Path of Exile

Why do you assume I have the intention of playing on ladder? I'm just going to hang out with mah bros.

 

Tried out the witch today. Seemed much easier than the shadow, though that was kind of expected. Ranged heroes op and all that.

I'm loving the loot system. Since the items that convert normals into magics or rares work at any level, it's very satisfying finding one, and interesting deciding what to use them on.

 

They really should add more skills sooner than later. Right now, any mage other than ice is dung. Lightning, for example, has two (2) blue spells. One of them, spark, is very powerful indoors, but weak outside, and the second, lightning teleport or however it's called, very gimmicky and makes the char a sitting duck. Fire has a banal shit boring fireball and fire rain that is not overwhelmingly good.

I really like the passive skill system, it's open and you can make a fighter witch if you wish, who will be obviously weaker, but not uselessly so; and some unusual combinations can work well (like ranger marauder). The tree is unbalanced yet, of course, chaos innoculation and elemental damage bonuses are especially overpowered.

 

I found another lightning spell. Some shock nova thing. Didn't pick it though. Also they nerfed CI today, from 80% down to 50%.

Fire trap isn't a blue spell, but it doesn't require dex either, seems to benefit from spell damage, and is quite useful for dealing burst damage or against enemies that don't move. Not viable as a main attack though, the charges replenish too slowly.

I might try a summoner next. I grabbed summon skeletons and the passive to let you summon more shit is SO easy to get (I might grab that even though I'm building towards being a fire mage, it's already unlocked I just need the 1 point. And getting enemies to stand around clubbing minions while I burn them is helpful). And I saw an aura that looked extremely useful for a summoner, I'd imagine there are a lot of those. Curses might be really good too, if the enemies cast them are any indication.

 

Oh, I forgot about shock nova. Still, lightning mage is hardly usable.
I tried playing as a summoner, but currently the follower AI is terribad, with zombies mostly standing around doing nothing or running in the opposite direction to enemy forces.

 

The skill system is one of its strengths and has a lot of room for experimentation. I met a witch that had the exact same build as my Templar, we were using lightning strike. Off the back of that spell, I got to the 3rd difficulty level without much trouble, very powerful.

 

Found out that fire trap apparently DOES require dex, it just doesn't start to do so until level 5. Not sure if that's a bug or just a dick move.

There's a 3 hour HC ladder race with prizes being held today. I'm going to enter with a marauder, seems to me a guy wielding a bigass club with a ton of life relies the least on drops so should be best suited to skipping areas and quickly making up the xp with AoE melee attacks with a low risk of dying. And the life regen should make it feasible to kill bosses even when underequipped/levelled.

 

How does it compare to Diablo 2 (yeah, I mean D2 not D3)?
Does it support single player as well?

 

Well, it's a f2p, always online game where everyone plays on the same server, so you'll run into a bunch of other dudes in town. However you're free to play the game itself alone.

Although why you'd want to beats me. The story isn't very compelling and the game structured around PVP and trading.

 

Eh, I just prefer playing alone generally. Makes the experience revolve around you. But aside from the chat (which you can probably turn off, though I haven't looked yet.) You won't notice other people at all if you don't actively look for a group.

Compared to diablo 2, I'd say the loot is more interesting, the enemies about the same, and the active skills need some work (mostly for variety/creativeness.) The passive skills are great though. Mostly incremental but some of the keystones make huge changes like making you always hit but unable to cause crits, or having no mana pool but being able to cast from your life instead.

 

I played the game quite a lot alone. Diablo-likes are obviously centered around team play, but PoE is perfectly playable in pseudo single player mode.

The game is shorter than D2 and still needs some polish here and there. The devs are working hard, though, and with each update PoE feels better. Drops are interesting, enemies are getting more and more varied, etc. Classes and skill system are obviously quite different than in Diablo 2, but they are decently thought out and fun to play. Skill tree is pretty kewl and there are quite a few interesting skill gems waiting to be found.

Also, the game is so much smoother and lag-less in comparison to D3. Even in beta stage.

So, if you liked D2, it's pretty much a no-brainer to try PoE out.

 

item system explained:


server architecture: