OFFICIAL Path of Exile (Discussion)

[Vayra86]

I've made my characters visible now

 

[Vayra86]

Funny you should mentioned melee, I was looking into that, too.
The only way to build a melee toon was Vaal Pact and that just got nerfed.

Edit: One advantage when you play as little as I do is you don't have to spend regret orbs. By the time you have to change your build, a nerf patch hits and you get a free respec

Check out the one I just linked bottom of page 1. Its great fun, and tremendously good.

 

[bug]

Check out the one I just linked bottom of page 1. Its great fun, and tremendously good.

Yes, I'm going for something like that. I'm going 2h and Idk if I'll need the extra endurance charges, because I'm planning on using IC with CwDT, but otherwise that's what I have in mind. There are other details I haven't figured out yet, like auras/heralds and if I should go pure physical. Decisions, decisions...

 

[Vayra86]

Dual Wield man. Dual Wield, main hand Mace. It may look weird, because sunder only uses the main hand... but it has tons of advantages, a big one being the extra set of stats you can get on the offhander, and the attack speed. Another big plus is the lower damage/hit which makes you less vulnerable to reflect, and the faster interval between hits means you get more life/hit. Two handers still aren't in a good place in terms of scaling as well, compared to 1h. On top of all this - if you find yourself dying on some maps, you can just pop in a shield offhand.

Extra endurance charges, I have tried playing without, but the survivability you gain from 5 is tremendously useful, that's hard for four or five nodes elsewhere to provide. I find that I have tons of options late in the tree; either stacking more HP, more damage, more charge duration, etc. Depends a lot on your gear, and you can do easy swaps as you go.

Herald of Fire, on this build, is hands down the best because its a 'more' damage effect, which is what the whole build is themed around (supp gems, Berserker for +40%, etc. etc.) - except you gain it as Fire. As this scales entirely off your immense Physical dmg, HoF is huge.

My aura is a very personal adaptation of EE's original build, as I use a Warlord's Mark with Blasphemy which is awesome synergy, or any other curse I deem necessary. Not having to cast curses is a real perk because it hits summons too, and allows for 100% of attacks per second to go to Sunder.

If you really do go for 2h, what's that 6 link intended to be? I don't really see a use for it.

 

[bug]

Dual Wield man. Dual Wield, main hand Mace. It may look weird, because sunder only uses the main hand... but it has tons of advantages, a big one being the extra set of stats you can get on the offhander, and the attack speed. Another big plus is the lower damage/hit which makes you less vulnerable to reflect, and the faster interval between hits means you get more life/hit. Two handers still aren't in a good place in terms of scaling as well, compared to 1h. On top of all this - if you find yourself dying on some maps, you can just pop in a shield offhand.

Extra endurance charges, I have tried playing without, but the survivability you gain from 5 is tremendously useful, that's hard for four or five nodes elsewhere to provide. I find that I have tons of options late in the tree; either stacking more HP, more damage, more charge duration, etc. Depends a lot on your gear, and you can do easy swaps as you go.

Herald of Fire, on this build, is hands down the best because its a 'more' damage effect, which is what the whole build is themed around (supp gems, Berserker for +40%, etc. etc.) - except you gain it as Fire. As this scales entirely off your immense Physical dmg, HoF is huge.

My aura is a very personal adaptation of EE's original build, as I use a Warlord's Mark with Blasphemy which is awesome synergy, or any other curse I deem necessary. Not having to cast curses is a real perk, and in turn adds to DPS because all I do is Sunder.

My problem is I don't have a good main 1-hander. I do have a couple of prismatic eclipses, ironically. Reflect, I plan on adressing by swapping Sunder for Lightning Strike and throwing Physical-to-Lightning in there. I know endurance charges are great, I've used them, I just want to see how it is to play without them.
And if the above fails, I get a free respec when 3.2.0 launches

I'm going to try going pure physical, because every enemy that counts has both high elemental resist and reduce curse efectiveness, in case you want to lower that. I have a Ming's Heart that I want to check out, though.

 

[Vayra86]

Just keep tossing them alchemies, or better yet: Essence- on every high level mace you see. That's how I got mine If it reaches into 120-200 dmg territory, it'll get you pretty far. For my setup reflect isn't an issue, I can just keep spamming sunder at everything, which is the point. Midgame swaps, apart from gear, I am not a big fan of. That said, if you run lightning for that purpose, I think the 3 endurance will be sufficient too. Another component of this build is the (Perma) stunning, and you do need phys for that. Is it worth sacrificing stun versus reflect mobs because you need to use LS?

