Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Jaedar]

People who haven't killed Sirus a few weeks into the league should be put into labor camps, aka forced to play D3 again, instead of playing PoE.

Sirus is hard ok.

 

[Sharpedge]

The community reaction to the harvest nerfs is absolutely ridiculous, and show the decline in playerbase and how casual some of these retards are.

I absolutely agree. But then again, pandering to this type of player is how PoE has come from what it was early on to the sad state it is in now anyhow.

 

[Saark]

I'm not even sure if this was a result of pandering to the PoE player, or just a typical case of GGG underestimating the communities/players ability to min-max the ever living shit out of all the new systems. It's not just Harvest that went totally out of control this league, and anyone with half a brain could've seen this nerf coming from a mile away. My only fear is that GGG tends to nerf the stuff that is used the general population of the game, and leaves the more "secret" farming strategies in the game unnerfed. Farming beastiary is insanely lucrative atm, as long as you have 6 accounts and a character that can quickly clear 6man hp red-maps, as you will then gain 6 beasts instead of just 1 if you did it solo. Same applies to mavens invitations, the feared gives insane returns when done in a rotation, and even done solo you more than make back the cost of having to buy the cortex maps.

 

[eklektyk]

i see "experts" here misssed parts where fossil crafting was repeatedly fucked without lube in rounds of nerfs aka why nobody bothers to run mines anymore [not only how they drop and in what quantity but also posible craft outcomes from them and simply removing some of them made fossils just shit except that one that can copy yours juced delirium map so you can rake in moniez like thers no tommorow .... rest is shit and ggg is still murdering delve content to this day...]

meanwhile im still waiting for those morons to unfuck their game so im able to play it without it shitting itself .... but honestly at this point i truly gave up that ggg is even able to fix small stuff let alone this trainwreck ...

fun fact - killing sirius goy harder since texture fuckery called "streaming" coz guess what every first callbac for texture from boss either freezos your game or simply puts invisible shit for you to figure it out [and not die to invis maze or aoe jizz on ground] bonus points for purging alll textures on death so you can enjoy loading all textures from scratch when you reenter boss arena ...

 

[Lone Wolf]

It's funny that the hardest part of the Sirus fight is while he's basically off-screen/unreachable. That's just terrible design.

 

[Saark]

Main issue with Sirus is that the fight is piss-easy if you don't die (meaning it's much easier to dodge his abilities when you're up close). Dying on that fight makes it unreasonably annoying, especially when you immediately go back to checkpoint instead of waiting out his current ability cast so you don't get invisible animations when re-entering or fucked up spellqueue. Then again, if you're tanky enough to survive a beam, or use phase-run after entering oriath from the templar lab, you're fine. Phase run in general is a nice ability to use when running back into boss arenas, as it delays boss response time/lowers target acquisition speed.

 

[Absinthe]

you would approach pack of blues with 1 rare with caution.

Depends on the rare. If it was a reflect rare or it had those retarded aura combos like "haste aura" and "allies cannot die" on some dude with stupidly good defenses and you would get mobbed in short order. Most rares you didn't care about but there were rares that could spawn with devastating modifier combinations that would just murder you if you weren't careful.

Would also have 2 separate skills, one for aoe and one for single target dmg.

Nah, even back on launch you had people whose idea of a good skill was GMP Freezing Pulse/Fireball and they would just shotgun bosses with it because you could do that back then (but only with spells, not ranged attacks) or dualwield elemental cleave (back when Cleave only reduced physical damage to 60% when dualwielding) with increased AoE passives and shit and Concentrated Effect. You also had Shockwave Totem builds iirc where people stacked massive amounts of flat damage on the totems (back when everything had 100% scaling) and just tried to summon as many of them as possible. But packs were indeed much smaller back then. Nowadays it's "aoe or bust" but back then you could progress through the entire game with single-target skills. I remember doing a weapon elemental damage flicker strike build which cleared fast (Flicker Strike CD did not exist back then) and killed bosses before they could do anything.

One of the more popular AoE clear skills back then was GMP Lightning Arrow with 100% pierce chance for the ridiculous multihits. In fact in Hardcore you just focused defenses (usually ES stacking with CI, but alternatively stacking tons of health) and used things like the 5L GMP piercing Lightning Arrow to clear packs on its own without even caring about how much damage you had on your passive tree.

You also had necromancers who just worked out that all you just needed to boost was the gem level, throw a source of flat damage (ie. Added Lightning Damage) on top, and stack massive amounts of auras to kill shit. Aura builds were also sometimes called disco builds because most auras reserved flat mana instead of percentages so you could stack a lot of them with a big enough mana pool (which was really fucking easy if you were Eldritch Battery build, because back then it straight converted energy shield into mana instead of creating some kind of ES shield on top of your mana) and they had more visual effects back then.

What did happen at launch was that people weren't doing hyper-optimized clear-speed builds, in part because MF stacking was a thing back then and maps with limited portals didn't exist back then so people were busy analyzing the appeal of item quantity mods on their everything and Increased Item Quantity support gems. And also because, if you were in hardcore, stacking EHP (Effective Hit Points, ie. how much damage you can take before dying) high enough to avoid dying was a thing. Later on one-shot patterns became the standard.

