Path of Exile
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@Sentenryu Armor is for reducing damage from hoards of small enemies. I think you'll be fine.
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@Magus Honestly I think any sort of damage mitigation is for reducing damage from hordes of small enemies. When fighting bosses (at least in Merciless and maps) you really want to manually avoid things like Voll's slam or Vaal Oversoul's lightning beam, unless your gear is insane and/or your build is extremely tanky to the point of gimping your damage. Or so overpowered you just murder everything before it can hurt you.
These strong attacks are always telegraphed (slams) or delayed (Izaro's mortar attack, Atziri's flameblasts) so you have a chance to do that.
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@blek Yeah, I just mean that armor is mechanically designed to be extra effective against large amounts of small things.
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@Magus Yeah, I prefer armor too. Though at the same time I like ranged characters, which tends to be difficult to reconcile, unless you want to go for Iron Reflexes every time. Evasion and dodge are too random for me.
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@blek I miss the old Ondar's Guile, that used to be so good for bow characters.
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Anyway, what kinds of builds are you guys planning for Prophecy? I haven't had the time to think about the patch notes too much, but it seems like the Perandus chaos Spark meta got nerfed pretty hard (chaos conversion nerf + Spark nerf).
I heard in Perandus that Sunder+Earthquake was really good, and I don't see any big nerfs to those in Prophecy patch notes, so I might try that. Not sure about class though, I really haven't given this whole thing much thought yet.
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@blek I've seen people do Assassin oddly enough for EQ builds. Marauder is probably good, Juggernaut for more tanky probably.
I think I am going to do a CoC Cyclone build or Poison Bladefall trap build. I usually shy away from doing strong meta builds but this league I kind of want to just chill and play something OP for once.
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@blek My first build, to get some items quickly, will be an RF totem Chieftain - cheap, easy to buff up, good damage, relatively safe.
But I plan to main casting blade vortex and discharge on crit, with PCoC, with a friend who'll be playing Discharge Juggernaut.
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@blek I want to do some variation of CoC with the physical spells, but that might be too expensive to start, people say that one cheap build to start a league is caustic arrow, so I might be doing that.
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@Sentenryu That's what I did last league, and let me tell you, it works beautifully. Seriously, look at what VanillaIceTheFifth is doing on my profile. Yes, he's got a Rat's Nest, Tabula Rasa, and those insane gloves, but you don't need them to dominate everything. Quill rain barrage is fun too, but nothing is as wonderful as throwing boomerangs that multihit and drop blades, throw knives, and shoot ball lightning on most hits.
Seriously, though, I suggest Chaos spell Occultist. It's getting buffed massively from the wand rebalance. Go pure energy shield, get the uninteruptable energy shield recharge ascension first, and eventually go CI. You'll tear through everything, and you don;t even need uniques. Only spell damage and ES matters at all.
Those builds will succeed.
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@Magus what spells do you use for that occultist build? ED + Contagion? I find them slow in the early game, something I'm missing?
I kinda wanted to make a elementalist based on the heralds, where you would use something like kinetic blast to trigger all of the heralds, then see if they can chain off each other. I would need a serious chance to shock and freeze tho.
I do want to play a witch, I'm just at a loss when it comes to which spells I should use. Maybe even caustic arrow?
(I know that's an attack)
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@Sentenryu said in Path of Exile:
what spells do you use for that occultist build? ED + Contagion? I find them slow in the early game, something I'm missing?
Yes. They very slowly get faster. But the thing is, they never slow down. You fire and forget, and things will die. You use that time to dodge, collect items, and find better positions. You pretty much only need Determination.
@Sentenryu said in Path of Exile:
I do want to play a witch, I'm just at a loss when it comes to which spells I should use. Maybe even caustic arrow?
That would work really well.
@Sentenryu said in Path of Exile:
I kinda wanted to make a elementalist based on the heralds, where you would use something like kinetic blast to trigger all of the heralds, then see if they can chain off each other. I would need a serious chance to shock and freeze tho.
Only Ice and Lightning will continue to trigger eachother, but apparently it can be amazingly powerful, and ENDLESS.
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I was toying around with a Caustic Arrow Occultist, the only Unique you'd 'need' is Soul Strike. Profane Bloom would probably up the clear speed a little too.
For Chaos Spell witch the spells I see commonly are Contagion, ED (the filler / spam spell) and wither totem for distraction + damage boost.
