Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[BlackAdderBG]

Does hardcore offer better drop chances? Also, when will they introduce the already infamous HC PvP league?

Anyone?

Drops are the same.What is HC PvP league?Cut-throat?If so ,then not soon,GGG said that balancing failed hard on that one and there will be only 1 to 3 hours races.

 

[empi]

I actually had more than a few GCP's- put them straight into my skill gems

yeah you probably shouldn't actually use your GCPs on gems unless they are already high quality, as quality gems (up to 15% iirc?) can drop. You can buy a high quality gem for a lot less GCP than it would cost to get a normal gem up there. And for some build/gem combos quality is pretty useless, for others it's really very powerful
Also the summoner build that was posted is pretty glass cannonish ;p

 

[made]

So I finished the game on normal and was - rather abruptly - teleported back to the start on cruel. Thought there was supposed to be one final boss after Piety?

Anyway, cruel continues just like normal ended. I'm still spamming ice nova 90% of the time, still running around in act 1 gear, still not finding any good loot or gems for my class while my stash is full to the brim with rares and gems for other builds.

I suppose at this point it would be better to start a new char?

 

[Castanova]

So I finished the game on normal and was - rather abruptly - teleported back to the start on cruel. Thought there was supposed to be one final boss after Piety?

Anyway, cruel continues just like normal ended. I'm still spamming ice nova 90% of the time, still running around in act 1 gear, still not finding any good loot or gems for my class while my stash is full to the brim with rares and gems for other builds.

I suppose at this point it would be better to start a new char?

You could. You could also trade for better items on the Trade Chat. It's fairly easy to get upgrades that way.

empi, if you think that was a glass cannon build, you should have seen me before I picked up any life nodes at all. Anyway, I think it worked out fine because being a glass cannon rarely posed a problem in Normal and Cruel. Now that I'm just starting Merciless, I'm also just finishing my core passive build which means all further passive points will go into more survivability anyway. Act 1 so far is fairly easy. I was level 52 and I did the level 58 Fetid Pool with virtual ease. The only scare I had was when one of those bone dog things de-synced from a screen-length away and the next thing I knew he was on top of me and I had like 10% HP left.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Either way, I heartily recommend everyone at least starts their characters in HC - you can continue playing in SC if you wish, so it's not a huge loss if you snuff it. On the plus side, HC is an absolute rush and also teaches one some good habits, i.e. running the fudge away when the ish hits the fan, building for survivability, etc. These are also important in SC since there's an experience loss on death in the higher difficulties.

Viable HC builds are usually hella boring in default league.

re: HC drops, they are exactly the same.

So I finished the game on normal and was - rather abruptly - teleported back to the start on cruel. Thought there was supposed to be one final boss after Piety?

Anyway, cruel continues just like normal ended. I'm still spamming ice nova 90% of the time, still running around in act 1 gear, still not finding any good loot or gems for my class while my stash is full to the brim with rares and gems for other builds.

I suppose at this point it would be better to start a new char?

You should really run your char through all difficulties (there are 3 now? were 4 before).

I'm not sure, have they removed the postgame (maps)? If not, go for it.

Provided you're not hating your current build/playstyle, in which case a new char is the best option.

 

[made]

It does get boring, because as I said I use one skill almost exclusively, plus fireball for single target. I'd love to experiment with other skills and gem synergies, but short of checking the wiki to see whats available and spamming trade chat to buy it there are no other options atm. Plus the more I'd specialize the build for this playstyle with passives (say more cold damage + chill) the more I'd be shoehorned into using it, so I've been avoiding them for now and just taking general caster traits. Titan Quest with respec mod was really more fun in that regard.

 

[Livonya]

It does get boring, because as I said I use one skill almost exclusively, plus fireball for single target. I'd love to experiment with other skills and gem synergies, but short of checking the wiki to see whats available and spamming trade chat to buy it there are no other options atm. Plus the more I'd specialize the build for this playstyle with passives (say more cold damage + chill) the more I'd be shoehorned into using it, so I've been avoiding them for now and just taking general caster traits. Titan Quest with respec mod was really more fun in that regard.

The end game is maps. And maps are a lot of fun. So you are better off going through all the levels.

Once you start finding good 4 socket items then you can diversify to a 7 or 8 different skills. You will get more gems from quests and you will start finding support gems and higher level skill gems.

The end game gets really complex when you have 4 gem sockets on boots, gloves, helmet, 5 or 6 sockets on your armor, and either 5 or 6 sockets on a two handed weapon, or 4 on two different 1-handed weapons or 4 on a one handed weapon and 3 on a shield. You can send up with over 20 sockets and at that point you get to play around with a whole lot of skills and options.

Starting over will just mean more of spamming of one skill. You don't really get to the more complex parts of the game until 4, 5 and 6 socket items start dropping.

With my Templar I will be using Glacial Hammer, Ground Slam, Molten Shell, Shield Charge, Heavy Strike, Tempest Shield, a few auras and maybe Leap Slam, and also a curse. And there will be at least a dozen support gems I will be using, plus some skills and support gems that I will only use for specific maps. And I will also need to use a totem in certain situations.

Maps sometimes change the rules of the game. So for instance you might find a map where all monsters have fire resistance, or where all players have blood magic, etc... you have to change your set up to do some of the these maps.

Also had my first HC death in Open Beta yesterday - only a level 23 Shadow, but it still stings since I had equipped him with some pretty sweet rares and it was due to my own carelesness. I was in Chamber of Sins 3 and ran in too eagerly to kill a Sin Lord, hoping to get him down before he resurrects too many casters - I didn't, he did, and the casters gibbed me.

I usually carry around a Detonate Dead skill gem that I pop in when I have to deal with necromancers. In maps and in higher level play necromancers can be a real problem, but Detonate Dead can control them... so I recommend carrying one around that you can swap into your set up. It doesn't even need to be leveled up.

