Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[SirSingAlot]

whoever wants to get some serious currency while doing the usual "run around and kill stuff" thing, i have an advice, which netted me approx 30ex more than usual during the last 10 days of semi grinding.

basically most maps you run are determined by tier, difficulty and layout.
the meta atm is shaped strand (tier 11) for those who dont want/cant grind like guardians, shaper, lab, atziri ect.
shaped strand has a nice layout (super straight forward) and an easy boss. it can be cleared quite fast.

currency and items dont differ too much from map to map (some specifics aside), which leaves us with..tadaaaa...Divination Cards.

Shaped Strand doesnt drop any good Divination Cards, so i looked for some map that does.

The Vault is a tier 12 map with a layout that is ...say...okish.
the boss can be tough or ez, depending on your dps, but after defeating him, there are some treasure piles that do give great loot.
most importantly, there are 2 set of cards, that give Exalted Orbs.
The Hoarder and Abandoned Wealth.
this is like super important income while grinding.

i do run onsl/breach/20% tempest leaguestone. most of the time i do 3x breach leaguestones. they are kinda expensive (i stocked up on them while they were affordable, tho) but as Breach monsters can drop div cards, this equals out fast.

i also add Bountiful Traps prophecy for good measure, whenever i can :D

i didnt track my drops, but i would say with said setup and rippy rolled map mods, i get a Hoarder like every second map minimum. Abandoned Wealth is rarer, but not The Fiend or The Doctor rare.
e.g. i dopped 3 of those today alone (lucky)

keep in ind, you get the usual drops as well, plus some nice loot from treasure piles after defeating the boss.

hope this helps anyone who aims for some Exalteds

 

[Ismaul]

Oh, I forgot to ask, what do you guys think of the whole "logout to live" mechanic?

It's shit.

I understand the desire for HC players to feel the excitement of surviving an almost death, of pushing until the last milisecond and knowing when to quit, but I don't think logout mechanics are required for it. The problem is that the game's mechanics are built around that. When your build/equipment is too good, which it should be in HC, everything becomes easy, nothing is threatening. So you've got only shit like one-shot hits that can threaten you. Some of them are fine, telegraphed things that you can plan to avoid, but then there are Volatiles that just kill you on death. Abusive one-shot mechanics are a direct counter to logout tools. I'd rather we'd be rid of both. But then again I don't play HC, and this change would only make standard leagues better. I personnally just take the death and live with it. HC is for those that want a logout macro as their main skill, and then somehow brag about it. Almost deaths make for fun videos though, I have to admit.

 

[T. Reich]

Oh, I forgot to ask, what do you guys think of the whole "logout to live" mechanic? Like you can logout just before you die to save yourself from either HC -> SC or in SC not lose exp? As well as it being legit?

Logout macros are for pussies.
Either play HC as-is and suck it up when you die, or stop deceiving yourself and play SC.

I play HC occasionally, for a change of pace. When I do, I never usy a logout macro of any sort, and I only resort to manual logouts if I know that I won't make it out via TP. Otherwise, I run away and TP the fuck out. Or die.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Flameblast totems is one of the popular league starting builds. If you want something a little different get Emberwake and The Taming and a fire spell like Incinerate+spell totem or just Flame Totems. The Taming is expensive but the combination makes for some crazy damage after a few seconds.

Haha yes, I spotted that combination whilst browsing the wiki a few days ago. It sounds hilarious, especially since it increases plain ol' damage, and not anything specific. Could you combine that with flameblast? Get huge amounts of increased damage, then that's multiplied by flameblast's more damage.

 

[ArchAngel]

Flameblast totems is one of the popular league starting builds. If you want something a little different get Emberwake and The Taming and a fire spell like Incinerate+spell totem or just Flame Totems. The Taming is expensive but the combination makes for some crazy damage after a few seconds.

Haha yes, I spotted that combination whilst browsing the wiki a few days ago. It sounds hilarious, especially since it increases plain ol' damage, and not anything specific. Could you combine that with flameblast? Get huge amounts of increased damage, then that's multiplied by flameblast's more damage.

