Path of Exile

That sounds like a terrible weapon to use in Hardcore, if it’s randomly playing death animations. It would drive me insane!

Well, I made my first foray into the Shaper’s Realm last night, and got my ass handed to me. Which is to be expected, really, despite having read/watched various guides to the fight. I made it all the way through all the various minor boss kills to the final Shaper fight, when he’s down under 25%, but my summoner’s spectres just didn’t have the skills to finish the fight. Not enough damage to take him out quickly, and once there were a bunch of those void floor patches, the minions kept dying (being too dumb to move off them). Assuming I can find/buy all the right maps, I’ll probably try again someday, but first some upgrades are in order.

So, first order of business, 6-link for my spectres. Which I probably should have done a while ago, but this experience gave me the kick in the pants needed to actually do it. Bought a new Vis Mortis with better stats and linked it up (took 506 jewelers and 380 fusings, first time I’ve ever actually rolled up 6 slots and links). That gives the spectres another “more” fire damage gem in the form of Chance to Ignite, which should help on the big-life bosses. And I also bought a upgrade to one of my jewel slots to give my minions +9% elemental resists, which should cap the spectre elemental resists (along with my various other bonuses).

Very first map I ran after shifting around the various gear, I got my first ever six-link drop (well, not counting Tabula Rasa) in the form of one of the armor/evasion body armors. Spend a ton of currency on six-linking something, find one right after. Sometimes I’m sure the RNG is poking fun at me.

Good job getting to the last phase on your first try! I bet most people fail on slams, ball management or the Zana phase. And yeah, spectres aren’t the optimal choice for that fight. My personal recommendation for learning fights are totems, you can recast them at will, and you generally have insane life regen and life pool from staying on the left side of the tree.

Here’s my trapper attempt from like two leagues ago:

This is the first time I am really trying to sell stuff on the market. Damn it is a black art. I mean, life and triple res, you can sell it at a decent price, but it’s hard to spot the less obvious affixes in the right combinations, with the right tier rolls that make an item worth big bucks.

Thoughts on my pricing for these? Both 4L with on-colours. The first is a quasi-6L and the second has some weird looking pricing on poetrade for similar - gets up to EX range pretty quick, but mine is held back by the fire (edit) res roll. It’s not even top tier life, but has good armour.

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Those boots are worth 2c tops. Probably 1. Mask is probably good for some aoe spectres, but it’s also missing +gem level which is huge for summoners.

Yeah, really not sure what is wrong with my poetrade-fu on those boots, I was going to price them at a couple of alchs, until I ran a search and ended up scratching my head at the results. I mean, it’s good armour and lightning res, but mediocre everything else.

Good fun running a few red maps today with @peacedog! Killed a couple of elder guardians along the way, though I learned that I need to be running my boss-fighting gear (as opposed to item qty gear) even on a tier 11 guardian. Extra 1.5k life and ~40% DPS makes a huge difference. At least if it’s the Eradicator, all that lightning is a pain in the butt.

Too bad that last run against the Enslaver didn’t count when he croaked right after doing lethal damage to your Cycloner. Spectre damage waits for no man, I’m afraid. We’ll get him next time!

@ineffablebob - that was a lot of fun and it reminds me I haven’t played a summoner since waaaaaaaaay back when and probably should try one again next league. I died a lot once we started doing high tier maps, once due to a weird “the game decided to minimize” incident, once to my not spotting frozen quickly enough (although I also realized I am playhing another character heavily with the de-freezing flask on a different hot key and probably also cost myself that way), and several times due to just dying, POE style. We did take down the hardest guardian, though.

I’m at an impasse. I need to do something for my Cycloner but I’m not sure what. I can improve his gear in a few places but we’re talking more marginal improvements. Thinking on the order of +150 hp without going nuts (for a gain of about 375 hp, on top of my 4990; +165% increased life on the tree currently)). I also have my attack skills in 5l (cyclone, Ancestral Warchief), and could go to 6l since the best defense is killing everything. I have about 2.2ex in just ex and chaos right now, but I have some stuff that might sell (nothing crazy) and a couple of intriguing items I’m about to discuss. Also using a Daresso’s salute amulet, which gives no health (but works pretty great since via Slayer I overleech and get some big bonuses from it). Mathil recommends getting a corrupted one to add +1 curses on affected enemies, but I didn’t see any for sale and suspect it might be too expensive. My current axe is about 440dps. I figure a 6l has to be another +100 dps to be really worth blowing a bunch of currency on, and is going to be expensive no matter what (but not necessarily the 6ex you pay for a 6l Atziri’s Disfavor, heh). I could try for a 6l Belly of the Beast, although they’re a bit out of my league until I generate more money (iirc 3ex+).