 

[dibens]

I was a fool for ignoring Unwavering Stance for so long, considering that getting stunlocked was one of the leading causes of death.

The game glitched and Merveil decided to hide from me in an unreachable area. Alas, there is no escaping Ground Slam

 

[Castanova]

I was a fool for ignoring Unwavering Stance for so long, considering that getting stunlocked was one of the leading causes of death.

The game glitched and Merveil decided to hide from me in an unreachable area. Alas, there is no escaping Ground Slam

What's your R spell -- Blood Rage?

 

[dibens]

What's your R spell -- Blood Rage?

Immortal Call, though I haven't found much use for it at this stage of the game.

 

[Castanova]

Ah. I've flirted with the idea of using it as an "oh shit" button to run away from a bad situation since I'm using Enduring Cry for charges anyway. But, yeah, it seems like the amount of time it lasts might be too short.

 

[dibens]

It can be supported with Increased Duration gem, giving you 50%+ time on it. My main gripe with it is that it's physical immunity only. For such a measly durations, should be elemental as well, minus chaos. Maybe there's a skill/gem for it, not sure.

 

[empi]

Who needs immortal call when you have a granite of iron skin :p

 

[Stabwound]

Got slaughtered by Normal level Piety on my first HC character, a summoner witch. I literally went from full health/energy shield to dead in about 2 seconds flat. You need to stack the shit out of lightning resistance for that fight, I learned.

 

[empi]

The piety fight in crematorium? That's very dangerous yeah, kinda comes out of the blue too.

Also cleaving with the AoE passives near templar and witch and increased AoE gem is pretty awesome

 

[dibens]

Ok, merciless act 2 and viper chaos damage is really starting to hurt. I can only imagine the pain and suffering that is in store for me from the act 3 snakes. Are there any items/flasks, that reduce it?

 

[KoolNoodles]

Game might be too buggy/overloaded to play with any sense of comfort right now. That goes double for HC. Lost a character to a lag spike/not hitting monsters. Even just a couple seconds of not knowing what is going on can mean death. Had a few other close calls and several disconnects in the middle of battles. It has been extremely annoying.

dibens Have you been picking up the chaos resist nodes? If not, it's very rare that an item has chaos resist(I think the only ones that do are uniques), and I don't think any flasks do. One way to mitigate damage from those is to get high physical damage resist, because it's half n' half, so that can actually help quite a bit in terms of tanking against chaos damage as well as anything else.

 

[Raapys]

There are certainly items with chaos resistance. Guy I play with has an excellent rare amulet with +16% chaos res. Also seen it on weapons, rings, etc., both rare and magic. Not sure about belts.

It's not very common though, so chances are that even if you find it, the item itself is probably not very good.

 

[Castanova]

Ok, merciless act 2 and viper chaos damage is really starting to hurt. I can only imagine the pain and suffering that is in store for me from the act 3 snakes. Are there any items/flasks, that reduce it?

I'm pretty sure there's a chaos flask similar to the elemental ones.

 

[Livonya]

If not, it's very rare that an item has chaos resist(I think the only ones that do are uniques), and I don't think any flasks do. One way to mitigate damage from those is to get high physical damage resist, because it's half n' half, so that can actually help quite a bit in terms of tanking against chaos damage as well as anything else.

Not true, I have gotten tons of items with chaos resist, none of which were unique items.

I have found 2 unique items so far, but didn't ID either of them as their item level is low so I will just use them in a crafting recipe.

 

[KoolNoodles]

If not, it's very rare that an item has chaos resist(I think the only ones that do are uniques), and I don't think any flasks do. One way to mitigate damage from those is to get high physical damage resist, because it's half n' half, so that can actually help quite a bit in terms of tanking against chaos damage as well as anything else.

Not true, I have gotten tons of items with chaos resist, none of which were unique items.

I have found 2 unique items so far, but didn't ID either of them as their item level is low so I will just use them in a crafting recipe.

Ah, maybe I am thinking of closed beta. They were talking about adding more chaos stuff but I haven't see it yet, but if that's the case I retract my previous statement, except about that lag.

 

[DakaSha]

Well damn.
Although i feel the combat is a bit clunky (possibly due to having to buy the good animations? Or maybe because its beta?) the mechanics of this game certainly trump most 'normal' rpg's let alone every other arpg out there. Also looks pretty damn nice, even on my horrible 3 year old laptop

been watching these



Giving me a good idea of whats possible

 

[Stabwound]

Do any of you bros have a good 2-handed mace in HC league for a level ~25 character? I've been using this one for a while but its damage is starting to become insufficient. I don't really know the economy well, but I can give you some currency shit in return, just let me know what you want/need.

My current mace:

 

[Raapys]

It's definitely a bit clunky. They said they would work the kinks out, but that was quite a while ago. The graphics are also kinda messy, so it's sometimes hard to see what's going on; character's not moving/attacking, but you don't register that you're stunned and think it's simply being unresponsive. Then there's the sometimes ridiculously slow hit registration, despite 70'ish ms latency. Hopefully the latter will get sorted out once they get the servers working correctly.

Gah, it's strange how the server troubles always seem to coincide with whenever I'm playing though. Keep dropping out every 10-15 minutes, usually just before I finish a quest objective or find a waypoint. Getting slightly annoying.

 

[dibens]

The clunkiness starts to dissipate once your specials start to rise in levels and you get attack/run speed stats. Early Leap Slam is abysmally slow, and previously in this thread I made a point of how unreliable it is. Now I use it as my main crowd clearer, running around, jumping like a maniac, mauling everything with two hits a secound.

Also, fuck you assholes for getting unique drops. Level 56 here and not a single one in sight.