3442

Actually melees are the most likely to take INT nodes, especially classes on the left side of the tree. Increased Area of Effect is a very popular gem and it has pretty steep int requirements.

3443

I feel the same way about following cookie-cutter style builds, but I’ve learned that POE is both very good and very bad in this respect. In the early game, say the first 40 levels or so, you can make pretty much anything work, so there’s a lot of freedom to do whatever you like…very good. But after that, things get so much harder (tougher enemies, resistance penalties, some really rough boss battles, map mods) that you really need to optimize, and there’s only a limited number of ways to do that. So you end up with builds that are very similar to what you’ll find on the POE forums, whether you get there through trial and error or follow someone else’s plan.

Now, once you’re highly experienced and very rich in whatever league you’re playing, you might find some more freedom in the ability to combine various uniques and passive tree choices into a new and interesting build. Usually you have to get a character up into the 70s to be able to use all the fancy items and have enough passive points for something like that. But that’s mostly for top-level folks like @Bateau, not the likes of me. :)

3444

Path of exile offers a lot of choice, but it also offers a lot of the illusion of choice. The more builds you make, the more you realize that you need to spend most of your nodes on boring things, and rarely on things that make you do more damage. People tend to take a lot of damage nodes when they are newer to the game, which works really really well early on, so it’s easy to get suckered into. The “kill it before it kills you” strategy works really well, right up the point where it doesn’t, and then your character tends to be unplayable. It’s one of the many pitfalls of POE lol.

It’s all ok though, because the learning process and experimenting is most of the fun of the game. Seeing how far you can push a build idea is endless hours of fun really. If you do start looking around at build guides, you’ll notice that they are all very similar when it comes to defense and utility vs damage nodes.

POE is at least 3 different games. Early game areas 1-5, mid game 5-10, and then mapping and lab runs. All 3 of those often require a rethink on your build. It’s one reason you see so many guides that use different skill sets to level vs what the actual end game build is going to be. Many build don’t even use the skills they are ultimately going to use until level 60+.

POE certainly gives you enough things to think about, and understand. It’s one of the reasons the game has such great longevity, there seems like there is always something to learn.

3445

Heh, I finally crafted a map I couldn’t finish a few days ago. It was tier 13 Lair , with a zillion different mods on it, including temporal chains, and one of those environmental hazard zone effects from Navali.

Also attempted my first guardian, and can I just say that mechanically the Chimera fight Sucks. Was actually going pretty well and had the boss down to half health until it started going into that stupid cloud phase over and over again.

Really kills my interest in trying to push any further. Otoh, all my skill gems are level 19 and I’m nearing 90 for the first time.

3446

Thinking more on this after the replies above, I’m wondering if this is one of the cases where Act V is end-game for me and I would start another class. I tend to tire of high level grind fairly quick and I think figuring out ‘best build’ wouldn’t be all that fun, something I know from all my other experiences with the hack’n’slash game style. The ‘illusion of choice’ comment by @Ultrazen above has me concerned as that’s the big draw for replayability for me: doing something entirely different each time I play through.

I’ll go along for a while yet, I expect, to see how I can apply the suggestions above without revamping my Elementalist entirely. It’s a pretty solid length of the game, and original story wrapped up well at Act V, so it’s a good break point if I decide to restart with a different class.

3447

You still have a lot to see yet. Tons. You’ll be hundreds of hours in before build fatigue Ultrazen mentions rears its head. Go watch the ‘Build of the Week’ series on GGG’s YT channel. There are dozens and dozens of amazing, weird and wonderful builds you can experiment with - PoE smashes it for build diversity, even if they do all have '200% life nodes on the tree" in common.

You’re earning repec points as you go, so have freedom to back up a little and fill gaps. As noted above, the biggest newbie mistake in PoE is not taking enough life nodes on the skill tree. Your gems and links can scale your damage (with some modest boosts from the tree), but your life pool (or ES pool) needs the love. Also life and resistances on gear are usually good options until you are looking to target specific affixes that may benefit your build and you can afford to drop some mitigation.

Check out some of the offline tools - Path of Building or POESkillTree. Plan out some toons for fun. Plan for around a 60-70 skill point allocation as most builds should be able to get that far before hitting any serious hurdles. Plan for a min 170%+ in life nodes. Fair warning, something like PoB can be quite in-depth and rather opaque without knowledge of the game systems, but it can be handy to see the effect different skill gem combos may have.

Mostly though, you are just experiencing the learning portion of the game, it’s totally normal to be dying a lot until you start to grok how to build towards the right balance of mitigation and damage on the skill tree. Heck I played on and off for years before advancing a toon beyond about 40, but that was before a bunch of changes were made to the early leveling experience (links kick in earlier now, most gems are readily available at the vendors, etc).

