Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Tacgnol]

You mentioned crafting. I do have currency to "invest", but I wanna know which method is at least somewhat reliable. Is fossil crafting the be-all-end-all of crafting or are things like essences actually useful?

Essences can be a really cheap and efficient way of crafting decent items. It depends what you need really.

If I get a white 6l, I'll usually throw a few essences of greed at it. Usually doesn't take many attempts to get something with dual/tri res.

Fossils require a bit more nuance and investment, but can ultimately be very rewarding.

 

[Eyestabber]

With alchemies being sold at 1/5 of a C, isn't alch and scour and okay crafting method rn...?

 

[janior]

i burned 2k alteration on a wand and stilll didnt get +1 to all spell cold skills xD i love crafting xD

 

[Sharpedge]

With alchemies being sold at 1/5 of a C, isn't alch and scour and okay crafting method rn...?

I am not sure. The problem is, you are rolling against the entire pool of mods with no biases. The way rare items are generated is as follows:

1. All the individual tiers of each mod are weighted and added into a single pool (both prefixes and suffixes). For example, there are 11 tiers of flat energy shield on an intelligence body armour and they each have a weighting of 1000, these weightings and the weightings of every other mod are all added together.
   
2. Roll the number of mods on the item (4, 5 or 6).
3. Roll against the total "weight" of the pool to determine which mod is rolled.
4. Set the weighting of the mod that was rolled to 0.
   
5. Repeat step 3 and 4 until either the maximum number of prefixes/suffixes is reached or the item reaches the number of mods it was supposed to have (4, 5 or 6).
6. If the maximum number of prefixes/suffixes is reached, set the weighting of ALL prefixes/suffixes to 0.
7. (As a result of this, the chance of getting a prefix or suffix on an item is not in fact equal and depends on the total weight of all the prefixes vs the total weight of all the suffixes.)

The thing is, not all mods have the same weightings, which makes them especially uncommon. That explosion on death mod I mentioned above for example has a weighting of 25 and in a situation where many mods have weightings of 1000, it is exceptionally uncommon. In fact it occurs on items with no biases less than 1 in 10,000 times. The reason fossils are so good is both because they eliminate many mods from the mod pool as a possibility and they multiply the weighting of some mods by 10, which makes them much more likely to occur. The advantage of Essences is they allow you to guarantee 1 mod, which in the case where a mod is very rare and you want it, it is great.

 

[Tacgnol]

With alchemies being sold at 1/5 of a C, isn't alch and scour and okay crafting method rn...?

Depends on your luck.

It could take hundreds (or thousands) of alchs vs more nuanced crafting methods.

Saying that, I've had some crazy good luck with just random alching. In synthesis I got a T1 life tri res stygian vise from punting a scouring and alch at a high level vise.

Much like everything in POE, it all depends on RNG.

 

[Jaedar]

Builds that are currently cheap to start off with and faceroll everything in no specific order are:

• Blade Vortex.

Explain this to me. It's always seemed kinda hard to me to get a blade vortex build with decent damage, that doesn't have to recast the vortex all the time and has enough survivability to not die when going balls deep into enemy packs. I guess vaal gem helps a lot with single target damage, but even so.

dont forget your "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" jewel boys, safety first

Bleed immunity flask man, that's how you actually protect yourself.

When it comes to surviving chaos, I recommend amethyst flask/Atziri's promise. +35% chaos res is a lot.

 

[Sharpedge]

Builds that are currently cheap to start off with and faceroll everything in no specific order are:

• Blade Vortex.

Explain this to me. It's always seemed kinda hard to me to get a blade vortex build with decent damage, that doesn't have to recast the vortex all the time and has enough survivability to not die when going balls deep into enemy packs. I guess vaal gem helps a lot with single target damage, but even so.

You can build a decent blade vortex character where blade vortex is used to apply poison relatively cheaply using Maw of Conquest+The Golden Rule and 2x Cold Iron Point daggers. Here is a PoB example of such a character (this 1 is not super cheap though) but you can quite easily make the gear cheaper in PoB and the build will still function. https://pastebin.com/Sr7ERc8T

 

[Shadenuat]

Essences can be a really cheap and efficient way of crafting decent items

+60% spell damage +damage from craft bench for the win.

also Eyestabber you asked about the difference between 2k hp and 6k hp. well imo the value of hp falls off after 5k or so so if you dont see any value stop caring about it so much and invest into something else like more damage. things like assymetrical defences (maybe block, or leech, or regen, or immunities or potions), speed, utility like jewel sockets, etc. or more sweet sweet damage

The attack you described above (mortar thing) is 1 of the ones which will just outright kill me.

