So as you may know, switching factions has the unfortunate effect of not being able to use the items from the other faction. So whenever you want to perform a faction switch, you will lose access to most of your current gear.
Legacy
has a slight advantage, because:
if you played the other faction before, you might already have reputation for the other faction = less reputation grind
changing faction will still reset your favor to zero, but you should retain the highest reputation rank you reached, so you can go pick for prophecies or go shopping in Bazaar right after you regain enough Favor
But if you donât have old characters from the other faction, thereâs no difference from doing this on Season.
Switching from Merchantâs Guild to Circle of Fortune
is better, because only items bought on the Bazaar have the MG lock.
Any drops from grinding monoliths and dungeons will be usable by CoF-aligned characters, so chances are you will be able to clear monoliths right after the switch. Of course this depends on how many self-found items you have stashed away and if they are useful.
Switching from Circle of Fortune to Merchantâs Guild
is the worst possible option, because almost all gear dropped by CoF characters will be locked to CoF faction. Thereâs a very high probability your character will end up completely naked. Since we need gear to farm gear, our only option is to buy rare items from the vendors.
On top of that, depending on the build, our characters might not be able to continue on their previous corruption level, so Iâm also expecting the need to farm non-empowered monoliths or to pick one timeline and downgrade the corruption to lower levels before we make the switch.
So to sum it up:
You lose access to current gear (most if not all gear becomes unusable due to faction lock)
You cannot use the new faction mechanics right away to regain gear (because your favor gets reset) PS: turns out favor only resets on the faction youâre leaving. But you still need reputation and favor on the faction youâre switching to.
You need to regrind reputation from zero (unless you already did the grind on another character in the same season)
You might need to run non-empowered or lower corruption in a timeline before you change faction (because your characterâs power will very likely go down)
Personally Iâm not a fan of this item gating.
I like the benefits of both factions, and Iâm fine with the favor reset on switch. But I donât see why I need to go naked when changing a faction, or why my MG character cannot wear an item that dropped in the monoliths farmed by my CoF character.
Not really. Most gear still drops without the CoF tag. At most, they have the âcannot be tradedâ tag, but even this isnât true for all. As far as I can tell, only things that were directly affected by one of the faction rewards gets tagged. Meaning that if you do a set echo, the piece that drops naturally doesnât get the tag, whereas the rest of the set that drops due to the reward gets the tag.
Most boss drops arenât tagged (unless you get the double reward), Nemesis drops arenât tagged either (the ones from his window, not his natural drops).
I actually am quite aware of this because I often highlight CoF tagged drops to use RoA on, and itâs not that many, comparatively speaking.
And Iâve also checked my stash. Of the exalts I do keep, about half of them are tagged CoF and half arenât.
I actually am not sure if this is true. You do lose all favour from the faction youâre leaving, but I think you retain the favour from the other faction.
This is mostly to prevent the meta of you going MG, buying all the cool gear to farm high corruption (which is easy in MG) and then switching to CoF to have higher drop rates with that CoF bonuses.
Itâs basically to avoid double dipping where you get the advantages from both factions at the same time.
CoF vs MG is supposed to be a meaningful choice. Youâre not supposed to be switching it around. Theyâve added that option so that players can switch if they regret their first choice, but it has to have heavy penalties to switch, otherwise the meta becomes âGo MG, gear up, switch to CoFâ.
There have been several threads about this and in at least one me and Kulze had a very big back and forth (meaning, novel writing ) between us because he was saying the same thing you are.
I believe in the end he was convinced of the need for the gear to be locked, exactly to prevent double dipping, but it was a while ago and weâre both stubborn, so I donât remember if it was settled or we just decided to move on.
CoF sucks ass outside of trying to force very powerful one off gear, so as state, if you could freely swap, it would literally just be âbuy power until extreme minmax, then swap to cofâ
CoF has way worse gearing outside of âI want to get X lp on this one specific pieceâ that might be to rare/expensive in MG. but otherwise MG is just straight up better.
I frankly would have made it so you cant swap, but thats just me. The fact that we can swap brings this type of topic up when really, they have done so much that swapping a character that has progressed on one faction heavily basically is a non starter.
