Prompt: Yep, next. Letter 10 – Keep it Small
GPT-4o said:
I was going to get off my arse and blog today. Quit procrastinating, take advantage of the weekend and the theme to shrink scope and fire off a quick post.
Then I learned that Belghast just passed.
Ah dammit. Now I didn’t feel like blogging any longer.
Which. If you think about it. Is the exact antithesis of what Bel would have wanted.
So, I guess a blog post is in order, after all. If only to mark the day and the memory.
We didn’t quite move in the same circles. Being on the other side of the world and all that, and just not as social as he was. For someone introverted, he did a commendable amount of community building.
For a while there, it seemed like whatever new gaming social media of the day was being introduced, Belghast was at the center and heart of some community space using it.
All those communities are going to be one heart and soul smaller for his passing. That’s sad, and worth a salute, or seven.
We rarely played the same games, until as of late. But his frequent and mostly daily posting established a kind of inviolable presence. Guy who played World of Warcraft. Guy who loves tanking. Guy who loves cats. Guy who loved his wife. Guy who branched out to other games and often got very enthused about his latest game of interest, and sometimes worried he was losing people by his lavish detailing of said game of interest.
But, y’know, the lavish detailing was the point. The enthusiasm. The positivity. The fascinated obsession with X piece of gear, Y weapon of whatever item level, and Z jargon-filled sentence that likely made sense to a devoted player of the game in question and only conveyed a kind of pure-hearted love to someone who wasn’t so wrapped up in that game of choice.
I admit to feeling rather chuffed when Belghast finally came round to Guild Wars 2.
For a while there, he just did not understand the whole horizontal progression aspect. He was deeply in love with vertical progression and levels and numbers climbing. He often lamented as much, that he kept trying with GW2 and it never quite clicked.
Me, I shut it and resisted the urge to evangelize. GW2 isn’t for everybody. It especially isn’t for people deeply entrained to the WoW MMO style, and needing incrementing numbers to feel a sense of accomplishment. I figured, GW2 gets people when they are ready. When the burnout cycle hits with the old way of doing things (though ironically now, GW2 is equally old and set in its ways.)
Sure enough, a decade later or thereabouts, Belghast is suddenly on the GW2 choo choo train and singing its praises in his podcasts and thriving at Tequatl and world bosses.
And I chortled quietly to myself, and chucked him on my friendslist. Just to spy, mostly. It was never really a great time to approach – his peak gaming times were my “off to work” times and vice versa. I’d log on, spot him in a lobby briefly, and he’d log off. That sort of thing.
But it was nice that he friended back, so we could each remotely and briefly watch the other go about our own GW2 activities. He liked his necromancer a lot. Was almost always on it. Reaper-ing, I guess. He would have seen me either on my guardian or my necro (harbinging-in my case.)
Then of course, there was Path of Exile.
That and PoE2.
Whoo. Was he advanced in that. Immensely. Intimidatingly. Number go up really did appeal to him. And I guess he was comfortable enough with socializing to trade for whatever the heck he wanted to achieve.
He was definitely playing a different level of PoE than I was. But it was nice to see someone get enthused about exactly what he was doing, and laying it all out for everyone to read and share.
All this to say, we’ve lost another a good voice in this part of the blogging community with the passing of the years and the rude intrusion of illnesses, and it’s going to be just that little bit quieter.
(But not too much, we hope. That would make Bel sad. A little more frequency of blogging is perhaps, one of the best ways we can honor his memory. After all, that’s what Blaugust is – a celebration of blogging, as introduced by Belghast, frequent blogger and community-builder extraordinaire.)
In other news, I’ve been tinkering away with Path of Exile, with a late SSF entry into the Mirage League.
It started with a nonserious half-procrastination half-summoner urge intensifies to just revisit the good ol’ summoner playstyle.
Roll up a witch, wander around with a bazillion summons, let them do the fighting, do my best to not explode too abruptly and fail at around the frequency of rolling a natural one on a d20.
Because it wasn’t serious, I did absolutely zero prior research into good builds (be it on the forums or the Youtubes), zero Path of Building pre-experimentation and basically chose all my passive tree points along the lines of YOLO, we’ll decide what looks promising when we get to the moment of choice.
