Path of Exile is a Free to Play action RPG with a large amount of customization and playstyles. The developers have stated that they will never add "Pay-to-Win" features to the in-game store and generally the store contains cosmetic micro-transactions as well as some very useful account upgrades. It's not uncommon to see Path of Exile be cited as an example of Free-to-Play "done right".
The gameplay is similar to other arpgs although it can be a little slow to start. Builds are often very involved and can include several unique items that play off one another to create powerful effects. There are three sub-classes for each of the main classes along with a massive
passive tree that allows players to tune builds to their liking.
Upcoming ExpansionWar for the AtlasUseful Links:Wikipoe.trade -trade indexer, this is the main location to find items you want to purchase from other players
online passive tree planneritem price trackerVorici chrome calculatorofficial forumsTrading
For the majority of players trading is facilitated by looking for items on a third party indexer called
poe.trade. Once an item a player wants is found, they can whisper the seller (usually by clicking a link on the search page which auto-copies a message that can be pasted in the game client) to see if a trade can be made. Sometimes this process is quick and easy, other times it is extremely frustrating. The developers have been teasing about improvements to this system for some time, but at the moment any concrete information is absent.
To have items appear on poe.trade a player can purchase a premium stash from the in game store and then elect to have the contents of that stash tab be public which will allow indexers to see the items as well as any prices the owner may have set on those items. It is also possible to list items for sale without premium stash tabs, this can be done using a third party application: either
Acquisition or
Procurement. These tools can look through the items in your stash tabs and then auto-generate text to either be pasted in, or automatically posted to a sale thread on the forums. The sale thread will then be read by the indexer sites mentioned previously.
It's also possible to trade via trade chat or by trying to buy/sell things on the forums, but doing this is incredibly difficult and time consuming and not recommended. New players will also almost certainly be taken advantage of in either of those places immediately.
It's totally viable to play the entire game without trading at all. Many players do this, some use the newly added SSF (solo self found) feature which has a separate ladder and makes it impossible for the player to group or trade with others. Players can opt out of SSF mode at anytime, thought hey will be removed from the SSF ladder.
PA guild
There is a forum guild, here are people that can invite you:
@mccart@Twenty Sided
If you are a member of the guild, feel free to use the guild stash as you like, I generally put items in there that I would like anyone to take, and I assume most people do the same.
Posts
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Current Reliquary Returns: -100 chaos
Just one more
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
I've had two drop and sold both.
Supposedly they are in the ballpark of rarity of exalts.
So I'm looking at your tree, and I think the logic of your build is a lot like mine was. I also used an ele foil and went hard on crit (was an inquisitor).
I think there are some small improvements you can do to your tree. Like the "Weapon Elemental Damage, Status Ailment Chance" nodes you have on the bottom right corner of the tree are an overall damage nerf for you. That's because status effects applied by flat chance are less damaging than those applied by crits, and you already crit all the time with power charges and diamond flask. I would remove those points and finish getting Fatal Blade. With your crit chance the multi from Fatal Blade is going to give you like 6k more DPS according to Path of Building. Also, if reflect is becoming an issue, I'd consider picking up Vaal Pact. Finally, 1 point in Acrobatics is pretty painful. You lose an awful lot of block chance for just 30% dodge. I'd probably spec out of it or finish going down the path. Here's a tree that allocates the same 110 points that you've used, but gives you more life % at the cost of some evasion %. Changing the tree also potentially lets you drop Wisdom of the Glade and let's you get a more efficient attack speed node if you still want it.
For your skill gems, I would use Wrath over Anger (better damage range + bigger/longer shocks). In the same vein, I'd use Added Lightning over Added Cold everywhere in your build. Changing your Added Cold to Added Lightning in WS will get you another 3.5k DPS according to Path of Building. Your 6th link could be Added Cold or Faster Attacks. Remember, POE doesn't really do fractional frame attacks, so if your APS is like 6.4, you're really only doing 6 attacks per second. At least that's what I've been told. For Vaal skills, I found a three link with Vaal Grace, Vaal Haste, and Increased Duration invaluable. Vaal Haste is an insane DPS boost. I don't really know much about warchief, I just used CODT instead. If you can, quality Herald of Ice is really powerful, the percentage increased cold damage applies globally.