I run Enfeeble for my curse (he runs Enfeeble + Vuln), because I wanted the more defensive option. I could swap that out. I also run Determination. Don’t laugh. It was good for low and the low mid tier maps. It’s arguably not doing as much for me now but I don’t need the mana. So I could maybe do something else there, although I am not sure what. I am incapable of elemental damage, I should note.

Anyway, the two most intriguing drops from our efforts today. I spent about 150 Jewelrs to get both to 6s. The first is an Oro’s Sacrifice, which is going for 4ex+ at 6L. The second is a juicy chest with 1500 armor (which overall is ok defensively, of course), + 100ish life, and a 23% cold rez. I think The best crafting option on it would be either another res or maybe +str (it’s already got flat and % armor). I could 6l that. Although now that I think about it, that’s better than my current chest so I could just use it at that point.

I do have a Lightning Coil and a Lioneye’s Glare, which are probably my best other options to try and 6l and sell. I currently have 160+ fusings.

Thoughts and commentary welcome.

Wish I knew more about melee survival, but my own attempts have topped out about where you are now. I played both a Sunder Gladiator and Ngamahu Cyclone Chieftain into the 80s, and neither can consistently survive in red maps. Even avoiding the worst map mods, they’ll still die for no obvious reason to random rares or blue packs. Presumably there’s some bad luck on crits or dodge rolls happening, but I have no way to tell. I suspect the really high-priced gear options would negate some of that, but that kind of gear grind isn’t my kind of fun, even in a grind-centric game like this one.

(Slight tangent - All of that is why I keep going back to summoners and totem builds. With those it’s possible to get by with sub-optimal gear most of the time, without significant risk. I’ve been taking advantage of that with my item qty loadout. Sure helps with the map drops, although of course you still never get enough of the top tiers. And then when it’s time to face the big bosses, you can switch into the high-life/high-DPS gear.)

You mentioned Belly of the Beast, do you have one? I have two, and you’re welcome to one, but it’s not linked or anything. Still, if you want to try to 6-link something, it could be that which you can use, rather than one of the others to sell.

For auras, one thing I’ve done occasionally is use Purity of [whatever] to cap out resists in order to use better gear. Maybe you find a ring or gloves or whatever that has a ton of life but leaves you short on cold resist, then you pop in Purity of Ice to make up the difference. Or even Purity of Elements for multiple resists. Depending on what gear you can find/buy, you might be able to pick up a lot of life, and as a general rule more life is going to be better than the Determination armor bonus. Or there’s always the option to go Blood Magic and ditch the auras entirely, unlocking those big life nodes behind the keystone, but of course for that you need to move points around.

Looking at your passive tree, it looks like you haven’t done the 4th lab yet. I’d be happy to run it with you, if you like. On days when PoELab says it’s not too crazy, I’ll sometimes roll through it for the drops and chance at enchants, particularly if I get that double-enchant prophecy. I still dislike the Lab in general, but it’s much less annoying once your build is solid than it is trying to do it during leveling.

On the tree itself, you do need the mana leech from Spirit Void and the node next to it? If you’re not having mana issues, you could move those two points over to more life, maybe Path of the Warrior. There’s also several points invested in bleeding around the Bloodletting node, which I’m not sure is doing a lot for your DPS since you’re not using the Gladiator ascendancy with all its bleeding bonuses. Those points could possibly buy you some more defense, or another jewel slot, without losing a whole lot of damage. And if you do move some points around, you could consider taking the other starting nodes (left side instead of right on the Duelist start). Means less attack speed, but some additional damage and life.

Aren’t you also missing Vaal Pact? It’s a no-brainer for Slayer as it will essentially double the ascendancy leech bonuses, no?

Oh, and can you link your toon so I can see gear and gem setup?

Whooops. I;ve done it on a couple of characters, I had been thinking I had done it here too heh. Unfortunately it’s not going to do much for survivability (it will do for killing more quickly, though which is almost the same thing). I forgot about Super Cull too (that’s going to make beast capturing even more fun, not). I should be able to do Uber lab without too much trouble. Also, I lied yesterday - looked at the wrong map. Killing the guardian does not give you the Atlas bonus completion. Double Also, I forgot I was immune to phys reflect (this is what happens when you play too m any characters, heh).

