Incline Path of Exile 2 - now available on Early Access

[tritosine2k]

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https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2323255030

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lul
You cannot even do delirium now check twitch stream.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Played to level 10 last night as a Sorceress. Early random thoughts:

-Comparisons to Dark Souls and Elden Ring are overblown. Yes, rolling is a necessity but I'm not rolling constantly. I'm rolling when I need to and just moving most of the time.

Play further. It's not exactly like Dark Souls, but there is a lot more rolling involved in the later boss fights. The early game bosses can be avoided with strafing a lot easier than the later fights, though I think strafing can also be a viable tactic later on if you have a good amount of movement speed.

I just fought Babala and now I agree that the comparisons aren't overblown. Very entertaining fight though. Died several times and had to make some adjustments to account for the fire resistance.

Also started a monk which has been hard even with hand-me-down equipment I stowed away in the stash.

That fight was awesome. Took me a fair few deaths to figure out the mechanics though, but it was probably the most fun I've had in any ARPG since I find most fights are either bullshit (damage sponges, 1-2 shot you) and boring or steamrolly and boring.

I didn't find it at all Souls-like though, it reminded me more like a 1 person MMO raid boss. Thought it was really cool either way.

I still think monk is the worst class, at least to start out with. Probably gets much better later based on that explode everything video posted earlier.

Has anyone messed around with Armour Breaker or armor break mechanics?

I haven't bothered because I'm not sure how it works.

It's a raw DPS decrease up front, but I'm curious, does armor stay broken, or does it regenerate or simply reset the condition on a timer? What is the duration of the "armor broken" status condition? Is the debuff permanent?

By and large does it end up being a DPS increase in boss encounters?

The tooltips in this game and basic mechanics are literally nonexistent and the wiki is a desert.

I have tried using it for some boss battles. No idea if it really makes a difference. It certainly doesn't have an immediately noticeable impact.

If it was just my char attacking, I'm not sure it would be worth it. It seems to go away pretty quick so if I have to run away to get away from AOEs, by the time I come back it has usually worn off already, and my regular club attack does much more damage than the armor break skill due to being supported by that attack speed up support gem. Now that I think about it I don't really think the DPS loss from the time spent doing 4 or 5 armor breaks is offset by the DPS boost while it is active on the enemy. Especially since a lot of my weapon damage is elemental anyway and I think armor break just boosts physical damage (by reducing enemy armor).

But I have summoned skeletons, so I hope they get some good use out of it. Maybe.

Armour break does make a difference with your physical damage after, but it takes awhile to ramp up (depending on what you're using to do it, I guess). I figure if it's worth it depends on how you're doing it. For me, I've just been using corrosion added to a poison dot that I can apply twice with comorbidity. So it's sort of like an incidental dot upkeep... not 100% sure it's worth it for many fights, but some where bosses have high armour, you can actually see it strip them from high armour to medium armour to none to break.

It resets after awhile if you don't continue to apply break status. So I need to continue refreshing dots to keep the armour break or it'll drop off.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

It’s too bad that people aren’t enjoying the melee combat. I went with Ranger and I’m having mostly a blast playing this. My vacation started the day the game released, and I’ve been poopsocking pretty hard.

This quiver completely changed my build thanks to its increased projectile speed. It turned my bow into a railgun, and the node on the skill tree that increases damage based on projectile speed pushed my damage much higher. It's super satisfying to shoot bouncing lasers and laying down fields of shock arrows. Feels like playing one of those top-down levels in Contra now. While I’m not annihilating bosses like I’ve seen some builds do, I’m struggling far, far less than I was previously.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It’s too bad that people aren’t enjoying the melee combat. I went with Ranger and I’m having mostly a blast playing this. My vacation started the day the game released, and I’ve been poopsocking pretty hard.

This quiver completely changed my build thanks to its increased projectile speed. It turned my bow into a railgun, and the node on the skill tree that increases damage based on projectile speed pushed my damage much higher. Feels super satisfying to shoot lasers all over the place. Feels like playing one of those top-down levels in Contra now. While I’m not annihilating bosses like I’ve seen some builds do, I’m struggling far, far less than I was previously.

Nice. Ranger is the tits. Sorc is fun too.

 

[Dr1f7]

It’s too bad that people aren’t enjoying the melee combat.

i saw a picture of someone playing monk with a twinblade-looking quarterstaff
i wonder if it's possible to make the twinblade thing glow red so u can be darth maul

if u can do that i'll be rolling a monk after my sorc run for sure
doing a darth maul style monk with some force lightning spells would be sweet

 

[ArchAngel]

It’s too bad that people aren’t enjoying the melee combat. I went with Ranger and I’m having mostly a blast playing this. My vacation started the day the game released, and I’ve been poopsocking pretty hard.

