Ah, so only one zap per time interval per cast? Think I was reading about a different power like that yesterday (specifically said on the wiki it can’t shotgun…think it might have been spectral throw). Actually, it sounds like they made a change a couple of years ago that prevented all spells from doing that, presumably to keep multiple projectile supports from being mandatory.
Anybody try SRS totems? That seems like it might be fun.
Frost bolt totems with 2x Frozen Trail jewels gives a similar “woah, that’s a lot of projectiles!” feel, FWIW. Great for fast clears. Mediocre for bosses as the single target DPS is pretty “meh.”
I had a spark build for a while that was like that, so much fun.
On a side note POEs download/update/patch whatever is just seriously bad.
I finally got around to making a trapper again - the new Tinkerskin chest is amazing for it and it really gives trappers what the Saboteur ascendancy should offer in the first place - some form of sustain. I found a pretty good idea on the forums that uses Chin Sol bow and uses Shrapnel Shot together with two Collateral Damage jewels and Point Blank keystone for truly disgusting single target burst damage. I’m talking half or more of t15 boss’ hitpoints in one salvo (11 traps), depending on how they spread. Plus it’s dirt cheap to get going, you can slot Shrapnel Shot in Deerstalker boots and get an instant 5 link that way.
Yep, that was the problem with my fire trap saboteur - glass cannon. SSF only and probably shit gear from memory, but relying solely on ES is a sure way to get yourself killed.
I solved that problem by going pretty heavy on evasion and I took acro/PA. Doing t15 without too much issue, even though I only have 4.3k life at the moment.
Char profile can be seen here (still missing one crit cluster and some life nodes, everything else is final): https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Bawtzki/characters
Are there any self-sustain options for mine build saboteurs? Tinkerskin seems to benefit traps only.
Not really :(. One of the new pantheon powers helps a lot though (health flasks recharge if you don’t use them for a few seconds). Since you don’t use Tinkerskin you can go hybrid and if you manage to stack 3k or so ES that should be enough to keep you going rather comfortably. But you’ll need lots of mana regen for mines. It’s so bad that these specs often choke on prolonged fights because they can’t sustain mana without clarity/flasks.
Yeah, my fire nova miner has been abusing the health flask recharge power quite a bit. Sustaining mana I just do with a combination of vaal clarity and a mana flask. I don’t really have a problem running one mana flask; since it’s always up I just roll it with a heat suffix and being permanently chill/freeze immune seems a good enough side benefit.
It’s not like I need a damage flask there anyway although admittedly I haven’t gone to the guardians yet, t15 has been my max and is likely to remain so as I never really feel the urge to go any higher.
In general, I guess Tremor Rod is still the single unique in the whole game that gives any benefit to mines. Kind of a weird omission.
I recall having to hit the mana flask pretty hard on my trapper as well.
Heirophant is a different kettle of fish - rarely starving for mana, except for the odd time some blue or yellow mob pack seems to do something affect regen (I assume there is some mob leech affix at work?)
Level 80, highest I have been in POE, exploring the atlas for the first time. Finally ran merc lab this arvo and, while admittedly rather over-leveled, was surprised that I demolished Izaro so easily. Only close call I had was tanking a couple of traps during the run. Bleeding is my biggest worry these days - it hurts so quickly sometimes I don’t notice until very late and only hit the right flask just in time. I should probably default to that flask, I guess.
Only map boss to cause me drama so far was Vaal Pyramid, but I gather that is pretty usual. Even the other ‘dangerous’ ones have not posed much drama, but that is on account of dropping Fire Pen from my golem set up and slotting a decoy totem (supported by minion and totem ele resist in a +2 minion helm). Decoy totems are extremely good defensive protection and fit in nicely with the Heirophant playstyle - drop three lightning totems, a decoy, Orb of Storms/PCOC to stack power charges then pull back and wait for the screen to clear.
My other worry is still effective life. Sitting around 3400/600 L/ES, which I think will be too low by mid tier maps, even when letting my totems do the heavy lifting? Still got a fair bit of scope for improvement in gear and passive tree, I suppose, but was hoping to pick up more crit/lightning damage nodes. I have a couple of points up my sleeve so need to look closely at tree optimisation.
