Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

I usually play melee so I took Marauder. Works fine most time. Tried Duelist too, more of a glasscannon class there. I hear Witch is rather strong due to hordes of pet summons, so should be ok as a starter class.

 

Marauder is the most obvious starting char. 2h mace, get survivability nodes towards resolute tehnique and some mace bonuses near it and slam away.

 

Holy shit, just found out that Ctrl-clicking a waypoint offers a fresh reset of the map. A faptastic feature.

 

Bros, there MUST be another crowd clearing skill for my axe marauder. Cleave has become almost useless, and playing frogger with leap slam is way too fucking goofy for a main attack. Maybe I should look into infernal blow and hope it's explosion radius and damage improves? Or sweep? Thought I am yet to find a skill gem for it (lvl 52 and still missing a marauder skill gem and my first legendary drop, fucking assholes). There's the lightning strike as well, but I don't see point in using it with slow two-handers and investing shit-ton of passive points in elemental, since I still need 6-8 to solidify my defenses.

 

Infernal Blow isn't really for clearing crowds (though it is great single target damage with enough supports due to the way they work, and prevents revival since it chunks corpses). Have you invested a lot of points in axes specifically? If not, you could take them out and go with maces instead, Maces let you use Ground Slam, which is a nice AoE skill.

I think Sweep is the goto crowd clearer for axes. Cleave can be used with two weapons at once and a wider weapon vareity, so it's a bit weaker. Lightning strike is more of a specialized thing I think.

 

Ok, so I guess I'll have to buy sweep. What is the going price for it, as I have absolutely no idea which orbs are worth offering to people.

 

Start a new char and do mercy mission, unless you want a quality one. Thing is... ground slam is a lot more safe than sweep.

 

It's cheap common skill,if you want you can roll new Duelist,Marauder or Templar and get it as reward from the 2nd quest.(http://blackrabbit2999.blogspot.com/2012/07/path-of-exile-quest-gem-reward-list.html)

 

I use Sweep + Life on Hit with a two-hander and it's money. If there are enough guys around me, I can't die. I'll hit Enduring Cry to get aggro + endurance charges, I'll put on Molten Shell, then I sweep until almost everything is dead.

I just got to the final dungeon of Act 3 in Cruel with my Summoner Witch. I'm fairly certain I won't be able to solo the final boss, though, since I'm sure my minions will die instantaneously. I did manage to kill the previous boss by standing out of his sight-range and spamming my Summon Skeleton Spell Totem, though, so maybe that's the ticket here too. Especially since the final boss summons her own stuff so I should be able to raise Zombies perpetually.

 

So I got the Sweep gem (don't now how I missed it two times in a row) and at first few 6 gem levels it's very MEH. As it stands, I can't possibly see any reason to use it over Leap Slam.

Then, as luck would have it, got my hands on a ridiculously awesome maul and respecced to maces. All I have to say about Ground Slam is HOLY SHIT it's overpowered. Aoe, reduced stun treshold AND you can kite enemies with it. Just drop a totem to pull aggro (another broken feature btw) or slow them with curse and slam away. Anyone gets close, leap a little further, rinse repeat.

 

Ground Slam is insane. I just found a good mace and am building for it, my formerly always-dying piece of meat is suddenly a killing machine. Can't wait to add more support gems beyond health.

 

Compare:



Music always tells the truth in these situations.

Also, made, that Solaris Temple music is so beautiful. Best area in the entire game thus far, imo.

 

I know, man. They really nailed the ambiance in this game. Makes me want to put up with the mindless grind just to take in the atmosphere.

 

I finished Act 3 normal with my hardcore Templar.

Because of the fact that I wanted to see the new maps in Act 3 I completely cleared them all and I ended up being way over level. And then I got 99% through the final temple on my way to the final boss just before a realm reset. I needed about 5 minutes more to get finish Act 3 and they brought down the realm. So had to do it all again.

Anyway, I finished Act 3 but I was level 39. Needless to say the final boss wasn't difficult.

What a great game.

The atmosphere and music is so great. It is just such a lonely depressing world.

Anyway, making my way through Cruel now. Should be interesting. Some of the side levels are really hard. I was clearing the Fetid Pools on Cruel at level 39 and I almost got killed a few times by the skeleton rhoa. Wow. Hard. I check the map and see the level for the map is 39. Almost 5 levels higher than main track map that I entered from. I guess I should check all the maps before I start them. I knew some of the side areas were supposed to be harder, but I wasn't expecting that big of a difference.

Enjoyable.

 

Yes ,side areas in Cruel and Merciless are 3-4 lvl higher than main ones.

 

It will be interesting to see if my plan for this Templar works in hardcore.

I am going for a ton of life of course, but also investing heavily in shield block, and then I plan to use a Blood Magic gem for my offensive skills and use my tiny mana pool for Tempest Shield (with Elemental Proliferation) and 2 auras... I just got the Blood Magic gem last night and just need to get the Elemental Proliferation gem and then I can give it a try.

Normally with melee I go for the blood magic and resolute technique passives, but I thought it would be fun to skip those and try something different.

