Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Veelq]

You can maybe modify your AW to Null's Inclination build, idk how viable it is right now but last time i played it it was alot of fun.

 

[Saark]

Well it currently is a BV build, so I'd have to respec to AW again anyway. I accidentally 6linked a chober chaber in 17 fusings when I was just trying to hit a 5l, so I'll probably go back to using that one until I rip. Tried finding a buyer while I was playing BV but noone wants to run AW, and the few people that do usually use advancing fortress+victarios charity instead. Started with that combination myself but wanted to try victarios influence and after 5linking that one I needed a 2handed 5 or 6link, hence the chober chaber. The build itself is fairly fun, it's just the need to carry atleast 3-4 weapons from the previous map into the next one that makes it annoying as fuck.

Also got myself a cospris will and +1 curse corrupted amu/windscream, was considering running a blasphemy quadcurse build that could utilize that armor. Anyone got any ideas that aren't BV? Essence Drain maybe? Gotta be a build that doesn't run damage enhancing auras so I can reserve most of the mana for the curses.

 

[T. Reich]

RF totems build.

All you want to run with it are blasphemised curses anyway.

 

[Carceri]

I have six linked one of those two coils in 12 fusings. I also found 6 exalts so far. The game probably thinks I'm a streamer this league. I'm very afraid of the consequences that inevitably must follow.

 

[Saark]

I'm actually more exited over divine drops than exalted ones by now, I wouldn't be surprised if divines actually overtake exalted orbs by the end of the league. Divines have generally increased in value over the course of the league and the exalted value will only drop further...

Haven't really played for over a week or so, anyone still playing HC?

 

[Zdzisiu]

I'm actually more exited over divine drops than exalted ones by now, I wouldn't be surprised if divines actually overtake exalted orbs by the end of the league. Divines have generally increased in value over the course of the league and the exalted value will only drop further...

Haven't really played for over a week or so, anyone still playing HC?

Divines wont overtake exalts. Not this league where there is both the corrupting tempest prophercy and monstrous treasure prophercy that gives you a lot of stronboxes to wall. I personally had like 8 6L items drop from them, all shit so I vendored them for Divines.

 

[Saark]

Probably not overtake, but we're getting there. Been a while that divines were close to 3:1 exalted and we've already passed that, in a week or so it's most likely gonna be 2:1.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Probably not overtake, but we're getting there. Been a while that divines were close to 3:1 exalted and we've already passed that, in a week or so it's most likely gonna be 2:1.

Oh shit, I took a look on Hardcore prophercy prices this time and boy, exalts are like 17-19c there. Exalts are 70c on Softcore prophercy and thats why I said they will never be overtaken by Divines.

What the hell happened to Exalts prices in HC?

 

[Saark]

The chaos made a reverse-pound-sterling is what happened. Probably a mixture of the cheap zana 3c bloodlines, people running gorges/plateaus instead of red maps therefore needing more chaos than when they were running t13+ for XP to hit 100 and stuff like that. HC generally had higher chaos value since people needed to reroll maps more often but what is going on right now is insane. People have already switched to demanding pure chaos for their t1 uniques, noone wants exalts anymore. Try looking for a shavs or a coil that you can buy with exalts. 300c for a shavs is a decent price, which with the current rates is ~20 exalt. A non 6socket shavs mind you, with shitty rolls. I bought my heretics veil early into the league for 10 exalt, which at the time were 350 chaos. The chaos value is at ~450c now, whereas the exa value has more than tripled. Fun stuff.

It's already more profitable to do the chaos recipe instead of the regal one, you can count yourself lucky if you can get a 1:1 exchange on regals. Start of the league was the regular 3c:2r ratio, and I traded in my first couple of exalts for 40c+. Thankfully I only kept 2 exalt and traded in the rest when they were worth a damn.