It is not good for slow spells like flameblast. You want to really abuse that 300 ignites allowed per target from Emberwake as it is then boosted by Taming massively. This is why fast casting fire spells like Incinerate or Flame Totem work best.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

It is not good for slow spells like flameblast. You want to really abuse that 300 ignites allowed per target from Emberwake as it is then boosted by Taming massively. This is why fast casting fire spells like Incinerate or Flame Totem work best.

Yeah I mean having 1 or 2 totems doing incinerate to get the %increase bonus active from all the ignites, then use flameblast which will then have a huge amount of %increased damge and %more damage, which will multiply together. Say you got 100 stacks of ignite going (I have no idea what's realistic), that's 1000% increased damage just from the ring. Flameblast does 241 to 362 base damage, that becomes increased to 2,651 to 3,982 damage, then at full charge does 990% more: 28,896 to 43,404 damage. I actually thought it'd work out to be even more absurd, given the crazy multipliers involved, if all that is correct. Over 100k if you can get all 300 ignites, before whatever other gear you have, though the multipliers are already so high I don't know what else you could squeeze out of it.

 

[Blaine]

I can't really speak for Dirk except to say that I haven't noticed him chomping at the bit either, but I'm starting to get pretty bored with mapping. A big part of the problem in my case is that I want to do red maps, but they almost never drop, despite how hard I've worked to fill in bonus percentage and despite the fact that I wear Bisco's Collar and run Rarity Support in Firestorm 6L. The map system in this game fucks you both coming and going: Lower-tier maps don't drop higher-tier maps, but a higher-tier map can drop any map of its tier or lower that you've uncovered—drastically diluting the drop table if you choose to explore (and rewarding those who strategically uncover just a few lucrative/needful maps). I have a tab full of low-tier junk maps that I don't want to run, because the enemies are effortless (I can't learn to git gud if I'm pressing RMB to win) and the loot tends to be disappointing.

Buying maps from poe.trade is lame and boring. Next league, I might go twink style and strategically open a few maps.

My Ranger build is going okay, I guess. It seems strong and fun when enemies are in large crowds, but miserable and aggravating otherwise, especially during boss fights. I'm not sure what I can do with it other than hope to finish Cruel, get enough passive points to finish more defensive nodes and open up gem slots for proper Barrage, then finally buy a "midway to endgame" set of gear. The cost of good rare bows is pretty huge for what they are though, and I'm reluctant to spend on what might be a loser.

Full plan: www.poeurl.com/bhHF Current progress through tree: www.poeurl.com/bhYG

Gear/gems: http://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/cruciverbalist/characters

Still need to run labs, might help a bit. Running Lightning Arrow with Blood Rage, Ice Golem, Hatred, Herald of Ice -> CoH -> Assassin's Mark. I get plenty of shatters and Assassin's Mark procs, decent amount of Power charges... IF there are large crowds. Hard-hitting bosses are the pits. Probably just a shit build, might abandon it.

 

[Blaine]

Yep, died continually in Mines, dying continually in Kaom's, build has officially failed. Potions and life leech can't keep up; everything smacks off half my health on every hit, Dodge or no Dodge (finished getting those nodes) and despite the speed at which I kill everything. I can't (manually) dodge everything while stopping to shoot. The life leech is incredible, but this is extreme brinksmanship; a little bit of stun, and I'm done. I can breeze through Dried Lake incredibly smoothly destroying everything, but a lot of areas are giving me trouble.

Don't really understand why the build failed. I'm not that much squishier (if at all) than my Witch was at that level, but I sure as shit didn't die stunlocked to rare mobs several times in a single area.

My feelings are hurt, but I'll live. Path of Health Nodes or Fuck You it is; think I'll roll some sort of warrior next.

 

[T. Reich]

Yep, died continually in Mines, dying continually in Kaom's, build has officially failed. Potions and life leech can't keep up; everything smacks off half my health on every hit, Dodge or no Dodge (finished getting those nodes) and despite the speed at which I kill everything. I can't (manually) dodge everything while stopping to shoot. The life leech is incredible, but this is extreme brinksmanship; a little bit of stun, and I'm done. I can breeze through Dried Lake incredibly smoothly destroying everything, but a lot of areas are giving me trouble.

