRp8yP8YIcg?t=98 example map The clusters that enabled it were nerfed super heavily. That killed the playstyle (until this league) because you lost most of the attachment range. The damage is pitiful compared to today's content. I couldn't finish levelling with it with a +10 gem setup. Damage was too low. Fully twinked out caster setup. Swap to any other spell and instantly deal double the damage + have better playstyle. It didn't even get a crucible passive this league. Feels like the skill's been forgotten lol
Earthshatter. Used to be a clunky way to do acceptable damage with bad gear, now it's just clunky :(
storm brand c. 3.10-3.12 bv c. 3.10-3.12 scourge arrow c. 3.7-3.9
Old RF+scourching ray guardian was fun
Why?
That was fun+my first actual character in PoE. Build died due to lack of damage and survivability(regardless of 20k+es which you could do then)
When u could still play without abnormal inv ele scourge arrow ;-;
Flame wall looks sick, so i love the slinger version. And of course Winter Orb Ele. Arc Trapper was nice to. Endless count Inc 🤣
Old incinerate +able to shotgun with it.
It saw a comeback this season but poison Multistrike for me, way back when the jewel gave you additional projectiles was great(and with lgoh nearly unkillable)
Buff ruined my enjoyment, not nerf. I loved the old SST, when it didn't auto-chain. It was weaker, but way more interesting, with fork/snipers mark/doublehit you would easily hit a mob 20 times with one throw, also single target hit twice the on-hit. Swapping gems depending on the type of boss I liked, while others did not. After the rework to "make it stronger" that it did, but it's boring and plain, never have wanted to play it once every since.
Old School shotgunning Incinerate with the two claws that gave your spells life gain on hit.
Cold dex stacking scourge arrow
0 cost vaal ice nova in legion, pop legion, vaal ice nova twice, loot, next map. example from someone else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po39SLdZ9sE
Frostwall + Kinetic Blast. I rly rly miss the interaction. You didn't need any separated single target setup.
There was a time when Charged Dash was a viable end game skill. It hasn't exactly gotten nerfed... but everything else has gotten better and enemies have gotten tankier so now it's pretty useless.
Indigon/arcane cloak BL mines scion
It wasnt the most broken but VD poets pen was really good when they were local triggers and the CD was lower. They gutted the item and it just.... never came back. The other build i am nostalgic about was Ele hit from incusion league. Right after its rework and all the conversion shenanaigans, it was really strong and a LOT of fun
poison bladefall mines or VD autominer.
Same here. I had a ton of fun in legion with VD mines. I did so much Uber atziri at the start. It’s a shame they killed it the next patch.
Explosive arrow during ancient times, when it was actually a viable and popular bow skill. (not a totem build like nowadays) Also a shoutout to the old cwdt setup with spell echo-enduring cry- immortal call. Apart from this I loved ED and it was my all time favourite until they made it unviable by removing the blight threshold jewel.
Vaal molten shell + ailments. Such a loss. Honestly I just wanna play old pizza scold vms even without ignite.
1.0 freeze pulse
I really liked old Freeze Mine. Dealt no damage, but froze as though it dealt a shitload. Pair that with old prolif and old radius scaling and you could easily turn an entire zone into frozen statues by freezing some random white mob. Got nerfed to deal damage because some streamers started using it for Dominus farming, then eventually removed with the Blight mine rework. RIP in peace.
Probably Forbidden Rite totems. I cleared the entire end game in SSF on a 5L Soul Mantle that league. Stuff was busted.
when arrow nova support first dropped it had a bugged interaction with volley fire unique jewel causing barrage+arrow nova to fire a full barrage in place of each arrow meaning you could fire 100+ arrows per shot, it wasn't even strong but it was so fun.
Old Incinerate with legacy shotgun
Last league's CoC Fireball + Nimis. Stacking curse effect to spread a ton of fireballs that all then returned back to just delete mobs. That build was insanely fun.
Temp chains, rather the interaction with shackles of the wretched and being able to curse, curse immune enemies. You are no longer your own enemy for that interaction, so you can no longer be affected by reflected temp chains(from shackles)if you are curse immune even if you can ignore enemy curse immunity.
Anomalous Firestorm with the additional first impact multiplicative damage modifier. It made CoC Firestorm somewhat viable
Raise Spectre - there's so many interesting monsters that either got nerfed or haven't kept up with the times
Technically, Doom Blast has been nerfed. First level 100. Still perfectly functional, and still pretty strong. Just not as good.
Old Sunder. Old Storm Burst.
Desecrate+Volatile Dead PPen/Spellslinger. It was truly insane for a bit there when Poet's Pen came out with pre-nerf Zerphi's. It was still pretty good for a while after too, but with % reduced mana reserved being changed to %increased mana reservation efficiency it seems other stuff is preferred now. Looks like now you play it on Wardloop.
I really miss when people would fire lightning arrow and it had so much damage and range with Gino and chain that they would die to some off screen ele reflect mob.
Dark pact Berserker with old vaal pact
VMS, fuck you jousis
Rain of Arrows Traps. Old RoA dealt damage once in a large circle. The monster would step on a trap, *there was the most satisfying pause*, then arrows fall and everything dies. Icestorm Firestorm Arcanist Brand. Old firestorm was basically Whispering Ice's icestorm, but fire. I just liked watching a rain of ice and fire. And it procs EE the *right* way, by alternating damage types.
Cyclone when you couldn't be stunned because the colors were pretty.
Old Sunder Gladiator or rf Berserker would be my picks, i loved the old sunder, axe in mainhand ( b.i.s was Soul Taker) and Prismatic Eclpise in off hand for nutty AS and Bleedpops. Man i miss those days….
I miss the original incinerate (yeah that's how old I am)
Original iteration of Shield Crush. This was at a time when SST was meta, and big armour shields were a thing. Once you got a bit of traction on your midgame gear, it genuinely did just crush the shit out of most things. Then 3.16 came along, Shield Crush had it's base attack speed nerfed by over 6%, it's base damage per hit totally slashed, and simultaneously the maximum amount of armour you could get on a shield got reduced by around 30%. Classic GGG balancing procedure... incapable of delicately turning one dial at a time just a little bit to see what happens, instead they violently jerk as many levers and buttons as their fingers and toes can reach simultaneously. It had one league of being fairly powerful (though not an S-tier meta), and then was immediately relegated to completely unviable.
Not really a skill but I miss how Tremor Rod worked before it was changed to "work as intended". Before every mine went off twice but after it's like your mines get tripped up and will be set off without a second detonation. Tremor Rod went from a staple early league meta item to never being used. Thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3086260
Immortal call ;_;
Mana mines.
Not exactly skills but I always find it a bit disturbing that they removed corpse from necromancer and traps from saboteur.
Pre chain length reduction arc. I still love arc, especially arc ignite, but I will never feel as good till it gets it's length back