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@Lathun said in Path of Exile:
ED (the filler / spam spell)
Okay, you have no idea how this build works I guess.
You contagion an enemy or pack, doesn't matter, and essence drain at least one of those, maybe two. Then you wither or wither totem and run.
The contagion spreads essence drain to enemies that die from them combined, meaning after the first enemy dies (rather quickly usually), you're likely to kill four packs with no more input.
You just have to get the buff in, and you're free to leave.
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@Magus said in Path of Exile:
@Lathun said in Path of Exile:
ED (the filler / spam spell)
Okay, you have no idea how this build works I guess.
You contagion an enemy or pack, doesn't matter, and essence drain at least one of those, maybe two. Then you wither or wither totem and run.
The contagion spreads essence drain to enemies that die from them combined, meaning after the first enemy dies (rather quickly usually), you're likely to kill four packs with no more input.
You just have to get the buff in, and you're free to leave.
Well yeah but vs Rares / bosses with real health pools you don't just stand around doing nothing (obviously if the rare is near other stuff you DoT that and ED it before casting 2-3 EDs on the rare to lower its HP). Bosses like Vaal Oversoul or any boss without a lot of adds a lot of the time you can just sit there and spam ED to kill it.
Obviously for normal trash packs you just contagion and ED them once and walk away, sorry for not making it more obvious what I meant.
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@Lathun Afaik, more essence drains really doesn't help; you just throw it in occasionally when one runs out, but it does pitiful on-hit damage; it only stacks on you, based on the number of affected enemies. You seriously do just mostly run away.
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@Magus It is pretty terrible, however it is better than nothing, but yeah you normally do just dot stuff up and run.
I use the term filler/spam as 'nothing else to do so might as well do this'. If there are other things to do, like kill more packs then you do that before casting additional EDs on a boss, but I generally save the boss for last when I do maps. So I sit there and use ED on the boss instead of doing nothing.
I do understand how I could be giving people the wrong impression though, so thank you for correcting me. I do understand the playstyle is Contagion->ED->Find more mobs->Contagion->ED->Find more mobs->Repeat
Edit: I use to be a WoW player, and one of the classes I played was Warlock. When I would play affliction after dotting everything up you would pretty much just sit there and spam shadowbolt until you DoTs fell off, which you would then redot and then go back to shadowbolting. That is kind of what I mean by filler, except in this case ED is also a DoT so you use it as a DoT and a filler. None of the other builds use DoTs so I never reflexively use the term filler when it doesn't really apply to this game (PoE).
tl;dr - I should stop commenting on contagion essence drain builds because I am confusing.
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TIL that "cheap" means 15 ex on the PoE forums. (that's the price of a build for occultist chaos spells)
I'm tinkering around this passive tree:
Passive Skill Tree - Path of Exile
Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.
I think I should be able to do it taking the ES nodes first.
also, I think I picked up Zealoths oath but no way to regen life, need to rethink that. I also would like to find some points to get Growth and decay but, with CI, I don't feel confortable taking any more points from ES, +252% already looks like it's on the low end.
Yesterday I tried a ranger using CA. I kinda feel more confortable with that, maybe because
I didn't take such a stride on the passive tree, maybe because it's a bow skill and the ranger looks like the archer of the bunch.
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@Sentenryu said in Path of Exile:
TIL that "cheap" means 15 ex on the PoE forums. (that's the price of a build for occultist chaos spells)
Yes and no. Yes that's considered cheap these days, but you can easily reach and clear maps with just self-found yellows.
I'd kill one of your cheap ES nodes near the scion and grab the spell damage below it. Remember that %spell damage applies to your DoT with chaos spells, so it's rarely a poor choice. Cold Hearted Calculation and Path of the Savant will be really useful.
Zealot's oath is a very good idea, because essence drain regenerates your life as it deals damage.
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Decided that my cast discharge on crit build will be a Slayer.
Passive Skill Tree - Path of Exile
Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.
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@Magus I was going for CA tho, and it is not affected by %spell damage.
for those, I think I would use something like this:
Passive Skill Tree - Path of Exile
Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.
I hope that those chaos nodes are worth more than spell damage, I imagine both 15% increased damage over time and 15% increased chaos damage stack
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@Sentenryu They do. It's a good plan.