Note also the flask usage: +3K armor and Basalt together will mitigate anything physical down to irrelevance. Like you said, pure phys is in a good place as far as enemy resistance goes. I have not yet played a build that had such nice damage scaling throughout the whole process. Even with crap gear you get so many multipliers, its mad.

 

[bug]

Just keep tossing them alchemies on every high level mace you see. That's how I got mine If it reaches into 120-200 dmg territory, it'll get you pretty far.

That's what I did, except I did it on my old ground slammer. That's why every nice mace I have now is a two-hander. For reference, the best one I have is Marohi Erqi...
I'm afraid to respec, I think the difference is like 20 nodes, if I don't want to wait for the next patch.

 

[Vayra86]

Well that is a helluva decent mace damage wise. But it feels like you have to cripple the build because its so much damage per hit, to me This needs a serious countermeasure

 

[bug]

Well that is a helluva decent mace damage wise. But it feels like you have to cripple the build because its so much damage per hit, to me This needs a serious countermeasure

Yes, I have to try and see how all the latest changes factor in. I mean, even reflect has been nerfed...

 

[Ahhzz]

Are you using NeverSinks Ranger guide? It looks familiar;
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041989

Overall he has very solid guides but they seem tailored for high end gameplay. Another really nice one to look at, and overall much more budget friendly - below.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaFHfrY-6uGSAvmczp_7a6Q

If you want my two $: focus on tornado shot as your primary. It is overall a lot stronger than Ice shot and synergizes better with other physical attacks. Stacking cold damage takes significant passive investment that you may want to use for staying alive instead. Going hard physical means you need a counter for reflect mobs- GMP covers you there as it staggers the reflected damage quite well. What any build needs is that you try to double-dip or triple-dip into the characteristics of gems and skills, or even items. GMP+Chain staggers damage even more, while also increasing damage output *and* potentially extending the on-hit effects of TS. Going physical is better now because lots of melee attack nodes are swapped to physical attack nodes, giving you more freedom in the passive tree. Using a completely separate attack (Barrage) to regain health will not last for you; health recovery needs to be inherent to your primary damager or to a defensive skill with duration, because later on you won't have time to alternate nor should you waste gem slots on it. Invest those slots towards a separate buff or defensive skill instead, things like Molten Shell, or triggers like Cast on Critical or Curse on hit attacks. Trigger gems are a great way to get free attacks/second because they don't take your global cooldown; its a free cast.

While Golems are nice, another very nice defensive mechanic is the Brotem:

You can let these skellies curse on hit too, if you wanted to, allowing you to focus even more attacks/second on your primary damagers.

About gear: are you using the bonus stats you can craft on gear pieces? Almost every gear piece except weaponry generally ends up being defensive. With your items focused on all resist stats, you should be able to cap most resistances, and its vital to do this for most builds. Don't pick up the weaker % resist nodes in the tree, and get it all on your gear. Damage output scales almost exclusively off weapons choice and passive skills anyway, any bonuses on other items are 'nice to have' - but defense should come first.

As for passives: focus should be entirely on damage output, unique utilities (keystones), and most of all, health pool.

One last thing I am missing is your escape/Fortify on hit trigger. Get it For example:
Whirling Blades + Blood Magic + Fortify (+Faster Attacks optional) is an awesome 4-link to keep Fortify up all the time and always have an escape even if you're out of mana. In addition you can leap across the maps quickly. Or if you dont worry about mana - swap Blood Magic And Faster Attacks for Curse on Hit + your fav curse

I actually started with this guy here. It's an Iceshot primarily, hence the 2 Omens on the Wind. I am thinking about dropping the Elem Damage in my IS chain to swap in health leech. I've since managed a 6S5L bow that's not too bad, and I've thrown in a Cold Pen gem to see if I can focus more on the Ice damage. Looks like we got a full reset at the patch, so I'm stuck working with this for a little, because I don't want to waste the reset and find I'm worse off with another build heheh. I'll dig in and see if I can patch in some of my "on hit" support with some extra defense and try that out. Thanks for the info, and the participation

 

[Ahhzz]

Just a note for those running ATI. I don't expect many are running an older 290 like me, but I'm on the 17.7.2 Radeon software, which gives me video drivers of 22.19.662.4, from Jul 20. My normal reaction to video drivers is "if it ain't broke....". However, my update popped up this last weekend, but kept failing to download an update. Since that sort of thing is just a burr under my saddle, I went to manually download the update to 7.12.1 (I forget which video driver comes with it). Based on my previous statement, you'll guess I uninstalled it quickly. Yeah, POE and the latest video drivers do not get along. Crashed on startup. So, roll back time. Just an FYI

 

[bug]

That's strange, PoE didn't change anything in its graphics recently. Did you submit the bug before uninstalling? This may be some new optimization gone awry.