I was fully expecting build failure around white or yellow maps, and was content to go with that as a natural stopping point. That or do some kind of respec – I noted with interest that Mirage League seemed to be more flexible on that front, with all the gold dropping left, right and center, and other more recent past league mechanics providing a bit more gear and self-crafting options. Exalted and regal orbs also seemed a bit more populous this league, which is great for my SSF gear crafting.
I did pretty much all the minion things. I took Raise Zombie. I hunted around for Vaal Summon Skeletons while using Summon Skeletons. I picked up Summon Raging Spirits. I was near the Minion Instability node, and thought, hmm, maybe I can test this out for once. I also wanted to try Infernal Legion. So I socketed SRS with the idea that they’d set things on fire with Infernal Legion as they wafted by, run out of health and then explode via Minion Instability.
Somewhere along the line, Absolution dropped, and I thought, hey, more minions, why not? Then Summon Phantasms came along, and I added that to Absolution because MOAR MINIONS.
Then Summon Carrion Golem does well with More Minions Around It the Merrier.
I ran some Labyrinths in the hope of getting some gem quality, and instead, I ran into an option of transfiguring a gem of my choice, and Absolution was a gem I could spare… and I thought, eh, this Absolution of Inspiring sounds like an interesting gem on PoEwiki, why not?
And it pretty much rivaled SRS as my main damage skill, so wow, ok, guess I’m fine with that too.
(I knowingly steered away from the more typical PoE build format of one main skill and building around that.
I knowingly walked into the whole thing with my eyes wide open about being curse-less, aura-less, rather sad in defences besides a vague hope to maybe focus more energy shield but also value life, and sadly, lazy to build up resistances because I could mostly get away with the summoner strategy of standing half a screen away and letting the MINIONS take care of problems.)
And then…
…and then…
A completely wild idea hit me that I absolutely had to test out.
What if… I asked AI for commentary, analysis and personalized build suggestions?
Does ChatGPT or Claude even understand Path of Exile? Are they just going to scrape random advice from forums and subreddits?
What if I could give them -actual numbers- from Path of Building, because hey, if there’s one thing reasoning AI models are supposed to be good at these days, it’s spreadsheets and coding and stuff, right?
After all, chances were good I might get ever-so-slightly better build advice than just me randomly posting a link to my build on some Reddit or forum page and letting whatever Tom, Dick or Harry Redditor come along and post snarky comments without actually looking at the build, right?
Especially since random redditors are incapable of taking into account unique starting situations like “this is SSF, do not recommend me something I have to trade my firstborn for.”
So the first thing I checked, with both ChatGPT 5.5 Thinking (High effort) and Claude Opus 4.7 (High) was… is this even doable?
Prompt: I’ve been messing around with Path of Exile in an SSF summoner configuration on the side. Now I’m not at all a great theorycrafter, and was wondering, if there were creative yet accurate ways to use AI on the side to help tinker with, improve builds and overall game understanding.
I’m not really looking for generic advice like add more life, or what not, that I could find on random Reddits. I’m more thinking along the lines of actually assessing a Path of Building build, or operating Path of Building in some way – grounded in the actual numbers… and/or comparing a number of current league build recommendations online and seeing where they are similar and differ, and so on.
How ambitious/impractical is this, or is this achievable with current AI standards? Also open to other suggestions and ideas as well.
Their replies are a little long to post wholesale here, but suffice it to say, both were quite positive about the idea, and pointed out that Path of Building is entirely on Github, and the PoB code is compressed XML, so AI is capable of inspecting the whole build.
There were a few hiccups around pasting the entire generated PoB code into Claude – it seems to truncate the text more – ChatGPT handled it fine. Eventually, we hit upon mostly providing the PoB share link (the stuff starting with https://pobb.in/randomsetofalphanumerics) and they were able to assess that fine.
I got the AI models to give me an overview of what they could read from the PoB code and manually cross-checked some of the numbers with Path of Building to satisfy myself that they matched.
Then from there, I just started discussing current plans, my playstyle, what I wanted and preferred, weaknesses of my build that I’d noticed or acknowledged as known trade offs, and asked for other ideas, suggestions, tweaks and improvements and what not.
And they started producing…pretty decent suggestions. They actually searched through common PoE databases like poedb.tw and other sources. (I suppose one could also constrain them with prompting to desired sources too.)
Not all perfect, of course. Some had to be taken with grains of salt. (But that should be done with all advice, really, even if it comes from real humans.) Some missed interrelationships like recommending a Physical to Lightning gem support for Absolution, but I also had Minions Have Unholy Might (which converts the Physical to Chaos) on my Witch-Necromancer ascendency, which made the support a bit more of a questionable tradeoff.