If I played this game on hc, I think I’d lose every single character to bleeding if they weren’t one-shot. Lol, a couple of days ago, I was picking up loot after a fight and keeled over.
Hit a boss in maps yesterday I couldn’t outregen because they were consuming corpses (Terrace) I had no way to deal with it and it was a daily for Zana (the mission was complete) so I just bailed. The only other boss I remember being a huge pain so far was Canyon.
I didn’t have any trouble with Vaal pyramid. When I’ve had issues, it’s almost always been because of rogue exiles or the beyond prefix. My elemental resists are capped, but chaos resist is at -60. Need to do something about that.
Yeah, for a change, Rogues, Breaches and Harbingers are causing me less issues. A wall of lightning spewing totems is tending to keep them occupied, even if they do take a bit longer to fall over dead.
I picked up a couple of life/chaos resist nodes, but I’m still at -48%, so chaos is a problem. But it’s meant to be, so it is what it is.
There was an exile using essence drain w lesser projectiles that I fought. If even one hit me, I had to flask. I didn’t realize at the time that it can’t stack.
Hearkening back to my question a week or two ago about picking up blue “magic” items or not, I was studying advanced crafting yesterday and found that most all serious crafting runs through blue items. Not normal --> rare as I’ve been doing leveling up. Easier to arrive at two mods you’re after that way. Then use Regal or something to change to rare. (And then a bunch of even higher level manipulation using the rarest gems – but that’s what they’re for.) Soo… while most blues are still crap, and a normal item is often the best starting point due to economy of raising quality, a very good blue item is not a total loss. But this method seems only to make sense at the highest, final level of crafting rather than earlier in a character’s ascent.
Also, I realized late that the best way to change the rolls/mods on a rare is to use a Scour and then another Alchemy, rather than your valuable Chaos Orbs. You can vendor the former quite easily, but Chaos are harder to come by and are needed intensively for trading. Hang onto those Chaos Orbs!
Still, the question of whether you should bother to pick up blues is separate. Alts, augs and transmutes are cheap, so serious crafters are just as happy to start with a good white base, as to go hunting for blues on poe.trade, aren’t they? 5L’s and 6L’s excepted, of course. Probably jewellery as well, but they will get you a return, whereas any blue 4L’s are just taking up inventory space better reserved for rares(Chaos recipes).
You are right, top tier rolls on a blue are top tier rolls and worth something, but you have to pick up and identify a darn lot of them.
Re blues, only top ilvl good bases are used for crafting, so if you think that picking up blue shit in a lvl 40 zone is worth your time, you’re wrong.
Got the Shaper itch on my trapper and decided to give it a shot at level 87 - ended up doing the run deathless. Also got last of the MSPaint™ tier challenge microtransactions today (36 challenges) so I’ll probably quit the league because the only ones that are left are grindy as hell or severely gated by rng. Can’t say it wasn’t fun though. Shaper video if anyone’s interested:
At what point do your resistances drop a second time? I swear that prior to the final area in Act 10 my resists were all cap save for chaos. Then I face Kitava and was absolutely wrecked, having had no trouble in any fight prior to that (and quite to the contrary actually). After the fight I check my resists and save for fire (which was far over cap due to my RF build) they were all way down. When did this happen? I’d have thought nothing would change like that during an act, but seems I was wrong.
As for blues, I thought I noted that they’re still pretty worthless prior to endgame b/c no one would spend high level orbs on leveling gear – at least I wouldn’t. I, personally, just learned though that blues are useful at some point. If they have the number of links you’re looking for and the right base item they’re as good as a normal anyway given the advanced crafting mechanics. That’s all I meant to say.
When you kill the final boss in story mode you get hit with res penalty.
As for crafting - http://poeaffix.net/ . You can see how the item level influences roll range here. Using alts or regals on gear to craft before you hit maps is completely pointless. It’s better to sell these orbs for chaos and buy a significantly better piece of gear from someone else, likely for very small price. Unless you’re playing SSF of course, in that case, go nuts.