Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Jason Liang]

Crook, a couple of hours before Ultimatum League ended, before I mothballed her.

Traded for this Watcher's Eye for 49c. I thought the price was fair, and it fits my Scion in standard perfectly.

I'll probably gunslinger Occultist again to start the new league, but go for a Chaos damage build instead of Fire/ Firewall.

RIP Gunslinger

 

[tritosine2k]

(...)
The laziest way to fix your flask charge generation problem is to get an Overflowing Chalice flask and use the new Enkindling Orb to give it something like +90% duration in exchange for the flask being unable to gain flask charges while active (which means nothing because Overflowing Chalice already does that) and then you just keep Overflowing Chalice active whenever you need other flasks to recharge faster.

On a side note, it seems Doryani's Fist + Manastorm + Rigwald's Curse + Mind of the Council + Brutal Restraint (Nasima) has potential to do massive damage.

Good stuff, thanx - I really like these all unique builds especially after discovering triple resist small jewels.

• A new Careful Conservationist cluster has been added to the northeast of the Ranger’s starting location. Careful Conservationist grants 10% reduced Flask Charges used, Flasks applied to you have 5% increased Effect, and 20% increased Flask Charges gained if you’ve dealt a Critical Strike Recently.

-will be a prime anoint target sure enough , let's bet how much golden oil ?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Black, Opalescent, Violet/Indigo/Purple/Whatever the fuck it was called.

 

[Jaedar]

If that is your only actual goal, theres plenty of ways to achieve that. The easiest one would be Transcendence.

Whether or not this is true, I need to point out how deeply unhelpful it is. Timeless jewels are not common, and statistically you'd need to loot quite a few to get this particular one, yes? I don't know, maybe I just have very unrealistic expectations about how much grinding is necessary to "get good" at poe.

The Templar has received audio dialogue for Part Two of Path of Exile.

Now I get why they destroyed the templar ascendancies, he would clearly be too op otherwise.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Raider survived the nerfs remarkably well. Around 10% movement/attack speed in the Onslaught effect + 50% Elemental Immunity, which you need 5-6 skillpoints to remove as an issue (Crystal Skin node cluster, I think it was). Deadeye is fine.

All melee ascendancies are totally fine.

Trickster is fine.

Pick any of those and go to town, with your 40-50% damage nerf and terrible flask QOL/sustain.

I might go ahead and pick the most retarded option - something like a Boneshatter Jugg. It's been so long since I've played that ascendancy that it's kind of attractive. If my nerve fails, however, I'll probably end up going trapper or Chieftain totems (Tectonic/Earthquake/Earthshatter/Sunder). Was going to do the the new shield skill gem (Shield Crush), but they've buttfucked it before the league even started. TBF, the first set of numbers was nutty, considering that shit could shotgun.

 

[Tacgnol]

-will be a prime anoint target sure enough , let's bet how much golden oil ?

Golden oil has generally gotten cheaper with the atlas passive trees, so it's not as big a deal anymore.

Usually only super expensive for first week or two.

 

[ArchAngel]

Raider survived the nerfs remarkably well. Around 10% movement/attack speed in the Onslaught effect + 50% Elemental Immunity, which you need 5-6 skillpoints to remove as an issue (Crystal Skin node cluster, I think it was). Deadeye is fine.

All melee ascendancies are totally fine.

Trickster is fine.

Pick any of those and go to town, with your 40-50% damage nerf and terrible flask QOL/sustain.

I might go ahead and pick the most retarded option - something like a Boneshatter Jugg. It's been so long since I've played that ascendancy that it's kind of attractive. If my nerve fails, however, I'll probably end up going trapper or Chieftain totems (Tectonic/Earthquake/Earthshatter/Sunder). Was going to do the the new shield skill gem (Shield Crush), but they've buttfucked it before the league even started. TBF, the first set of numbers was nutty, considering that shit could shotgun.

Melee is not even close to OK with nerfs to flasks and Fortify.
Anything except trap/totem/minions will be a big trap.

 

[Saark]

Anything except trap/totem/minions will be a big trap.