 

[ne6togadno]

@Ahhzz
have you checked this https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_Software_Adrenalin_Edition/
may be some of the new features isn't working for you. may be if you try to figure out which one and turn it of you may get the rest of it working

 

[Ahhzz]

That's strange, PoE didn't change anything in its graphics recently. Did you submit the bug before uninstalling? This may be some new optimization gone awry.

Nope. Just restarted my machine again, ran POE as admin just because. and when it hung a black screen instead of the GG logo, I yanked it. I might try to fuss with it this weekend, but my play time is limited, especially during the week, and I didn't feel like screwing around with crashes in that time

@Ahhzz
have you checked this https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_Software_Adrenalin_Edition/
may be some of the new features isn't working for you. may be if you try to figure out which one and turn it of you may get the rest of it working

I didn't read the review, but I knew they had pushed something new out. Checking the update manually made me take a quick look to see they were changing a lot with this update, which usually means something's gonna break, but I had to go and try it anyway . I'll probably spend a few this weekend to see if I can sort it out, but honestly, since it's running fine without it, and I don't really see anything in Adrenaline that will revolutionize my current gaming, I'll probably just sit where I am

 

[bug]

Nope. Just restarted my machine again, ran POE as admin just because. and when it hung a black screen instead of the GG logo, I yanked it. I might try to fuss with it this weekend, but my play time is limited, especially during the week, and I didn't feel like screwing around with crashes in that time

I know how that feels, I also only get an hour or so each day to play. And I had a similar issue that was related to multithreaded optimizations. I just turned it off and never looked back (I wasn't getting better performance with it enabled anyway). I didn't report the issue because it was already known at the time.

Edit: @Vayra86 After some path of building, I think I'm going to go pure physical with arctic armour and double curses with blasphemy (I have a couple of pairs of Windscreams).
I think this should be good enough to farm T10-11 maps and if it can, hopefully I can get the material to try other builds.

 

[Ahhzz]

*sigh* sometimes, it's a bad day..... no portals left....

So, this one spawned with the Assassin Master, took his job and managed it, but it also spawned with a Void Hand... I should have said "nope!", but I had to try. So, that cost me one gate/life that by the pic above, would have been nice to have, eh? ...*sigh*

I have manged to rework my character a bit, went TS as @Vayra86 recommended. It's done well so far. I finished all 10 Acts, and have NO idea how someone in the HC League even gets the sack to try the last boss. Ever. I had to have died over 75 times. Annoying as hell. Anyway. So, tweaked my toon, and took my respec. I enchanted my gloves with a mana leech on Phys Damage, and I never run out of mana running TS. I threw my Ice in with a Mirage Archer, since it was sitting at Double my expected TS DPS, so works well on single target mobs, and after running in Abyss league, I got spoiled having a little mini-turret on my shoulder

 

[bug]

*sigh* sometimes, it's a bad day..... no portals left....View attachment 95023

So, this one spawned with the Assassin Master, took his job and managed it, but it also spawned with a Void Hand... I should have said "nope!", but I had to try. So, that cost me one gate/life that by the pic above, would have been nice to have, eh? ...*sigh*

I have manged to rework my character a bit, went TS as @Vayra86 recommended. It's done well so far. I finished all 10 Acts, and have NO idea how someone in the HC League even gets the sack to try the last boss. Ever. I had to have died over 75 times. Annoying as hell. Anyway. So, tweaked my toon, and took my respec. I enchanted my gloves with a mana leech on Phys Damage, and I never run out of mana running TS. I threw my Ice in with a Mirage Archer, since it was sitting at Double my expected TS DPS, so works well on single target mobs, and after running in Abyss league, I got spoiled having a little mini-turret on my shoulder

According to this: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Map that's a difficulty 4 out of 5 boss. Why would you even try it with only 2k life?
And if it makes you feel any better, I also thought my Ranger (LA) killed rather fast only to find out it was squishy as hell. One day I'm going to rework her.

