Path of Exile

Deathwing

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Learn from my league start mistakes/experiences. By league start, I mean no uniques, 4L max, no expensive anoints, no benchcrafts that cost chaos, 2 T3 affixes on weapons, 3 T3 affixes on everything else. Basically, builds that you can reliably progress your atlas with no market interaction.
  • Splitting Steel Champion. I failed to account how this would perform indoors. Quite easy for projectiles to return past you, neutering its single target. Hugging the boss is dangerous before defenses come online.
  • PConc Pathfinder. Most people do Grace, I decided to try petrified blood + flask since I was planning to later go into phys taken as. IDK if Grace would have made much of a difference, just felt really squishy. I would frequently forget to press life flask. Would it be OP to allow utility flask crafting on life flasks as part of Master Surgeon?
  • Corrupting Cry Champion. Novel idea, really like that they are being creative with corrupting blood. Not sure this was the best application. Even at ~1.5s, you're constantly held back by the cooldown. I can easily move a pack through the warcry's aoe in 1.5s. This might be better as a non-league-starter build when you can slap a whole ton of warcry CDR tattoos on your passive tree, get it down to ~1s. I still might want more, tbh.
    • Can still leave stragglers easily. If you've played Bane Occultist, think of the difference Profane Bloom made for your clear.
 

ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
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Your (poor) experience with splitting steel champ is wild to me. That was one of the easiest/smoothest melee starts I've ever had. Yea beltimber and paradoxica are probably very expensive early on, but you don't need those to blast red maps - ichimonjis are 1c on day one of the league and you can dual wield those and aura stack your way to your first watchtones with ease. Hell you could even bail on splitting steel if you just weren't feeling it and play literally any strike skill with the aura scaling available from the ichimonji setup
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
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Your (poor) experience with splitting steel champ is wild to me. That was one of the easiest/smoothest melee starts I've ever had. Yea beltimber and paradoxica are probably very expensive early on, but you don't need those to blast red maps - ichimonjis are 1c on day one of the league and you can dual wield those and aura stack your way to your first watchtones with ease. Hell you could even bail on splitting steel if you just weren't feeling it and play literally any strike skill with the aura scaling available from the ichimonji setup
Right, but I didn't want to play just any strike skill. I wanted to abuse returning projectiles and Splitting Steel seemed like the best candidate. I'll prioritize a new interesting character to play over a decent league start, especially given the previous league only lasted a month. That said, I'll admit I was perhaps too quick to dismiss the build after discovering the environmental unreliability of the returning projectiles.

How was splitting steel smooth for you last league? VC required a gold oil.

I looked into Ichimonji's. Decent for the mana reservation efficiency. But the dps loss compared to a comparable 2H weapon is severe.
 

Xevy

Log Wizard
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The rewards are bonkers now. Stacks of 19 chaos and shit in round 3. 6links in round one. The Reddit crybabies just make the rich richer. Good thing I bought 180 coins last night for 60 chaos. I think I was ~70 coins in when I almost recouped my costs in RAW chaos. Shit was bonkers then. Even more bonkers now.
 
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Xevy

Log Wizard
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Well, apparently I don't even know how bonkers. It's mega bonkers now but was giga bonkers this morning. I'm getting divines round 3 and stacks of almost 20 chaos and sets of 5 tattoos at once and I get a stack of 2 mirrior shard cards (275c each), BUT my guildmate who was playing this morning before the alleged stealth nerf was getting 3-5 divine stacks in his matches. He said he got 15 divines in something like 5 tournaments. I think they did a generic buff to currency drops and forgot to take it off the high end currency which means some fuck out there probably hit 7 mirrors in a match.
 

Aazrael

Golden Baronet of the Realm
2,516
8,897
I tried the Trial only two times but gave up when I did not understand how to kill totems and got stunned and owned.

Whats the best tactic for them, play defensive or offensive? I'm Righteous Fire so need to be in melee range for most damage.
 

Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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I tried the Trial only two times but gave up when I did not understand how to kill totems and got stunned and owned.

Whats the best tactic for them, play defensive or offensive? I'm Righteous Fire so need to be in melee range for most damage.

Flankers are the units that make a bee line for the enemy towers. They're the most important positions on your team.

If you yourself are damaging a totem and you take any hit you're stunned for five seconds but you can break off a channel without any consequences.
 
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Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
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as RF you'll want to do the defense strat most likely. fill in flankers first. sit around mid of your base, kill every enemy you see, grabbing aggro and distracting them from your allies, and totems. be sure to watch top and bot lanes just out of screen vision as well. especially stealth/teleporters/sages. kill the enemy over and over and over, until their timers are big enough for you to go on offense.

if you get hit, while channeling a totem, you get stunned. you can insta release, but still easy to get hit offscreen by an archer. so typically you'll want to kill everyone first.

