There are some great leagues in PoE, but there’s others that are way off the mark.
When you are looking for a league to play in Path of Exile, there’s a few traits that we are often looking for. We want something that’s going to benefit us with PoE currency, or has fast clearing speeds, and even just being generally fun to play. Whilst there are some fantastic leagues for us to participate in, there’s others that fall short. So, here’s a selection of the worst Path of Exile leagues you can take on.
Bestiary
This league makes the list due to its state before its overhaul. The gameplay systems that were in place were frowned upon by fans of the game, who found rare monsters to be tough to take down. The main problem was what came of the ability to catch these monsters. Once you had a monster that was low on health, you would then be able to thrown a net on them to be captured. This would store them in The Menagerie, after which players could use blood rituals to make new items or mods.
The problem here was that trying to maintain all of the net tiers, and you could end up killing the monsters you were trying to catch by accident. It has been overhauled since to make it more playable, but it’s still worth a mention.
Onslaught
This may seem like another harsh choice to some. Onslaught was one of the first challenge leagues to come to Path of Exile, where everything was sped up and offered new Unique items. This was pretty bare bones though, even for an early attempt.
If one of the goals of leagues was to shake up the formula, Onslaught didn’t offer too much towards this. What it added wasn’t really enough to differentiate itself from the PoE norm, unfortunately.
Invasion
This was a super tough league for players to participate in. Sure, you may have come across hard leagues in your time playing PoE. However, they aren’t likely to compare with the likes of Invasion.
This league was only available for hardcore players. You would take on bosses from different sections of the game. So it would mix things up where you could have endgame bosses right at the start of the game and so on. As you can imagine, this led to a lot of untimely deaths, much to the player’s frustration.
Torment
The Torment league feels like it fell on its own sword in some ways. It offers a mechanic in which ghosts could take possession of enemies. This would make them powerful foes to defeat, but also means that you’re going to get better loot to throw up on PoE trade. Sadly, this modification made enemies a bit too difficult for some who wouldn’t be able to control them while the league lasted. The loot drops, despite these tough enemies, weren’t anything to shout about either.
Talisman
The good thing about Talisman was that the developers had listened to player feedback regarding leagues for hardcore and softcore players. This leads to a big league for both sets of players called Talisman. The bad thing was that it’s probably the worst league that has ever graced the game.
As the name suggests, you would see enemies using talismans that would make them strong, and killing them would see you rewarded with a talisman. This is where the issues came in. Talismans that were considered best were locked behind tiers. To unlock these tiers, you would have to rack up thousands of talismans yourself before you could unlock them. Stash tabs were needed to have them stored, and it just wasn’t worth the hassle in the end for many.
That said, players shouldn’t be discouraged from trying leagues out for themselves. After all, it’s something that makes the game unique to other titles that are of a similar ilk. Some leagues will also provide the best experience that you can get in the entire game. There is always going to be leagues that have to be at the bottom of the pile, and the ones that you find above are certainly contenders.
There’s a lot to celebrate about Path of Exile too. The PoE currency system really helps it stand out, and the fact that its free to play is always handy. But there’s always going to be some bumps in the road, and the leagues in this article definitely represent the worst aspects of the league system in the ARPG experience.
Do you enjoy any of these leagues in Path of Exile? Let us know in the comments section below!