This quiver completely changed my build thanks to its increased projectile speed. It turned my bow into a railgun, and the node on the skill tree that increases damage based on projectile speed pushed my damage much higher. It's super satisfying to shoot bouncing lasers and laying down fields of shock arrows. Feels like playing one of those top-down levels in Contra now. While I’m not annihilating bosses like I’ve seen some builds do, I’m struggling far, far less than I was previously.

It is only Warrior that is slow and clunky. Monk is already doing POE1 level shit in maps as I shown in that video I posted few pages back.

 

[darkpatriot]

It’s too bad that people aren’t enjoying the melee combat. I went with Ranger and I’m having mostly a blast playing this. My vacation started the day the game released, and I’ve been poopsocking pretty hard.

This quiver completely changed my build thanks to its increased projectile speed. It turned my bow into a railgun, and the node on the skill tree that increases damage based on projectile speed pushed my damage much higher. It's super satisfying to shoot bouncing lasers and laying down fields of shock arrows. Feels like playing one of those top-down levels in Contra now. While I’m not annihilating bosses like I’ve seen some builds do, I’m struggling far, far less than I was previously.

It's okay, aside from the annoying need to spend half your time avoiding boss attacks rather than just wailing on them. I think part of my not enjoying it as much is that clubs don't seem to synergize well with minions, at least for low levels/act 1, which is all i have experience with right now. I should beat the boss and get to act 2 next time I play though.

I actually found the whole build up stun and detonate it thing kind of interesting, but minions kind of mess it up. Without minions I can more reliably get the timing for it (2 or 3 normal attacks depending on the enemy then detonate it to do a heavy AOE attack) but with minions it often leads to enemies dying without triggering a stun or dying shortly after getting the stun triggered. And since it happens less often and less reliably I am not anticipating them as much, so I miss more of the ones that do trigger before I get a chance to detonate them.

And of course having to have a scepter for spirit instead of a shield or two handed weapon also prevents you from getting the most out of melee.

But maybe other melee weapon categories (or higher level club skills) will synergize with minions better.

 

[ArchAngel]

You can easily do a build based on minions.

Cope.
Even ranged minions barely follow and get bogged down. Couple that with no phasing lol and you hardly advance. I wouldn't play this thru PoE1 acts let alone this aids-dog stuff.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2323255030

Minions AI is currently terrible and the despawn system makes it worse. I would not go full minion build for anything expect SRS in its current state.
I got some minions but only as temporary meat shields while I cast my ED and Contagion.

Minion AI needs fixes, but anyone who claims that you can "hardly advance" with minion builds is absolutely clueless.

You are absolutely clueless or you didn't really try using non SRS minions. When your skeletons cannot pass through a simple door or despawn as soon as they stuck or you run away too far from them but you need to wait standard respawn time before they appear (same shit for Infernal Hound that is then not taking 20% of damage meant for you..) or Zombies that also despawn but unlike persistent summons of course cannot spawn again or how boss battles have no corpses..

Also I forgot to add that minions do not follow you into zones that cut of retreat like some boss arenas or trial of chaos. I've done some fight with half my minions looking at me from edge of the screen stuck on a fence and going into trial of chaos arena with only two minions that managed to step on the platform before it went down is super "fun" when I am immefiatelly jumped by 20 enemies. I can only imagine how "fun" it would be if my damage also depended on same minions

 

[frajaq]

I give up on this HCSSF task, I'm not in the right mindset of playing it safe and paying constant attention, plus I want to experiment with new skills.

I cleared the Act 1 Boss as a squishy Ranger without difficulty but died to the Hyena boss in Act 2 right after lol

 

[deama]

The monk chayula ascendancy isn't very good I think. The darkness mechanic doesn't actually allow you to have any buffs active, which is a pretty big deal.

Those flames of chayula are kinda meh as well. It needs a revamp. It's kinda useful for bosses that have a lot of space to just wander around, but the feeling of it is pretty meh.
I think if they instead made these flames a lot more powerful and give interesting effects but reduce spawn rate, I think that would work better. Sort of like temp rare buffs that last e.g. 15 seconds and can be upgraded to 30 seconds on next link with some minor additional general leech, or a constant effect ontop of the rare buffs.

I think the only decent part of it is the energy shield where mana leech also works for energy shield.