Also 6Ls were some expensive, rare shit so you generally built around the assumption of only getting a 5L, until Tabula Rasa and Masters came out anyway.

Potions were never a thing though

Potions were a thing but you usually went for buff potions even then. CI builds usually went for Persistent Granite Flasks of Iron Skin in HC. You got massive amounts of armor off of that back then. People also used Diamond Flasks a lot back then, because they just turned all your abilities into guaranteed crits for something like 2 seconds and 80 flask charges (1 use only). So Persistent 20% diamond flasks were popular.

I member when people used to form parties and combat in general didnt look like dragon ball

You never saw the guys who did 100% piercing spark spam builds before Fork was ever introduced into the game. They just flooded entire rooms in bouncing sparks. Those builds were pretty rare though. And when Fork came out Spork builds became absurdly popular (even though 100% piercing spark was still superior).

 

[Lyric Suite]

Update for the name of science.

Downloaded the client, i noticed you can delink from steam from their website without having to send them an email, but once i logged into the game, still no tabs.

So now i had to email support. Pff.

 

[Tacgnol]

Nah, even back on launch you had people whose idea of a good skill was GMP Freezing Pulse/Fireball and they would just shotgun bosses with it because you could do that back then (but only with spells, not ranged attacks) or dualwield elemental cleave (back when Cleave only reduced physical damage to 60% when dualwielding) with increased AoE passives and shit and Concentrated Effect. You also had Shockwave Totem builds iirc where people stacked massive amounts of flat damage on the totems (back when everything had 100% scaling) and just tried to summon as many of them as possible. But packs were indeed much smaller back then. Nowadays it's "aoe or bust" but back then you could progress through the entire game with single-target skills. I remember doing a weapon elemental damage flicker strike build which cleared fast (Flicker Strike CD did not exist back then) and killed bosses before they could do anything.

One of the more popular AoE clear skills back then was GMP Lightning Arrow with 100% pierce chance for the ridiculous multihits. In fact in Hardcore you just focused defenses (usually ES stacking with CI, but alternatively stacking tons of health) and used things like the 5L GMP piercing Lightning Arrow to clear packs on its own without even caring about how much damage you had on your passive tree.

I also remember a lot of builds back in the day that used Flicker Strike + melee splash. If you were really posh you swapped out the melee splash for something else for bossing.

I remember how pleased I was back then just to have a high end 5l chest. Also how excited I was to afford a Marohi Erqi and then 6l it myself. Shows how much the game has changed over the years.

 

[Absinthe]

I skipped that. Melee splash was kind of unnecessary if you stacked your frenzy charges. You were flickering so fast you were one-shotting well over 10 enemies per second. Packs weren't that big anyway, not back then. By the way, you can still do Flicker Strike with any weapon if you do a Red Trail + Bloodgrip (or Endless Hunger as Slayer) build. Use Golden Rule unique with Puncture+20%Increased Duration+Efficacy (use an alternate weapon set with joke damage for this) supports for very lengthy low-damage bleeds.

For an alternative Flicker Strike build you can do an Multistrike (preferably Awakened) 20% Flicker Strike with Raider ascendancy and Redeemer's chestpiece and you will have 30% chance of generating a frenzy charge on hit, 20% chance of generating a frenzy charge on hitting a rare or unique enemy, and 20% chance of generating a frenzy charge on kill. Throw in a Blood Rage self-buff for extra 25% chance of generating frenzy charge on kill and just stack maximum frenzy charges for a big buffer. Raider is honestly a good pick for Flicker Strike anyway since you can stack ridiculous amounts of frenzy charges for massive scaling (esp. with helm enchant for flicker strike).

 

[Lone Wolf]

As long as you've got Farrul's Fur and one or two +1 Max Frenzy Charge items, you're good to go.

There's an almost immortal min-maxed version of a FS build with a max block Gladiator that's pretty obscene (79% block attack/spell, recover life on block through The Surrender, get Phase + Elusive + Fortify + life leech). The caveat is you've got to be okay with spending 35 ex on an Awakened Multistrike for it to shine (LOL). And the amount of cooldown management can kiss my ass (boss totems, plus Berserk/rage, plus Blood Rage, in addition to piano flasks).

I want to love FS, but there's just so much clunky bullshit that goes with it.

 

[Absinthe]

Blood Rage is hardly cooldown management. That buff lasts 10.8 seconds and refreshes itself whenever you kill something. Throw Increased Duration on top and you really have to try to lose that buff. Just get it to 20% and add Enhance for free extra attack speed. I think you can cast it off of an alternate weapon set too, if you're hurting for sockets (may as well make it a set that pumps your enhance a little higher then, like Vix Lunaris / Invictus Solaris / Magna Eclipsis, or Sinvicta's Mettle if you just want to start Rampage). And Berserk / totems is something you only contemplate for boss killing and even then, it's not necessary. In fact you can skip Rage and Berserk altogether. Boss totems aren't needed either, just handy.