I have a 5l Belly I was using on another character that I think I’ll give a try here. I remembered Kaom’s last night as I was falling asleep, which is another option. Although one requiring some tweaking of my setup. Actually a lot of tweaking and Mathil surprisingly wasn’t running CwDT/IC in his Kaom’s setup. So I am not sure I want to try that.

The gems are:

Cyclone - Brutality - Maim - Melee Phys - Chance to Bleed

Ancestral Warchief - melee phys - conc effect - (supposed to be Bloodlust, but right now it’s Brutality - FA; I should go back to bloodlust). Mathil ran these as 4l.

Blasphemy - Enfeeble

And then assorted utilty/movement stuff.

Spirit Void - yes I need it. I haven’t secured any other means of mana leech yet. Mana pool unallocated is currently ~90. I will go dry in the blink of an eye if not leeching (and I basically need to be cycloning for best survivability since I overleech via slayer). Best source for this on an item is going to be gloves or ring, IIRC (well, Gloves for sure; I can’t recall what you can master enchant on rings at high master levels). As I still have some attributes to sort I haven’t gotten around to further upgrades 9I still have a +30 mana node in action). Vaal Paact - don’t think I need it (also staying on guide here, as it were) Or rather, I don’t think it will prevent the deaths I experience. I have a good leech rate as is and the deaths are not cases where I fail to out leech the damage I am taking. I will note that additional life will further bolster my leech rate (which is. . . +168% currently) as I have 6% of max life going to leech rate. On the bleed, looks like I am supposed to take Crimson Dance too. I honestly can’t tell how much the bleeding is helping (I’m on Guide with it, as it were), but I’m supposed to run Bloodlust on the Warchief for moar damage while I bleed enemies.

My rings aren’t that great honestly. Acceptable for low and mid tier mapping rings. My gloves are decent but certainly replaceable. So I guess I’ll start by trying to secure other means of mana leech as well as the stats I need to free up gear choices/reclaim that +30 mana node. I should node that I have a couple of decent gems I lucked into but neither has max life. I should shop for some gems with that. Also going to reclaim one of those 8% area of effect nodes up by the Hobo start. That + the recovered int node would be another 10% life, and that’s before Belly. Current chest has +70 life so I would gain quite a bit from all of that. Mathil recommends Devoto’s devotion as a helmet. He also has Iron reflexes and with all his gear 13000 armor, which would probably help with survivability a little bit. But I think I have bigger fish to fry before I try to really go for crazy higher armor totals (he’s got 20% armor master enchants on both rings).

Couldn’t figure out how to link directly to my character on poe.com so I gave up. Thanks Obama.

It’s probably a d0med errand; I kind of feel like you have to be some amazing player to make melee work at high maps (rip old Immortal Call and my Reaver who got like 12 seconds of invincibility). But I want to try. I think I’m going to try to 6L that sword and sell it too.

There’s probably a way to link directly to the char but I can’t be arsed to find it. His cycloners is CyclicalAdjustments.

You’ve got that 0.4% from the hybrid node between the Voids even if you drop the two mana-leech only nodes. Of course, I have no idea if that’s enough by itself.

Something that would probably help survival a lot is putting Fortify in the Cyclone link. Since you’re using it almost all the time, you’re almost never getting Fortify off Leap Slam. Lose some damage, gain survivability - the PoE mantra.

I run Crimson Dance on my Sunder Gladiator, and the bleeding certainly does do a good chunk of damage. Unless I’m missing something, you’re under 100% chance to bleed, looks like about 65%, so in your case the bleed damage is around 2/3 effectiveness. Just another case of damage-vs-survival, I suppose.

