Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Castanova]

So far I've gotten a Witch and a Templar to around level 10. I plan on doing the same for the other 4 "classes" and then shelving the game until there are no more character wipes. I don't have the time to put any kind of serious effort into the HC tourneys and I wouldn't want to participate unless I feel like I can compete.

Witch seems pretty good, Templar less so right now, mostly because of his crappy-ass passive tree starting point. I heard they're fixing that though. On the Witch side, I'm disappointed that the Corpse Explosion skill (forget the PoE name) requires DEX to level up. BOOOOOOO.

 

[spectre]

Castanova
I recommend that you at least beat Act 2. The chars only start getting interesting until you are around level 25. And it can be done in under a day for each char (which is not a lot to recover from).
Just do the Baleful Gem and Weaver's needle quests to get some nice skills and support gems. The game really picks up when you can connect some gems for a nice effect.

I've had the chance to play coop with my mate, and I have to say that I prefer to keep going solo, as there seems to be no benefits to a team. The loot allocation system is bonkers, you open a chest and the only valuable thing gets alloted to another player.
Or when a player snags a valuable item off the ground because you have to pause and rearrange your stuff to make it fit the inventory.
You could say that I'm being butthurt and that it's the name of the game
But you know what? Fuck that. I'm not asking for team play catering of Diablo 3 proportions, I just want to have an incentive to do so. So far there's none, at least on lower levels.
This could be different on hardcore and/or higher levels.

It's not a game I would play with random people on the internets. Most of the time I just form a team to trade stuff anyways.
The devs seem to have their heads screwed on right, so I'm optimistic that they'll fix that eventually. Still, loads of fun when you go solo.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I like the way the multiplayer is balanced. There is a bit more loot, so that if people need different things and are willing to cooperate you can more quickly upgrade your gear. But you get less currency items. It's also safer, but probably slower progression, since you have to wait for the slowest team member all the time. I like that being solo is still a viable option for competitive people.

 

[Castanova]

So, what's everyone's strategy around managing your inventory and Scrolls of Wisdom? Your inventory space is so limited while you're out in the field but at the same time you get all these magic items that you want to identify. And you can't identify them without Scrolls of Wisdom. Which you mostly get by picking up useless whites and vendoring them. ARGHGHGHGHH!

I seem to find myself picking up whites until my inventory is full, then I replace them with magic items until I find a waypoint or until I find a town portal scroll (forget the name). Sometimes I find myself going to old waypoints to quickly clear out some monsters to find white items to sell. Even still I've got like 5-10 magic items in my stash waiting to be identified!

 

[Damned Registrations]

It changes a bit as you level up and get more magic find and need more slots. Eventually I don't even bother picking up magic items any more, only rares. The exception being anything with enough slots to make it worth turning into a rare.

You can get scrolls of wisdom by selling unided magic or rare items and then selling the orbs you get from doing that. The orbs you get for selling IDed items are more useful though, especially later on, so I try to ID all the rares to get as many as possible.

 

[fuzz]

So, what's everyone's strategy around managing your inventory and Scrolls of Wisdom? Your inventory space is so limited while you're out in the field but at the same time you get all these magic items that you want to identify. And you can't identify them without Scrolls of Wisdom. Which you mostly get by picking up useless whites and vendoring them.(...)

You're identifying too much but I'd guess the source of the problem is that you're actually picking up too much loot. Check the wiki and for starters choose the type of armor you're going to wear and only pickup the one that is for your level. For example as a level 21 Marauder look for War Plates, scratch all those Copper ones at this point. I've never run out of Scrolls of Wisdom, I just pick them up when they drop and I don't hoard whites for vendors (unless vendor will trade it for an orb). You don't have to ID everything, shit I often don't even ID rares because of certain recipe.

http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Chest_Armour
http://templeofexiles.com/recipes

 

[hoverdog]

Overally, I'm still a bit of a hoarder and packmule; I tend to pick up every rare item and all blues that could fit my character. I rarely run out of wisdom scrolls though - and when I do, I just make a quick run through early areas, pick up several whites, and sell them for scrolls.

 

[spectre]

I had to fight my packmule urges a lot in this game, but I actually managed to work out a system where I can manage my stuff semi-effectively.
Part of it was identifying what stuff is really valuable.