I suspect Tempest Shield isn't going to be a big winner, but should be fun never-the-less. I have always wanted to try it.

I also have a standard two-handed Marauder at level 28 in hardcore, so I can fall back to him if my Templar is too crappy (and wait for the next passive skill reset and re-tool the Templar into something else).

 

How does Blood Magic passive work? Does the damage to health feel significant? I'd be curious to try (though right now mana is rarely an issue), but wouldn't want to shoot myself in the foot just by ignoring something simple.

 

For a Marauder it's a no brainer. I took it when my hp was around 500 and with the Troll passive I regened all the lost hp. Adding life per hit support gem to specials also effectively nullify the hp loss. One downside is that you probably won't be using aura skills with Bloodmagic, since they cut your hp by 40%.

 

Blood Magic is awesome, especially when your life regeneration per second gets really high. You can often be in a situation where you regenerate life faster than you spend life via skill use. If you throw in a life on hit gem then you actually gain life by using skills. You literally never have to worry about skill costs ever again... unless your attack speed gets really, really, really high and then blood magic can be dangerous... but I have never personally experienced that.

The problem is you can't use most auras (the ones that use a percentage of your mana pool).

In late game if you get a really good 6 socket armor or two handed weapon then you can always remove the Blood Magic passive and switch over to using a blood magic gem. Then you can use auras that use a percentage of your mana pool.

With a Marauder I always go straight for resolute technique and then straight to blood magic. As soon as you have blood magic you just fly through the content as you can spam skills.

My Templar on the other hand only has about 220 mana and 1200+ life. I constantly run out of mana and my mana potions are sometimes empty and I have to port back to town to refill. There was one mini boss in Act 3 that took a LONG time to do as I had to go back to town at least 6 times and each time the bosses energy shield would recharge... so the fight took forever.

I love all the options with PoE.

I still want to make a Staff Templar, a Bow Marauder or Bow Templar, and Wand Marauder or Wand Templar.... just so many interesting styles.

 

Yeah Blood Magic is basically my favorite thing ever. It changed my Marauder from a somewhat fun dude for like 5 seconds until I was out of mana into a total badass, spamming sweet abilities perpetually.

 

So I get to normal Piety on my HC Shadow, level 36 with 1200 hp, 200 ES and maxed resists, get her down to about half health without any real danger. And then I disconnect. Of course, every area resets.
So I do it all again, reclearing level 3 of Lunaris Temple (which is way too big btw, and kinda boring). I walk into the teleporter to Piety. Game client crashes.
Fed up, I run through most of level 2, ignoring the mobs, and then suddenly get chained, and 3 shot through a lagspike by that Warden wannabe miniboss. Thus ends my career in HC.

Now, the question is, should I continue in default, since I really like this build, or should I restart HC with something different? I almost want to just do a Ground Slam Marauder and revel in the faceroll. Almost. Maybe a melee Templar of some sort instead?

 

Go back to hardcore. Regular just doesn't have the tension of hardcore, and I suspect now that you have played hardcore you will find the regular league kind of boring.

I usually just delete my characters once they go to regular, but sometimes I keep them for testing purposes.

I killed that mini warden boss twice now and both times he almost killed me... the third time I had to go past him (due to server crashes) I just skipped him as he was too dicey. One lag spike and he would have killed me for sure... I also had 1200 hp. He hits hard.

He was actually way harder then Piety. I just stood toe to toe with Piety and never really had any close calls. But that mini warden boss I had to shield charge him, run away, shield charge, and even so he got me down to less than 25% life several times.

Also, I will give you one piece of advice based on my countless deaths in hardcore. NEVER run through a level ignoring the mobs unless you are prepared to die. Almost every single hardcore character that bit the dust did so when I was running through a level ignoring the mobs. Lag spikes happen a lot, but they don't matter when you are using potions, fighting, and what not... but somehow running and lag spike is just a bad recipe.

The Western Forest has killed most of my hardcore characters. I hate that zone. I always try to run through it. I have had a LOT of deaths doing that.

I have already had 2 deaths in the Western Forest since open beta started, both times I was running through. It was easier before when you could phase run, but now running through can be really deadly.

 

Well, hardcore is more fun, but I want to get this build to maps and see how it does. I didn't really believe I could get there in hardcore, with just stuff I found, and without knowing the content. I'm already hearing complaints about some stuff in Act 3 on higher difficulties (like those fire-breathing frog-things in the Docks, apparently if they happen to roll Additional Projectiles, it all stacks and they kill you in 2 seconds through maxed FR). I guess I could play something safe like a defensive marauder or templar, get that to endgame, and use it as a staging ground for more gear sensitive builds. Would have done a summoner, but apparently Act 3 rapes them hard.

Apparently the current fotm for HC is Marauder, so I'll probably run that. Hammer smash face, and so forth.

 

I've died from one-second-lags too many times to even consider HC at this point.

 

Yeah, hardcore doesn't seem like a great option while all the bugs from BETA still persist.

Also, I LIKE PATH OF EXILE THIS MUCH!