 

[Aothan]

Cast on Melee has exceptional synergy with Sunder's effects, previously I usually made Ice Crash my cast skill but Sunder has an indirect area of effect around the character and then in one direction about half way across the screen, producing additional casts in conjunction with spells affecting the same creatures. The slight delay with Sunder's combined area of effect attacks helps multiply castings, which significantly improves how Cast on Melee can work

but finding the right spells to use is less certain, I've always preferred Arc, and still do, yet now with Sunder other spells like Freezing Pulse work well enough and could be further bolstered with Herald of Ice, however what seems to be somehow working beyond expectations is Firestorm. Even with no specialisation in the element and no synergy with support gems can often suffice for rare creatures without any further focus on most of them. If I understand correctly taking increased duration passives will concentrate the number of fireballs generated in the same period of time so that could be the next choice of pathways to transition into. And if so, something of a first since I always typically focus on lightning and cold, yet this time Firestorm is proving inexplicably powerful even without any specialisation in these area

 

[Saark]

Just ripped my Animate Weapon summoner (finally) at 93. Died to animated weapons in a death and taxes, ironic. Tanked the boss and his spells (even though he was triple-ghosted) without any issues, yet after having my summons get destroyed and resummoning them 2 screens away from the boss, I got two-shot by some animated wand. Anyone knows whether they count as the bosses minions and are therefore buffed by the spirits?

Fun build though, apart from the lag once you get to 40+ weapons and try to run through the map quickly, the constant re-application of the auras to the mobs makes the whole game freeze for a couple of ms everytime one of the AWs is too far away/gets ported back to you. Insane clearspeed though, was breezing through T13/T14 maps without a hickup, only map that had troublesome boss(es) was village ruin, weapons died way too fast.

 

[Carceri]

Impressive build, I saw Pohx was playing something similar(?) when I took a peak at his stream. The clear speed was indeed great. Sorry for your rip.

 

[Saark]

Blame Zana (it was her portal after all).

 

[Carceri]

I would never do that. I love Zana!

Spoiler

When I don't hate her.

 

[Aothan]

Malachi in Cruel difficulty is too strong for my staff Templar, I have to wait until level 63 so I can use the Broken Crown for additional Chaos resists and change skill points around to shield skills to even attempt passing

 

[Goromorg]

Malachai doesn't do any chaos damage, best you can do is to increase your hp and hp regen. Stone golem is pretty good for that and he taunts enemies also - best to use him in CWDT setup.
In general this fight is quite a pain in the ass for melee, use cyclone or earthquake if you can.

 

[Aothan]

I always assumed the different types of abilities in Malachi's area would have had a Chaos component and being typically used to the heightened convergence of damage was surprised how much more damage was received with a staff. My Templar was reduced to about 12% health three times within 20 seconds or so -_- Including getting stuck in front of a Vaal-like attack which Arctic Armour probably mitigated just enough to get away in time

but having returned just a few minutes earlier it was an easier battle than other times with a sword and shield, also thought Malachi dropped the Trypanon mace (which does not appear to be available) but it was a level twenty something unique. Then I found the Marohi Erqui mace in Twilight Strand that could be well suited to a cast on melee character (and I even have a Jewellers prophecy available) because of the increased likelihood of single attacks producing multiple castings. For the most part sword or mace (i.e. Nycta's Lantern) and shield just seems practical for the concentrated damage spikes. Nonetheless I'm still inclined to somehow return to using a staff for the same purposes because that was the original concept with this character

 

[Saark]

Malachai does no chaos damage, no. The ground effect is a physical degen effect, his slams are pure physical aswell. You will want cold resistance for the tentacles and fire resistance for the traps and the moving void-zone after you kill the third heart. You can do it without fire res, but I strongly suggest capping cold resist agains malachai, else his tentacles will chill/freeze you and you will either die or take way more damage than necessary.

GL in merciless.

 

[Aothan]

was fun but the session ends with Lightning Thorns which does substantially more damage in maps. I still have a Ranger so might return to them sometime, otherwise maybe, just maybe, an Arc caster but would like to try a different game for a few weeks and I don't recall when the current season finishes

 

[Damned Registrations]

So I've basically set my SRS witch aside for now; the dps and survivability is spectacular for the level/gear, but the clearspeed just isn't that great on lower level maps or regular areas, and right now it seems like that is where the cash is at unless you can do endgame stuff. Made a new character, flicker ranger. Movespeed is stupidly high, not to mention flicker itself warping me around. I just run low level maps over and over, very rapidly. Probably spend half my time doing things like trials (basically a guaranteed 5 chaos) or prophecies (hit and miss, but when they hit the payout is often 20~ chaos, so very worthwhile to spam through them and get the good ones to show up) or missions for the masters (obviously not profitable but needs to be done to hit level caps.)