I almost never pick up any blues unless they have nice slots or a quality bonus. Whites I pick up only if they look like they can be Chaos Orbed into something useful - gear has to have nice skill slot combinations - three connected slots is a minimum.
Rings and belts only get picked up if they have maxed rolled out stats (e.g. +30 to strength on a strenght amulet).
I pick up all the yellows, and quickly convert them into shards if they don't have divine stats and are immediately useful. I devote an entire tab to storing them (but only the smaller ones), in case I find two with a matching name to sell for a chaos orb.
I pick up all items with quality bonus, and immediately convert them to +quality orbs.

It's still possible to get clogged with items this way, I solve this by running several different characters, using different types of gear and keeping them around the same-ish level. When my guys hit, say, level 20, I get rid of all the low tier stuff,
except for a few (2-3) "starter pack" items that will be given to new chars.

I generally keep the stuff on the guy that will be using it. If I have a bow user, he gets all the good bows I find on his person. I immediately salvage all the bows I don't use, but keep the ones that were used a lot. That's how I save most of my space actually,
because most of the stash space is lost on stuff that maybe useful to someone at some point in time. This way, all the good stuff gets immediately distributed to whoever will use them, and it's easy to pick the best stuff in each category.

By the way, what nice skill combos do you use?
My favourites so far are:
Lightning Strike + Lesser Multiple Projectiles + Bonus Elemental Damage
Using it on a blood magic Marauder for a nice ranged attack option.

Ice spear + Bonus critical damage + Faster projectiles
A no-brainer. At long range, the spear achieves a guaranteed critical hit. FP makes it easier to hit the target.
Adding multiple projectiles would be nice and logical, but the package above keeps the mana cost low.

Split arrow + Bonus cold damage + Pierce
This makes a nice shotgun-type attack that nicely freezes/chills a group of enemies. Works best with high crit chance.
Slapping Life on Hit Support gem on top makes it even more awesome.

 

[DwarvenFood]

to @Raapsys for being a bro and granting a beta key, I'm enjoying the game, will have some time to try different chars and play a bit before the big "reset" of game world comes. It's a bit of a click-fest for now, but I'm just getting started.

 

[udm]

to @Raapsys for being a bro and granting a beta key, I'm enjoying the game, will have some time to try different chars and play a bit before the big "reset" of game world comes. It's a bit of a click-fest for now, but I'm just getting started.

Definitely gets better later bro. A lot of the fun comes from tinkering with builds. Just don't play a necro build yet. The pet AI is still borked. I mostly end up summoning pets as kamikaze units.

-edit- Seems like the patch that fixes minion AI will be rolled out early this week.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Ground Slam + Stun (elee Damage + Added Fire Damage + MOAR LOOT when you get enough slots. Added life on hit can be nice as well.)

Combined with a bit of stun threshold reduction from equipment or passives (or both) you can reach 100% stun threshold reduction, which means you stun everything not stun immune with every hit. Merveil? Stunlocked. Brutus? Stunlocked. Pretty much everything in the game? Stunlocked. And it's an AoE with a decent range too, and the damage isn't even that bad. Surprised it isn't getting nerfed.

 

[udm]

Fuck yeah 0.9.12 is out.
Patch notes: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/49469

Lot of good stuff in there, including new skills and quests.

 

[spectre]

Haven't played 9.12 too much (came out in the middle of the night where I live).

They added two nice passive keystones (it's nice to be able to recharge energy shield by other means than waiting) and two skills I haven't seen yet.
Biggest new thing is the summon AI buff. Didn't play too much with it yet, but at least the zombies tend to stick around more which is exactly what was needed.

There were interface changes, most of the good, but the new skillgem slot graphics are fugly. It was obviously meant to relieve the color blind (that would be me) but unfortunately it looks much less stylish and much more pre-beta.

There were some nerfs, I only noticed Poison arrow and Ice Wall. I suppose the first one had it coming because of the sick, sick aoe it does. Still, I'm glad they didn't go the blizzard route and while the nerf is critical, yet the skil remains valid.
They also added more sounds. Some of them are... interesting? (firestorm sound a bit like a guy feeding the ducks)

The added quest are nice, I am yet to have a full playthrough of act 2 to see the full extent of the changes, but so far it seems that they've bridged the gap between act 1 and 2 quite nicely and gave a nice incentive to go to the old fields in Act 2.

 

[udm]

I'm finishing Act 1 in Ruthless now. Despite the nerf to necros, it's still a very viable build. I haven't had a problem with Merveil, Brutus, Vaal or any of the bosses on previous difficulties. In fact, I only died once so far in Ruthless because I got careless. It gets even easier once I started throwing passive skill points into boosting mana. With Clarity, I can more or less have a consistent supply of skeletons alongside the usual zombies.