Yeah, its the same song and dance melee has done for time immemorial, yet somehow it continues to be very much viable and the choice of build for most high-end players that want to push the ladder as quickly as possible or rush towards UElder farming day 2-3 of the league. Weird how that goes, its apparently unplayable yet all the people with some actual brains prefer playing it.

Whether or not this is true, I need to point out how deeply unhelpful it is. Timeless jewels are not common, and statistically you'd need to loot quite a few to get this particular one, yes? I don't know, maybe I just have very unrealistic expectations about how much grinding is necessary to "get good" at poe.

What exactly is the expectation that people are having, that you should be able to survive most if not all content just by virtue of... gaining levels? Choosing an Ascendancy? Of course it will require investment to get to a level where you can safely facetank Shaper Slams or stand in the Hunters goop or survive Delve Darkness for 3+ minutes. But that doesn't mean its impossible, or even super expensive to do, it just takes know-how, some skill and a bit of currency. How much currency, well, that depends on how far you want to push it, same as with any build.

Maybe the expectation is for people to get to have high DPS and high survivability playing SSF, without realizing that the game was never meant to be balanced around SSF or even tailored towards it in any way. They said as much when they first introduced SSF as a game mode, yet people still somehow cling to the idea that SSF should be the main-mode of the game.

All Transcendence needs is the keystone, and a bunch of "physical damage taken as element" gear. Militant Faiths are the cheapest of the timeless jewels. And since you dont actually need more than 4-5k life once you have the remaining gear, you can literally buy 1c bases with phys damage taken as element affixes and slap some other stats on it. Capping res isnt all that hard either, since you run Purity of Elements with the Watchers Eye mod anyway. With ~5ex investment you are usually able to just stand still and tank Sirus Awakener 8 Meteors already, and thats one of the hardest hitting abilities in the entire game. Getting tanky, to the point where you can facetank Atziri Flameblasts or Shaperslams, isnt all that expensive, and we're talking about absolutely avoidable things here that oneshot 99% of builds. Being able to survive most of what you'll encounter in redmaps is dirt-cheap, and the only thing you have to worry about are elemental degens (there is almost none of them in regular maps, the only elemental degens you can encounter there are xoph breaches, mobs that use vortex like shaped maps or the laboratory boss). Wind Dancer and the DoT pantheon take care of most degens.

 

[lukaszek]

Maybe the expectation is for people to get to have high DPS and high survivability playing SSF, without realizing that the game was never meant to be balanced around SSF or even tailored towards it in any way. They said as much when they first introduced SSF as a game mode, yet people still somehow cling to the idea that SSF should be the main-mode of the game.

ssf is the way

 

[Ziem]

so which build are you guys going to play
i think im going with

Spoiler

uninstall wizard

ssf is the way

yeah if you want to force yourself to play the same metafaggot league starting build as everyone else except without being able to play anything potentially interesting afterwards

 

[Jaedar]

Maybe the expectation is for people to get to have high DPS and high survivability playing SSF, without realizing that the game was never meant to be balanced around SSF or even tailored towards it in any way. They said as much when they first introduced SSF as a game mode, yet people still somehow cling to the idea that SSF should be the main-mode of the game.

ssf is the way

I'll take 3 deaths per map over having to engage with trade. Either way, I do play SSF, and have never found a single timeless jewel and "a bunch of physical damage taken as element" sounds great, but that's a really rare mod afaik.

As for my expectations: this was my character last league https://pastebin.com/VB2wuhrR but I got bored with it pretty quickly so some of the gear is very suboptimal. It was reasonably tanky, but I still died within like 1s if I ever stopped moving in ultimatums in yellow maps (iirc) and I still got instabigged a few times on turning corners or letting rares stack up and what not. Obviously It's lacking armour because it's using a tabula, but as is usually the case, I found that the 30% more damage was a better survivability boost than 2k extra base armor and +100 base hp. I think it has a pretty solid investment in defenses, but maybe you'll tell me differently.

It's another thing GGG are really weird with though. Refuse to balance the game for SSF, refuse to make trade enjoyable to engage with.