If you mean autistic mortar, just like other chaos damage skills I don't seem to take much damage from them being CI.

anyone remembers snakes in Diablo 2 last chapter catacombs that kill anyone instantly? way it happened was because physical damage was applying to poison dot, and any time character moved, sprites would overlap on top of each other and character would take 20-40 damage per tick at a rate of hundred ticks per second. equpping reduce damage by flat number would stop dying from the bug.

I am almost sure with metamorphs it's similar design. maybe some attacks have res pen, or overlap in bugged way. I mean, have you tried summoning morphs in "lab" biome?

this was taken during act 10 before game crashed: morph summoned multiple summons who used contextural area attack (all monsters here summon golden jugs). morph as u see on map is quite far away; the whole screen there is covered with this.

ofc i might be wrong and I didn't fight red morphs yet, but it did feel like chaos immune greatly reduced damage.

And Al Hezmin didn't feel like did much damage at all to me.

 

[Eyestabber]

Rofl.

So my sabo is clearing t10 maps now. Arc isn't even lvl 20 yet. Lmao, melee xD

In other news, a guy wanted to sell me an exalt for 115c and I had to turn him down because I was low on C. Damn, I suck as an e-Jew

 

[Shadenuat]

There are different "melees". linking some decent spell to cyclone and/or converting most physical damage to elemental with good scaling skills is "melee", but I am sure it lifts up a lot easier than pure physical melee. (whats the classics there, frost blades probably?) it is only when you refuse to anime and just want to actually physically hit something with axe and be all that real physical axe-like what can get you into trouble.

then agan what am I even arguing here, as I clear mapos with level 19 Bane.

 

[Eyestabber]

So...lacerate hitting enemies across the screen isn't really melee? I'm shocked!

Okay, help me understand something, boyos. Here is my sabo:

https://pastebin.com/HwiPQMef

Now, I know the chestpiece is "wrong", but I'm using something I crafted and intended to sell, but since nobody wanted to pay 70c for it, I decided to use it on my secondary character. However, when looking at POE.ninja for top level Saboteurs with acrobatics and MoM, I realize Vaal Regalias are simply not a thing. Niggas seem to pick up any chest piece they can grab, with fucking Kaom's Heart + Tremor Rod being a pretty popular combo. I don't have the currency to afford a six linked Rod + Kaom's heart, so I'm looking into a rare chestpiece. But...what kind!? Shouldn't these dudes be wearing evasion based chest pieces, since evasion is the only defense that isn't penalized by acrobatics??? And why fucking Loreweave, of all things?! Armour takes a whopping 50% penalty, that's the last thing I would consider scaling with this build.

I mean...they are all rich, so why is nobody buying a super high evasion chestpiece full of white sockets or something...? Carnal Armour (ES/Evasion Hybrid) is the closest I found.

 

[Shadenuat]

loreweave is obvious due to max res and slots.

evasion is RNG based mechanic and thus is unpopular. you get flat % chance to evade attacks with passives and potions, and dump rest into EHP.

 

[Zeriel]

Evasion actually isn't pure RNG, it's deterministic/entropy-based, which means when you don't evade your chance to evade goes up until you do, and vice versa (i.e you evaded too many times, you are going to not evade the next hit no matter what). That being said, it is possible to get it so high that doesn't matter. I actually think it's in a better place than it used to be. It's not for HC, but it's not bad in SC.

It's like armor though, you don't get JUST evasion, it's another layer of defenses and without other layers it won't do much on its own. The difference compared to armor is you can get one shot possibly, but I don't find the difference between pure armor and armor/evasion to be that big of a deal personally, and not getting hit a lot is nice in SC.

 

[Shadenuat]

Hybrid is probably fine, but pure Evasion on armor I played and didn't like it much. Then again I was a lot more shit at gaem at that point and was melee. Should't have picked Raider.

Here is my sabo:

damn the glass level of builds trade league can get away with. 6 link already and 2700 hp against chaos attacks huh. energy chest doesn't make much sense to me indeed.

 

[Eyestabber]

So carnal armour then? I'm thinking a 80c evasion/ es chestpiece + atziri steps. PoB gives me almost 60% chance to avoid physical damage entirely.

Should I be scaling mana for MoM too?

Btw, is that chestpiece decent for an ES heavy build? I crafted it myself as an "investment" of sorts.

 

[Shadenuat]

400+ is definitely great start.

 

[Eyestabber]

400+ is definitely great start.

Some chink paid 65 c for it.

I bought the "perfect" thing I was theorizing about: a yuge evasion chestpiece with a shiton of life, 4 blue sockets, one green, one white. Some res AND percentage life and mana. Here:

Bad news is I now have to get +dex from my gear, but gloves alone gave me +51, so I think I'm gonna be just fine.