For gear, what you have is really good. I think your main hand foil is kind of slow, but still really nice. For jewelry, I found that at high levels when you already have great weapons, %WED goes a lot further than flat elemental damage. Here's my profile, the character is called WildBladeStrike. His tree was wiped with the 2.6 release, but you can see my gear. Only real difference is that I have sword and board and went inquisitor.
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I'm definitely planning on using wrath and added lightning, I just hadn't been able to find some affordable way to get the intelligence I needed yet. I also didn't have the chromes for a while and got frustrated chroming my chest, but I should be able to get it done now. Thanks for your help!
So, this build is at least semi-viable.
what are you running?
I've tried to get into Legacy with a SRS Necromancer since I've never got one into maps but I think the expansion hype sucked all the fun out of PoE 2.x for me
I'm ready for new content
The reason why it's a DPS drop is because there are two ways to inflict a status effect: By Crits or by flat chance to inflict the status effect. If you have a high crit chance like mccart does you pretty much are always want to inflict the status effect via crit (she has like 85%+ with diamond flask up).
Consider two scenarios:
1) You apply an ignite with a normal attack. Let's say you're hitting for fire 100 damage. Targets are ignited for 20% of the hit and ignites last for 4 seconds. So you have applied an additional 80 damage over 4 seconds.
2) You apply an ignite with a critical hit, and let's say after crit multi you're hitting for 200 damage. You're going to apply an additional 160 over 4 seconds.
I think you'd agree that #2 is better than #1. As you approach the crit cap, there are now two competing methods to apply the status effect 20% of the time it's going to be scenario #1, and the remaining amount of the time it's scenario #2 (85% *80% ~ 68%). Without the base flat chance, she just has 85% chance to apply a larger ignite.
Also, ignites don't stack so there's not value in just applying many small ignites without that one really expensive unique ring. I'm not saying that having flat ignite chance with big fire hits is bad, I'm saying that her build is already centered around critting, and with her current setup she's going to get a lot more value out of crit multi.
I'm with you, it can be difficult to roll the right colors and get int! My char was very carefully balanced to have just enough int. It helped that I started as inquisitor so there was more int to pick up on the way. Daggers sound badass, but you're right they're so hard to get. I also think that WS really benefits from fast attacking and I think daggers are usually slower. I think you get more from having crit multi on your swords right now rather than using a dagger since your crit is already amazing.
Regardless, FOR MCCART, since she is basically crit capped and an extremely fast attacker, crit multi is going to give her much more damage than flat chance to apply status effects. Can we agree on that?
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
im sorry i do not permit agreement in this thread
you must both level a zero %life/es build to 90 on hardcore as punishment
Molten/Multi with a ton of armor and regen and resolute technique.
Lots of leaping strikes!
I'm at the point where I can facetank Argos in the cruel lab but can't sit and take an entire shot from Izaro's green burst thingy, so more defense is required.
Shit just got real.
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barrage traps for single target with coated shrapnel
8)
yeah, I'm going 4X coated shrapnel already. If I use a wand I can do barrage, but bladefall for single target feels like it just makes more sense. But I plan on using Jaws of Agony so maybe I don't need another ST skill once I am that level.
Chilling in T11s atm and have pooled about 400 chaos. I wanted to roll up a HoWA next but apparently everyone does. Might just do a Necro support and glue myself to my two friends that already have HoWA characters. I could also transition to Golemmancer but that's a lot of money for no change in playstyle, just an increase in power level.
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I have and idea for a trapper, but every time I think about building it I realize leech and on hit effects are impossible, and give up on even attempting it because seriously fuck that.
Mana isn't so bad. Run MoM (and maybe EB) and a clarity. You'll be ok.
Life is a lot harder and you pretty much just have to rely on using traps from a distance and dodging stuff
CI trappers can have a hard time without either Occultist or Soulstrike
Soulstrike CI would be okay, but the build uses a different quiver anyway. Maybe I should just rethink it as a RA totem build but....ugh, RA totem.
These last 7 levels are going to be a bitch, though. I really hate leveling builds that you can't even start until x level. SR cwc Firestorm gets a little tiring after a while.
Power through!!
My actual-RF guy is up to 85 (86?). Still deathless. I've scrounged up a Doryani's Catalyst, a Kaom's Heart, and a decently-rolled Ngamahu Tiki, which basically puts me at endgame gear. I'm at 7.8k life currently, and the next several nodes I take are all life nodes (which are adding ~120 life/node at this point).