 

[Saark]

Having just recently hit Level 90, I feel the foundation for the game is pretty damn solid, but I'm not sure I like how builds are more focused on weapons and archetypes now, with Ascendancies largely supporting a singular playstyle as well. It's quite difficult to really venture into "off-spec" builds for classes, and with the somewhat limited amount of sockets and supports available at the moment, that basically means that every archetype has essentially one build with barely and deviations if you take 10 different players with the same ascendancy/build idea. Frost Sorc plays Cast on Freeze+Comet, Lightning Casters play Archmage, Minionbuilds play SRS+Arsonists, etc.

I hope this changes going forward. I also think that items are about as dull as D4 at the moment, as every character essentially wants the same stats, with minor alterations. If you play ES, you essentially want the same Prefixes on every item, and a bit of res on the Suffixes, and that covers pretty much every single of your items. If you play Life, swap Mana for Life and that's pretty much it.

Droprates in Endgame are fine, but some of the Tilesets are absolutely abysmal. Mire, Vaal Foundry, Crypt, Augury and a few others can go fuck themselves.

Making currency in Endgame is piss-easy, and reaching "critical mass" for your build, as in ~80-90% of its potential, gets done pretty quickly. SSF will definitely have more time to slowly build up to better items, but the raw droprate of Exalts is high enough that you can try and craft quite often.

Hopefully they'll make some adjustments to some stuff in the future, but after the first patch I'm pretty hopeful for the future of this game, and I most definitely prefer it over PoE1 already. Well done GGG.

 

[ArchAngel]

Having just recently hit Level 90, I feel the foundation for the game is pretty damn solid, but I'm not sure I like how builds are more focused on weapons and archetypes now, with Ascendancies largely supporting a singular playstyle as well. It's quite difficult to really venture into "off-spec" builds for classes, and with the somewhat limited amount of sockets and supports available at the moment, that basically means that every archetype has essentially one build with barely and deviations if you take 10 different players with the same ascendancy/build idea. Frost Sorc plays Cast on Freeze+Comet, Lightning Casters play Archmage, Minionbuilds play SRS+Arsonists, etc.

I hope this changes going forward. I also think that items are about as dull as D4 at the moment, as every character essentially wants the same stats, with minor alterations. If you play ES, you essentially want the same Prefixes on every item, and a bit of res on the Suffixes, and that covers pretty much every single of your items. If you play Life, swap Mana for Life and that's pretty much it.

Droprates in Endgame are fine, but some of the Tilesets are absolutely abysmal. Mire, Vaal Foundry, Crypt, Augury and a few others can go fuck themselves.

Making currency in Endgame is piss-easy, and reaching "critical mass" for your build, as in ~80-90% of its potential, gets done pretty quickly. SSF will definitely have more time to slowly build up to better items, but the raw droprate of Exalts is high enough that you can try and craft quite often.

Hopefully they'll make some adjustments to some stuff in the future, but after the first patch I'm pretty hopeful for the future of this game, and I most definitely prefer it over PoE1 already. Well done GGG.

Wtf lvl 90 already? You are further than Kripp that said has been playing 14h per day.. and I am still mid Act 3. I guess reading everything and full clearing all maps makes it go slow

 

[Jermu]

found interesting combo with spark
so even when spark can't inflect status condition while using elemental discharge the ignite sparks gain from flame wall still work
did not have time to test this much yet but seems strong since you cast 28~ sparks each second

act 3 final boss was pretty disappointing + easy, but overall enjoyed all acts and had nice location+enemy variety. act 1 cruel was pretty chill since enemy AI is not different did not die even once

 

[TedNugent]

dodge now is 0 units instead of 1
passive block applies to all hits from any direction lol
last boss I fought I literally just stood there and held down mouse1 the entire fight

 

[Cyberarmy]

You definitely need to adapt your gear and resistances to the boss abilities.

Cold res for the witch, fire res for Rattlecage in the trial, lightning res for Jamanra in act 2, etc. I did Jamanra last night and died a couple times until I swaped to stacking lightning res and did it in one shot.

Just like PoE 1 back then, trying Merveil without some cold resistance was suicide.

 

[Saark]

Wtf lvl 90 already? You are further than Kripp that said has been playing 14h per day.. and I am still mid Act 3. I guess reading everything and full clearing all maps makes it go slow

I have 3 days and 10 hours played on my Sorc so far, I play video games for a living otherwise there's no way I could commit this much time to it. I also ended up playing and developing a build that turns out to be incredibly strong. Fuck anyone who wanted a build-guide for EA release, when figuring out builds is half the fun.

As a whole, I think PoE2 is a game that is best enjoyed slowly without rushing for Endgame. It's quite clear that GGG have crafted an experience that can be enjoyed just for the campaign, without ever even engaging with the Atlas. While it sucks that Acts 4-6 are missing, most people will probably spend a solid 30+ hours of gametime getting to Endgame in the first place, and for it being a free game, the way the story is being told much better than in PoE1, and the overall production quality of the campaign with fully voiced characters, it's a game where the campaign can stand on its own, even if you drop it after. That alone will make the game a much bigger commercial success already, since PoE1s campaign was serviceable, but certainly not something you would recommend to any fellow gamers. That is very much different for PoE2.