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@Magus Bane of legends prevents the overkill leech from endless hunger unless you would have overkilled the mob from over 20%
damagelife, that's the only sad thing on that tree
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@Sentenryu Well, I intend for this to be an insane cast discharge on crit build, so I doubt that'll be too much of a problem :D
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"Performance Improvements" don't begin to describe what the update did to the game, the update cut the time the game took to open for me from 2 minutes to 4 seconds
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@Sentenryu And I may not be able to play until tomorrow :/
Maybe some today? I hope?
...also I may go straight for the discharge samurai and forget the RF totem.
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@Magus I'm playing with scyill right now, he got the unique item prophecy. this guy has way too much luck
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I literally just said on chat that I would like to upgrade the Bramblejack as long as it's not something like "kill malachai wearing it"
Well, the requirement is to kill daresso wearing it. Not much better.
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@Sentenryu Chris Wilson said so before the patch was even out!
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So:
Ended up going straight for my cast on crit build, which only has around 15% crit currently (horrible!), even with my first katana.
I kept dying because the leech just wasn't enough, when suddenly I had an idea: If I Blasphemy Poacher's Mark, I can get the life/mana gain on hit as well as the frenzy charges, and reap huge benefits! Sure enough, I'm way tougher now, since both I and my blades trigger it. I'll need far more crit, and should maybe just use discharge instead of leech already and get the dps, but this now feels viable.
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So yesterday I finished the crematorium in Cruel, after getting home late. My character is weak. At 50, I can wear my new gloves, which will allow me to use better armor without being reliant on its sockets, and use PCoC with Discharge and deal substantially more damage, which may help a lot. I'm not going to be truly powerful until I reach 5 sockets and can have PCoC apply to blade vortex too.
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So, my cast on crit build is powerful but dies constantly.
Started a bleed gladiator, alongside my friend who is going necromancer, since he discovered that zombies can use Fortify.
We tore through 3 acts and ascendancy easily, and I now feel seriously powerful.
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@Magus What abilities are you using on your gladiator? I was thinking of making a bleed gladiator using Rive but never got around to doing it. The new Voidheart ring seems good too, obviously you wouldn't need both. I guess even the 50% bleed chance from Gladiator itself might be good enough. I could never figure out what abilities I wanted to use though.
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@Lathun Lacerate and Puncture+Melee Splash. I'm currently at around 41% bleed on Lacerate, and the constant detonations are wonderful. I'm also going sword and shield, so I'll be picking up the marauder's extra 8% bleed sword node, and maybe some physical nodes in the shadow area, but mostly I'll be working on defensive stuff from now on. The tree has 24% bleed, so in cruel, I'll reach 74% :D
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@Magus Hm, sounds like an interesting build. The AoE phys explosions was definitely my favorite thing in gladiator, I am sad no one else seems to be playing one. Glad to hear it is working out so far, maybe I'll try something like that or Puncture (bow) Assassin after I finish my current character.
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@Lathun It'll pretty much be completely reliant on high physical damage swords, but since I'm using a shield, I'm plenty tough. The damage increase against bleeding enemies, though, helps. This might end up being one of my favorite builds, if it works out.
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So, @e4tmyl33t has been playing an everything-based elementalist, and I've been helping him out as a couple characters - he caught up with my discharge build, so I managed to get it to 60 finally.
I'd started with that Wideswing RF Totem build, which worked pretty great after the first ascendency, but I need to play it more; just got to cruel.
Meanwhile the bleed build is 70, and I corpseran Malachi for the challenge, but I'm still at 15. I'm going to have to go prophecy hunting like crazy if I want to get that weapon effect. Also, this build is enormously fun, I strongly recommend it to anyone with any interest in melee.
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Yeah, though now that I'm in Merciless I'm finding that I am indeed quite squishy...
Hopefully I can find some gear to change that relatively quickly. Though I am wishing the "rebuild" system was more robust (ala Diablo), since I know I tend to bounce between character build ideas a lot and having to start up a whole new character for that seems kinda silly.
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@e4tmyl33t It's not unusual to have at least 2k ES by 60 afaik, and you'll want 3-4k around 70-80.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Path of Exile:
Though I am wishing the "rebuild" system was more robust (ala Diablo), since I know I tend to bounce between character build ideas a lot and having to start up a whole new character for that seems kinda silly.
