You can always summon! I rarely miss an opportunity to push my favorite playstyle on people. :) I’m using Skeletons this league (based on this guide) and even without good gear (none of the uniques in the guide, and only 4-link thus far) I’m doing fine up into tier 12-ish maps.
I also like Sunder Gladiator, if you’re more of a melee type. I’ve never gone all the way to the end bosses with it, but I know @Bateau has.
I typically barely make it to maps if that, so I’m not concerned about end bosses, just looking for a few days of fun :) But I think I’ve had trouble with summoners in some of the small arenas. I guess I’ll try one of each and see what clicks!
Holy cow, Path of Exile is implementing sidekicking! (OK technically the reverse.) Trails blazed by City of Heroes being picked up a decade later.
And some other party stuff in that link, too, mostly about making it easier to team up.
Quite happy with the gear so far. Still need to divine some of my jewels for more life, divine the staff a bit more, maybe get an elder ring with some chaos res and get a good helm enchant. But so far so good.
So I’ve been having fun with this game this season. Incursion is cool, although it gets kind of wicked once you get in the 70’s. I’m playing an Arc Witch build atm, and wanted to look around for something else to give a try with. And that is when it truly sunk in, just how many viable builds there are currently in this game. There are like dozens of builds for every single class. It’s just crazy! I ended up having no idea what to try next because I was just overwhelmed with too many choices!
You know like when you go to the grocery store hungry, and you come out with 500.00 worth of food? I think I have that issue, because I made and delete and remade about 6 classes. I still didn’t settle on a second build to try, although I may be leaning towards a second witch of all things, this time a Skeleton necro…
With all this talk of traps, @Bateau, are you glad you picked the build? happy with it? I feel like Straight up Arc might not carry me to the end of the Atlas…Looking for something to go the distance with as I’ve never completed the Atlas to date.
Yes, very happy. Good clear speed with arc traps, insane single target on stationary bosses (most of them) with spire (although I can just as easily spam arc on them), insane sustain (20% life regen, lmao), free casting, decent hp (5.5k) for a trapper, aura+two heralds. And for once I feel like my saboteur tree isn’t stretched to the limit, I was able to pick all the nodes I wanted and started going for extra jewel slots now, just because I can, not because I’d need them.
Truth be told, I smashed Shaper with significantly worse gear than I have now. Most of the work was done with a 5L spire (added Advanced Traps in a 6L, which is more of a QoL than anything else), I didn’t have the crit boots, and the rest of my gear only had resists and life on it. Well except for the amulet, I picked that up on day 2 because I needed str for using Agnerod. Good thing too, similar amulets go for like 3 exalts now and I paid 19c for mine.
Tldr - saboteur is overtuned, traps are overtuned, arc is overtuned, spire is even more overtuned. You should be able to clear the atlas on very modest budget gear. 5 link arc is enough for clearing (drop inc crit strikes), 5 or even 4 link spire is enough for bosses.
edit: If you don’t feel like rerolling you could also try BV with full ele conversion, friend did it a couple days ago (was arc in the start) and he’s very happy with it.
Awesome. Thanks for the response. Two questions:
What is a spire?
What is a BV? =)
I am Pretty green here…
Spire is Lighning Spire Trap, it was introduced with this new patch. BV is blade vortex, it adds spinning blades around your character. This is my friend’s build if you’re curious about BV:
Char name is Unlimited_Power_
Yeah, I have a buddy running triple-Herald BV and he is very amused.
I’m running Vaal Double Strike to supplement my single-target on the Earthquaker since I’m running the soul flask anyway, and it’s fucking great. Any single-target encounters get absolutely shredded, which covers one of the build’s weaker spots. Popping both charges on that thing is just monstrous.
Staged bosses can still be obnoxious though, since the clones don’t outlast whatever dumb animation I get to wait for. Ah well, Warchief is my buddy.
I’m surprised at how not-annoyed I am at hardcasting Bloodrage and Vulnerability. Vuln casts so quickly that I barely notice and means I don’t have to dick around with any Curse on Hit nonsense, and with the hardcast it lasts forever with a huge radius since I can run it full level.
Just gotta smush Kitava and it’s on to maps, finally. I’ve been taking my time, with the aborted Burning Arrow nonsense (she’s 51 and probably stuck there forever). and then my general slow leveling - I’m 70 or 71 still in Act 10, thanks Alva!