 

[Saark]

Welp, looks like they completely gutted all Cast-On-Trigger builds. Going from needing 1 Freeze to trigger a spell (which was busted beyond belief) to needing to Freeze 15 white mobs for a single trigger, or 6 Freezes on a rare, is quite the hit. That being said, looks like at least Comet is bugged and has 50% higher max Energy than it's supposed to. Either way, expected nerf, although it looks like they went too heavy on it unlike the Gas Arrow/Gas Grenade ones, which are still very viable builds.

Build still works for me, ~ish, but that's because I have incredible gear so this is probably now an unplayable build for almost anyone. Unlucky.

 

[Ismaul]

You definitely need to adapt your gear and resistances to the boss abilities.

Cold res for the witch, fire res for Rattlecage in the trial, lightning res for Jamanra in act 2, etc. I did Jamanra last night and died a couple times until I swaped to stacking lightning res and did it in one shot.

Just like PoE 1 back then, trying Merveil without some cold resistance was suicide.

Nahhh, in PoE1 you could just brute force it with a death or two if needed, and care about gear later. Not in PoE2.

 

[Vyvian]

I'm sad there's no Scion class in this or the equivalent. Feels like Gemling Merc is the closest we can get thus far.

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm sad there's no Scion class in this or the equivalent. Feels like Gemling Merc is the closest we can get thus far.

I am not, it just made the passive tree needlessly more complicated. Also the character was boring and mostly less useful

 

[Vyvian]

I'm sad there's no Scion class in this or the equivalent. Feels like Gemling Merc is the closest we can get thus far.

I am not, it just made the passive tree needlessly more complicated. Also the character was boring and mostly less useful

I can understand that. I just liked the "blank slate" aspect of it and how I could take it anywhere I wanted.

 

[Asymptotics]

So I was playing the CoF ice sorc. Nerf dropped and I just switched back to Frost Bolt + Cold Snap for general clear with CoF Comet acting as a secondary damage boost vs large packs and bosses. Build feels absolutely fine, albeit a tad bit slower (more control of my mana though.) Meanwhile reddit is straight up losing its shit, acting like all sorceress builds are dead.

I went ahead and checked the CoF comet sorceress build guide on maxroll - holy shit it was a bad build even before the nerfs. Who's the fucking "expert" writing this shit. Nothing but damage nodes on the tree. Build constantly mentioning mana issues. MAYBE YOU WOULDN'T FUCKING HAVE THEM IF YOU PICKED SOME OF THE FUCKING MANA NODES YOU DIPSHIT.

My main issues with the game currently is the fact that build variety is insanely low for the standard they set in PoE1. Of course with more skill gems this will get better, but I feel like a major overhaul of the passive tree will be needed soon. There's just too much travel nodes and the pathing basically has 1-2 options ALL of the time. We need way more connections between the different rings (inner, mid, outter.)

 

[Israfael]

Welp, looks like they completely gutted all Cast-On-Trigger builds. Going from needing 1 Freeze to trigger a spell

I'm having more and more release D3 vibes - mostly useless uniques, general paucity of loot (although now it's better), skills tied to levels (so until I've got sunder on my Titan in the end of A3, my ST dps was nil, but now I melt stuff in like 5 hits or so despite choosing tanky ascendancy nodes, probably it'll also get nerfed), anything that provides this very PoE1-endemic feeling that you've broken the system is getting mercilessly gutted by the devs (like CM Diamond Skin/Energy armor Wizard did in D3 or its barb analogue).

re's just too much travel nodes and the pathing basically has 1-2 options ALL of the time.

For that they'd probably have to redo the stat requirements for the gems - I was basically forced to take plain stat nodes because I didn't have required str (100 or 90, don't remember) to level up / obtain certain skill gems. I fear it'd just restrict most of the builds to one stat and very narrow set of skills.

 

[Reever]

Meanwhile reddit is straight up losing its shit, acting like all sorceress builds are dead.

My favorite are the threads that go "We need respecs to be cheaper because it's a testing environment and the high costs stifle creativity" - Bitch, you weren't creating anything. You copied the most meta build that got a 90% nerf and now are crying because of it. And than they're going to switch to the next meta build because they can't get past act 1 cruel without having their hands held the entire time.

 

[motherfucker]

Yo can anyone help a motherfucker with a key? I'll put your quote of choice in my forum signature.