Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[tyrannosaurus rex]

How about EE ? The 50% DPS boost seems really attractive but how would you pull this? I was thinking using a totem dealing a certain element AOE then hitting the enemies with the other but the issue is that if you attack faster than the totem after 5 seconds you'll take a penalty of 25% instead.

 

[Carceri]

Fuck this gay Warband Bullshit. FUCK THIS GAY WARBAND BULLSHIT.

It should have a disclaimer : WARNING PAST CRUEL ACT 4 WARBANDS WILL MURDER YOU IN LESS THAN A SECOND, AN ACTUAL SECOND.

I don't know if they did it because the game stagnated and the only ones staying are the nerds with specific items they bought outside the game at the ready for each new characters, or if they think it's supposed to be stimulating, but it's not. It's fucking not. What this encouraged me to do is that I've been grinding ledge like a retard 20 times in a row now, with felshrine, just to get 1 level every 1 hour to hopefully get nodes strong enough in the passives, and earn enough disposable income to craft resistances onto my equipment that I'm tempted to throw away every time I find something better.

One band, BOOM FLICKER STRIKE LIGHTNING UR DEAD. Not even the time to move my fingers to the potions. Health goes down instantly. Even if I go through the painful dullfest, after dying once, of changing all my rings for lightning resist I picked along the way, killing my dps and removing half my skills, I die in 2 seconds, while spamming potions to stay alive.

I won't even talk about how I've been killing every important bosses since cruel by dying 15 times and rushing them and just making sure I had grinded to the next level before. Because there's no fucking other way, you die in seconds, even with my best effort at using dash, decoy totems and backstabbing. Better just get them through attrition.

The game wasn't that hard when I first played through all of it in 2012, not even Dominus in 2013 was that impossible. Did the remaining players get so inflated by uber gears that they had to up the difficulty for them?

Learn to play scrub. I'm almost 90 in tempest solo-self found. Game is still easy.

Edit: just wait till you fight those bands on maps. Pure fun. I have played warbands in the beginning of the expansion to get the general feel of the new mobs/bosses/maps etc. Reached 85 with a crit arc witch. Never died.

 

[Saark]

Theres really only 4 types of builds that utilize EE (unless I forgot one):
-support builds that party up with people who know what resistance will be buffed
-summoners who dont have to worry about the negative effects because minions dont trigger EE
-selfcast discharge who will usually cast icenova before the discharge
-cast on crit builds that roll a single +elemental dmg on attack mod on their rings or weapon, which will then proc EE while they use their physical attack that triggers the cast on crit (spells of the other 2 elements obviously)

Also if you still get dumpstered on by non-boss warband mobs you're doing something wrong I'm afraid. The only annoying thing about warband trashmobs is their extremely high HP. Don't get stunlocked by the ball-lightnings the corpses leave, I'd suggest carrying a topaz flask if youre CI or simply maxing your lightning res on any life build so you don't get stunned. Some of the captains can be a bitch in unique maps, died to a spectral throw brinerot captain in a poorjoys once, normal maps should be a non-issue and dying to them before maps is just complete failure on your end. They are a nuisance at best and can easily be skipped if your build doesn't allow for killing them quickly on lower levels.

 

[T. Reich]

Theres really only 4 types of builds that utilize EE (unless I forgot one):
-support builds that party up with people who know what resistance will be buffed
-summoners who dont have to worry about the negative effects because minions dont trigger EE
-selfcast discharge who will usually cast icenova before the discharge
-cast on crit builds that roll a single +elemental dmg on attack mod on their rings or weapon, which will then proc EE while they use their physical attack that triggers the cast on crit (spells of the other 2 elements obviously)

You forgot ignite prolif builds. EE works real well with EA, for example. The mechanics are the same as the onse you described for CoC builds.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Learn to play scrub. I'm almost 90 in tempest solo-self found. Game is still easy.

Edit: just wait till you fight those bands on maps. Pure fun. I have played warbands in the beginning of the expansion to get the general feel of the new mobs/bosses/maps etc. Reached 85 with a crit arc witch. Never died.

Shitpost elsewhere.

-cast on crit builds that roll a single +elemental dmg on attack mod on their rings or weapon, which will then proc EE while they use their physical attack that triggers the cast on crit (spells of the other 2 elements obviously)

A bit hard to follow you there but this sounds like a direction I would like to go into.

