2721

With a diamond flask up, 77%. 52% without, 376% multiplier. I’ve never really played a heavy crit build, tending to be a very defensive builder, so I have no idea how good a multiplier that is.

edit: should note, that’s at level 100. I’m going to try and stick to a build all the way for once.

2722

Thanks Bateau - I appreciate the answers. The game is good, but so damn complex.

2723

No kidding. And there are tons of mechanics that are not explained anywhere, sometimes not even on the wiki. For your first character I’d recommend something simple, like an earthquake juggernaut (marauder class, jugg is one of its ascendancies). You can find lots of build variations on forums and youtube - LiftingNerd usually has beginner friendly builds posted and they are a good starting point - but he does have a tendency to fit in setups that you don’t really need, like Cast When Damage Taken + Glacial Cascade + GMP for defense, which is completely unnecessary. And his builds are often bottlenecked by base stats - ie, he picks a skill that requires lots of INT on a marauder, which is traditionally a STR heavy class. Sometimes this is unavoidable, like for example Increased Area of Effect gem which is used by pretty much everyone and comes with a pretty steep INT requirement.

And a lot of builds don’t really come together until level 70 which is the level that a lot of good uniques have as a requirement. Just something to keep in mind if you plan on looking up any.

2724

I will either play a lazy Paladin type build since I’m really lazy, or a SRS Witch build, since I really like them. I’ll be in the league so whatever build I pick will be a ‘league starter’ build, i.e., something that doesn’t require a bunch of uniques to function well.

2725

This is one of my least favorite things about PoE. If I’m looking up builds, I’ll usually ignore any that don’t say they are a “leveling build” or “league starter build” or something similar, because I’d like to actually use the build’s skills in the first 40 hours of gameplay.

2726

SRS got nerfed pretty hard but most of the minion gems got a big boost at lower levels so something like zombies or skellies might a good way to level now.

2727

I agree @ineffablebob : as an addendum to that, I hate builds that make you respect a buttload points also when you get to the “real skills.”

SRS nerfed… noooooooooo!

2728

Bah, I thought I’d been keeping up with the changes this time around but I missed any SRS nerf. Time to go digging; my third character if I got that far was probably going to be summoner and I usually level with SRS when I try that.

2729

Oh ye of little faith, despair not for your summoners! :) I haven’t paid a huge amount of attention to the 3.0.0 changes to be honest, although I did read the manifesto thingy a while back. However, I’m confident that a balanced summoner build will still work just fine to get up into early maps, and that’s what I’ll be playing first. By “balanced” I mean all the zombies you can get, all the minion support nodes you can reach (though minion life can be skipped early on), SRS, and a skeletotem. Spectres are a nice little add-on up in the 30s but not a primary focus. Balance this with enough life/ES/resists to keep yourself alive, of course.

I’m sure the nerfs will only come into play up in the 70-ish level range. I’ve generally lost interest in a character at the point, but I’m sure you could respec into something that takes advantage of all the specifics of the minion changes if you wanted to keep going.

2730

I only noticed now that no one has posted the patch notes yet:

2731

So going through the full patch notes, some notable/favorite lines:
Added a new vendor recipe. (argh, no information on it at all. I must know!)
The Dying Exile’s voice acting has been rerecorded. Pretty short gig.
Rewards throughout all versions of the Labyrinth have been reworked and should be more rewarding for the time invested. (I’m terrible at the labyrinth so usually only run it for the skill points but I do enjoy trying to find the secrets, more rewards for that are nice)

Confusing:
Fire Nova Mine’s damage multiplier is now restricted to hits and ailments. Anyone know what this means? As a person intending to play FNM if it’s a nerf I want to know. But what is there other than hits and ailments? The explosion is a hit and if it ignites, it’s an ailment right?

2732

Weapons do have a base stat requirement, so yeah you will tend to gravitate to those your class selection can use easily, based on how your primary stat or combination of stats will grow as you level. But you can can use any weapon, providing you can meet those stat requirements through equipping gear that boosts the stat, or investing in the relevant nodes. Whether you want to do that depends on what you are trying to build and how much of a gear requirement/node investment it is going to take.

Why you might want to do that is twofold (maybe more). Every weapon type generally a base advantage over the others, known as an implicit modifier. eg, all claws will life leech, daggers increase global critical chance, maces stun , wands have increased spell damage, etc, etc.

Also, weapons have a natural affinity to some socket colours, generally defined by their stat requirement, so a mace, which requires str, will tend to more often roll with red sockets, even when applying chromatic orbs to re-roll them. This applies to armour as well - str based armour will roll less often with blue and green sockets.

So if you wanted to play a stun-lock (mace implicit) pure spell-casting (blue gem), armour based maurauder, finding a two handed mace and armour gear (ie str based) with blue sockets is going to be a challenge - that gear is potentially going to be expensive to acquire via trading as well due to it’s relative rarity. Or, you might forgo the focus on stun and stack spell damage with dual wands (int based), which roll blue sockets easier, but a marauder will need some int node investments to ultimately use them. In PoE, these are both viable options.

2733

Sweet.

You’ve suddenly made me want to make a dual wand-wielding Marauder magic user.

2734

Do it! Trying goofy homebrews is one of the great joys of PoE.

I’m still undecided about what I’m going to play. Haven’t played a Summoner in forever and she’s always a solid league starter, so I might go with that. I’m always tempted by movespeed, though, which points toward Raider. But getting cockblocked on not being able to get a decent weapon is soooooooo annoying.

Round and round we go!

2735

I haven’t tried a summoner in a while, can they solo bosses now? If so, do you have to keep on porting out to get more zombies?

2736

Berserker dual-wield Obliteration chaos wander was extremely powerful (and still is for clearing, while single target has taken a hit due to global DOT changes).

Because the kill effect on the wand scaled with your skill tree damage nodes, so with Berserker’s 40% more considered, you need just around 185% increased chaos damage to get 100% mob health as damage. Kill one or two dudes, trigger one explosion, and the entire pack dies, often chain reacting to the entire screen.

2737

Shite, I want one of them!

2738

Sure, I’ll give that a try. It does seem kind of crazy though. And I doubt I’ll get Obliteration. Any build that relies on a piece of loot to drop is a non-starter.

I’d think the buildup of such a build would be just like any other. It’s not as if I’ll be able to use wands right away. I’ll have to take him in that direction and get the same old skills at first, but then get more appropriate skills I get more Intelligence and other bonuses. I bet he will play like any other Marauder for the first month or two of play.

2739

Obliteration wands are cheap though. Maybe slightly more expensive early in the league but after 2-3 weeks the prices usually drop to 1 chaos, which you can get in 5 minutes of mapping. And I’m talking pure currency here (actual chaos orb drop), not converting all the other stuff that you pick up. I don’t know how things will work on consoles but on PC trading is an integral part of the game and I honestly can’t imagine playing without it.

2740

In 3.0 I’m going to try a variant of a RF totem (plus searing bond and scorching ray totem) Berserker build that I finally tried out in the 2 week event and had a lot of fun with. RF is pretty strong in the beta with the new DoT changes (don’t let the skill gem ‘nerf’ fool you), but people are arguing about whether the totem life nerf will kill RF totems. I’m not convinced it’s dead, at least in combo with the other two totems.

I also want to try out the new Storm Burst skill and probably try out CwC combos with it and try the new shock/chill changes out with an Elementalist.