Shared Suffering - a truly ruthless 'godawful builds' challenge league
Apply here: https://www.pathofexile.com/private-leagues/league/Shared+Suffering (please read the rules below before applying)
I’m tired of playing good builds, so I’m making a private league where everyone has to play a randomly-assigned godawful build instead, in an environment that's closer to the classic ruthless leagues we had in the early days of the mode.
There are a few rules needed to make this work, which are outlined below.
How the league works:
Everyone taking part in the league must submit a build for the Wheel of Absolute Garbage, in the form of a skill + ascendancy combo. This should be a combo that no-one in their right mind would play for a normal ruthless league start; it could be a solid skill paired with an ascendancy that no-one would ever pick for it, or a relatively awful skill paired with a solid ascendancy, or the worst skill you can think of paired with the worst ascendancy you can think of for it. The funnier it sounds on paper, the better.
Then, a few hours before the league starts, I will stream myself spinning the Wheel of Absolute Garbage once for each participant; whatever skill+ascendancy combo it lands on for each person is what that person has to play. I will remove each build from the Wheel as it is chosen, so each person ends up playing a different build that someone else submitted for the league. It is possible to be forced to play the build you submitted yourself. I will put all of the information regarding who has which build allocated to them in a spreadsheet for those that cannot catch the stream.
Submitting your godawful build:
After applying to join the league, either add a comment here (or in the #shared-suffering poeruthless discord thread) or DM me (on reddit, discord or poe site) with your PoE IGN and the build you want to submit. Your application to the league will be accepted once your build submission is verified. Your application to the league will not be accepted if you do not submit a build.
The build you submit should still be technically viable in a ruthless standard league start environment; we want bad builds, not literally unplayable builds. This means that skills with significant cooldowns or similar limitations that cannot be reasonably bypassed are not allowed (i.e. vigilant strike, bear trap), as are skills that would only do reasonable damage with a specific support gem (i.e. corrupting cry [insert warcry here]). The skill you submit must be the base version and not a specific trans/trarthan/etc. version; the person playing the build will get to decide which version(s) they want to use.
For the sake of balance in this event, all scion ascendancies are banned (luminary carries you too hard with merc, reliq/ascendant are too flexible for this). Chieftain and Guardian are also banned (too much build-agnostic power). I reserve the right to veto any submitted builds that I consider to be too good for this event, though I doubt that will be necessary; I'm sure we can all come up with some variety of garbage that we want to force someone else to play.
If you want to join the league but you can't settle on a build to submit, you can always leave it entirely to chance with this random build generator. Just make sure it's something that's still in the game (randomizer might be a bit out of date).
Once your build submission is verified it cannot be changed.
View all the currently submitted builds here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qyYDdK6bG5Q7U2d8noDht8kUKmfKcz9W13XZ_OqD5Fw/edit?usp=sharing
Playing your godawful build:
Before act 4 you can play with whatever skills you like, but you must play the class that can ascend to your chosen ascendancy. Even if your chosen skill is available in act 1, you do not have to use it as soon as you can get it.
From act 4 onwards you must be ascended to your chosen ascendancy, and the chosen skill must be the main way you deal damage. This means that you are allowed to use other damaging skills if they are important for making your main skill do damage, clear better, etc.; for example, an a essence drain build may also use contagion to spread the essence drain. You should not simply have the skill gem listed in your build equipped while you kill everything with other skills.
Generally, if you have to ask yourself 'is what I'm doing in the spirit of this challenge league?', it probably isn't. Regardless, feel free to ask me about any specifics pertaining to your chosen build and I'll do my best to answer promptly.
You may use any vaal/trans/trarthan variant of your chosen skill, and you may swap between multiple different variants as you wish. You may throw yourself into 'lab jail' in act 3 if you want to farm a specific version of your skill before committing to your build in act 4. You may also farm pre-act 4 for as long as you like to prepare for the transition to your build. If you try to push into act 4 with your build and it doesn't go well, you can return to farming pre-act 4 with whatever skills you like, though you may not swap to a different ascendancy.
You may allocate ascendancy nodes however you wish, and you may use bloodlines however you wish if you are able to unlock them.
Other rules:
This event will run in standard softcore trade ruthless; it is entirely up to you how you want to trade with other players, though I recommend trying to help each other out as some people will inevitably be suffering more than others. It's even better if you're helping out whoever rolled the build that you submitted.
The Allflame mechanic is simply too powerful for a ruthless challenge league, so this event will be held in standard to make the league feel more properly ruthless.
As an additional challenge for the endgame, no currency should be taken from boats. Boats can still be used to farm for tattoos, runegrafts and gear, and ore may be shipped to fulfil quotas and farm for more tattoos and runegrafts, but currency should not be taken from the boat window. This is a gentleman’s agreement and cannot be tracked; ultimately the goal is to make currency drops in maps matter a lot more again, and not push anyone to spec an ore tree ASAP once they reach the endgame. As this is a trade enabled league though if you violate this rule you may be disrupting the league for everyone else, so please keep to it no matter how much you are suffering.
This private league will have no other modifiers (no extra dmg/proj/aoe/etc.)
If you obtain a voidstone, you may ask me to spin the full Wheel of Absolute Garbage again and obtain a second build and character that you are allowed to play for the league. Before that, you may only make one character for the league - no mules allowed.
Due to the structure of this league, new invites will no longer be accepted once I have started spinning the Wheel. You must sign up before the league starts so that you can submit a build and have one rolled for you.
Further info:
The league starts on Wednesday 14th October at 6:00pm BST and will last for at least 20 days. I will try to fund all necessary slots myself, though I will happily accept any crowdfunding if people want to help out.
There will be a channel for this private league in the poeruthless discord, just scroll down to the private leagues section to find it
We will use Global Chat 1 as it is generally not very active in standard ruthless; the last time I tried using a different channel a lot of people just ended up stranded in Global 1 anyway.
I will be streaming from https://www.twitch.tv/jekojeko3
My build submission for the event is: Raise Spectre Pathfinder
Good luck and stay sane~