Path of Exile

Eidal said:

First of all, who cares if you die in the lab. A key costs a few chaos and the opportunity cost of 15 minutes... but it's a learning process so consider it an investment. For comparison, I spent 400 chaos learning Uber Atziri this league.

Once you scale your character up to some appropriate end-game level, you're incredibly unlikely to die to Izaro -- assuming sensible build design. He isn't a high-level boss, and while doing triple key runs introduce some risk, you ought to kill him so fast he barely gets a chance to do anything. If your Izaro fights last longer than 5-10 seconds because of DPS (i.e., not because you're letting him charge up for double and triple key) then you don't have enough DPS and need more gear.

You'll also start to see the pattern that all Lab zones operate under. Example: an objective will almost assuredly be "down and to the left" of zone in, and another will be "up and to the right" from that... etc etc. My slow-as-fuck SRS build was clearing labs with some side objectives in ~15 minutes. Actual good lab builds aim for much much quicker runs.

Uber lab notes

^ Great resource. Sometimes its just better to go run maps, sometimes the Lab is a super fast 6 room run.

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It's getting to a point a league starting builds are judged by their ability to run uber lab more than anything else, which is kinda sad. I rolled FB raider, which ended up being reall bad for bosses, so I'll keep it in mind next time. I'd also mention the darkshrines giving extra keys/enchants/lab wide buffs, which can make your run piss easy.

Zaphid said:

It's getting to a point a league starting builds are judged by their ability to run uber lab more than anything else, which is kinda sad. I rolled FB raider, which ended up being reall bad for bosses, so I'll keep it in mind next time. I'd also mention the darkshrines giving extra keys/enchants/lab wide buffs, which can make your run piss easy.

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Well, that's more a factor of how most people don't like it and the speed-clear meta which produces an overabundance of everything except enchants.

Baron SRS is a pretty shit lab runner, too... but I put about 30 ex of gear on it and it made it fine.

Zombie hit the nail on the head. Ignore the flowing autism on Reddit, best Poe economy ever atm.

Also: why am I only one of two assassins showing up on SC Harbinger on poebuilds.io? People started friending me and axxin questions out of nowhere. Granted I know it just automatically posts u without signing up but wtf are there really no other assassins or are all the other ones private profile? Did I become class leader when I dinged 99 last night?

The fuck, i'd be kinda upset if I started getting spammed by a bunch of randoms for no reason.

Nirgon said:

Zombie hit the nail on the head. Ignore the flowing autism on Reddit, best Poe economy ever atm.

Also: why am I only one of two assassins showing up on SC Harbinger on poebuilds.io? People started friending me and axxin questions out of nowhere. Granted I know it just automatically posts u without signing up but wtf are there really no other assassins or are all the other ones private profile? Did I become class leader when I dinged 99 last night?

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Doesn't pick up private for sure, in one of the ES/CI ones and it doesn't see me on the ladder.

zombiewizardhawk said:

The fuck, i'd be kinda upset if I started getting spammed by a bunch of randoms for no reason.

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Eh I gave away my old terminus, bunch of 1c things I had that never sold that'd be good starting the build. Shrug maybe score some karma.

Right now I'm currently running/leveling two builds. One for mapping and shaper/guardians/ubers kills which is this build.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1940495
And this build for running Uber lab.
Forum - Duelist - [3.0 Updated] For Slayer - Ngamahu Cyclone Build (Very Cheap. Easy Uber Lab Full Key Runs) - Path of Exile
I know there are builds which can run Uberlab faster like the BV one but cyclone has been one of my favorite skills in PoE. Plus I know I can run Uber with my Doomfletch build but it seems that slayer is perfect for Uberlab with all the regen and leech.

Sextants:

So I started to use them for the first time and not sure if it's just me, but I'm not seeing the returns comparing to what they cost and what I've been getting out of maps (especially sextant blocking). Do people use sextants? Do you block or just apply a sextant (or 2) on a particular map? I might be doing something totally wrong...

You need at least two, preferably three, sextants to really notice a big difference in xp/hr. With yellow sextants going up to ~3c now, and the fact that most good maps are 1 white and 1-2 yellows, it's pretty expensive to maintain. With Racecourse fully blocked and all maps chiseled and rolled to ~100%Q and ~30% pack size I more or less sustain 1W/1Y (mainly by selling all the extra map drops I get).

I'm sick of Racecourse and want to move to a higher level map like Coves or Courtyard now, but I'm pretty sure I won't even come close to sustaining the currency required for 3Y sextants all the time. Don't really care though, I've put about 3k chaos into my current build and there's no more gear upgrades left besides paying ungodly amounts for 7% life+3 dps affix jewels and shit like that.

Edit: Should also mention that I spent yesterday chain-running T15 Beachheads and it was giving 23% xp per map at 90. Don't recall what it dropped to at 91 and 92 but it's still damned good. That was with one other person in the group, not sure how much difference that makes. Maps are worth about 18c now and I easily cleared that in currency drops from the harbingers (friend gave me all the shard drops he got). I made them all myself rather than paying anyway, about 50% success rate on Harbinger's Orbs to make 20 maps turned out to be much cheaper than buying the finished product. Just don't forget to chisel the white maps before using the orbs, I fucked up my first 3 that way.