I am just sitting here with the biggest smile. It is insane how systems are perceived by different players.
I personally think CoF is amazing for gearing, like truely outstanding. Very fun, lots of target farm opportunities and a lot of random drops as well. I never felt at a disadvantage, even though I would be happy to be at a disadvantage for playing in a way that I enjoy it more anyway. But it is rather the opposite and it feels like I am rewarded for playing the way I love to play.
Even when taking out as much personal preference and bias as possible CoF is not that far behind MG, depending on what you want to achieve.
Iâm not worried about the âcannot be tradedâ tag. Just the CoF tag.
I read that argument about RoA on discord aswell. But I canât say I agree. I had no trouble finding stuff to ascend, but my stash is more CoF and less untagged. One of the reasons I went MG on later characters.
I tried it out, and youâre right, it resets favor only on the faction you left, so thatâs a small win.
You still need to have favor, and in case of season you probably wonât have any reputation with the other faction, so only on legacy I guess.
I understand the reasoning behind it, but why is double dipping a problem?
Whatâs important to me is that I can loot meaningful gear and use it on characters I want to play. I donât really care if some other guy can farm more efficiently by using two faction bonuses instead of just one. If anything, Iâd just use that too, so itâll be level playing field
I have the same perception of CoF vs. MG. MG all the way I can literally buy a gear upgrade the moment I reach its required level.
I guess you could say the time investment required to obtain decent gear in MG vs. investment required to obtain comparable gear in CoF is like night and day.
But as stated above, I donât see any problem with enjoying the benefits of both factions.
The choice between CoF and MG is meaningful even without the restriction, since youâre choosing between loot spam, filter management and stash management OR way less of the abovementioned and instead you spend time browsing the auction.
I donât think itâs really what you want to achieve but rather how you play. If youâre an altoholic that has a lot of different characters and all of them are CoF, then CoF is very good, because, while you might not find the great drop that your current character wants, youâre very likely to find a great drop for A character. So itâs great for legacy altoholics.
But if you only play 1-2 characters each season, itâs much easier to gear with MG, even as a baseline. For these, MG is just very superior.
Different experiences, I guess. I do tend to keep most T7âs, regardless of the base, as long as itâs not an unwanted affix (like melee stuff). And when I checked my stash, it was about 50/50.
Because a bunch of people donât like trading. CoF was made exactly for them. If you allow double dipping, youâre basically forcing players to trade if they want to be effective. We go back to the âYou donât have to use itâ argument which has been debunked over and over again.
Basically, if there is no downside to switching and youâre enforcing a meta of âgear with MG, then switch to CoF for the dropsâ, then there is no point in having them be opposing factions at all. Might as well just give them both to everyone.
But the people who donât like trading can play solo self found, which we also have.
Yes, gimme. Iâd say it works in poe just fine.
PS: And technically they are not opposing factions. They are on the same side. Itâs not like alliance vs. horde in world of warcraft for example.
I only play 1 char per season usually, maybe 2 or 3 maximum.
From my personal experience MG is only superior for outrageous LP on multiple slots.
But that is not requried for any build anyway.
There is always the side of what is âbetterâ and the other side of âwhat is more funâ. The latter is very subjective. But even the former is not as clear cut as many make it out.
If your goal is not 3-4 LP on literally every slot possible with perfect BiS affixes CoF is better in many cases.
Anyway, I just really think that EHG achieved something great with how polarizing Item Factions are. It just puts a smile on my face everytime, when somebody speaks very bad about something I personally absolutely adore.
Curiously, I see CoF as the better option to farm this kind of endgame gear. In my eyes, the power of MG is in readily available gear.
When leveling, I can just open up the auction and buy a specific useful unique, whereas in CoF I would have to get a lucky drop or try RNG with RoA.
And when in 300c+, I can simply search for T6 affix and the base and find possible upgrades right away.
The only caveat is that in Legacy you sometimes canât do this due to the exorbitant prices, and sometimes you need to farm gold before you can do it in season with specific rare unique items like Bastion of Honour, which have high costs.
There are plenty of people that play CoF and also in a group. Weâve seen cases in this forum where someone played with they wife, or son, or friends and theyâre all CoF.
