It isn't often I do reviews or updates on PoE this often but I wanted to recap what was the easiest and deepest league I've played in, but also frustrating. As stated previously, I usually play a new league for 1-3 weeks. I get to about 10-20 achievements and call it (usually around 2 void stones and finished atlas). Starting at Affliction I started getting deeper into PoE and finished 31 achievements that league and 28 achievements in 3.24. In 3.25 I have hit 34 achievements.
League Starter: I still have a philosophy to never play the same build twice. I'm also still playing through all the ascendancies. You can see my previous post for every build I've played so far, but this league I really wanted a melee start because of all the buffs.
I then settled on Cyclone Slayer because I've never done slayer and I saw multiple build guides for shockwave cyclone which were decent pre-melee buffs. I leveled using sunder and it went amazing. The build was almost exactly the same as Zizaran's slayer slam build, which is a bit of a bait build after you get into maps but it's great in campaign. For a walkthrough of the campaign see my PoE general leveling guide here: https://mastuh.blogspot.com/2023/08/path-of-exile-poe-leveling-league.html
Then I swapped to cyclone and it was painful. Cyclone is very tough to play. It's slow, it's not safe, and it requires too much gear and passive nodes to get the most out of it. I almost quit the league at white maps when I was struggling, and I've never struggled in white maps since my first league when I didn't know the game.
After watching a video from bigducks I realized there was a behind the scenes build from Rue that utilize frost blades of katabasis. However, I never found a legit guide for it so I looked at a bunch of builds on PoEninja and built out my own version of this build (POB here: https://pobb.in/ImBG2xqwe3J4).
Something to know about this frost blades build is that it's very good until you get to bossing. The build relies so heavily on building charges that going into a boss fight cold causes it to struggle. It's also not overly tanky because of that and the single target damage isn't amazing. However, it's the easiest map clear I've ever done. Once I got the awakened support gem I didn't even have to worry about elemental reflect and could literally do any map modifications. I was juicing maps above 100% item qty on all my map runs and didn't struggle at all. Very rarely would I hit an enemy who was too hard to kill, other than a super juiced map boss which happened a couple times.
The gear for this build is extremely cheap. You can get most of it in white maps. The jewels are icing on the cake. I didn't get them until I was deep into red maps. Prior to that I was using yellow viridian jewels. The build itself is basically a 1 button build, aside from an occasional war cry cast and the use of a movement ability.
Eventually you will want to transition to a claw/shield build. That version of the build I never tried. You really need a perfectly crafted claw and shield to replace the gear you have. However, if you plan on going above void stones you will have to transition to this end game version. I quite the league before that so I cannot attest to it but poeninja has many builds to copy from for that.
Now let's talk about Settlers of Kalguur. The QoL changes to the game were great, especially the currency exchange which makes currency trading so much better for everyone. However, the gold costs for some exchanges are a bit annoying. I find myself doing lots of smaller exchanges to avoid the thousands of gold the larger trades cost (i.e. trading an item for 100 chaos might cost 3k gold but trading it for a divine would cost 300 gold). I hope GGG fixes this, but this gets into why I really dislike this league and hope most of it doesn't go core, gold sinks.
This league was designed around people who play PoE 24/7 and can keep up with the gold costs of your settlement. The costs are extremely high to do anything productive with the town that you find yourself constantly managing your town instead of playing the game. However, the less time you're in maps making gold the harder it is to keep up. If you want my advice, save up 250k gold first and then dump it into your settlement. Upgrade everything as far as possible. Ensure you max out mining first because it actually becomes a gold maker for you. When it comes to boats ensure you do about 100 of each resource and dust and send to the closer ports. Don't worry about the items the ports are actually requesting other than the challenge related to that. By this mini shipment method you will have far less risk, far more rewards/hour, and will stack up the runes you need to finish enchanting achievements.
Overall 3.25 brought a host of great QoL changes, buffs to melee, and an interesting new league mechanic. However, I hope Kalguur doesn't go core other than the currency exchange and gold respec. Good luck exiles!