See, that’s the problem with Path of Exile that has always bamboozled me somewhat. A lot of it is tradeoff decisions. But I often don’t understand the full extent of the tradeoff wholesale, or it involves so many calculations or flipping dropdowns and checkboxes on Path of Building that I lose the will to chase the answer to the question.
And this is where AI steps in and supports. It’s a friend that -doesn’t- get tired of my incessant piddly questions about some nitty gritty aspect of my build.
Dare you to do that with random Redditors or forum goers. Unless you luck into a very numbers-obsessive theorycrafter friend who’s got nothing better to do than to explain calculations to you… don’t think you’re getting very far.
For example:
Prompt: Ok, I’ve surfaced an ilvl 67 fossilized spirit shield with 7% increased minion damage implicit. And managed to roll/craft 19% increased energy shield, 8% increased stun/block recovery, minions deal 16% increased damage, minions have +19% elemental resistances, minions have 99% increased critical strike chance on it.
Now I’m at the crafting bench, trying to decide between 56-70 maximum life, 41-50% increased energy shield, 35-45 to maximum energy shield options. What would each get me?
GPT 5.5 Thinking (High) said:
That is a rather respectable little SSF shield. The craft choice has a clear mathematical winner for maximum Energy Shield, but Life remains a defensible choice because of your character’s particular vulnerabilities.
A Fossilised Spirit Shield has 49–55 base Energy Shield. Your existing 19% increased ES is local to the shield. Current armour quality is multiplicative with local defences, so putting it at 20% quality gives the finished shield another 20% more ES. (poedb.tw)
What each craft produces
Assuming the shield’s underlying base roll is somewhere from 49 to 55:
| Bench craft | Shield ES at 0% quality | Shield ES at 20% quality | Other benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 56–70 maximum Life | 58–65 | 69–78 | +56–70 base Life |
| 41–50% increased ES | 78–92 | 94–111 | None |
| 35–45 maximum ES | 99–119 | 119–142 | None |
These are ranges because both the shield’s base ES and the crafted modifier can roll within ranges.
Why flat ES wins
The percentage craft combines additively with your existing 19%:
- Existing 19% + crafted 41–50%
- Total: 60–69% increased local ES
But it is scaling a fairly small 49–55 base.
The flat craft instead changes the base to:
- 49–55 base
- Plus 35–45 crafted ES
- New effective base: 84–100 ES
Then your existing 19% increased ES and quality multiply that much larger number.
So on this particular base:
35–45 flat ES is considerably better than 41–50% increased ES.
The percentage option is the bench-shaped decoy frog. 🐸
What that means on your character
Using the scaling seen in your earlier PoB, approximately 69% increased Life and substantial increased maximum ES, your rough character gains should look something like this after bringing the shield to 20% quality:
Life craft
- Roughly 69–78 ES from the shield, subsequently multiplied by your global ES scaling
- Approximately 95–118 actual maximum Life after your increased-Life modifiers
- Likely around 260–310 combined raw Life-plus-ES, compared with wearing Springleaf
Percentage ES craft
- Roughly 94–111 local shield ES
- Likely around 225–270 character ES
- No Life
Flat ES craft
- Roughly 119–142 local shield ES
- Likely around 290–345 character ES
- No Life
Those character-level numbers are estimates because I am applying the scaling from the previous PoB snapshot rather than recalculating the newly equipped item inside PoB.
Life versus flat ES
The real decision is therefore between these two:
Craft maximum Life if you value:
- Better protection against Chaos damage, which ordinarily bypasses Energy Shield
- More value from Life flasks
- A slightly stronger underlying Life floor after your ES is exhausted
- Less dependence on ES having time to recharge
With your current −52% Chaos Resistance, Life has extra strategic value. Energy Shield cannot help against ordinary Chaos damage that bypasses it. (PoE Wiki)
Craft flat Energy Shield if you value:
- The largest total buffer against ordinary physical and elemental alpha strikes
- Leaning further into the ES investment already present on your passive tree
- Getting maximum defensive value from this specific shield
- Testing whether a more meaningful ES outer layer makes the hybrid concept feel better
For the random “I stepped ahead and the landscape suddenly deleted me” incidents, flat ES probably gives the largest immediate numerical buffer. It should provide perhaps 20–80 more combined raw pool than the Life craft, depending on rolls and your exact global modifiers.