The greatest thing about CoF was how they provided an SSF experience without forcing you to play alone and ignore your friends.
PoE doesnât have CoF. PoE only has trade. You either trade for stuff or youâre purposefully nerfing your experience because you donât get anything in return. Characters in SSF will always be weaker than ones in regular league, because the game revolves around trade (and its toxicity).
That would be mostly semantics. We can say theyâre opposite factions, then.
CoF was basically created because plenty of people donât like trading (about half the playerbase) and rather than screw those players like GGG does, they gave them CoF.
So in LE, players that donât like to trade actually feel like their gameplay is respected and kinda on par with those that do. Allowing double dipping will once again just nerf people that donât trade.
Finding a good exalted base is way easier in MG than in CoF, though, if youâre playing in a season and only 1-2 characters. Thatâs because you can âtarget farmâ it very effectively. And most of the time you barely spend any money on them.
Most of Aaronâs recent builds are MG builds where he goes to the bazaar, spends 1-2 million gold and is all geared up in an hour, with not much to improve upon.
How is the family from your example affected by the fact that someone else switched between MG and CoF at some point?
Even now there are optimal leveling builds, optimal build guides, optimal dungeon strategies, and so on. Everyone who isnât using them is âpurposefully nerfing their experienceâ aswell.
Just because there exists an option, it does not mean you MUST use that option. Itâs just like Volatile Reversal. Everyone says itâs a must-have in every Sentinel build. But I never used it. I guess I was fine with purposefully nerfing my experience ever since I played a Sentinel. Or just maybe, its existence didnât affect âmy experienceâ in the slightest.
No, it wonât nerf anything.
People who play CoF today would still be able to play CoF tomorrow. If you have access to both trading and extra drops, it doesnât magically make the extra drops disappear. You still have it.
The difference between an optimal leveling guide or a non-optimal leveling guide is that you might waste a few more hours.
The difference between being in BiS gear to farm high corruptions if you can simply switch is several days (or even weeks) for people that donât like/want to trade.
Not to mention that, while this game is mostly single player, it does have many multiplayer features, like trade and leaderboards, which would all be affected by this.
Trade especially, because if the meta is simply getting your gear to farm empowered monos and then switch to CoF, you wonât be feeding the market with high power items. And those that show up will be very expensive.
This is what I already said is not a valid argument and has already been debunked several times. Just go re-read the mastery respec threads.
TLDR; if you add a difficulty slider to souls-games, you donât have to use it. But the players that like souls-games will all leave. Because itâs no longer a hard game that challenges players, itâs an easy game that has a hard mode.
Or if you add a godmode option to LE where you are immortal and one-shot everything. You donât have to use it. But the fact that it exists will cause most players to leave.
Likewise, there is a very significant portion of the playerbase that plays LE mostly because of CoF. Because they donât like to trade. But with the current system, they feel they arenât nerfed. They feel like their gameplay matters. They would leave if you could just double dip.
Theyâre the same players that already left PoE exactly because you have to trade to be successful. Because GGG doesnât care about SSF players.
There is a big difference between âMy favorite playstyle is mostly on par with the other faction and I might take 2-3 days more to reach MG playersâ and âMy favorite playstyle is so much worse that I need 2-3 weeks to reach MG playersâ.
So yes, you have the option not to use it. But such a huge difference will simply make it so that the option is simply not to play the game.
Days (or even weeks) to gear in CoF vs. Aaron gearing in 1 hour.
So either the CoF players from your examples are hilariously misinformed and/or they want to live in some kind of illusion of equal opportunity when there really isnât one.
Or the difference between gearing speed of current CoF and MG is not as important as youâre trying to make it.
No, it wonât.
Comparing difficulty and cheats to efficiency seems rather silly. There are tons of games with difficulty settings.
Thanks, this seems to be a key difference. You NEED to trade in poe. But you DONâT NEED to trade in LE.
The only reason they enable switch between factions is in case you regret your choice or want to try something different without the need of leveling a new character. Literally 2 different playstyles.
Considering that heâs using legacy characters, itâs the equivalent of me creating a new character and using my multiple stashes to gear up a new character in an hour. So nothing is debunked if you compare equivalent things.
