Path of Exile

For the new peeps.If you want to get some currency/gear early on definitely do Delve runs. Those 4 slot resonators fly out at 2.5 ex each and they are much more common than exalted orb drops. When you delve definately run back along it if it's a long one and find the nooks and crannies and walls to blow up. There's tons of currency in those boxes. Before depth 300 Delving is super easy and nice XP. Oh and the city nodes you can hit delving are great for building up a base of maps/chisels and shit like that.

BrotherWu said:

What do you guys recommend for a site that describes a few builds for a noob? I'd like to pick one from a few that sounds fun and just says do this then this and here is why. What I don't like is the notion that I have to research this shit for hours before I even start and without any context in order to avoid finding out a few weeks from now that I have been wasting my time.

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This is one of the reasons I have a hard time getting on board with the "PoE is the best ARPG" train. The learning curve is pretty high, and if you naively try to play the game like you would any other ARPG you'll find your character sucks bigtime.

Also, IMO, the core mechanics of the game are simply less engaging due to the model of 99% of your character development being passive attributes around a single hyper-optimized skill. It ends up being more like playing a spreadsheet than playing a game in the sense that there's no diverse selection of skills that you're strategically choosing between on the fly. Troubleshooting your builds gets hard at the high end, too, without a lot of experience, since the gameplay response is so fast that you're either exploding entire screens of enemies at once or you die instantly to something with very little chance to react and very little feedback about what you did wrong. Even if you know your build is, for instance, weak to certain enemy modifiers that still barely helps you because the game speed and UI are such that it's practically impossible to inspect and enemy for attributes and then decide to avoid them.

Don't get me wrong - PoE is still a fun game and I still play it. It's just not the end-all, be-all like it can be hyped to be.

Poe.trade is easily the worst of the three now, and there's pretty much no reason to not just use the official one anymore. Really wish trademacro dudes would rip out the poe.trade support, or at least allow an option like poe.ninja does.

Yeah, there's a etiquette to trading.

Find your item on poe.trade
Copy and whisper player
They invite you to group
Right click their name and visit their hideout
Trade

Make sure what you are buying is exactly the same as the item listed - as in the rolls (stats) etc. A high roll on certain items can make them super valuable. And you could buy something and the numbers are not the same even though the item is.


Once you start trading it's easy, you have to do it a fair bit late on once you start changing currencies around.

Yes, we have a guild, although it's later in the league so not as active, but worth getting into.

You can't really mess up delves. Now certain encounters won't respawn if you blowup the side passages and whatnot, so you can't really "farm" that section over and over again. But most people will just continue going sideways and down when delve farming.

Don't mater if you mess them up - the death xp loss doesn't really start to hurt until 90 or so. If you are delving definately get a flask to stop/cure chill/freeze effects and a granite flask.

BrotherWu said:

What do you guys recommend for a site that describes a few builds for a noob? I'd like to pick one from a few that sounds fun and just says do this then this and here is why. What I don't like is the notion that I have to research this shit for hours before I even start and without any context in order to avoid finding out a few weeks from now that I have been wasting my time.

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I would ask what type of character do you want to play? Melee, minion, or spell/range? Glass cannon or tanky? If you can give us that, we can give you plenty of suggestions.

I wouldn't get super caught on researching for hours worrying that you have wasted your time. Yes you can really optimize your build but builds have MANY variations that are able to go end game stuff. I would guess a good portion of the players don't do uber elder and stuff like that. And even if you get to a point where you kind of hate your build, it's not hard to level back up and get back to end game.

Holy shit all these Diablo refugees coming in waves. Welcome exiles.

Captain Suave said:

This is one of the reasons I have a hard time getting on board with the "PoE is the best ARPG" train. The learning curve is pretty high, and if you naively try to play the game like you would any other ARPG you'll find your character sucks bigtime.

Also, IMO, the core mechanics of the game are simply less engaging due to the model of 99% of your character development being passive attributes around a single hyper-optimized skill. It ends up being more like playing a spreadsheet than playing a game in the sense that there's no diverse selection of skills that you're strategically choosing between on the fly. Troubleshooting your builds gets hard at the high end, too, without a lot of experience, since the gameplay response is so fast that you're either exploding entire screens of enemies at once or you die instantly to something with very little chance to react and very little feedback about what you did wrong. Even if you know your build is, for instance, weak to certain enemy modifiers that still barely helps you because the game speed and UI are such that it's practically impossible to inspect and enemy for attributes and then decide to avoid them.

Don't get me wrong - PoE is still a fun game and I still play it. It's just not the end-all, be-all like it can be hyped to be.

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This is a very single minded way to play though.

One of the reasons why SSF is so popular, is you basically do the opposite of this. play it by ear, to get the best possible results from items drops, etc. And if you do get a cool build enabling Unique. start an alt.
Look at the private league suggestions.

One of the things PoE was BUILT on, that many other arpgs screw up is, that "fuck it, start an alt" thing PoE has. you are expected to reroll often in PoE. And theres game design and intent built around supporting that.