My other specialty is lightning-based attacks. Shock Spark (edit: I meant Spark, not Shock lol) and Lightning Warp work well so far (LW is a lot of fun), but the devs have hinted that lightning users will get a direct attack that doesn't miss. Waiting for that with bated breath.

All in all it's a lot of fun playing as a lightning/necro build.

 

[covr]

Well, it's right time to play that game, finally. If someone still got some beta keys, please PM me.

 

[udm]

covr I'll be upgrading my account soon. If none of my friends want my extra beta keys, I'll drop you one. Meanwhile you should download the client first. There will be a server stress test/open beta again this weekend.

 

[covr]

Thank you, udm!

 

[udm]

http://templeofexiles.com/recipes

Thanks for the link. This is great. I had absolutely no idea that selling stuff in different combinations could yield different orbs. I always thought orbs and shards were distributed based on the item's mods.

That's what I love about this game: having that sense of discovery. Even at level 51 and finishing Act 1 of Merciless, I'm still finding out new things (like the fact that I can combine Remote Mines with Summon Skeletons )

 

[Gregz]

Well, it's right time to play that game, finally. If someone still got some beta keys, please PM me.

OPEN BETA FOR ALL THIS WEEKEND, TOTALLY FREE, JUST DL THE CLIENT BRO

(this weekend only)

 

[Aothan]

I just recently participated in the week-long hardcore event with a level 50 Templar at the finish. For someone who has played rpgs over the better part of a decade this was actually the first time I singularly emphasised a defensive themed character, albeit a character with a few personal preferences for the benefit of concept and such. As an exercise in cautious and 'tank' play it was ironic that my impression was how hardcore typically promotes easier styles of play over perhaps more challenging or skillful ones, but that's obviously with a few contingent speculations in mind. Anyway as some may have noticed the next week-long event will introduce a preliminary set of testing conditions for possible changes to the game's endgame challenge design. Essentially these new conditions are difficulty based reductions to elemental resistances a la Diablo II.

Not sure what others will think of all this but whilst I welcome improving the challenge it seems to me the developers are reluctant to address what is probably the core issues that give rise to disproportions in balance between characters in relation to game challenge and particularly in the later stages. I've been theorising to myself for some time what the underlying causes of imbalance could be defined as yet it was the views of other players who are better versed in making full use of disparity that helped me understand the same issues somewhat more directly. That is, it basically seems the game's complexity 'regresses' in the later stages, whatever the benefits of certain skills and items might be, more life tends to work better regardless. As such there emerges a bit of a facade in what the game's complexity effectively amounts to. But on that point I would add the game's foundation is admirable yet remains limited in realisation whilst mode of encounters don't present a variety of challenges that vary depending on character methodology (i.e. 'class') and as alluded before the developer's difference to address these core issues where they are most pronounced (namely the Marauder's preposterously expedient clusters of 'more life', resistances and so on). However, I wouldn't assume these issues are entirely unknown or that they even adequately depict strict design complications; Path of Exile is still in a state of ongoing development and the developers have said in their own ways this stage is foundational whereupon future design complexity can flourish. But there is also the common player reaction, any addition to monster skills or effects on player typically evokes a wave of discontent on why the game is being made 'boringly' challenging etc etc it is very self-serving rationale from what I would suspect are the more fickle elements of the playerbase (not that I would trust myself to be able to apprehend the interests and inclinations of the playerbase anymore) that I don't particularly care to belabour at this time.

Overall though the game is progressing well, it is a great game as is for any and all who enjoy the hack n slash genre whereas the long-term potential is probably the best of any possible example that I could suggest. Just to return to a previous issue, the issues with balance and complexity that are becoming increasingly prominent probably in part reflect the game's open design approach, where all characters can partake of any class profile. It is a workable design but could well naturally lead to the complications which are at hand, in comparison to say more layered forms of complexity e.g. the AD&D system which allows for balancing (for what that is worth) to occur discretely so that changes to skills and items have varying levels of significance within clusters of possible class combinations and such; the difference with an open ended system like Path of Exile's is that every single addition becomes combinatorial across the skill range, so that the balance mechanism is essentially limited to starting positions on the tree. Anyway I am rambling a lot with little inclination to put this into a more systematic outline of ideas.