Starting a new character with MG or CoF, both will reach empowered monos at roughly the same time. Both will reach 300c roughly at the same time. MG will be more effective, since they can target farm and CoF canât.
Itâs all simply a matter of scale. Options define what a game is. Players join a game or leave it because of those options.
Souls-players love FS games exactly because they are hard and have no easy mode. If FS implements a difficulty slider, they will leave. And this is because itâs not the same game. Elden Ring is a brutal game that punishes players. If it had a difficulty slider it would be an easy game that happened to have a hard mode. That is not what they are looking for.
You donât need to trade in LE because you have CoF. Otherwise, you would.
The only difference between both games is that PoE doesnât give a crap about players that donât want to trade. You donât want to trade? Screw you, PoE is not for you.
Whereas LE actually cares about players that donât want to trade. Donât want to trade? There you go, hereâs a faction that will make your experience more fun.
LE tries to make both MG and CoF players kinda equal. It fails in some aspects, but that is their intention and what they constantly strive for. CoF will always inevitably be a bit behind, but the aim is that both are viable options and equally fun.
Youâre trying to take that away and make trade players the top dog again. You want your cake and eat it too.
Sure, Im actually a CoF player only. Because its how I like to play too, but we really need to consider just how soft of a âWant to achieveâ is in terms of balance.
I think MG will always beat CoF, and there is literally mathematical proof of that. You just cant beat trade this does not mean I wouldnt play CoF, but this is exactly why CoF needs to be protected from hot swap shenanigans. Because MG is already better in 99% of cases, the few niche cases of better farming CoF has going for it need to not be nerfed because MG players abuse them cough key selling
im okay with MG being better, I just absolutely will not stand for grubby little MG players to hot swap back and forth and getting what little juice there is from CoF into their hands.
Thatâs kinda the point of getting a cake yâknow?
Souls games literally have an invulnerability button.
When they messed with their unconditional invulnerability in Dark Souls 2, some players really didnât like it. So if anything, your example proves that players really want their easy mode.
Heh, no Itâs the easiest Souls game yet.
See, youâre contradicting yourself again.
You said, itâs a several days (or even weeks) difference for people that donât like/want to trade. And now youâre saying you can gear up a fresh character in an hour.
Except you were talking about âgearing for high corruptionâ.
But now youâre talking about âlevelingâ and âreach 300câ. And if leveling and reaching 300c is roughly equal in time spent, then it has no bearing on the âgearing for high corruptionâ part that comes during/after.
So to repeat this in full sentences, âgearing for high corruptionâ has - per your own words - a difference of âseveral days (or even weeks)â today. Which debunks your prior argument that CoF is an equal option to trading.
This is perfect, because Iâm not asking for the removal of CoF, so this difference between poe and LE will remain in place.
No. I want to keep it that way.
If the options are truly roughly equal, there would be no reason to switch faction for âdouble dippingâ.
This artificial restriction of not being able to use loot obtained via the other faction doesnât achieve anything meaningful. Using Bazaar is still more time efficient with the restriction in place.
Ok, youâre going down that path of deliberately misunderstanding what people say. Like I said in the other thread, I know where this is going and nothing will come of it. Have a nice day.
It is when I said that when you played a lot of hours in legacy Aaron can gear up in 1h and so can I because I have a full stash of stuff, but when itâs a new character the difference is now bigger.
If you play 500h there is barely any difference between players that donât want to trade and those that do, other than for some specific stuff.
If you play 20h on each and are reaching empowered monos, there is a noticeable difference, between players that donât want to trade and those that do, but one which isnât significant enough so most players donât mind.
If you play 20h having access to both at the same time, players that donât want to trade will have a huge difference to those that do.
That is what Iâve been saying from the start and youâre cherry picking sentences and throwing them out of context just to argue.
So by all means, carry on. Iâll just stop engaging in this discussion. Itâs not like thereâs any point to it. Current system is treating all players equally, what youâre proposing is âGimme all the stuff even if some players get screwed comparativelyâ.
) between us because he was saying the same thing you are.
I can literally buy a gear upgrade the moment I reach its required level.