Nola said:

Forum - Duelist - [3.0 Updated] For Slayer - Ngamahu Cyclone Build (Very Cheap. Easy Uber Lab Full Key Runs) - Path of Exile
I know there are builds which can run Uberlab faster like the BV one but cyclone has been one of my favorite skills in PoE. Plus I know I can run Uber with my Doomfletch build but it seems that slayer is perfect for Uberlab with all the regen and leech.

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I started with that build and then moved over to one that uses 6L Molten Strike for boss killing (~6.5M Shaper dps by my math, since PoB doesn't support balls very well) and just a 4L Cyclone for trash clearing. Trash isn't actually noticeably slower since the balls do all the damage anyway and I even run Fortify in that link full time. For convenience, I created a new Berserker for the main build and then respeced the Slayer to a near clone of the build that uses the exact same gear to clear uber lab without Vaal Pact.

This is the build I based it off:
(Xoph's Amulet version), and my zerk currently: View Profile - Path of Exile - Vorph (Squirts_MacIntosh if it doesn't come up, Slayer's name is Ghee_Buttersnaps).

Mechanics question -- if I'm tossing out well over 100 balls per second, using Elemental Overload and not Resolute Technique but no actual crit gear besides Starkonja, would Surgeon's be a better prefix for my silver/quicksilver/basalt flasks than Experimenter's or Chemist's? Or is there some kind of ICD on Surgeon's that makes it suck?

Vorph said:

You need at least two, preferably three, sextants to really notice a big difference in xp/hr. With yellow sextants going up to ~3c now, and the fact that most good maps are 1 white and 1-2 yellows, it's pretty expensive to maintain. With Racecourse fully blocked and all maps chiseled and rolled to ~100%Q and ~30% pack size I more or less sustain 1W/1Y (mainly by selling all the extra map drops I get).

I'm sick of Racecourse and want to move to a higher level map like Coves or Courtyard now, but I'm pretty sure I won't even come close to sustaining the currency required for 3Y sextants all the time. Don't really care though, I've put about 3k chaos into my current build and there's no more gear upgrades left besides paying ungodly amounts for 7% life+3 dps affix jewels and shit like that.

Edit: Should also mention that I spent yesterday chain-running T15 Beachheads and it was giving 23% xp per map at 90. Don't recall what it dropped to at 91 and 92 but it's still damned good. That was with one other person in the group, not sure how much difference that makes. Maps are worth about 18c now and I easily cleared that in currency drops from the harbingers (friend gave me all the shard drops he got). I made them all myself rather than paying anyway, about 50% success rate on Harbinger's Orbs to make 20 maps turned out to be much cheaper than buying the finished product. Just don't forget to chisel the white maps before using the orbs, I fucked up my first 3 that way.

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Yeah, that has sort of been my experience as I seem to be losing $ and not really gaining. Holy crap on the 3K Chaos, I'm maybe 120-150 chaos tops in my build (AW Chieftain) and it has been by far the most I've spent in anything for a character in PoE. I decided to sack up and start to slow grind up (I suck at making $ in game) for a Tukohama's Fortress. Also what the hell is up with the Exalt prices now...I swear even a week or so ago, they were going for 1/2 the chaos they are commanding now.

It adds up fast, unfortunately... the 6L 40% Belly, Xoph's, 100hp Starkonja w/enchant, and 3x T1 opal ring alone are >2k. Love the build though, and Ngamahu axe is my favorite item in the game so it was worth it. I'm sure the build works pretty well without so much investment too, I just decided this was the one I wanted to go all-in on to finish up the league.

Exalts were down to 27c at one point, then the price fixers (and everyone else who saw what was happening and went along for the ride) decided to buy them all up for the last ~4 days and now we're at 67 and still rising. I'm kicking myself for not buying up any when they were below 30, but at least I had 3 drop over the weekend and another made out of shards I got from Beachheads yesterday.

I can get into the 7k hp range with Starkonja, depending on how high I level before burnout, which was more important to me than then movement speed and extra IAS. It took me about 3 days of searching but I found a perfect (hp, don't care about anything else) one with the +3 balls enchant on it for 300c. Looks like people are trying to get 8+ ex for them now, and Devoto's can be gotten for like half that and really has no rolls worth caring about if you don't mind the hp loss.

Anyone have a couple cold steel jewels they can toss in the guild stash? I have a feeling I'll have to spend an hour+ messaging people who are afk/"busy"

Deathwing said:

Have you considered further hybridizing it by putting the molten strike setup in the weapon and wearing a Kaoms? You lose two supports for your burst balls, which I have no idea how much dps that ends up being.

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A ton. Best case is about 800 more hp at the cost of about 40% of my average damage on both types of balls. Axe balls need GMP which MS doesn't want, and MS needs Multistrike which does nothing for the axe proc. Plus the biggest attraction of Ngamahu is not having to 6L the weapon; to switch you'd have to link it up and spend 8ex on a 40% fire damage Kaom's.

Seems to be on-cast, but a bunch of individual rolls for every hit. Can test it pretty easily with this build; cyclone often takes a long time to proc EO, but molten strike will proc it instantly every time (with only 6.25% crit chance).

And yeah, from what I was able to dig up that's exactly why Surgeon's sucks.

Props to my Guardian and Necro aura pals and fuck anyone hating on the assy this seas