Also if you still get dumpstered on by non-boss warband mobs you're doing something wrong I'm afraid. The only annoying thing about warband trashmobs is their extremely high HP. Don't get stunlocked by the ball-lightnings the corpses leave, I'd suggest carrying a topaz flask if youre CI or simply maxing your lightning res on any life build so you don't get stunned. Some of the captains can be a bitch in unique maps, died to a spectral throw brinerot captain in a poorjoys once, normal maps should be a non-issue and dying to them before maps is just complete failure on your end. They are a nuisance at best and can easily be skipped if your build doesn't allow for killing them quickly on lower levels.

I don't know with whom you hang around but it's been a problems for all the people I know who only play occasionally (only relative to those who are on this game for months, several hours per day). What you write sounds almost insulting tbh assuming I don't know about electricity resistances when I specifically said I said I try to adapt my gear against them as much as I can. None of the gear I found while levelling to 66 is enough to deal with them and I'm following a good tested/approved passive path. It must be failure on my part, not to run with uber gear I should have farmed hours on end on ledge or something :/

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Well I played just now. I got almost murdered by a warband who didn't even deal ele damage. It's depressing because armor is something I thought I had covered well. I kited them with decoy totem which is basically the only thing keeping me from dying. I met a bunch of guys through some pvp fun and when I asked them about it, same. They even had a better armor and DPS than me, still they admitted they had to kite the shit out of warbands and died in one hit to bosses like in the chamber of sin.

I'm saying, playing as a melee build, I must be doing something wrong, but whatever it is it's fairly obscure. That or you really are meant to farm safe zones like a madman once you hit merciless.

 

[Carceri]

What's your armor rating? Though, if they hit like a truck armor is not gonna do much (the way it work in PoE is fucked up). Enduring cry/Immortal Call is much more effective at mitigating physical damage. Also, Arctic armor gets an honorable mention here. I don't recall having problems with the warbands in normal lvling areas. Only on some maps they were pretty dangerous, but then again I wasn't playing melee and I was also freezing stuff.

Shitpost elsewhere.

Don't get mad now

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I expected a ''git gud reply'' and I still got mad when I saw it.

I thought about Enduring cry, immortal but they nerfed it. You cant put them on auto cast anymore. So I would need to cast them individually, which takes time in the middle of a fight plus my fingers are fairly busy with mana potions, life, armor/ele potions, flame dash, decoy totem. I would probably die if I stopped stunning/knocking enemies for 1 second and taunted all the enemies to get to me at once.

I got molten shell on auto cast with some nice damage boost and curse of flammability. I was thinking about arctic armor but I also have to run Clarity and Herald of ash for crucial DPS boost. I could run a third aura but then there's that node I took that eats my mana for 30% of the damage. I'm not so sure if it was wise since I occasionally run entirely out of mana and can't cast any skills when I take a lot of damage. Not sure if the 30% transfers back to life if I run out of mana to eat it.

I get frozen a lot. Shocked a lot, ignite and bleed aren't much of a problem.

Do you recall how it was for you at level 65 on merciless? Shit has been impossible for me since act 4 cruel and act 3 cruel as far as warbands are concerned. Trash mobs I can deal with even if they murder me scary fast too, but damage soaking warbands I can't.

 

[Aothan]

I think Lightning Penetration and possibly Elemental Weakness may be used then, which I would imagine would have to work well enough given otherwise elemental damage would be negligible (i.e. no magic) in many instances

all things considered I should probably even check to see if someone has tried, and more or less estimated, how effective individual bolts from Herald of Thunder can be with a character emphasising this ability

 

[Saark]

I don't know with whom you hang around but it's been a problems for all the people I know who only play occasionally (only relative to those who are on this game for months, several hours per day). What you write sounds almost insulting tbh assuming I don't know about electricity resistances when I specifically said I said I try to adapt my gear against them as much as I can. None of the gear I found while levelling to 66 is enough to deal with them and I'm following a good tested/approved passive path. It must be failure on my part, not to run with uber gear I should have farmed hours on end on ledge or something :/

