Path of Exile

Deathwing said:

Please explain. The abuse part. I know why the skills are shit to play.

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Look at the gems and their quality.

This is a level 26 tree with standard 20% gem quality and no other quality enhancers. It's got 739% GENERIC increased damage (for the skill gem).

Pyros said:

Thing is, and I could be wrong since I haven't played in forever but I assume that's still the case, the issue is that these skills are still melee. This is the same issue as melee in general, you need to be close and to hit stuff to do things. Normal summoner, you just run around, refreshing your offerings or whatever but you can do your own thing. Melee summoner, you have to play like a melee, have to go in, hit stuff, go out to dodge and so on. Means you need to build more defenses, sometimes more stats(attack speed, ancestral hits, melee range) so yeah it has to be stronger and even then it's not necessarily good enough to offset being able to sit on your ass a screen away.

Still the buffs are big so it's nice, I'm considering it, just wish I didn't have to play Templar, fucking hate that old man.

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Melee has been the meta for a few patches now. Melee is not shit to play (and Absolution is a spell, not an attack). This game makes it very easy to turn melee skills into pseudo ranged attacks anyway via extra strikes and strike range for strike skills, or by just giving slam skills huge base AoE modifiers.

I hope everyone is prepared for how annoying this skill gem imbuement system is going to become. 7 links are cool and all but how about:

"WTB Leap Slam with Endurance Charge on Melee Stun imbue"
"Looking for Elemental Weakness with Hextouch Imbue"
"Anyone got an Intimidating Cry with More Duration imbue?"

Gonna be SUPER annoying to try to min-max if you are that kind of player. Being able to, at the very least, 2 link every single one of your skill gems is going to drive me crazy.

That's why I'm planning on playing a build that completely ignores skill gems.

Arakaali's Fang spoooders here I come!

Khane said:

I hope everyone is prepared for how annoying this skill gem imbuement system is going to become. 7 links are cool and all but how about:

"WTB Leap Slam with Endurance Charge on Melee Stun imbue"
"Looking for Elemental Weakness with Hextouch Imbue"
"Anyone got an Intimidating Cry with More Duration imbue?"

Gonna be SUPER annoying to try to min-max if you are that kind of player. Being able to, at the very least, 2 link every single one of your skill gems is going to drive me crazy.

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I've been going over the builds I want to play and supports they would want along with how much it changes their PoBs. For spells and minions losing one gem level in exchange for one level one support, assuming the support is fine but not optimal, ranges from 10 to 15% more damage. That's fine. If you absolutely have to have a specific support (Power Charge on Critical comes to mind) it's going to be an egregious amount of attempts for a lot of skills. If you need exactly X support on Y transfigured gem get ready for pain.

If we assume the currency isn't so expensive/rare that you feel like a donkey every time you light one fire there are some little bonuses to be had. Offerings don't have a lot of viable supports so maybe a one in six for Increased Duration makes sense. I don't have the kind of game knowledge to know off hand all the edge cases but I trust in the community to do that work for us. Warcries don't look too bad?



If the economics demand that I never use my coins on my skills I'm going to be disappointed. I don't want it to be pants on head retarded to try and put Multiple Totems on a Rejuv Totem. I'm going to do it anyway but I'm going to cuss the entire time.

What imbues are the best for a main skill or least affected from being level 1? i haven't looked a whole lot but the pickings seem kind of slim. Pwr charge on crit and end charge on melee stun are obvious...otherwise you want supports that don't just do % more damage like spell echo is great, bloodthirst still does what you want it to, bonechill, combustion, cruelty etc
For a lot of spells i don't know if it's worth the extra 30% mana cost for 14% (or whatever the average damage multi is for level 1 supports) damage when a 21 gem is 10% ish more damage for like 4% more mana or something.

There's definetly some socket saving ones, like mark on hit etc

To the Kinetic Blast of Clustering bros hunting for Returning Projectiles may the odds ever be in your favor. Meta skill, transmuted gem. Returning projectiles do 66% less damage at level 20 and 70% less damage at level one. Odds look around one in forty to hit but there are some other green level one supports that are probably fine.

Some gems like Pierce, Chain, Shockwave, or Hypothermia can be just pure profit at even level 1. For some skills it really is an interesting choice between 21/20 and/or Vaal. For instance with spell skeletons I'd always go for a 21/20 Vaal version, but I'd have to run two swaps for bosses (gmp/pierce vs hypo/crit multi). Now I have to make the decision of potentially having something like pierce which is MORE damage and just quality of life all the time vs losing the 10% more damage from +1 level plus the safety and who knows how much extra damage from the Vaal skeletons themselves.

Most likely people will just be offhand leveling their main skill nonstop and slamming these coins on them. GCP's are going to be a real factor if coins aren't rare as you'll want 20% quality before slamming them because fuck doing uber lab to quality a corrupted gem. Honestly outside of Vaal skill specific gems, I think it's almost 100% of skills, spells included, that would benefit more from a GOOD lvl 1 support rather than +1 level.

There are also highly useful level 1 supports that you may not otherwise use, like Behead support.

And then theres the trigger gems that are technically skill gems, and probably can be imbued, even though they act as support gems (Battlemage's Cry, General's Cry, Spellslinger, etc)

This imbue system also vastly increases other trigger setups, like cast on crit, assuming you can imbue that on your trigger skill. It takes a Cyclone CoC setup from essentially a 4 link to a 5.5ish link.

Animate guardian having minion life or feeding frenzy will be crazy too.

Thinking more on it, I bet AG will be a good money maker. People generally buy AG already at level 20 and they know in advance that they're gonna be spending many divines on good ol' Bob, so shopping for one that saves a link with feeding frenzy, meat shield, minion life, even minion speed or elemental army are gravy choices.

Think you can probably even get guardian's blessing if you want to win the lottery.

I was initially excited at the prospect of getting spell totem support as an imbue so I could wear a real chest instead of Soul Mantle but I had forgotten that totem life is based not on the skill gem but on spell totem support itself.

I like some of these suggestions

And I can definetly see gcp's being the "chaos" of this league with no real chaos sinks in the game besides spamming focus/simplex ammys. Wtb 50 gcp / 1 div

Don't forget that you can merchant recipe GCPs. One 20% quality gem can be sold for one GCP. A combination of gems totaling 40% is also one GCP. I typically have one tab designated to hold all the random quality gems that drop and then the actual proper gem tab holds a more curated pile. When the gem dump tab fills up I turn them in. It might be a little foolish to do that normally relative to the actual value/time but in Mirage maybe not.

Something else to maybe consider



You can have a six link bow and a three socket Maloney's in your weapon swap to level nine gems instead of six at a time. I'm kind of bad in general at using the weapon swap as a source of income but I've never faced down needing to level a hundred Raise Spectre gems to 20.

Spectres are a very specific gem that you'd almost certainly want to get 21/20 over an extra support because you need to hit the level 25 gem level threshold. If you're a spectre-only/focused build then you may have other sources to +level them, but for people running support spectres you'd generally stick with aiming for a 21/20 so you can get your 4th spectre.