Don't really understand why the build failed. I'm not that much squishier (if at all) than my Witch was at that level, but I sure as shit didn't die stunlocked to rare mobs several times in a single area.

My feelings are hurt, but I'll live. Path of Health Nodes or Fuck You it is; think I'll roll some sort of warrior next.

Just a quick look at your char confirms my suspicions - a lvl55 char with a lvl30 bow? Get the fuck outta here! At your level, you can get a bow that does 2x damage for the ridiculous price of nothing.
GO BUY A GOOD 200+ phys dps bow (lvl req 55 max) - http://poe.trade/search/animichonouset.
Also, drop maligaros for actually useful gloves - with resists and life.
Same goes for atziri's foible.
And for pete's sake, drop hyrri's bite already and get a drillneck.
(mind the stat requirements on gear, as usual)
You're not playing a caster build - you can't go strand to maps on just a lifesprig. Update your gear as you level.

Going onto gems:
1) LA without GMP? HAHAHAHA
Go: LA + GMP + WED + faster attacks/chain. BAM - much better clear speed.
2) No single target skill? No wonder Kaom and friends assraep you.
4-link anything and use barrage or blast rain, add these supports: + added fire + WED + faster attacks/slower projectiles
3) Blood rage does more harm than good for you at this stage.
4) You wouldn't go wrong if you got another 4L and stuck a siege ballista gem in there with 3x supports for damage.

Passive tree:
You went for avatar of the hunt, really? Also, picking up crit this early at the expense of life and raw damage? Ok...
And no ascendancy taken yet?...
There, fixed it for ya - https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscr...0xbvjwTPC7MM6xKLPetN-1CPawd2o7YPuDu96_MX-ug==
Not ideal, bet it's better than nothing.

 

[Blaine]

Hey, YOU advised me to use all the unique shit up through Merciless (with a couple of upgrades). I had been looking at bows by character level, and I have a Drillneck already in preparation for Barrage, but the fact is that all of the gear has to be replaced at once, basically, and I had no idea if that would fix the jank. I do have a single-target skill; I tend to slot in Burning Arrow against bosses and shit, unless they're fire-resistant.

You also suggested that nodes quote "are for endgame," unquote. I spent dozens of levels early on going for health nodes, but as for the crit, a bunch of class and skill gem mechanics revolve around it (flasks, shatters, etc.) and I figured I needed some of it. I didn't want to go for too much, too early either, but with crit it's either shit or pretty good, so I probably got carried away.

In fairness, I'm practically in Merciless now. The thing is, everything was gravy up until halfway through Cruel, and then it all went to shit real quick. That's when I started going for more of the defensive nodes right away.

We'll see if I can be bothered fixing it. The whole point was to plan my own build, and learn from it; comparing your fixed version with my own should give me a better idea of what I did wrong. Avatar of the Hunt, yeah, because remember, I wanted to go fast. SHAZBOT! But movement nodes aren't allowed.

All the vaunted "build freedom" in this game, except for the one caveat of needing pretty much all of the extremely Jewish health and survivability nodes they stretch as far apart as possible, eh? I mean, look at your fixed version. It is, quite literally, a dead breakneck rush for every single survivability node. The end of almost every branch of that tree ends at a survivability cluster. I thought I did pretty well rushing survivability, but not well enough apparently.

Most Ranger builds that don't go for CI/ES look very similar, rushing the same nodes. I should know because I looked through a bunch of them for ideas.

 

[T. Reich]

> Hey, YOU advised me to use all the unique shit up through Merciless (with a couple of upgrades)
At no point did I say to stop upgrading your shit at lvl30 . I also strongly recommended you to get Silverbough at lvl35.
Also, if you're intent on playing barrage in the endgame, you should've gotten 3x threshold jewels and 100% pierce as I also recommended.

> I spent dozens of levels early on going for health nodes
Except you didn't. You went past several life clusters, dudebro.

> Avatar of the Hunt, yeah, because remember, I wanted to go fast.
2x quicksilver flasks of adrenaline. That passive cluster is a terrible noob trap, movement speed or not.