Also seems to me that melee is great with high budget, because it scales really well in many different ways, especially with very good rares. But if you're on a budget it's often felt pretty awful to me, with a few exceptions (like cyclone).

so which build are you guys going to play

Realistically: quit before maps. Optimistically: forbidden rite ci occultist or some reaper minion build. I looked at craftofexile and it looks like it should be doable to create some pretty decent ES gear with ~50alt orbs and the crafting bench.

 

[lukaszek]

pinging traps got buffed and cast speed changed in favor of trap throwing so i might try those again. Maybe even on saboteur for first time ever!

Also might give blade trap a go. Its weird

 

[Absinthe]

If that is your only actual goal, theres plenty of ways to achieve that. The easiest one would be Transcendence.

Whether or not this is true, I need to point out how deeply unhelpful it is. Timeless jewels are not common, and statistically you'd need to loot quite a few to get this particular one, yes? I don't know, maybe I just have very unrealistic expectations about how much grinding is necessary to "get good" at poe

That shit doesn't work on degen/DoTs, just so you know.

It's also possible to do Shackles of the Wretched (Temporal Chains) + Kaom's Roots and use Blood of Corruption. Gluttony of Elements has 14 seconds of vaal soul gain prevention (in addition to not gaining souls during aura effect), but with a high roll Soul Catcher flask (or at least 222% increased effect of curses on you for enough duration from temporal chains to always exceed soul gain prevention duration - that's an extreme investment, but doable) and the 26% flask effect nodes (there's +8% flask nodes on the life and mana flask scion clusters between duelist & ranger each and +10% on ranger's easiest mana nodes) + Pathfinder ascendancy and you can ensure that your vaal soul gain prevention lasts shorter than its skill duration, but you still can't gain any vaal souls during the aura effect, but you can use a Soul Ripper with a decent roll to collect 100 vaal souls' worth of flask charges during Gluttony of Elements and immediately pop the flask the moment your aura runs out and reactivate it (pop it early and it's wasted and you're screwed though). Grats, you are now immune to elemental damage, and shackles and blood of corruption are budget uniques. As a Pathfinder Ranger you can slowly charge up a Soul Ripper just by standing around too, letting you get Vaal Souls in boss fights that don't normally let you start with vaal souls if you can wait around a bit first, especially if you stack a bunch of increased flask charges gained (it multiples the 3 flask charges per 3 seconds). If you went CI, you can use Darkscorn+Taste of Hate+Lightning Coil+Formless Inferno+Watcher's Eye (one of the purity modifiers that converts phys damage taken into an element) to convert 100% of phys damage taken into a mix of elemental and chaos damage, I think. Now you're immune to all damage. If you go crazy on Taste of Hate's flask effect (maybe carry two ToH flasks so you can use the enkindler orbs for massive duration/effect boosts and recharge one while the other's active) you can probably use fewer uniques there.

Side note, with the new Enkindling Orb it's possible to achieve over +150% flask effect with a unique flask on a Pathfinder using Alchemist's Genius. And with 150% increased flask effect you can make a perfect roll Soul Catcher give you 100% reduced soul gain prevention duration. You can make do with less using Yaomac's Accord, but Shepherd of Souls is pretty fucking horrible (30% less damage with non-Vaal skills in exchange for Vaal skills giving 50% of their souls to other skills when activated), and any duration-based Vaal Skills will also have increases and reductions to skill effect duration affect soul gain prevention, and seeing as increases and reductions to soul gain prevention duration stack additively... reduced skill effect with the above Soul Ripper will give you a very easy time obtaining 100% reduced soul gain prevention using much, much less flask effect, but you will have shit duration with your Vaal skills. Conversely it means increased skill effect duration tends to massively undermine the Soul Ripper (do not use increased skill effect duration with Gluttony of Element strat above unless you're going full curse effect temporal chains). You can use this shit for permanent Vaal Immortal Call in the permanent leagues, although the duration will be entirely too short for this to be reasonable unless you use self-tchains for a massive duration multiplier. Even better, you can use this with Vaal Breach to generate its own Vaal Souls so you can breach while you breach and spam enough breaches to make whoever is partying with you want to absolutely fucking murder you except they're probably already dead.

On a lazier note you could just use Fortify and Berserk to massively lower the damage you take. Totem builds with chainbreaker and high mana regen can get really long uptime on Berserk. And it's always possible to just crank up the individual Purity of Elements auras with some max resists to get 90% max resists on all elements.