CC is very effective. blind/stuns, temp chains, etc.

with my cold dot build, i have to play D. and often lose a few towers top and bottom. esp as my dps falls behind. so, I just play defense on the 4-5 on screen towers, and kill over and over. eventually Ill have enough time to kill. move forward to their base. kill defenders, then respawns and take a tower out. fall back to make sure I didnt miss an insiv flanker, and repeat.

mass mirror archer with blind/stealth can probably cheese it. haha.
 
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ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
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Right, but I didn't want to play just any strike skill. I wanted to abuse returning projectiles and Splitting Steel seemed like the best candidate. I'll prioritize a new interesting character to play over a decent league start, especially given the previous league only lasted a month. That said, I'll admit I was perhaps too quick to dismiss the build after discovering the environmental unreliability of the returning projectiles.

How was splitting steel smooth for you last league? VC required a gold oil.

I looked into Ichimonji's. Decent for the mana reservation efficiency. But the dps loss compared to a comparable 2H weapon is severe.

Yea I didn't have cascade until like late in to yellow maps, just played splitting pretty straight and the damage felt completely reasonable the whole way through.

It wasn't really until t16s and pinnacles that the return shotguns started to really feel important for damage, all the rest of the normal content just scaling impales and crits did the job fine

I guess I could see it struggling before you get a perseverance? But by the time you're done with whites and are 80 those should be <5c
 

Deathwing

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Yea I didn't have cascade until like late in to yellow maps, just played splitting pretty straight and the damage felt completely reasonable the whole way through.

It wasn't really until t16s and pinnacles that the return shotguns started to really feel important for damage, all the rest of the normal content just scaling impales and crits did the job fine

I guess I could see it struggling before you get a perseverance? But by the time you're done with whites and are 80 those should be <5c
Maybe I'm just picky. Maybe PoE has made me anxious. But getting into slog fights, which must have happened with just splitting steel and no return proj, makes me think I'm just baiting an eventual one shot. Move or die. Kill quick or die.

Maybe I should try a build that can actually stand still.
 

ronne

Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
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I mean if you're on the usual champ aura setup you don't have a ton to be afraid of besides huge degens. You pretty quickly hit like 40k evasion/armor and have fortify, there isn't a whole lot that is actually going to kill you with hit damage until well in to red maps.

Once you get to reds it gets a little scary until you cap suppress, then it's back to really only caring about degens again until pinnacles
 

Apostolos

Golden Knight of the Realm
430
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I have a crafting question. What is the best method to get a 3 res helm from a scoured item? I think I am giving up on running labs for my enchant.
 

Xevy

Log Wizard
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I have a crafting question. What is the best method to get a 3 res helm from a scoured item? I think I am giving up on running labs for my enchant.
Several options.

-Essence Spam either of the big 3 (or chaos if you like) until you get 3 resists or 2 and an open suffix to craft a resist if you like
-Prismatic Fossils with resonators (more annoying and pricey probably). Just spam and hope for 3 or 2 and an open suffix. Don't use frigid/scorched as they block out cold and fire rolls respectively.
-Harvest blast any of the elements.

The cheapest is probably either t2 essences if you don't need T1 and hoping for one to two more resists or harvest blasting a cold/fire/lightning roll on it and hoping. Both can be a chaos per chance or so though, so if you're on a budget I'd just use my own supply.
 

Thregin

Blackwing Lair Raider
743
228
I didnt run the simulation too long but it seems to be about 1/130 essences to get either
T3 or better resists or
T3 life+T3 res+open suffix to craft last resist.
 

Chris

Potato del Grande
18,237
-312
For Return Projectiles abuse, I've got that with GMP, Spell Echo and Ice Spear on Sniper's Mark cursed enemies. Deadeye so Fork and bounce off walls too.

The entire screen is Ice Spears.

Dunno if it's just a meme build but people are in end game with it: poe.ninja
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
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The only real abuse part of that is Sniper's Mark. GMP and Spell Echo act as straight multipliers the same as without return.

How are you getting fork?

Might be fun if it could be done on an ascendancy with actual defenses.
 

Chris

Potato del Grande
18,237
-312
The only real abuse part of that is Sniper's Mark. GMP and Spell Echo act as straight multipliers the same as without return.

How are you getting fork?

Might be fun if it could be done on an ascendancy with actual defenses.
Fork is from Deadeye Ascendancy, only works on first stage of Ice Spear.

EDIT: I meant Chain.

Not sure if the Sniper's Mark projectiles returning shotgun or not, assuming not but it's just funny having all that shit fly everywhere.

I may try Tornado Shot instead but I've built for cold damage now...
 
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