 

[Shadenuat]

wow frost maiden priscilla boss has no invul phases, no regen banners, and antifreeze flask works against her ultimate attack?
what is this, fair fight or something??

guess I can say I like house Ordos and house Atreides bosses

then comes Dark Fakt from Ys 1 but I feel no ads and ability to fly over checkers field might feel bad for melee bros.

finally Banner Saga dude is just boring as fuck not sure what's the deal and who designed him but I don't like this.

also I wonder how it feels for people who DO have to break through boss shields as they all have them, and so do morph (Bane/chaos of course doesn't care for this)

P.S I probably should praise how much better waving sword around feels (you can almost imagine it's dark souls and do hit and run stuff) compared to before, and I really liked Dash animation when leveling (I use withering step now since well it's more effective for me). I even feel some bosses were designed a little with this idea. too bad overall game and league is still hostile to this gameplay. during low levels it felt fun tho.

 

[Sharpedge]

So carnal armour then? I'm thinking a 80c evasion/ es chestpiece + atziri steps. PoB gives me almost 60% chance to avoid physical damage entirely.

Should I be scaling mana for MoM too?

Btw, is that chestpiece decent for an ES heavy build? I crafted it myself as an "investment" of sorts.

I took a look at that PoB, allocated some skill points into life and looked at the net result, sitting at ~4k hp and 1k es. I guess if you are feeling comfortable with that its ok, but I don't personally like playing characters that are that glassy.

My recommendations are:

1. Roll your flasks. Easy improvement to make which doesn't cost much to do and gives a decent improvement. You will want a quicksilver flask of adrenaline most likely, the others you will probably want immunities on (freeze, bleed, curses, etc) which can be crafted on in the menagerie.
   
2. Consider acquiring better jewels. You can get life and 1 damage mod really cheaply, life and 2 damage mods depends on how efficient you are at searching. If you throw life into its own search term and then all the damage mods into another you should be able to find something good for a reasonable price, here is an example (which does not cover all jewel mods for arc, but you get some idea) https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/X3GLEJduP. You can find a list of all the jewel mods over here https://poedb.tw/us/mod.php.
3. Until you have a lot of currency, I recommend treating the 6 link chest piece as an item that has effectively no stats, but has 6 links and then balance your stats around that. As it currently is I think you are a bit beyond that stage so you can probably include your chest piece in your stat balancing, as said above, loreweave is probably a good go to.
4. I would mess around with your skill links a bit in Path of Building, I think with some adjustments to your links it is possible to increase your damage.
5. It may be worth looking into even a 5 link tremor rod (which you can force with a jeweler's touch for max 12c). Mines detonating twice is a big deal.

 

[Shadenuat]

so when you talk irl do you also do it like, in bullet points or

 

[Sharpedge]

so when you talk irl do you also do it like, in bullet points or

No, but if I am giving advice I prefer to use them as they are an effective way of separating ideas. In those above sentences, each of those topics is their own idea and I could write a separate paragraph about each of them, but there is no real need to add that much explanation to them and so a numbered or bulleted list works well. Otherwise, in a general conversation paragraphs do just fine.

 

[SirSingAlot]

Okay, new topic: how are you guys making money at this point in the league? Everything that drops for me seems useless and I just learned essence crafting isn't nearly as reliable as I thought it would be. Currently I have no tactic better than "kill lots of monsters and hope for an exalt to drop" and I lol when I look into the market and notice that 6-linked bases are being sold for like 10C. Epic loot inflation.

I tried farming T15 Cells for "The Offering" cards, since even unlinked Shavs are being sold for roughly an exalt, but I only got like 2 cards in 8 runs.

Give a n00b some general farming guidance, pls!

get some currency and start flipping.

for real. instead if mindlessly grinding your ass off, you might as well become a hideout warrior and/or play the content you enjoy the most without having to worry about how much it nets you.

specialize in some items and try to corner/control the market.
after you have gathered some additional Ex, you either pimp your build or reinvest.

for clarification:
think big! dont wasted your time with 1-3 chaos flippings unless you dont value your time highly (which i do personally)

 

[Eyestabber]

but I don't personally like playing characters that are that glassy.

Truth be told, he is not THAT glassy. Right now I'm sitting at 3.2 k HP, 356 shields and 795 unreserved mana. That adds up to 4351. Then you have to consider a total of 61% chance to avoid melee/ranged physical damage and 30% vs spells. So if we round it up to 50% we get like 6k EHP? I don't really feel my sabo to be fragile, I rarely ever die with him. Granted I'm not doing T16 maps, but I did do T11 with no problems other than damage being pretty low. But that's not something that warrants currency investment, I should just wait until my gems hit lvl 20 instead.

And as far as defenses go, I can scale my survivability by bumping mana up to 1.3k, so further upgrades won't really be expensive for me. I need to shuflle some gear around in order to reduce the total res I'm getting since I'm WAY overcapped. That extra res can probably be traded for something better.