 

[ArchAngel]

All these crazy combinations is still something that only 1% (or less) of players know about or use. For many of such you also need to trade a lot and grind a lot. This is again something only 1% will do.

Don't be outraged when other 99% say bullshit.

 

[Gerrard]

Can't make this shit up.

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

Update for chinese bots and server loads, nothing to do with gameplay.

 

[Absinthe]

ArchAngel, there's also much lazier shit like getting over 20k max life and using Bloodseeker as your weapon so that every single hit you deal instantly brings you back to 100% life.

That said the curse stacking immunity build is very good (but expensive) since you can curse enemies into the ground while you're at it and if you stack skill effect duration you can make a single Gluttony of Elements last over 30 seconds and you won't even need Soul Catcher flasks. You'll probably still want Pathfinder (and an Overflowing Chalice maybe) so you can charge Soul Ripper out of nowhere for the boss fights. The non-curse effect stacking variant is actually pretty cheap and doable but reapplying Gluttony of Elements at 100 vaal souls every 7 or 8 seconds (more with more curse effect) is a pain in the ass, even if you are getting at least +40% charge generation, flask charge on crit, and 3 flask charges every 3 seconds (multiplied by increased flask charges gained).

 

[tritosine2k]

If that is your only actual goal, theres plenty of ways to achieve that. The easiest one would be Transcendence.

Whether or not this is true, I need to point out how deeply unhelpful it is. Timeless jewels are not common, and statistically you'd need to loot quite a few to get this particular one, yes? I don't know, maybe I just have very unrealistic expectations about how much grinding is necessary to "get good" at poe

(...) there's +8% flask nodes on the life and mana flask scion clusters between duelist & ranger each and +10% on ranger's easiest mana nodes) +

Gone. I have hard time getting attack block to 78 with rumi and tree nerf and glad ascendancy. Gave up on spell block with that superb spell block staff and all of tree + spiked concoction (also halved) lol? Might end up using block small cluster...

 

[Absinthe]

Hm, seems most source of flask effect and Rumi got nerfed pretty hard. You can still equip double Enkindled Rumi's for +50% flask effect on each Rumi and let one recharge while you use the other. You can also use The Anvil for another +8% block (and +3% max block - it's pretty good for max block builds). I assume you're already using Tempest Shield for +3% block, right? The more expensive Divergent variant can get you a few more points of block.

Wait, nevermind, this is easy. Just get 2x 20% (or higher - flask quality stacks additively with local increases and reductions to duration, so 20% makes for 1.2 sec duration) Replica Rumi's Concoction instead, get the Enkindler Orbs to give it like 90%+ increased duration, and just use it with Kaom's Roots (ignores petrify). That one gives you +50% block chance easy. Problem solved, and it even gives you a free endurance charge every time you activate them.

The flask effect reductions don't particularly affect the Gluttony stunts though, since you can still raise curse effect a bit to compensate or just stack enough flask effect. More curse effect is typically better anyhow.

 

[Tacgnol]

If that is your only actual goal, theres plenty of ways to achieve that. The easiest one would be Transcendence.

Whether or not this is true, I need to point out how deeply unhelpful it is. Timeless jewels are not common, and statistically you'd need to loot quite a few to get this particular one, yes? I don't know, maybe I just have very unrealistic expectations about how much grinding is necessary to "get good" at poe

(...) there's +8% flask nodes on the life and mana flask scion clusters between duelist & ranger each and +10% on ranger's easiest mana nodes) +

Gone. I have hard time getting attack block to 78 with rumi and tree nerf and glad ascendancy. Gave up on spell block with that superb spell block staff and all of tree + spiked concoction (also halved) lol? Might end up using block small cluster...

I was able to get 79% melee and spell block quite easily on my glad last league. I've not drilled down into the notes, but I guess they've nerfed a lot of the DW block nodes on the tree?

 

[Absinthe]

Side note, Stibnite Flasks now give 20% more evasion rating during flask effect. That 2x Replica Dreamfeather Iron Reflexes build is apparently now using Granite Flask of Iron Skin, Jade Flask of Reflexes, Basalt Flask, and Stibnite Flask. 4 flask piano for armor and 1 flask for personal use.

