Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Aothan]

I was anticipating a slightly more radical list of changes that would have required the usual min-max playstyles to undergo sudden and frantic revision, however the changes listed are a promising beginning. The problem which I might somewhat presage from these patch notes is that whilst they have not shied away from beginning discussions regarding a future need to adjust skills and all else GGG does have a tendency to become reluctant about upsetting their powergaming demographic. Yes this type of game genre does lend itself to powergaming but that should not be at the expense of experiencing challenge at any level and a need to play with skill and creativity, neither of which were particularly necessary with the most common power builds/classes.

for myself this is actually not a week where I can play as liberally as I would like to, even tomorrow is going to be a little awkward. Nonetheless I want to see how the first hour or two of the game will be with the new population influx and the game officially starting for all characters. Speaking of character my first and likely my primary character if mostly in principle will be a two-handed sword Ranger with an intention to specialise in Arrow Dodging and Crystal Skin. I've always been fond of the two even where the latter is not the greatest investment of late-game skills points although I suspect that could change dramatically with the introduction of Act 3 and further game development additions.

Character names are going to be a huge problem. Even in the closed beta it's nearly impossible to make a name that isn't already taken unless you start getting into gibberish words, and names don't reset from closed -> open beta.

I found that out when I tried to name my character Claer (Claire likely) from Claymore. Turns out just about if not every one of the Claymore's names have already been chosen.

 

[Arkeus]

I found that out when I tried to name my character Claer (Claire likely) from Claymore. Turns out just about if not every one of the Claymore's names have already been chosen.

'Claire' kinda is a traditional french name, so it would be like using 'John' or 'Michael'.

 

[made]

Just saw that the dev studio is called "Grinding Gear". LOL. Very clever.

 

[Raapys]

It is.

Lots of changes in those notes. This really does impact character builds and power levels, especially for the witch. From what I can see, she just became a lot more difficult to play, even if she'll damage-wise be about the same. They removed the separate 50% ES multiplier from CI, and generally made ES much lower on armor. I guess it was needed, CI has been a no-brainer for ages. But now I'm not sure anyone will bother, since they're also bringing down the amount and regularity of chaos damage and adding passives for it.

Also, orbs of alchemy can be bought. Not sure what this is going to do for the economy and stash tabs.

 

[aris]

I'm here to ask you one question, and one question only. Is it possibile to make a zookeeper character in POE like the necro in Diablo 2 with shit tons of (permament) minions? I've missed that so much!

 

[Raapys]

Permanent minions are limited. I think at lvl 70, skill level 17-18~ ish you could have like...6 to 8 zombies and one or more revived dead? Not sure. The limit is a combination of both passive and active skills, so I could be wildly off. And they did require corpses to summon. But then you could also summon like a dozen skeletons on the fly, without corpses, which would last for a few minutes. You could even summon a totem which would spam skeleton summons for you. In short, partying with "pure" summoners was hell, as the entire screen was filled with that stuff.

 

[aris]

You could even summon a totem which would spam skeleton summons for you. In short, partying with "pure" summoners was hell, as the entire screen was filled with that stuff.

for them, for me. Thanks for the info! I hope the summons are noclip though? That is, that you could walk right through them. Previously it wasn't like that in diablo 2, and it was annoying as hell when you were getting the staff in act 2.

 

[Raapys]

I don't remember having trouble walking through them. I do remember having trouble targeting shit since all the summons were actually targetable by players. However, I also seem to recall the patch notes saying something about that being fixed( i.e. they were made non-targetable) after I stopped playing the closed beta because of the character wipe. They're usually quite cooperative in fixing stuff like that quickly. They supposedly also fixed pathing and AI issues related to minions.

Mind you though, I haven't actually played a pure summoner myself. My witch would sometimes use 3-4 zombies or a skeleton summoning totem to distract enemies, but I never invested passive skill points into it. To me it looked like it was very easy to survive with that many minions once you'd gotten the summons up, but I'm not sure how it is versus bosses, nor how high the damage output is. Of course, you'll probably be using some kind of attack yourself too( or maybe just curses and auras), so it might turn out to be decent.

 

[empi]

Pure summoner in closed beta is a pretty boring/slow but very safe playstyle, gets pretty strong in endgame.

Anyway, if anyone wants to party with me when open beta hits later, name will be IWandToBreakFree, also i've never had trouble selecting a name really

 

[LeStryfe79]

Character names are going to be a huge problem. Even in the closed beta it's nearly impossible to make a name that isn't already taken unless you start getting into gibberish words, and names don't reset from closed -> open beta.

http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/accents/codealt.html

This is your friend.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Almost everything OP from closed beta has been nerfed. I'm still too afraid to play a melee duelist though.