  • You have surprisingly little life on the tree (160ish) and total life (5k). Drop the bleed nodes and go for life. Your gloves/helm/boots all can have more life in addition to the Belly you have. You should be able to get up to 6k life
  • Drop determination, it does very little with the amount of armor you have, instead run a Doedre’s Damning and upgrade the other ring to something non-shit and add Vulnerability.
  • Lions Roar is a cheap flask at this point, use one. Also run Writhing Jar - due to slayer Endless Hunger, you get an absurdly long leech stack that constant heals you.
  • Pick up Vaal Pact and be be running Soul of Arakaali with the upgraded life recovery - basically after CWDT-IC triggers you will be healing at 4500 hp/sec. Using Writhing Jar for long term overleech should cover for health regen. POB calculates you to reach max leech rate in about 1/2 a second.
  • Run Damage on Full life in place of Chance to Bleed. With the amount of overleech you should be having (3000-4500 hp/sec), the game considers you to be at full life. If you get a 6L run Conc Effect and swap Inc AOE.
  • Get the two point jewel sockets! Fill them with a cheap life/damage jewel [1c] optimally with resist [3c] or stats (e.g. int or dex), note that life + 2x damage jewels are [30c+]
  • You don’t need a high level blood rage, that will help on dex requirements

Doing all of that basically increases your DPS while increasing survival through more life and shitloads more leech. Play with Path of Building -
OLD: https://pastebin.com/7KgysLh1
67k DPS, 5k life, 1.4k max leech (2.1k spike with Arakaali), useless amounts of armor
NEW: https://pastebin.com/UiAjRrSb (tree only link)
85k DPS (105K with Lions Roar), 6k life, 3.1k max leech (4.6k spikes)
If using Chance to Bleed instead of Damage on Full Life because you don’t trust it, you maintain DPS and get 1k life and a bunch more leech. T1 HP on gear should get you to around 6.4 or even 6.5k life.

I’m supposed to run damage on full life with cyclone as part of the 6l. I guess technically chance to bleed is supposed to be the last gem (and damage on full life is the 5th) but I was too skeptical of damage on full life because of survivability issues. I’ll try that @fdsaion. I’m not sure where you’re coming from on the conc effect/increased AoE; I’m using the former on Acenstral Warchief for extra boss dps (and occasionally beast killing) but no increased AoE anywhere in terms of support gems. Incidentally I am going to ditch FA on the warchief (for Bloodlust). Oh, and Uber lab yielded a 40% increased Warchief damage for my new helm, so that’s nice.

I should say I don’t use blood rage much right now. I slotted a new blood rage because it was too high and I’m having some difficulty regearing with my int requirements as it is (I removed that +30 int node, and now if I remove certain things I have to de-gem before rewearing, heh). I am going to have to spend more than I was hoping in some cases but so be it. One increased AoE node and Spirit Void/one of those tiny mana leech nodes removed + the Int node got me the Armor/life nodes over near Maurader. I’m just shy of 5.9k life. In a test (a T10 map + uber lab) I am still mana leeching just fine with the one hybrid life/mana node.

No Doedre’s Damning yet because it leaves me in a bad resist place. Like I said still sorting out new gear, trying to leave a ring slot open. Have not respecced out of those bleed nodes yet.

More later.

I suggested Conc since it gives a lot more on the 6L compared to Bleed, but at a big hit to trash mobbing due to reducing AOE, and IncAOE as a mapping swap since there’s a lack of other blue supports to slot in as a replacement since non-crit and non-ele and obviously non-spell (Summon Phantasm on Kill? lol).

And yeah, levels on Blood Rage don’t give much important stuff. For int problems, int on amulets probably is the best way - maybe pick up a lifeless one (since your amulet also doesn’t give life). Though the main problem with int is enfeeble. Maybe trade for temporal chains?

The Arakaali I mentioned - “50% increased Recovery of Life and Energy Shield if you’ve stopped taking Damage Over Time Recently” combines really well with blood rage and immortal call. Assuming you’re not taking another DOT concurrently, IC does trigger that. CWDT-Blood Rage-IC (socket order matters) can even automate that.

Er, thoughts on pricing for these? Shame the ring does not have a life roll, but I think it should still be worth a fair bit for a phys to fire conversion build?

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Nice ring! I bid 1c on standard :)

No idea. 10c - 15c? Rares always are a bitch, especially since good rolls can be useful to someone, just you never know when they’ll show up. Especially since things probably have slowed down now (I haven’t had time to log in in over a week also)

Well, it took me a good long while, but I finally finished off the Shaper. No deaths at all this time, though there were two very close moments, and he nearly killed a spectre too. Really helps to have done the fight once before, plus having folks like @Bateau posting their videos for reference. The main difference from my first attempt was better gear (6th link on the spectres, and up to 9k effective HP with Mind over Matter) and better management on those void patches. Still not great on the latter, but at least they were spread out enough that I could keep the pets out of them with the occasional Convocation.

I doubt I’ll ever want to do regular Shaper runs, too stressful for my tastes. But it’s good to have finished it once!