I levelled 4 characters to 80+ in warbands, one of them had 900 life and negative resistances when I reached merciless act4. I may have died 15 times to cruel malachai and about 5 times to merc piety, but I still got there pretty damn fast. As I said, warbands while levelling can be quite annoying because of their insane health pools and your gear not being optimized. Just skip them, you're not missing out on any good loot anyway. My progression usually goes like this:
1. Figure out a build I wanna play
2. Plan the tree
3. See what level I need to play it
4. Play some easy levelling build until I can respec into the planned one
5. Rush to merciless act4, farm aqueducts/dried lake for a while

Most of acts 1-3 in merciless are kind of easy after finishing up cruel act4, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the time to prepare for it a little. And yes, that might include farming ledge until you can at least hit 50+ resistances, and have a couple of decent flasks that cover most status ailments, bleeding and at least 1 instant heal flask. Once you get a grip on what actually killed you (which takes quite some time to do), avoiding/mitigating the threat gets a lot easier. Took me a while to realize how important flasks are once you reach merciless for example.

What build are you playing that you are running into such troubles with warbands? Oh and armour is less and less valuable the larger the incoming hit is, it doesn't always reduce damage by the percentage shown in the character sheet. Make use of endurance charges properly, unless you already do that too. Lifeleech/LGoH should solve most of the troubles melee run into. Also: fortify.

edit: just read your last post a second time, getting frozen/shocked is scary for everyone. If getting higher resistances really is too expensive for you right now at least get some decent flasks. It will make life A LOT easier.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I have some decent flash. I don't however have them customized for status ailments most of the time, but occasionally I will dig one from my chest if one band is using ice/schock. I have my panic flash for insta recovery too. Lifeleech seems almost useless to me, first because I don't have a single node to optimize them, second because life regen isn't really a big problem, especially not against mobs. I use fortify.

What kills me is simple : they deal crazy DPS. And often it's too fast for me to even react, if reacting would get me anywhere. They're strong as fuck uniques/warbands running around, teleporting, trying to get at them is a real pain, when their projectile destroy you in two hits. Then they themselves semi kite you around. Melee assholes can deal a lot of damage too but it's easier to abuse them with decoy totem flame dash, unless they themselves use a fast skill. They have a higher running speed too generally.

There's the question that I also generally run out of flask in 10 seconds if I try to confront them directly. Sure have anti freeze flasks is fun, but that will last 3 seconds generally, just good for 3 bad freezes. That would be worth something if the fight wasn't as volatile as a cowboy duel.
Is there a way to link to my inventory?

 

[Zdzisiu]

I have some decent flash. I don't however have them customized for status ailments most of the time, but occasionally I will dig one from my chest if one band is using ice/schock. I have my panic flash for insta recovery too. Lifeleech seems almost useless to me, first because I don't have a single node to optimize them, second because life regen isn't really a big problem, especially not against mobs. I use fortify.

What kills me is simple : they deal crazy DPS. And often it's too fast for me to even react, if reacting would get me anywhere. They're strong as fuck uniques/warbands running around, teleporting, trying to get at them is a real pain, when their projectile destroy you in two hits. Then they themselves semi kite you around. Melee assholes can deal a lot of damage too but it's easier to abuse them with decoy totem flame dash, unless they themselves use a fast skill. They have a higher running speed too generally.

There's the question that I also generally run out of flask in 10 seconds if I try to confront them directly. Sure have anti freeze flasks is fun, but that will last 3 seconds generally, just good for 3 bad freezes. That would be worth something if the fight wasn't as volatile as a cowboy duel.
Is there a way to link to my inventory?

How much life do you have? Are you on capped resistances? I remember some of the warbands killing me very quickly when I had around 0% res at the beginning of Merci.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Yes that's my case right now. If I average all my res I have about 0%. I have 1800 life and 250 energy shield. Something around 2000 armor. I know this is sub par but the problem is that I never got a single drop with good elemental resistances, and good sockets.

If I meet a bad warband and get really pissed, I usually dig out my resistance armors and rings and I get very close to max res like that. But I lose most of my skills and cut my dps by 1/3 on my main skill. A bit dull to run around like that the whole time, or to go TP and switch your entire gear everytime you meet them, which is at least once per map. Not counting the occasional unique.