 

[Eyestabber]

Side note: I'm loving the mao kun map. Tons of xp bonuses, guaranteed currency drops and super easy enemies! I found my leveling place!

 

[Eyestabber]

So carnal armour then? I'm thinking a 80c evasion/ es chestpiece + atziri steps. PoB gives me almost 60% chance to avoid physical damage entirely.

Should I be scaling mana for MoM too?

Btw, is that chestpiece decent for an ES heavy build? I crafted it myself as an "investment" of sorts.

I took a look at that PoB, allocated some skill points into life and looked at the net result, sitting at ~4k hp and 1k es. I guess if you are feeling comfortable with that its ok, but I don't personally like playing characters that are that glassy.

My recommendations are:

1. Roll your flasks. Easy improvement to make which doesn't cost much to do and gives a decent improvement. You will want a quicksilver flask of adrenaline most likely, the others you will probably want immunities on (freeze, bleed, curses, etc) which can be crafted on in the menagerie.
   
2. Consider acquiring better jewels. You can get life and 1 damage mod really cheaply, life and 2 damage mods depends on how efficient you are at searching. If you throw life into its own search term and then all the damage mods into another you should be able to find something good for a reasonable price, here is an example (which does not cover all jewel mods for arc, but you get some idea) https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/X3GLEJduP. You can find a list of all the jewel mods over here https://poedb.tw/us/mod.php.
3. Until you have a lot of currency, I recommend treating the 6 link chest piece as an item that has effectively no stats, but has 6 links and then balance your stats around that. As it currently is I think you are a bit beyond that stage so you can probably include your chest piece in your stat balancing, as said above, loreweave is probably a good go to.
4. I would mess around with your skill links a bit in Path of Building, I think with some adjustments to your links it is possible to increase your damage.
5. It may be worth looking into even a 5 link tremor rod (which you can force with a jeweler's touch for max 12c). Mines detonating twice is a big deal.

1 - Already done by the time you replied. My flasks were all garbage, true. That's because I'm lazy and looking into flasks is boring.
2 - Ty for the search, I fucking suck at using the engines. Bought 2 jewels 85c total.
3 - True, but I already bought a little luxury chestpiece, see above. Also, read my thoughts bellow.
4 - I'm using the Poe.Ninja heatmap feature to make my build. Not following any specific guide. I started out with Zizaran's but ditched it once I realized he doesn't even consider going for acrobatics. Acrobatics OP, yo, someday ppl will realize this. As soon as I got my acro my sabo went from dying all the time like a bitch to being almost as tanky as my lvl 90 + several exalts gladiator. It's insane. Specially now with all the one-shots. Armor and life won't save you from a 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 damage hit, but a 43% chance to dodge will!
5 - Too expensive. Wanna keep my budget tight for now. I already blew 2 E on the chestpiece, but DAMN, that thing is a beauty!

Since you're so forthcoming with tips, I would like to ask about gearing strategy. I looked and looked but found ZERO guides as to where should I look for my stats. Here's what I found out by experience so far (btw, I know about poedb!):

• Chestpieces should be treated as glorified tabula. Only rich people should want serious stats from their chests. I feel like 2E for that chestpiece I linked was a really good price.
• Amulets are the starting point for missing stats, since so many amulets have stat granting implicits. With stats covered, we look into life, mana, damage and res, in that order.
• Helmets: the expensive thing is having the proper enchantment. I found that helmets and gloves are great places to look for primary stats you might be missing. For instance, look at this beauty:

Spoiler

51 dex, life, maxed out evasion on the slot AND 48% res and it only set me back a meager 10c. Gloves are gr8!

• Influenced mods are always expensive, unless coupled with other really bad rolls. So I don't plan my upgrades around them.
• Resistances are tricky and my main question. How do you balance it all out? I'm currently overcapping pretty hard and I know res is always a suffix so...what gear piece should do the heavy lifting when it comes to res? What other suffixes should I look for once res is no longer a concern? It's a real puzzle right now, because even tho I'm overcapped, removing ANY gear piece results in no longer hitting the cap!
• Boots, helmet and gloves can be tweaked towards maximum defenses with minimal losses to desirable enchantments, right?
• "Belt slot" might as well be called "Stygian slot" as a vyse + jewel trumps any alternative. Ofc, that choice comes with a heafty price tag attached and is more of a lvl 90+ luxury. Meanwhile, life, str and ES belts work just fine
• Open suffixes are better than open prefixes. Crafting life on gear is kinda bad, an actual life prefix delivers WAY more, whereas resistances are much more forgiving. You can craft +35% res or +20 ele + chaos res easy peasy. So, again: open suffix > open prefix.