And if you want Flicker Strike damage for cheap, Hegemony's Era works.

 

[lukaszek]

main issue with flicker strike is that camera has to center on your character. You guyz play it blind or what

 

[Absinthe]

Spastic camera is part of the Flicker Strike fun. That and collecting benefits from being stationary, because all movement is instantaneous (which resets how long you've been stationary, but nothing can happen during your movement anyway).

 

[Lone Wolf]

Blood Rage is hardly cooldown management.

I didn't mean that BR is hard work to manage, just that it's another thing to manage.

In fact you can skip Rage and Berserk altogether. Boss totems aren't needed either, just handy.

Chainbreaker + Berserk is a real bossing difference maker. Totems almost as much.

Either you rely on those, or you min-max the everloving shit out of your items.

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

I gave this game a try and wanted to make a necromancer so I looked at the talent tree and the necro abilities are somewhere between witch and templar, I'm NOT a girl so I decide to play templar and go for death knight style melee necro dude
few hours in someone say "LOL templar necro doesnt work noob" cuz of some xpac shit or whatever
ok FUCK this game then

wtf is the point of this huge talent tree that goes anywhere if most of the builds 'won't work'
shit game fuck you pillars of exile

I will NOT play is a girl!
back to diablo

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

You can use zombies along with herald of purity and/or dominating blow.

 

[didntdemon]

Templar necro does work and in fact it's pretty close to the melee summoner playstyle that you seem to be looking for. You've got trolled man.

 

[Zeriel]

There's always people crying "X class doesn't work" to justify their own inability to get something to work, or because it's not the absolute best at X, Y, Z niche content. Especially with seasons the "OP" builds are generally the ones that can do all the content as quickly as possible, i.e with low or easily obtainable gear. As such, very little discussion actually revolves around absolute power levels with the best gear possible.

 

[Jaedar]

I will NOT play is a girl!

Weak, it's just pixels on a screen.

That being said, the witch prestige class "necromancer" is as the name implies best suited to necromancing. The templar class "guardian" is good for leading a horde of divine constructs into melee. Still a summoner, but different flavour.

Obviously you can also make a guardian necromancer, it just won't be as strong.

 

[Tacgnol]

I will NOT play is a girl!

Weak, it's just pixels on a screen.

That being said, the witch prestige class "necromancer" is as the name implies best suited to necromancing. The templar class "guardian" is good for leading a horde of divine constructs into melee. Still a summoner, but different flavour.

Obviously you can also make a guardian necromancer, it just won't be as strong.

Guardian is also often good for "gimmick" summoning builds, like the spider summoner that uses that unique dagger.

Otherwise, you generally go Necromancer for undead and Elementalist for golems, though there are exceptions to both.

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

Weak, it's just pixels on a screen.

I'm CLEARLY not autistic enough for this game, then.
Me dum dum me pick necromancer in diablo and make skellies go rarrrrr

 

[Saark]

I'm CLEARLY not autistic enough for this game, then.

You seem to be autistic enough for this forum though. Just play whatever build and whatever base-class and whatever ascendancy you want. It all works. My friend is playing an Icecrash Occultist and slamming Awakener 8 conquerors in 2 hits. Not like any of that will mean anything to you, but if youre looking for a game that allows you to play whatever you want, this is it.

 

[Lone Wolf]

The first wall you hit is build complexity - and the fact you can have basically non-functional builds by the time you reach maps.

You battle to overcome that one, maybe use some guides, and then you find yourself in front of the taller wall: taking a character from 'okay' to 'powerful' is often a question of currency that most players can't answer. That ED/C build gets you to maps on basically nothing, but the ceiling is painful as hell to whack your head against for tens of hours.

Finally, you somehow scrounge together enough bread to complete a build and encounter the tallest wall of all: build min-maxing, where every tiny upgrade (sometimes as low as 0.5%) is numerous Exalts of investment.

At the end of it all, you have a character that can beat all content.

To do it differently, however, you need to be playing a different game. For some, POE is an investment/economics simulator, where they sit in their hideout crafting items to sell or scouring the trade sites for flip opportunities. Lots of money to be made, but you're no longer playing the same game. For a lot of those people, currency stacking is the beginning, middle and end of their POE experience. Path of Math, for example, is a guy who makes currency strategy/high end crafting videos. All he does with his time is evaluate how much money he's squeezing out of every map/league mechanic. He buys a build that can clear that shit as quickly as possible, then shows other people how the top 0.1% of the player base (if that) generate thousands upon thousands of Exalts.

 

[Peachcurl]

The first wall you hit is build complexity - and the fact you can have basically non-functional builds by the time you reach maps.

I'd say that build complexity is the major selling point for a large part of the player base, when it comes to comparing PoE to its competitors. If you couldn't fuck up your build, what would be the point of caring about builds at all?

But I agree with the issue about tedious economics (etc.) that you mentioned. That's why I mostly play self-found.