 

[tritosine2k]

If that is your only actual goal, theres plenty of ways to achieve that. The easiest one would be Transcendence.

Whether or not this is true, I need to point out how deeply unhelpful it is. Timeless jewels are not common, and statistically you'd need to loot quite a few to get this particular one, yes? I don't know, maybe I just have very unrealistic expectations about how much grinding is necessary to "get good" at poe

(...) there's +8% flask nodes on the life and mana flask scion clusters between duelist & ranger each and +10% on ranger's easiest mana nodes) +

Gone. I have hard time getting attack block to 78 with rumi and tree nerf and glad ascendancy. Gave up on spell block with that superb spell block staff and all of tree + spiked concoction (also halved) lol? Might end up using block small cluster...

I was able to get 79% melee and spell block quite easily on my glad last league. I've not drilled down into the notes, but I guess they've nerfed a lot of the DW block nodes on the tree?

I have a scion caster with a mostly unscathed staff (and "drinking problems" ™ ) . That new reduced flask charge skill looks better to start with than "aqueous accelerant" (top anoint with this kinda gear , hopefully they not listed the whole node as bonus just one passive.

Point is , the flask effect stuff stopped scaling .

 

[ArchAngel]

ArchAngel, there's also much lazier shit like getting over 20k max life and using Bloodseeker as your weapon so that every single hit you deal instantly brings you back to 100% life.

That said the curse stacking immunity build is very good (but expensive) since you can curse enemies into the ground while you're at it and if you stack skill effect duration you can make a single Gluttony of Elements last over 30 seconds and you won't even need Soul Catcher flasks. You'll probably still want Pathfinder (and an Overflowing Chalice maybe) so you can charge Soul Ripper out of nowhere for the boss fights. The non-curse effect stacking variant is actually pretty cheap and doable but reapplying Gluttony of Elements at 100 vaal souls every 7 or 8 seconds (more with more curse effect) is a pain in the ass, even if you are getting at least +40% charge generation, flask charge on crit, and 3 flask charges every 3 seconds (multiplied by increased flask charges gained).

Cool those are two build.. what about others? Neither helps what I want to play. Also neither supports fun gameplay of leveling up, picking logical passives and using good drops..you know like how every other aRPG works.
It is cool that this game supports 1% of crazies, but 3.15 will scare most others when difficulty will no longer be fun and grind will be too much.

 

[Saark]

All these crazy combinations is still something that only 1% (or less) of players know about or use. For many of such you also need to trade a lot and grind a lot. This is again something only 1% will do.

No, it is not. Way more than 1% of players engage in trade, and saying something like this just shows how ignorant of the state of the game you truly are. The reality is, that SSF is still only played by a minority of people, and asking for buffs or improvements for SSF is something GGG will only do, when it doesn't affect trade at all, or provides QoL for Trade-league players.
The TFT discord has ~65.000 users, and while you can certainly reckon that a lot of them are just afk or joined at some point and no longer actively use it, you can still expect at least 1/3rd of its users to use it regularly (and ~15k people have ranks that require a certain activity). When we have ~150k-200k palyers at league stats, thats about 20-30% of people actively engaging in trade.
It's time people understand that not having to rely on trade is simply not going to happen, it never will. Part of the appeal of SSF is supposed to make due with what you get, and doing so does require better knowledge of the game. Its like playing a roguelike and asking to be able to be just as successful as people who know much more and have much more experience in the game than you do, and doing so would only be possible by removing perma-death.

At some point you either gotta educate yourself, get better, or stop whining. Or play Trade. Theres still options here, but if you just decline all of them out of stubbornness, then is it really GGGs fault? Theres so many ways to build builds that are pretty tanky, that dont need insane amounts of gear or currency or can be done on a budget. You just have to expect to not also deal 5mil DPS with it. Unless you know what youre doing. Maxblock with Life on Block is still one of the easiest ways to stay alive in almost all kinds of content, and its not difficult to build at all.

 

[ArchAngel]

I am not saying only 1% use trade, read again