I talked about this in the D3 thread, but PoE does not hand your build to you on a silver platter of unlocked skill categories - here’s a damage skill, now an AoE skill, here’s a defence skill, now a mobility skill, etc. Instead it give you the freedom to do what you want, mostly when you want, with a staggering amount of content thrown at you. Sometimes it takes a few deaths to realise you are missing something that another game would have thrown at you as part of the progression. Then it takes some experimentation to come grips with the array of skill gems and what they can offer.

I kind of want to say you should persevere until closer to 60, to see how more links can begin to affect your gem choices, or force you to throw a bit of currency at a nice bit of gear to get the right colour sockets, or see some of the gems that only become available in later acts. But you know what? It’s just as valid to go back and start a new toon and build on the knowledge you have gained with a fresh character. Whatever keeps your interest up until the game systems begin to come together.

3448

For reference, I have 15 toons and only 3 of them are above level 70! In turn, 2 of those are post Oriath launch!

LoL!

Also, in D3 I mostly follow build guides all day everyday. In PoE I kind of prefer to do my own thing for some reason. My 76 Saboteur Fire Trapper and 84 Hierophant Ball Lightning Totemer are my own builds, the 78 Beserker Sunderer is from the PoE forum guide.

3449

Fortunately, I had been allocating points to life and energy shield nodes (although perhaps not enough) and I was only two steps away from Mind over Matter, so I Paradigm shifted myself to grab that (and for the first time I saw my mana run dry). I did make a line to the Fire damage node up top since my Elementalist prefers fire damage with cold as backup, but I think I have a good scattering of passives chosen. I have a tendency to go for defensive builds anyway, without really meaning to, which tends to make me live long in games like D3 but not be able to kill things quickly enough. Looks like my slight shift to a balance in PoE may have had the opposite effect.

I’ve not died in a while since I haven’t been boss fighting recently but I’m heading to a big encounter in Act V very soon, I expect, so I’ll see how it goes with some slight changes I’ve made. I did have that Lightning Warp gem hanging around, so i slotted that to replace another unused gem. Oddly, I find there are way too many gems slots to make use of everything. Is the idea to put one skill per item and then link all the slots with support gems?

3450

My favorite thing about Mind Over Matter is that I tend to notice I’m bleeding to death when my mana runs out in time to pop a potion. One of the goofier design decisions in PoE is that they do a far better job of alerting you when a bleed ends than when it begins.

3451

For the most part, yeah. There are exceptions, like when you use Cast When Damage Taken and link it to 2 or 3 skills so they auto-fire when you’re getting hammered. But for the most part, what you want is as many linked sockets on each item as possible, and put one active use skill in the item plus a bunch of support gems for that skill.

As an example, on the Inquisitor I’ve been playing, I just bought a 5-link chest armor off poe.trade and put my Static Strike links there. Static Strike + Multistrike + Added Fire Damage + Elemental Damage with Attacks + Faster Attacks.

3452

@Equisilus This is also why build guides tend to focus on one or two skills. Only one or two slots (if using a 2h weapon) can have 5+ slots. The power difference from those extra 1-2 slots is considerable. However, there are also items that give you a “pseudo” 6-slot effect. For instance, on my hierophant, I have a 4-link Allelopathy, which gives you the power equivalent of a 6-link (two of those “links” being blight and Empower Support)

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Allelopathy

3453

I don’t want to dissuade you from trying a bunch of different things, far from it. To me, the best part of POE is the experimenting. The “success” of a build is one aspect of gameplay, and varies in importance to different people. I generally get tired of games like this when I run out of new things to try. I’ve got at least 500 hours into POE and still not close to that point.

I actually looked at build guides (and still do from time to time) just to get an idea what similarities there were, and to try and spot patterns of successful builds. I love game mechanics, and trying out different combinations, and POE is really at it’s core, a huge puzzle game, with a fairly repetitive real time aspect to it.

Jeez…I’ve had so many failed builds, that I didn’t realize were failed builds until I got to about level 60, I can’t even count them all, but that’s most of the fun…the “how far can I go with this” aspect of POE is really engaging.

Long story short, don’t be afraid to try any and all things, and experiment for yourself, POE is one of the best games on the planet for it, and it’s a lot of fun.

3454

I have whatever the maximum toons allowed is, but only 3 of them above level 30.

I always lose interest after Normal difficulty. Or in this case, after Act V.