> All the vaunted "build freedom"...
You can build all you want, but you can't ignore the basics unless you consider finishing normal difficulty as "finishing the game". Don't be a proverbial rainbow-haired shitlord.

Anyways, a4cruel is probably the most spiky act in terms of difficulty; you shouldn't judge yourself too hard based on your performance there. A1merc to a3merc will seem like a walk along the beach (well, act1 is the walk along the beach...) compared to a4cruel.

 

[Blaine]

At no point did I say to stop upgrading your shit at lvl30. I also strongly recommended you to get Silverbough at lvl35.
Also, if you're intent on playing barrage in the endgame, you should've gotten 3x threshold jewels and 100% pierce as I also recommended.

Here was the misunderstanding:

You were only talking about the rings. Somehow, I must have thought you meant all/most of the uniques. Unfortunately, I guess I forgot about the bow at some point, although as you can see I recorded your advice.

Except you didn't. You went past several life clusters, dudebro.

Except I did. It requires 41 passive points in my plan to reach Vitality Void, Thick Skin, Heart of Oak, the Blood Siphon Cluster, and the Blood Drinker cluster. Even considering quest passives, I spent several dozen level-ups going directly for those clusters, even if I saved others until later.

So, you're factually incorrect. I did indeed spend dozens of levels going for health nodes. You're right though, I didn't take literally all of them first. How silly of me.

You can build all you want, but you can't ignore the basics unless you consider finishing normal difficulty as "finishing the game". Don't be a proverbial rainbow-haired shitlord.

I strongly disagree with you here. When "the basics" means piling on literally nothing but survivability (or stretching towards it) for 2/3 of the character's progression, and often the very same nodes, that detracts from variety. Grim Dawn's class skills tree may not have 1,000+ nodes, but you can take completely different skills within a given class tree across multiple character builds that utilize that class.

There's other same-y meta shit too, like the huge number of people who use Ice Golem and/or Warlord's Mark+CoDT panic button combos. I've seen that shit in countless builds and it's annoying. In fact, both of my characters are supposed to use Warlord's Mark+CoDT in links, although I refuse to use Warlord's Mark on the Ranger for the moment because getting endurance charges manually is annoying.

You hate the game's CI/ES meta, yet you defend GGG's design decisions that paved the way for it.

Anyways, a4cruel is probably the most spiky act in terms of difficulty; you shouldn't judge yourself too hard based on your performance there. A1merc to a3merc will seem like a walk along the beach (well, act1 is the walk along the beach...) compared to a4cruel.

Yeah, I've noticed that before too. It is the last act, so it's understandable, and it's mid-progression, so builds aren't yet complete when they get there.

Anyway, I appreciate your advice. My point (it's not much of one, since it doesn't matter) is that the health check meta-design is utter shit and removes some fun from building characters. GGG aren't infallible, as the CI/ES proliferation clearly shows.

 

[ArchAngel]

Your first and only mistake is going for a life build. Never.make.a.life.build.in.POE!

EDIT: I made a bunch of life builds and made a few CI builds (and one ES low life build). CI was always superior to life and even that low life /ES build was superior.
Even the 5500 hp (without kaom's) Berserker ended up less fun then CI builds.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Your first and only mistake is going for a life build. Never.make.a.life.build.in.POE!

So what do you do as a warrior?

 

[ArchAngel]

Your first and only mistake is going for a life build. Never.make.a.life.build.in.POE!

So what do you do as a warrior?

you don't play a warrior. Warriors are boring :D

 

[T. Reich]

Your first and only mistake is going for a life build. Never.make.a.life.build.in.POE!

So what do you do as a warrior?

CI.

Edit: here's the passive tree for CI 2h axe sunder zerker, just because - https://www.pathofexile.com/passive...R6QLqEOoY6rrr7uwY73zviO_r8NXz3fcy9034X_jr-Tc=.
I bet this fucker will have both more damage and "life" than his life-based variant with Kaom's.

 

[T. Reich]

Blaine , Regarding your "path of life nodes" complaints, I can say the following.