edit: Wulfstand you seem to be the earliest requesting a key in this thread of recent, if you are still about and still inclined then please send me a message and I'll reply with the beta key I have available.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The 'life = best stat' problem is a fundamental one really; in a HC scenario, what you're trying to maximise is not the average amount of damage you can take before dying, but the MINIMUM amount- after all, if your evasion/armor/etc. works as you expect, you're not going to die anyways, whether your evasion was astronomical or shit, you planned around taking that much damage. It's when those things don't work as you expect and the enemy suddenly ignores your evasion and gets triple crits that you need to prepare for. Chance based evasion will never be useful for that scenario. This becomes mroe and more true the easier it is for a character to die. In order to make the endgame difficult, characters can die in just a couple of hits, so the probability of having a bad string of luck kill you rises exponentially. It's like point buy vs random rolls for making a character; even if the point buy allots fewer total stats than the random rolls, you can't prepare for the rolls, so much of their benefit is wasted. Likewise, evading an attack when you're at full health and have time to heal anyways is completely irrelevant and a waste of your dodge chance.

I think that fixing this would require putting life/ES on some separate kind of growth mechanism, so that it isn't competing with other blatantly inferior stats.

Of course, this only applies to hardcore. If you're planning on playing riskily enough to die a dozen times anyways (like for PvP for example), you're better off increasing whatever stats make you the most difficult to hurt on average.

 

[Aothan]

I agree the either/or scenario depicts the value of life when it matters most and therefore in consequence why life is ultimately a more critical value than armour or defensive style. However, to fairly represent the ideas concerned that category of example is an outcome produced from the confluence of different defensive values (e.g. life, armour, block etc not to mention this is excluding tactics and other points) in the most precarious of situations. The issue as I see it is that how those instances which should altogether naturally underscore the key value of life for any given character relative to their threshold of high risk are not in effect the only set of examples where an emphasis on life functions similarly or even better than a more balanced development of defensive styles. Otherwise stated, most forms of defence seem to function in an almost redundant sense where a focus on larger health pool and the ability to heal or recover is just as feasible.

This is not the best time for me to fully qualify how these views can be (mis)understood but I should add that the majority of my characters are designed with a focus in evasion, comparatively limited health (my almost level 70 has just under 1300 total health), and with skills that accentuate fast or constant play over simply confounding the encounter system's pattern of behaviours. So I do understand the basic utility of evasion as with the defensive qualities of other approaches but have from recent experience also come to note the level of redundancy these emphases have when effective utility is compared across different examples. Whilst armour and evasion etc should in some way be of marked advantage to just focusing on life it seems the opposite is or holds largely true for most of the game's level of challenge, as such the value of defence can be reduced to whatever items confer and then augmented with little concerted effort. For armour the most obvious is Granite Flasks but also just as useful is the use Endurance Charges which are arguably a little too effective for the ease of obtaining high physical resistances values. My most recent evasion orientated character, one developed to accomplish a more focused test of evasion in its present form, was deliberately itemised to maintain evasion as close to just over 50% (in other words less than natural potential would allow) to assess the basic functionality of an evasion specialised character. In my estimation evasion works really well but for the present design a value of just over 50% evasion rating is about the most effective range, which should generally encompass encounters equal to character level and 2-3% more for rare encounter types. Any greater focus tends to begin to cost more than what dedicating along those specialties would assist with when once again compared to augmenting health. There are of course some very useful aspects to evasion that will become more pronounced as the game's mode of challenge increases in variety, namely how evasion works in conjunction with Arrow Dodging and avoiding elemental resistances (the Ranger's Crystal Skin skill nodes are decisive for my characters but only for a limited number of circumstances). Anyway, the problem is in a roundabout way how easy it is to reach a value of approximately 55% evasion, an observation that has also been similarly discovered and further explicated by other players in their own ways.

For the ideas we have raised here, I think the issue is not that the game's complexity is entirely superficial but that the comparisons which can be made suggest degrees of otherwise superfluous options. And in place of a more organised commentary instead the usual caveat to foregoing comments: GGG are very attentive to issues and though they are understandably diffident to undermining the gradual cultivation of a dedicated playerbase the directions their frequent patching updates reflect bespeak of an unusually committed and assiduous development team that wants to continually expand and refine one of the best hack n slash games available. /in something of a rush -_-

 

[Black Shogun]

Game looks awesome... but I still haven't gotten my Beta Key.... Q_Q.
Playing Torchlight 2 for now.

 

[Gregz]

Any updates on the open beta release date?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Nope.