Damage has been very good through the tier of maps I've progressed through so far (mostly 8's with a few 9's mixed in). With three crit chance/life/area damage jewels, plus crit chance from Doryani's, Elemental Overload is up ~75% of the time and it's very easy to keep it up on bosses where it actually matters. I've found an Alchemist's Sulphur Flask of Iron Skin to be reasonably effective as the only offensive flask that really works with the build. I clear breaches like a boss.
That said, the build absolutely has some defensive weaknesses. Kaom's Heart provides life but not a ton of flat armor, so it's becoming increasingly crucial to keep my endurance charges up in maps. A number of map mods are also un-runnable: -max resists, no regen/less regen, and Vulnerability mods are prohibitive or close to prohibitive.
The only big remaining power-spike for me is uber lab (still missing two trials).
I expect character viability caps out somewhere before guardians, but we'll see how far I can push it.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
Is Templar a good character? I liked the look of the Inquisitor ascendancy. I realize that all the characters are probably fine, but there is still usually some bias.
Also, the start close to some minion focused nodes, could they make a decent summoner?
For totem builds, do players often use a spell totem with a chosen spell linked?
@Feldorn my manz!
Don't worry too much about how "good" your first character is going to be. Unless you're following a guide line-for-line, your first character is gonna be kind of mediocre. There is a lot to learn in this game.
To try and answer your questions:
Templars are good. All six (seven) of the base classes can be viable -- Scions aren't in a great spot right now, but you can make one work, and all of the others have various strengths that can make them good choices for any number of builds.
Templars aren't the best summoners, but you could make a reasonable one with the Guardian ascendancy.
Many totem builds are Spell Totem with the chosen spell linked, but Ancestral Warchief (and to a lesser extent Siege Ballista) are viable as well.
I'd recommend that you focus on a single skill with your first character - don't try to make a Summoner/Totem hybrid for example, just pick one or the other and try to figure out how to make that work. As you progress, the game will start to tell you when you don't have enough defense, or enough damage, or whatever.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
I'm focusing on some sort of melee build. I just want to mow down hordes of monsters.
Do people often group for stuff, or is this mostly solo?
I'd tried this out when it was still beta but never came back after release. It was pretty confusing and my need to understand mechanics ultimately had me stay with Diablo games.
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Templars are a personal favorite of mine, particularly as a self-caster base class. But it's too easy to make generalizations that can be misleading. If I said Templar makes a good "battle caster" you'll probably get all the wrong ideas and there are a lot of exploitative exceptions to any given rule, because players minmax the hell out of this game. Templars I guess could work as attackers, but I generally don't have a lot of experience running a Templar to that purpose, and don't think his ascendencies are all that straightforwardly intuitive for that sort of thing. Although I don't want to get too bogged in justifying why, since I'll just wind up whacking a lot of detail weeds that will be overwhelming for a new player.
Aside from the other advice given, given your desire to melee, I'd probably just recommend starting a Marauder.
I mostly say this because I think Juggernaut is a very resilient subclass that emphasizes defenses and player freedom. (Read: failure tolerant.)
Unstoppable is amazing. It effectively trivializes all debuffs to your attack speed, movement and even allowing you to move while you are technically frozen. Package this with a large life pool and maybe stun immunity and your guy will pretty much do what you want him to with you rarely (if ever) losing control over him.
Other than that, building a lot of strength makes it fairly easy for one to stack life. I find it's rarely bad advice to tell new players to just stack life.
As for spell totems. Yes, but it depends. Flameblast is a popular choice of circumventing elemental reflect. And it's also popular for support skills that are meant to do help you do other things better, but which you'd rather not bother doing yourself directly when you can have this automated robot do it for you. Otherwise, I just think Spell Totem is not all that good if you want to use it for main dps. There are skills which are innately totems though (i.e. Ancestral Warchief, Siege Ballista, Shockwave totem and Flame Totem) and I'd rather recommend one of those if you want a totem build. Either that or the Pizza Stick Blaster.
I get the impression Cyclone is pretty strong. Since you're moving as you use it, it actually lets you do damage while going places. And being a moving target is generally always better than being a stationary one.
So yeah: Cyclone Juggernaut sounds pretty good to me for a first build.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Lightning Warp is better when it actually has levels and Less Duration plus movement speed.