Merciless Izaro wasn’t so bad once I replaced my two crappy 4L pieces with things with actual life and resistances and defenses. Still hate the Charge Disruptor version of the fight.
70 and ready to murder everything. Res capped (not weakness capped). Chaos is -8. Still feel horribly squishy at 3.6k life / 1.1k ES. One item left to “complete” the build (Call of the Brotherhood ring), which is somewhere between 14 and 25c depending on rolls. Other’n that, it’s just picking up really excellent items/jewels/flasks instead of merely good ones.
Haven’t touched a map yet. Early tiers are going to fly by.
After stupidly getting my latest Sarah killed by one of those Roomba things in the Labyrinth, I decided I wanted to try something different that was viable for SSF. Went looking in the forums and found this Fire Nova Mine build, which says it works OK for maps with no specific uniques needed. So I rolled up a Shadow and have him up into A1C now. The miner playstyle takes some getting used to, but now that I’m comfortable with it he’s rolling along nicely. Those fire nova mines really eat through screenfuls of enemies. I’m a little concerned about defense in the next 20 levels or so, but so far he’s survived fine largely by keeping his distance from everything.
If you’re a caster than the new MoM is worth thinking about. Easy 1-1.5 extra buffer if you invest into some mana nodes and some flat mana on your gear.
Did I mention that I switched back to my SRS Summoner and that she’s now absolutely crushing it? I just hit Act 2 Merciless and she is cremating the opposition. That’s using SRS, Zombies, and Spectres (and the spectres are whatever ranged mobs I can scrounge, since I’ve got the spectre gem linked to GMP). She feels a bit squishy but I really don’t have room to add any fancy cast when damage taken stuff to her.
I think I need to be a bit more aggressive about upgrading my gear - at least the non-uniques I’m toting around. But tell the truth, most of the time I’m fine. And the zombies are durable enough to tank anything while I hide behind them shooting my little flaming skulls. Fun!
What are you running for defenses? Decoy Totem, man, Decoy Totem. And I don’t think I could survive without a CWDT setup on a caster. Eww. On a summoner, my preference is for CWDT + Tempest Shield + Arctic Breath + IC. But you could do without the Arctic Breath and throw it on a weapon/shield, if you just don’t have the 4L space.
I realized that I had totally overlooked two incredibly important thing on my Inquisitor: Ghost Reaver (Leech goes to Energy Shield instead of Life) and dropping Clarity for Arctic Armour. Those two together have made a significant improvement to my tankability.
FWIW, also, I really dislike the 2.6 life/ES tree in the guide I got the basic idea from. It goes down to the Wheel o’ Life, but wastes like 8 travel nodes to get there. Sad! Much better to pick up the excellent life clusters like Purity of Flesh and whatnot that are much closer.
Feeling pretty happy with my tree at this point. I’m at the point where I’m smooshing low-tier maps and just kinda waiting/grinding for better map drops to push deeper into the Atlas.
In a game that forces you to build in a “kill them before they can kill you” way to survive much of the content, putting reflect mobs in the game is just horrible game design. It’s absolutely stock that players are going to have way more DPS than they have defense, it’s just the way the game is designed. It’s one of the many choices they make that ultimately kill the game for me. It’s a great foundation, but there are so many things just like this that add up to make the game more frustrating in the long run than it is fun. Bonus points for putting reflect mobs off screen that can one shot you. Sort of infuriating really.
Been leveling my latest Sarah over the last few days, and I found what may be my favorite unique yet. The Gull has the cool ability of occasionally spawning mini-shrines for you, and also increases the effects of any shrine you touch. I’ve had times when I’m running around with three different shrine effects for 30 seconds or so, and once a double speed effect (a normal one plus mini version) that made me so fast I was afraid to move lest I run into enemies before the display caught up. Once I find a good +2 minion gems helm I’ll probably have to drop it, but man, it’s a great item for leveling.
I’ve been leveling a marauder to create a lazy man’s build that uses tons of ignites. Unfortunately it doesn’t come together until you hit 68, so I’m leveling using a Facebreaker and Ancestral Warchief. Only 25 levels to go (to hit 68).
L35 Firestorm Witch so far after firing it up a few days ago. Following a FS build with zombies as primary distraction. Crappest gear ever (though resist is pretty good), but FS just wrecks shit. Not used a leaguestone yet…should probably get to that.
Also low level leaguestones have a restricted (area) level range, so definitely use them.
Haven’t played at all since the first week (I got up to L88 then), but probably will return. I have a really fun character, just needs better gear, and I recently just thought up a feasible upgrade for single target damage.
Lost my latest Sarah at 80, which is probably where I’ll leave the Legacy league. For a while, anyway. I like PoE, but the time investment is so high. Playing SSF-HC is a good way to limit myself.
I haven’t been playing much recently, because, as you mention, the time investment for PoE is so high, but you might have inspired me to roll a SSF HC character just for the heck of it. A summoner seems like a reasonable choice since it offers a fair bit of safety.
Edit to add: early going was rough (heck, I almost died to that firestorm NPC you run into in the second zone!) but once you get SRS things get a whole lot easier.
Man, anyone that can play HC in POE… I literally wouldn’t do that if you payed me lol. Maybe you guys should start a masochists club or something…sell T-shirts maybe…
Safety from the game, yes, to the extent that’s possible. Safety from your own stupidity, not at all. Reference Legacy Sarah numbers one and two. :)
You’re not wrong! Sometimes I’ll play softcore for the first couple of characters in a league so I can scout out the new dangers. But I like having that extra dangerous edge of the hardcore mentality, even if it is masochistic.