And again, this is completely by design; they even have a note saying it on the skill tree on the website. They want organic builds, not calculated ones, to the greatest extent possible. Then too, you have to level gems and such. You can probably do all the sidequests and buy the 30 regrets you need if you have to, though.
Overall, in D3 in particular, you only have like 10 skills with three options each, so a respec isn't such a major thing. In PoE, it isn't that strange to have a blood magic caster Marauder, or a Templar archer, or any number of offbeat combinations.
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While true, it means I have to start a whole new character if I want to do, say, a full chaos build at this point, which will also likely mean starting new gems as well (because any of the ones I already may have thrown XP into will be too high-level for the new char to use for a while)...
I'm the kind of guy who'll keep spare armors around in D3 so I can bounce between builds, but will only ever create one character of any given class so as not to clutter up my character list.
Guess it's just the way I do things.
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@e4tmyl33t Yeah, I try to keep spare equipment and gems, and you can reset gems by selling them to an npc with a regret (a scouring just takes them down a level), but you'll probably end up as an occultist as well (which is really quite an awesome specialization), maybe even with Chaos Innoculation - it's likely to be completely different.
Alternatively, you could try an assassin or raider with greater multiple projectiles on spectral throw, and cast bladefall on crit like I did last league. That was a huge amount of fun.
I still haven't done a proper physical caster yet... Maybe next league?
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@Magus Last league I ran EK, it was a lot of fun until I started gibbing myself on reflect mobs and maps. I went full phys damage EK (I used added fire though) and if I didn't remember to remove added fire I would die to ele reflect maps. I couldn't do anything to not die vs phys reflect maps. My build was super crappy though.
I burned out of PoE so fast this league for some reason, I did my 24 challenges and bounced. It might have just been my build not scaling up with party size that well (I was playing Bladefall Trapper).
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@Lathun For me, it was that I played so much last league, and the person I mostly play with was busy leveling as quickly as possible, so I got left behind with my stupid explosion build, dying like crazy.
Made me quit for a while. But the bleed guy made the whole thing fun again.
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@Magus I had that issue last league, my friend was playing LA and got 6L voltaxic and 6L lightning coil, that with the fact he can play 8 hours a day more than me because of my job meant he blazed ahead of me. He would always invite me to play together when I logged on and I basically would just sit there and do nothing because the entire map was dead in 3 lightning arrows so I got super bored until I got a 6L myself.
This league he is doing the same exact build (who knows why, Voltaxic got nerfed and he didn't get a 6L) so he burned out too.
Sadly my brother did an aura guardian build....and has no one to play with. I logged on and ran stuff with him but eventually he just got bored and quit too. He is only home on Tuesdays and weekends though so he really didn't have a lot of time to play to begin with.
I really want to do a melee tanky build but all the melee skills are so annoying to use, maybe I'll wait until they add some cool new ones.
No idea why I just typed all that though
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@Lathun said in Path of Exile:
He would always invite me to play together when I logged on and I basically would just sit there and do nothing because the entire map was dead in 3 lightning arrows so I got super bored until I got a 6L myself.
Yeah, my friend just said, 'its more fun solo, i get more uniques' and left me to die to brutus. BRUTUS!
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@Lathun said in Path of Exile:
I really want to do a melee tanky build but all the melee skills are so annoying to use, maybe I'll wait until they add some cool new ones.
Seriously, I just use a shield and 1h sword. I use shield charge, leap slam, lacerate, and melee splash heavy strike. Those last two mainly. But that's a really fun skillset imo.
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I need to rejigger the sockets on some of my stuff and get my spell totem gem back into the mix. Easier to let that throw out firestorms than it is to bounce between that and Arc myself.
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@Magus my brother was once rushing through the game (have to get to that dried lake farming asap) and got oneshot by Brutus, I didn't even know he could hit that hard.
Lacerate looked like it could be fun, but it doesn't really feel...melee to me. I know it is via gem tag but I don't even consider Reave melee since the projectile range goes so far with 8 stacks. Unfortunately everything in the game dies so fast now if you don't have a ranged component to your skill or an AoE the skill is very likely bad, or just so slow that when playing with other people cough bow builds cough everything is dead before you can even get to it.
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@Onyx it has been a while since i played, but i am almost finished on normal, at lvl 40 i think, i honestly dunno
i am doing build wise, but i am finding it fun, cool story line