The devs of PeE designed the skill tree (and the game itself, really) with maximum customisability in mind. That includes putting the management of a characters's survivability into the player's own hands.
Yes, this (as any other system) has its own set of problems, including the "path of life nodes" meme that's been there since open beta (it's been much worse in the past btw).
However, consider this - it is you who gets to decide how to balance your character's survivability vs damage output. And not just via passives, but via gearing, skill and support gem choices as well.
You are not obliged to follow the tried-and-tested ways to manage that balance, Moreso, gearing and skill choices can seriously impact what your passive tree looks like.
You are not obliged to use the "panic button combos" or whatever other widely accepted standards of build-making, you can make your own.
Don't shit on the meta because "meta" is what's "in" at the moment, not what's required. You decide whether follow meta or not.
But that doesn't mean that you get a free pass from the game for being a special snowflake. If you ignore the base tenets of the game, you do it at your own risk.

Take me, for example. I shit on strand meta and on speed clear meta. They don't work for me, I play for variety and occasional challenge (remember that triple beyond breach suicide 8mod high gardens?). My average time per map is 10 mins if not more. I shit on the strict looting discipline meta and pick up tons of rares that drop, which would've been readily ignored (and hidden by loot filter) of the meta-slaves.
Am I poor? Can I not afford pretty much any non-mirror-tier build? Am I not having fun my way, and still stay "competitive"?

I've never played a pathfinder build, in fact I made a point to avoid it whenver reasonably possible. I've pretty much never used a vinktar flask in my current builds (outside of my Standard playground), even though the meta-slaves can't do without one.
I can still do any content with builds I play, if I feel like doing all the content.

However, I do not just go and ignore the principles of the sound character building in PoE, because the game will not forgive you this mistake.

 

[ArchAngel]

Blaine , Regarding your "path of life nodes" complaints, I can say the following.

The devs of PeE designed the skill tree (and the game itself, really) with maximum customisability in mind. That includes putting the management of a characters's survivability into the player's own hands.
Yes, this (as any other system) has its own set of problems, including the "path of life nodes" meme that's been there since open beta (it's been much worse in the past btw).
However, consider this - it is you who gets to decide how to balance your character's survivability vs damage output. And not just via passives, but via gearing, skill and support gem choices as well.
You are not obliged to follow the tried-and-tested ways to manage that balance, Moreso, gearing and skill choices can seriously impact what your passive tree looks like.
You are not obliged to use the "panic button combos" or whatever other widely accepted standards of build-making, you can make your own.
Don't shit on the meta because "meta" is what's "in" at the moment, not what's required. You decide whether follow meta or not.
But that doesn't mean that you get a free pass from the game for being a special snowflake. If you ignore the base tenets of the game, you do it at your own risk.

Take me, for example. I shit on strand meta and on speed clear meta. They don't work for me, I play for variety and occasional challenge (remember that triple betond breach suicide 8mod high gardens?). My average time per map is 10 mins if not more. I shit on the strict looting discipline meta and pick up tons of rares that drop, which would've been readily ignored (and hidden by loot filter) of the meta-slaves.
Am I poor? Can I not afford pretty much any non-mirror-tier build? Am I not having fun my way, and still stay "competitive"?

I've never played a pathfinder build, in fact I made a point to avoid it whenver reasonably possible. I've pretty much never used a vinktar flask in my current builds (outside of my Standard playground), even though the meta-slaves can't do without one.
I can still do any content with builds I play, if I feel like doing all the content.

However, I do not just go and ignore the principles of the sound character building in PoE, because the game will not forgive you this mistake.

I can mirror this with my experience since Closed Beta. I made 50 characters by now. Some ignored these base principles and paid the price. But I made many others work (at least until I get bored with them which is usually somewhere between levels 80 and 90). And did 0 characters that were just c/p of popular builds. I did use some of the popular ones to inspire my own, but I never did a 1:1 copy paste.

 

[Blaine]

T. Reich

Sure there's a choice. As I said earlier, players can choose not to invest extremely heavily in survivability, and then pay the penalty by dying constantly after a certain point. Failure is technically an option, too. I have no doubt there are outliers often having to do with expensive/odd gear combos, but they're the exception.