But that gap is not enormous. The Life craft is still highly competitive because it gives both Life and the shield’s natural ES.
My choice for this character
I would craft:
35–45 to maximum Energy Shield
Reasons:
- It is unequivocally the best ES craft on this shield.
- Your tree already has substantial global ES scaling.
- The shield is replacing one with essentially no ES.
- Your stated failure mode is sudden incoming hit damage, where a larger outer buffer is immediately useful.
- Life can be sought more efficiently on the helmet and ring replacements you are already considering.
Before settling it, raise the shield to 20% quality. At maximum rolls, that takes the flat-ES version from about 119 ES at zero quality to about 142 ES at 20% quality, a meaningful little slab of blue upholstery.
The finished item would then contribute minion damage, minion survivability, minion crit, some actual personal ES, and 22% block. Not endgame royalty, perhaps, but decidedly no longer Springleaf held together with optimism.
With that, I can actually understand why Increased Energy Shield is a poorer choice either way, compared to the maximum energy shield addition.
Then it’s just a choice between do I want more life, or do I want more energy shield? And in this case, I decided to take GPT’s recommendation and go for the energy shield.
I’ve used it to compare differences between two builds, to get some visibly quantified changes in my efforts, and some pep talk encouragement that my gear search/tweaks have been fruitful.
When some uniques (Geofri’s Sanctuary, The Black Cane) dropped for me, I’ve thrown the question over to the AI models to figure out if it’s worth replacing the current item I’m wearing with the unique – what do I gain, what do I lose, what’s the trade off, is it worth investing my currency to roll a six link on the item, and so on.
I’ve asked it to recommend new utility spectre options because one of my spectres (Undying Evangelist) wasn’t really pulling its weight in my playstyle. Trying to find it and stay inside the proximity shield dome protecting against projectiles was exasperating.
So I asked it for curse spectres instead, and it highlighted an Enfeeble cursing spectre that I -certainly- would never have found on my own, because it was noted on some PoEwiki page buried under a ton of other details, and only located in a specific Delve node in a specific Delve biome (I barely knew there were Delve biomes. Well. Now I know.) It also found other spectres. Your choice is still your own in what you assess and evaluate to be valuable to you.
I’ve thrown it my current inventory quantity of Cassia annointment oils and asked it to recommend me viable stopgap nodes:
Prompt: I’ve got 2 black oils, 2 violet oils, 4 indigo oils, 5 azure oils, 7 teal oils, 12 verdant oils, 18 amber oils, 35 sepia oils, 37 clear oils. I have room for 2 annointments, on an amulet and a cord belt I picked up recently. Recommend me viable/reachable annointments that might help with, primarily, survivability (life, life regen, energy shield) or, secondarily, minion damage (not the nodes I’ve already taken in my passive tree.)
Isn’t that frickin’ amazing?
ChatGPT thought for 4m 33s, searched through a bunch of databases and wikis re: current 3.28 info, checked my actual allocated tree, and then threw up a bunch of suggestions that didn’t use crazy as-yet unobtainable oils like prismatic, silver and gold that I hadn’t reached the correct map level to obtain yet.
It gave me Arcane Guarding + Sanctity as the first recommendation, and a resource conservative SSF suggestion of Arcane Guarding + Robust.
Per my offensive secondary suggestion request, it also suggested Righteous Army, Gravepact and Fearsome Force. (I’d already taken Righteous Army, so its passive tree check failed there. Gravepact and Fearsome Force were indeed nodes I was looking at as well.)
Ultimately, because Sanctity was only two hops away from my present passive tree, I decided I might be able to reach it eventually with levels. So I chose Arcane Guarding + Robust instead.
Is it the -best- possible choice of utmost optimizationz0r? Probably not. I wouldn’t even begin to know where to take the first step along such a theorycrafting road.
But is it useful for just narrowing down an overwhelming playing field of choices into “here’s just two to five options to look at and decide from” and getting some plausibly presentable benefits out of it?
Yes. Better than just not even doing it because figuring out the options was too hard.
Long story short, my summoner is level 90, and not doing -too- badly at tier 10 maps so far. Still fun to play. And it’s nice to have someone/something to throw questions at, acting as a personalized PoE companion/guide.
Why I Game 