 

[Vayra86]

*sigh* sometimes, it's a bad day..... no portals left....View attachment 95023

So, this one spawned with the Assassin Master, took his job and managed it, but it also spawned with a Void Hand... I should have said "nope!", but I had to try. So, that cost me one gate/life that by the pic above, would have been nice to have, eh? ...*sigh*

I have manged to rework my character a bit, went TS as @Vayra86 recommended. It's done well so far. I finished all 10 Acts, and have NO idea how someone in the HC League even gets the sack to try the last boss. Ever. I had to have died over 75 times. Annoying as hell. Anyway. So, tweaked my toon, and took my respec. I enchanted my gloves with a mana leech on Phys Damage, and I never run out of mana running TS. I threw my Ice in with a Mirage Archer, since it was sitting at Double my expected TS DPS, so works well on single target mobs, and after running in Abyss league, I got spoiled having a little mini-turret on my shoulder

Last boss of Act 10 you mean? You just dodge things, and hit things in between. Yes, its a gear check as well, but if you can dodge the big hits, it really should be doable and if its not, you're not ready for mapping so might as well revisit previous acts and farm some more, or confine yourself to Maps of level 5 tops This fight checks for two major things: passive regeneration+resistances and HP pool. A distant third is DPS, but if this boss regenerates faster than you can DPS it and you run an optimized build at that point (as in, 5 links and decent passive+gear setup) you might as well reroll straight up

Note also how many of the newer mobs and bosses emphasize mobility. You really need one or two strong escapes.

And... yes 2k health, not gonna work at all Double it and you're on the edge of what's recommended. Sacrifice damage nodes in the passive tree for +HP; the longer you can hold position, the more you can fire as well, so defensive stats are also an offensive boost. If you feel squishy, all the moving and dodging will cost you tons of damage. The point of adding mitigation is that you reach a threshold where only the big hitters (like act 10 has a couple of) require active dodging and the rest can be facetanked or slowly moved out of. And beyond HP there are the low hanging fruits in mitigation: Armor boosts and having capped Resistance to everything.

Big and easy win you might try is pick up Iron Reflexes and funnel all that evasion rating into Armor. Add an armor flask on top, and you get pretty tanky for 4 seconds. Alternatively, and easier to access from the Ranger, is to build defense around HP/ES/Evasion. Its less focused but the net result is higher survivability at the cost of passive investment efficiency.

 

[Ahhzz]

According to this: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Map that's a difficulty 4 out of 5 boss. Why would you even try it with only 2k life?
...r.

because that's the 4th map I've ever done Plus, I still almost killed him

In my defense, I just finished the storyline, and I'm working out the whole maps/farming stuff as I go

 

[bug]

because that's the 4th map I've ever done Plus, I still almost killed him

In my defense, I just finished the storyline, and I'm working out the whole maps/farming stuff as I go

Yeah, don't do that.
Do maps tier by tier (use the Atlas, farm maps if you have to), but use that wiki and read about bosses in advance. Some of the bosses that are hard to tackle in melee are easy when ranged and whatnot. It doesn't help that 3.1 just revamped all maps (so the wiki may not be up to date), but if you're like me, the maps you have are still mostly pre-3.1 so the wiki still applies.
Fwiw, I a bit farther ahead than you (doing tier 5-6), but still rewards are just meh...

 

[Ahhzz]

Last boss of Act 10 you mean? You just dodge things, and hit things in between. Yes, its a gear check as well, but if you can dodge the big hits, it really should be doable and if its not, you're not ready for mapping so might as well revisit previous acts and farm some more, or confine yourself to Maps of level 5 tops This fight checks for two major things: passive regeneration+resistances and HP pool. A distant third is DPS, but if this boss regenerates faster than you can DPS it and you run an optimized build at that point (as in, 5 links and decent passive+gear setup) you might as well reroll straight up

Note also how many of the newer mobs and bosses emphasize mobility. You really need one or two strong escapes.

And... yes 2k health, not gonna work at all Double it and you're on the edge of what's recommended. Sacrifice damage nodes in the passive tree for +HP; the longer you can hold position, the more you can fire as well, so defensive stats are also an offensive boost. If you feel squishy, all the moving and dodging will cost you tons of damage. The point of adding mitigation is that you reach a threshold where only the big hitters (like act 10 has a couple of) require active dodging and the rest can be facetanked or slowly moved out of. And beyond HP there are the low hanging fruits in mitigation: Armor boosts and having capped Resistance to everything.

Big and easy win you might try is pick up Iron Reflexes and funnel all that evasion rating into Armor. Add an armor flask on top, and you get pretty tanky for 4 seconds. Alternatively, and easier to access from the Ranger, is to build defense around HP/ES/Evasion. Its less focused but the net result is higher survivability at the cost of passive investment efficiency.