@Fozzle or any other newbies – you know about the wiki, right? It’s a fantastic resource, and generally pretty updated already for 3.3. Highly recommended, up to and including the way some of the less-obvious mechanics work and interact (damage modifier double-dipping, etc).
Hey @Fozzle, I highly recomment trying a trapper. I started with an Arc Trapper and he’s ridiculously overpowered (I believe I’m running essentially the same build as @bateau). At 65 I’m still smashing stuff while barely taking any time to stop and kill packs. Any fight where there is a delay before you start attacking (like with the Omnitect) I simply spam traps at their feet and trigger the fight, and it’s almost over instantly.
The only real required unique I’m using is a pair of Deerstalkers, which cost 1 alchemy orb. And all that does is save you one link, so a 4 or 5 link would work as well.
I’ve never played a trapper before but it’s a ton of fun.
If you want some videos on playing a trapper here are two decent ones:
I am running the same build I found here - Witch - [3.6] Triple Herald Blade Vortex Elementalist - Forum - Path of Exile
Not the most user friendly build and description but better than most. My issue was realizing Warlord’s Mark was 100% needed for the leeching. Once I did, and properly focused on resists and hps, my survivability went up dramatically. Still kind of fragile but I know the places I need improvement now and I can’t complain about the kill speed. You just zip from point to point wreaking havoc.
The hard part is stopping long enough to pick something up because everytime you see a pile of mobs you just HAVE to hop into the middle of them. So I often find myself backtracking to pick up things that I just couldn’t be bothered with while on my berzerk spree through the level.
Crashing! Again! Twice in five minutes in the freaking Canal, aka the second long-ass linear zone with no waypoint before a boss. Even dropped a portal out of paranoia, but it wasn’t there when I logged back in. I may be done with this for a while :/
I’ve been playing an Arc totem build, which is sufficiently ridiculous. Just got to mapping, pretty fun.
I abandoned my SRS Witch at 68 for the moment after smacking into Kitava with crap gear. I was only kind of half feeling SRS anyway - scaling minions has me scratching my head a little and I have had very little currency drop for spending. The build I was following also has a few exalty items, which seem a bit far off at the moment.
Had a Whispering Ice drop pretty early on, so started up a cast when channeling Scion. It’s a CI/ES build though and I have not played one before. At least it’s not the current meta, so maybe I can get some cheap gear.
it’s weird that CI isn’t meta considering how much chaos dmg the incursions and temple have in them. I’m trying to buy a chest piece or two fairly cheap to try and 6 link; I’ll gladly play CI this league.
I may give that shadow trapper build a shot, since my witch is straight up Arc right now. I want to see other colors on the screen for a bit besides blue =) The Arc witch is straight up Vaal Arc build and at level 80. The DPS is really good there, but the life expectantly can take a really quick turn for the worse as she is below 5k Hp, and no shield (Mind over Matter build).
Also kind of having fun with the skeletons which might be something @sharaleo may want to try as I imagine the passives are similar? vaal skeletons is a ridiculous party of bones…
Edit: Durp, I see Shadow Trapper is just a how to video for basically the same build. =)
Dayum, once Whispering Ice starts getting up to speed, it sure does some damage! Early 50’s and the last few bosses have been a breeze. This one is an Avatar of Fire conversion going for the Ascendant’s juicy elemental penetration nodes of the Elementalist and Templar.
Cheap staff to begin with and a bargain sudo 7L at basically the cost of the jewellers to 6S it.
When do i need to start equiping specific flask types for boss fights? I did play some last summer, but all of my memories of how to play go`` back to when there were only three or four acts. I used to burn lots of currency to get a staunching flask for Dominus, but that no longer seems to be needed, will i need one (or any other specific mod or flask type) in act 4?
Staunching flasks are still your friend. Lots of stuff can bleed and it can be easy to not notice until you are dead.
Other than that, fill gaps while levelling - ruby, topaz, etc for resists during boss fights, granite, stibnites, etc for mitigation.
I don’t think any of the pre-map bosses really require a specific flask any more. I almost always have 2 life and 1 mana plus 2 quicksilvers while leveling. I try to get at least one of those to remove bleeding and another to remove freeze, because like @sharaleo says there’s lot of annoying stuff that can be dangerous. But I’ve survived all kinds of weird stuff while leveling without either. Another story once you reach maps, then you really want to get a good stash of flasks for various situations.