But then comes the problem that it doesn't change much because their dps is still crazy, and reaching them while they run around like crazy, I die in 6 hits instead of two. If they don't crit me or do some serious ailment that I don't have the split second reflex to react against. There's no room for a single mistake. I some other cases, like that ice spider in act 4, piety in act 4, some weird archer that pops up in act 2... I still die almost instantly even with resistances capped.

 

[Saark]

Try to up your cold res a little if you're having troble in act1 (which you by all acounts shouldn't have), after you're done with that act max lightning res at all costs. Most fire and cold damage can be avoided or isn't that scary to begin with (cold spells are pretty much always projectiles that you can avoid anyway, and there is little firedmg in act 2 and 3), lightning damage on the other hand can easily twoshot you thanks to shock and the big damage range it always has.

If your budget allows for it get a goldrim since you're melee, if you were a caster an aurumvorax would be even better. It doesn't matter if you lose like 50% of your DPS if it means you being able to damage enemies full time. Swapping in resist rings for bosses is always a smart thing to do, but if you lose like half your skills you are having trouble with your primary stats - you should focus on fixing that. Roll some dex/str on your gear or pick up a +30 node if you're close to one so you won't have to deal with these issues.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Also, dont forget that Masters can craft resistances on gear fairly cheaply, its a good way to fix your resistance problems temporarly when you get to endgame and can trade/acquire better gear.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I thought about it but first it isn't that cheap for me, and my biggest concern is that the gear I craft will get outdated very quickly. I got them all at level 5.

I was thinking about accumulating wealth until I could buy some uniques that wouldn't grow old. Not sure if that's a good idea.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

If your budget allows for it get a goldrim since you're melee, if you were a caster an aurumvorax would be even better. It doesn't matter if you lose like 50% of your DPS if it means you being able to damage enemies full time. Swapping in resist rings for bosses is always a smart thing to do, but if you lose like half your skills you are having trouble with your primary stats - you should focus on fixing that. Roll some dex/str on your gear or pick up a +30 node if you're close to one so you won't have to deal with these issues.

I meant, If I have to max all resist, I can't rely just on rings. If I have to I swap only rings for a precise elemental type, I got them sorted out in my stash. It's still a nuisance because my rings usually provide a serious boost to dps.

Also I got a lot of stuff not clarified with Ice crash, are you familiar with the skill?

 

[Saark]

I'm afraid not, I only heard it's a poor mans cyclone.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

That would make Infernal Blow and Static strike even more awful then. I stopped using Infernal Blow due to how awful the performance was compared to Static Strike. And I stopped using Static strike after I got Ice crash. Ice crash has almost the same DPS as infernal, but strikes dozens of enemies at the same time and you don't even have to aim. You can also become unreachable with stun and knock back. With Infernal Blow I had to go face to face with a single opponent, and if I wanted it to be even remotely efficient at AoE he had to die right next to all the other. And even then damage wise it wasn't much. That kind of AoE is comparatively so weak compared to Ice Crash where it's a constant stream of massive DPS to everyone around regardless. Plus combined with herald of ice you achieve the same kind of explosive potential.

But reave and cyclones are so overused, it seems the balance of this game is a bit shit.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I also wanted to be original at some point and make an avatar of fire, dominating blow templar. What a piece of shit. The DPS went down the shitter, and the problem with those skills like Dominating Blow and Infernal Blow is that they only become useful when you don't need them anymore. If they kicked off, it means you didn't really need them in the first place. The hardest part with a stack is always the beginning. Plus my first minions would die from the gang up by the others. I thought about minion instability but that would only make it a poor man's Infernal Blow.

 

[Saark]

I wouldn't call it shit, its just that some skills scale better than others. Only elemental hit and a few other skills are pretty much unusable in their current state, everything else works just fine - its just that some things are easier/cheaper to gear for than others.

A friend of mine is successfully playing a static strike build btw.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Static strike sure. Its still feasible. Just worse than ice crash in every aspect. Infernal blow though? Unless you play at very high level where its bonus kicks off, no reflect.

 

[Icewater]

Are you playing self-found or something? The stats you posted are terrible for Merciless and you could easily buy much better stuff.

 

[Saark]

"Worse in every aspect". Shock > Freeze, and being able to move while attacking is a huge advantage aswell. You should really stop throwing around extremes like that.