Also, hyper focus on 1 single optimized skill results in many many builds. Often even for that single skill.
Compared to say grim dawn/torchlight, were sure you have other skills. But every character ends up exactly the same. Because any given skill has 1 maybe too modifier options.
A witch in poe has thousands of builds. An embermage in Torchlight has what 5?

Caliane said:

This is a very single minded way to play though.

One of the reasons why SSF is so popular, is you basically do the opposite of this. play it by ear, to get the best possible results from items drops, etc. And if you do get a cool build enabling Unique. start an alt.
Look at the private league suggestions.

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I play SSF mostly because I don't find trading all that fun. It's virtually guaranteed that you won't find the items to enable your first character to experience all the content. If you're lucky enough to get good items (if you can even recognize what they are wihtout looking at a guide, given the byzantine interactions between items and skills and passives), then you have to either ignore it and keep grinding on the very low chance you'll find what you need for your current character, or follow a guide to build around the item you just got and do all your leveling over again.

Caliane said:

One of the things PoE was BUILT on, that many other arpgs screw up is, that "fuck it, start an alt" thing PoE has. you are expected to reroll often in PoE. And theres game design and intent built around supporting that.

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Yes, but the process isn't all that fun. I am unspeakably tired of running full-tilt through the same acts all over again collecting skill books. Even for an expert player, doing this solo takes hours. The game needs a "let me start playing at my unlocked endstate" option for alts. (I know your alts have access to everything you've previously unocked in your hideout.)

Caliane said:

Also, hyper focus on 1 single optimized skill results in many many builds. Often even for that single skill.
Compared to say grim dawn/torchlight, were sure you have other skills. But every character ends up exactly the same. Because any given skill has 1 maybe too modifier options.
A witch in poe has thousands of builds. An embermage in Torchlight has what 5?

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Having a numerically high number of builds is immaterial if whatever you get is one-dimensional to play. There's huge nominal statistical variability in PoE's skill system, yes, but by the time the character is built the gameplay experience you get still falls into a small number of buckets (~10?) . I'd rather have 5 builds that result in dynamic, interactive play than 1,000 that functionally the same and only cosmetically different. (For the record, I didn't think Torchlight's design was all that great either.)

Please help me understand how any other ARPG is not "one dimensional". I'm genuinely curious because I never played Diablo or Torchlight at a high enough level. So I'm trying to understand what I'm missing out on.

Penance said:

Please help me understand how any other ARPG is not "one dimensional". I'm genuinely curious because I never played Diablo or Torchlight at a high enough level. So I'm trying to understand what I'm missing out on.

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They all are in a certain sense, obviously, but almost every build I've ever tried or seen in POE involves essentially one attack skill, one movement skill, and an entire mountain of passives and buffs that require no action- or decision-making from the player. In many other ARPGs, you have a stable of 5-6 skills available from which you'll draw as the situation requires. That's not the case here. Resource and cooldown management isn't a thing in PoE that I've seen. Due to the pace of the game you either have enough leech/regen to spam your skills and be invulnerable or you die horribly.

There's just not a lot room for user input (skill) that makes the difference between a character being sucessful or not. You've either stacked enough multipliers into your character sheet that you're successful or you aren't. Again, that's true for the entire genre to some degree, but PoE seems farther down that end of the spectrum that most everything else I've played.

Before everyone jumps on me here, let me reiterate: The game is fun. I still play it, I just still think is has some substantial flaws. On net it's less flawed than the modern alternatives.

yeah, hes talking about clearspeed meta. PoE over time has evolved into a gotta go fast direction, where you do just obliterate everything. dont really pay any attention to what you are killing. treating every npc the same. The only danger is poorly rolled map mods, which is solved by IDing all maps, and not rolling reflect, etc.

Beyond, harbringers, Essence are all attempts to put a bit more planning, back into the game. life regen in beastiary/essence, holy shit I have a use for frost bombs anti hp regen?!

This is of course, not actually different from every other arpg. D2 certainly had teleport around with enigma, instantly kill everything with hammers, or whatever you chose.
its of course the optimal strategy. 1 click kill. So, obviously more advanced builds will move towards that. Or even further with autobombers.

Captain Suave said:

There's just not a lot room for user input (skill) that makes the difference between a character being sucessful or not. You've either stacked enough multipliers into your character sheet that you're successful or you aren't.

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This is a common line of thinking from people who suck, but it's not actually the case at all. Player skill absolutely has a huge impact on what you can do with any given build, and the whole point of your build is that it represents *your* play style. You can play a super fast auto-bombing boom boom blowup fuck doll, but that's only because *you* want to. There are many perfectly viable play styles that can do the highest level of content, figuring out how to do it on your own is what makes PoE great.

James said:

This is a common line of thinking from people who suck, but it's not actually the case at all. Player skill absolutely has a huge impact on what you can do with any given build, and the whole point of your build is that it represents *your* play style. You can play a super fast auto-bombing boom boom blowup fuck doll, but that's only because *you* want to. There are many perfectly viable play styles that can do the highest level of content, figuring out how to do it on your own is what makes PoE great.

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This is true, thus why my lack of skill always leads me to "What can I do with jugg this league!?"