I do need to tweak health up a bit, either thru gear or modding my tree up a little. It's a work in progress, and since I tied my Life gain to TS, with the wall of frost popping quickly, I can "facetank" (wall tank heheh) most anything except the big bosses. The mana leech on my gloves make sure I'm able to keep shooting indefinitely, and since moving my Ice shot back into the rotation, I think things will go a little easier as I farm my gear up Thanks for the input

 

[bug]

I do need to tweak health up a bit, either thru gear or modding my tree up a little. It's a work in progress, and since I tied my Life gain to TS, with the wall of frost popping quickly, I can "facetank" (wall tank heheh) most anything except the big bosses. The mana leech on my gloves make sure I'm able to keep shooting indefinitely, and since moving my Ice shot back into the rotation, I think things will go a little easier as I farm my gear up Thanks for the input

Trust me, with 2k life you won't facetank much in maps. First tiers are easy, but later on the map effects are more powerful. My main char is a 5k life RF that leeches using Cyclone, Ornament of the East (unique claw with LGoH and "always hits" mod) and additional LGoH and still there are times when I barely make it out alive. There are also times when I don't and those really, really hurt at clvl90+

What people do is get around 200% life increase from the tree and then make sure they have 75+ life on every piece of equipment that allows it (i.e. it is not a unique item). Currently I'm too poor to do the latter.

Edit: There this old saying in the RPG world about speccing defensively: while you're dead, your dps is zero. This is not strictly true in PoE (because of cast on death gems), but I don't think you want to take that path

 

[Ahhzz]

Trust me, with 2k life you won't facetank much in maps. First tiers are easy, but later on the map effects are more powerful. My main char is a 5k life RF that leeches using Cyclone, Ornament of the East (unique claw with LGoH and "always hits" mod) and additional LGoH and still there are times when I barely make it out alive. There are also times when I don't and those really, really hurt at clvl90+

What people do is get around 200% life increase from the tree and then make sure they have 75+ life on every piece of equipment that allows it (i.e. it is not a unique item). Currently I'm too poor to do the latter.

I think I'll take the 4 points I have, and hit Thick Skin for an 16% bump (and +4% more next point), and then work my way towards Constitution and the surrounds for 49% more. That will take me a few levels tho I'll just end up farming the gear to add some health in until I get there . I don't expect to do much in higher tier maps for a bit. I always hated rushing towards an end goal in a game. Once I do that, I lose all motivation to continue. So, I'll just enjoy the ride along the way

Man, 200% is a SERIOUS stretch. I don't know how people manage that while still attempting to get anything useful from the Tree. I'm at 77% off the tree, plus the random +10 to life here and there, and it'll be 12 points dedicated to just stretching out for that 49% at Constitution....

 

[bug]

I think I'll take the 4 points I have, and hit Thick Skin for an 18% bump, and then work my way towards Constitution and the surrounds for 49% more. That will take me a few levels tho I'll just end up farming the gear to add some health in until I get there . I don't expect to do much in higher tier maps for a bit. I always hated rushing towards an end goal in a game. Once I do that, I lose all motivation to continue. So, I'll just enjoy the ride along the way

Bah, enjoying the ride...
You're supposed to be min-maxing, buying low, selling high and stuff, not have a good time. I kid, of course, I play by myself precisely because I like to enjoy as much as I can of this game in my own way, at my own pace.

 

[Ahhzz]

Bah, enjoying the ride...
You're supposed to be min-maxing, buying low, selling high and stuff, not have a good time. I kid, of course, I play by myself precisely because I like to enjoy as much as I can of this game in my own way, at my own pace.

I do have a BoB, at level 46, but it's only 2 Unlinked Greens... Technically speaking, it's an required level 46, can't tell from here the item level, but it should be able to handle a 5L5S, if I get really lucky.... Still, only 31% added life, plus 700 armor, is not that great to trade in 1000 evasion for.

Honestly, I'll probably just focus on Thick Skin, and then gear as I can, and enjoy the maps. I was reading about people rerolling maps to get higher densities on mobs for more efficient farming. I understand the logistics. And I understand about how hard the leveling is at higher levels. But that just doesn't sound like the way I want to enjoy the game . I'll reroll for better gear, or to take away a nasty mob mod, but otherwise, I'll probably just go into each one like the first one: slowly and carefully, killing everything that moves or doesn't, and enjoying the thrill