Look, health and resistance gating (or the equivalent) in RPGs is older than the original Diablo. We all know this. PoE is different, however. A large portion of health comes from the actual character skill tree, and skill customization is perhaps the single, major, most important element of the game (and of all Diablo clones) in terms of character customization. However, customization "options" that lead to failure and unviability aren't really options at all in my view except in the strictly semantic sense. That's my personal opinion, mind you. The way the game is designed, there appear to be a lot of paths one simply ought not take, for any reason (and paths one almost always ought to take, with exceptions). I'm not saying that every path should lead to success mind you, but here we have extremely specific paths that almost anyone who designs viable characters will take, or avoid, to some extent.

A single touchstone, CI, should probably not be as important and well-known as it is.

You're not telling me anything that we don't already agree on, really. I'm aware I'll be punished for not doing what must be done, or doing it improperly. That's how life works, not just PoE. The developers don't give a damn whether I like it or not.

In any event, the "principles of sound character building" in PoE tend to be fairly simple. This is both fortunate and unfortunate. It's fortunate because they're fairly easy to learn (I'm not saying I've learned it all, but I've come a long way), but also unfortunate because as far as I can tell it's a bit lame and boring. No one's going to be excited about taking the required-to-not-die, generic, +5% max life clusters, except perhaps people who really enjoy statistics.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Your first and only mistake is going for a life build. Never.make.a.life.build.in.POE!

So what do you do as a warrior?

CI.

Wait, really? I figure I'd try it, so I just went to make a build that still used 2-handed maces, but put all of my life nodes into ES instead. I managed to keep all of my damage, and got the skill that adds life leech to ES instead, so that's good. Problem is, instead of thousands of health, I have about 100 ES, with +100% to the max or so, and greatly reduced armour. And most of the uniques either don't have much ES if they're amour/ES ones, or have useless modifiers (+spell damage, etc) if they're pure ES. So what do you do, exclusively buy strange rares that have both ES and modifiers useful to warriors? Craft your own oddities for absurd prices? Degrade your combat skills even further to add more ES nodes?

 

[T. Reich]

> The way the game is designed, there appear to be a lot of paths one simply ought not take, for any reason (and paths one almost always ought to take, with exceptions).
Which is true for the current specific structure of the passive tree only.

There have been numerous significant overhauls of the passive tree over the years. Sure, the last major one was a while ago, but every time it happened, the changes were major enough to shift meta (and "best" pathings in the passive tree) considerably.
You may view the current passive tree as something that's permanent, but the fact is that it's not.

 

[T. Reich]

Your first and only mistake is going for a life build. Never.make.a.life.build.in.POE!

So what do you do as a warrior?

CI.

Wait, really? I figure I'd try it, so I just went to make a build that still used 2-handed maces, but put all of my life nodes into ES instead. I managed to keep all of my damage, and got the skill that adds life leech to ES instead, so that's good. Problem is, instead of thousands of health, I have about 100 ES, with +100% to the max or so, and greatly reduced armour. And most of the uniques either don't have much ES if they're amour/ES ones, or have useless modifiers (+spell damage, etc) if they're pure ES. So what do you do, exclusively buy strange rares that have both ES and modifiers useful to warriors? Craft your own oddities for absurd prices? Degrade your combat skills even further to add more ES nodes?

You are either trolling or have absolutely no idea how to design a viable build in PoE.
I give you .

The part about armor was especially hilarious, I actually chuckled out loud.

I may be willing to mutilate one of my standard chars with passive respec available just to prove a point. I'll see if I'm up to it later today.

 

[Blaine]

Does it have 10k ES?

No?

Delete it. It's trash.

 

[Blaine]

You are either trolling or have absolutely no idea how to design a viable build in PoE.
I give you .

And yet, his freestyle Marauder build he made when completely new to the game can easily survive in maps... possibly not high-tier red maps, but he didn't follow any build or equipment guide.

I can tell because he was surprised that Marauder build guides list stuff like "only has ~6.8k life" as a con, because with "only" that much life, they aren't HC-viable. A con! To get that much life, you already have to have life on damn near every possible piece of gear, and a lot of nodes to boot.

You're a good sport Reich, you really are. It must be annoying putting up with skrubs discovering "Path of Life Nodes" for the Nth time.