I think I would actually stay interested if I could get any of my hardcore characters to survive, but I never can. Like Equisilus, I have a tough time staying alive. I’ve followed all the advice from you guys too, but some weird damage spike always happens and I die. And for the non-hardcore characters, I always lose interest.

3455

I have to say, I think GGG is really horrible at progression in general, and transitions from area to area power wise. You can be going along just fine, with nothing really giving you any trouble, or indication that you’re going to be in trouble, and then you turn a corner and wham, you’re just instantly dead all the time. I just came back for the first time since they changed the leveling structure, and ran into that “one boss” K-something…it’s bordering on un-install territory, it’s such an idiotic fight, and just so out of whack with where your character is naturally going to be on the leveling curve.

I spent almost all of my nodes on defense and life, with just a smattering of other stuff along the way, and that boss was just insulting. The one thing Blizzard is really good at, that GGG absolutely sucks at, is giving you a relatively smooth progression. The spikeyness of POE really always gets my goat in the end.

3456

I’ve had to force myself to (mostly…I regress occasionally) give up on HC in POE. There’s too much randomness in the number of ways you can die, especially once you get into mapping. Add to that the possibility of random lag deaths and the occasional game client crash death, and it’s just not very fun. I still play my softcore characters largely like hardcore, with lots of defenses and careful playstyle. My current level 72 Inquisitor has only died three times that I can remember, and one of those was a game client crash.

3457

Most of the damage in that fight is pretty easy to avoid, once you have a feel for it (and I usually suck at avoiding stuff). Good luck doing that as a melee, though, which is the real problem, imo. It’s so much easier with totems/ranged.

3458

Kitava.

GGG have a tendency to over-tune bosses. Oriath launched only a couple of months back with 5 new acts and Kitava is the big bad (you will fight him twice). Those fights are almost certainly going to be re-balanced by GGG. But yeah, it is a little annoying to steamroll your level content, then have a boos one shot you a bunch of times. Though, with GGG boss fights, tons of damage can be mitigated by being familiar with the boss’ mechanics. I recommend checking out YT for a rundown on all the boss fights to prepare yourself.

3459

Yah I get what they want you to do in boss fights, and I don’t mind having to learn boss moves, that’s as old as it gets when it comes to video gaming. My problem is their sense of progression when it comes to tuning fights, they have always been all over the map with it.

I have some limited understanding of how hard it is to balance stuff like this, and to try and make fights challenging. It’s especially difficult in a game with so many possible character builds, I’m sure there are some people that get to that fight and have no problems with it. I happen to have a build that was just about exactly wrong for that fight (sparks), and that’s part of the problem. A phys based ranged character, or a totem character, and that fight would be a cakewalk. It’s not that the boss mechanics are that hard to figure out, it’s just the amount of time you have to spend running around, vs actually doing anything meaningful to the boss is out of whack, at least to me. It really punishes “turret” builds, and as usual in just about every game like this, characters that can be on the move while they are doing damage always fair the best. That’s a lesson I guess I should have learned by now lol.

At any rate, I’ve put a lot of hours in the game, and there is a lot I love about it, the spikey nature of game has always pissed me off though.

3460

Agree completely. And frankly, most of the bosses are weighted heavily against any character that has to stand in one place to do damage. That’s why I quit playing my sunder character and made the move to DoT chaos damage,

3461

I think that right there is one of the most annoying aspects of a game. Any time I have to take my questions outside the game, or ‘prepare for a boss fight’ in the real world, the game loses me a bit. I suppose that’s why I don’t do any upfront prep and only ask general questions. But hey, I get that it’s a big part of these sorts of games; I simply don’t play that way and it’s why I avoid high-level, high-difficulty parts. Looked up what PoE mapping is; I thought it was literally about mapping an area and didn’t see why that was end-game fun. Nope, it’s running instances randomly generated from a map for high-level boss fights. Ugh.

I’m definitely heading towards an Act V end-game (making my way back through Oriath now). I’d love to play some different characters instead of struggling with figuring out boss encounters. Although, I only died once in my last battle (Innocence/Sin) so it’s improving. Switched out Lighting Warp for Flame Dash since I remembered that dude in the library was selling a bunch of gems (still have not bothered to use the skill, though). Upgraded my fireball with additional support gems such that I’m wiping out mobs as they hunt my skeleton minions. And replaced my elemental resistance aura for an energy shield bonus and regenerating one.

I guess, for me, I have to avoid talking too much about the game and how to manage it before doing so sucks the enjoyment out of playing. And if I hit that brick wall, well, it just means I can start another character and enjoy another 30-40 hours. Then another. Then another.