Also, flicker is just god damned fun. Especially this style; I don't feel compelled to pick shit up off the ground for the most part. If it's not worth at least 1/4th a chaos orb, it's garbage, basically. The rares don't need to be ID'd because they're too low level to be worth jack shit. So I just warp around until I hear a gong and grab whatever pretty thing dropped. No real vendoring to speak of. I do grab the jewelry for unid'd chaos vendor, but that is fairly speedy.

Once I build up enough exalts to really gear out my SRS build (Empower lvl 4 would be the big ticket item, and a +3 6 link maybe, depending on how I feel about moving away from my poison skulls setup) I'll move back to it and use it to farm some high tier stuff and run stuff like uber labs or pale council or whatever.

 

[Saark]

Did you use Victarios Charity together with Necromantic Aegis? It greatly improves your clearspeed with SRS, AW and to an extent zombie builds aswell.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah that's my build. The global more damage on frenzy double dips the poison damage, which is rather nice for the enemies that should honestly be out of my league. The main problems are just plain movespeed (flesh offering helps, but offers nothing to survivability, spirit gives you resists, ES, and a way to recover ES while you're dying horribly, so I prefer spirit a lot) and the fact that you're not moving while casting, and you tend to spend a lot of time casting. SRS also butchers vorici missions, which is annoying. The upside is you can take the time to do shit like gather drops and ID shit while you're waiting for skulls to finish mopping up an area, but it feels tedious and most of the shit isn't valuable anyways. I'd imagine it'd be a much better tradeoff on high tier maps where you can find decent rares worth actual currency instead of vendor fodder. If I had the sockets to spare for running 2 or 3 vaal haste that would help too. Except in the lab. Fucking izaro and his vaal skill cockblocking.

The other problem is that Charity precludes the use of a staff, so in the long term I'm not sure which is better. But it's a negligible change to passives anyways.

Another thing is that a huge advantage of SRS is the map mods you can run. Reflect is a total non issue, in fact pretty much anything can be ignored with my build (hybrid life/es for defenses and no serious reliance on auras, so even blood magic is doable). But again, at low tiers you don't see that dangerous shit most of the time anyways. Flicker does just fine for pointless mods like 40% added fire. Oh, except chain. Chain projectiles wreck my shit as a summoner.

 

[Saark]

I was quite surprised when I first found out that minions/summons were scaling differently with charges, so it's great that they implemented something like victarios. You used to have to get a monkey spectre for the frenzy charges back in the day. A cheap (3-4ex) selfcrafted +3 staff is more important for SRS though, you're right about that. A lvl4 empower in a +3 staff would probably be the dream setup. What I liked about Victarios was the significantly enhanced crit-chance thanks to the power charges, and the attack speed bonus is also quite large so that flesh offering isn't a must anymore. You are actually able to get shocks off consistently with just wrath. Someone would have to do the math whether the +600% crit chance, 12% more damage and 45% attackspeed might be competitive with what a +3 staff provides for SRS, while being a whole lot cheaper too.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I didn't realize those were the numbers they got. Do they get movepseed out of it too? I recall hearing that, and movespeed is a huge deal for those fuckers, because they often target enemies that are trying to move away from them.

I think at the high end, each level of SRS is worth about 10% more damage. So my napkin math says the frenzy charges are better (they frenzy your character as well, and that 15% cast speed doesn't hurt) if you're doing poison. But then again, at high enough levels poison might just be a waste of time because they'd just bash everything to death in under a second anyways. The last part of the dream setup is a lvl 21 SRS gem with 20%. Should give you lvl 27 skulls I think? A pledge of hands is also a good alternative probably to a 3 skill staff. Free spell echo means room for another 50% more damage gem like full life melee, which should be more damage than 3 levels. Plus the spell echo is unattainably high level.

But yeah, Vicatrio's is just an incredible bargain, and leaves a hand slot open. Right now I'm actually running a white wand along with the Ascetic amulet for some cheapass MF. Could throw in a midnight bargain instead though and run another spectre.

 

[Saark]

As far as the math on SRS gemlevel vs more multipliers goes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...IAQABjpwzWPdW-x8aXTKZiTmjk/edit#gid=963549630

It's quite old and there have been a couple of changes to SRS and supports, I'll see if I can find something more up to date. With a little bit of work you can just put in the proper basedamage and all the multipliers anyway to see what is best though. http://poedb.tw/us/gem.php?n=Summon+Raging+Spirit should have the current base-damage values.