 

[Castanova]

Almost everything OP from closed beta has been nerfed. I'm still too afraid to play a melee duelist though.

Hah, well, it'd definitely be hipster-ish to play a Duelist now considering GGG noted that Duelists suck and will be rebalanced in the future.

I hear Summoners are the "best" build to use as your first character as you can safely farm end-game maps solo in order to twink your following characters. Seems like it might be kind of a boring playstyle to me, though, but who knows -- I did enjoy my Necromancer in D2.

 

[empi]

Also it's very funny to see people on the PoE forums raging because CI builds aren't obviously op any more

 

[Raapys]

This is quite a blow to any and all top-right skill tree builds though. The problem is that there aren't really any alternatives. The lower left part of the tree has all the significant life stuff. Which means we'll still need to use CI since we otherwise won't have the HP to withstand high-level chaos damage, but we'll end up with 50% less ES and whatever they removed from armors and stuff.

But they haven't done anything to nerf the blood magic guys nor melee in general, from what I can see. Their survivability stays the same, while top-right goes down the drain. It might actually be improved, because of chaos resistance nodes.

 

[empi]

Eh from what I've heard/seen, of the very few chaos resistance nodes there are, there are two close to CI and one in the top left corner. With chaos resistance being on gear too, a ES/life hybrid should certainly be viable imo, or going EB. There's quite a lot of hp nodes around if you branch to the shadow/templar areas, and now that you're reaching higher levels and getting more skill points from quests, if you do roll witch it's easier to branch out to one of the more hp heavy areas to the left or right.

 

[Raapys]

The patch notes said they'd be adding more chaos resistance nodes, but don't forget the -60% chaos resistance in merciless. As for hybrids, have those ever worked? Except life/armor, that is. Remember that ES needs quite a few nodes before it becomes effective; you not only need the +%ES, you also need just about all the -ES recharge time. I really don't see a hp/ES hybrid working as well as the pure ES with CI( even after the nerf).

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Patch notes up ^^

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/70479/page/1

From another thread explaining some of the changes, a pretty insignificant change overall but for the argument on this thread kinda interesting:

"In Act 3, you can now trade currency all the way up to Orbs of Chance, Orbs of Alchemy and Glassblower's Baubles. This will allow players to pursue heavily economic styles of play without the need for stash tabs, or just allow more casual players to trade up to these orbs when it suits them. Orbs of Alchemy can be traded up to all the way from more common currency items. They also cost an Orb of Regret, so players who plan their builds well can capitalise on not needing these orbs by trading them in."

Converted to Keystone Passive - Ancestral Bond: You can summon up to 1 additional totem. You can't deal damage with your skills yourself.

Monster Viper Strike damage has been lowered.

 

[Raapys]

Aww, the vipers were the ultimate glass-cannon killers. So many infuriating moments, especially with the added rubber-banding that sometimes happened.

 

[empi]

Life/ES has definitely been a useful hybrid, many templars use it for instance, and by there are few chaos resistance nodes, I mean there are few chaos resistance nodes on the latest alpha which is the same as it will be in open beta, not that were a few before and more are being added. Until we know how easy it is to get chaos resistance, difficult to tell how viable CI will be.

 

[Kane]

open beta howto: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/70299

 

[IDtenT]

I've been playing a sword and shield duellist with a target of using blood magic. You guys telling me it's not worth it?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Aww, the vipers were the ultimate glass-cannon killers. So many infuriating moments, especially with the added rubber-banding that sometimes happened.

Hopefully Act 3 will have another butthurt inducing area similar to the Weaver's Chambers.

 

[Raapys]

Meh, looks like the alpha testers are all calling CI useless now. And that +chaos res item mods went in completely untested. Strange they should make potentially 'game-breaking' changes without running it through the testers first.

 

[Castanova]

I've been playing a sword and shield duellist with a target of using blood magic. You guys telling me it's not worth it?

Nah, it's totally fine to play Duelist. It's just that the Duelist starting area is almost unilaterally worse than the Marauder or Ranger starting area. As a Duelist, though, you can fairly easily make your way over to the Marauder starting area after you level up a bunch and you'll end up with a fairly similar character in the end.

 

[empi]

Blood magic is already pretty damn good for some builds in OP, and life regen, life on hit and life leech are being buffed so blood magic should be pretty strong, it's just that duelist's starting area on the tree is pretty weak. And as auras are generally getting nerfed (rightly, especially determination which was pretty crazily strong), being able to run fewer auras isn't as bad any more