Through the first 2 acts, Shattering Steel is terrible. Rough on anything with decent HP - bosses, rogues, the new assassin guys - and even packs of blues are a pain. First time in many leagues that it’s been a chore to get past the Vaal Oversoul. It may get better with twink gear and higher levels, but I can say with certainty that it’s not a good league starter. Having said that, I’ve come this far so I’ll at least push through to when I can try out Lancing Steel at 28.
Edit: On second thought, I’m giving up and doing something else, since I see some folks have posted on the POE forums that Lancing doesn’t seem any better for leveling. Need something else as the league starter.
Damage penetration for weapons should work well for any attack skill that deals that type of elemental damage (melee, projectile attack, or bow.)
I got lucky and found this veiled mod early: 15 energy shield regenerated per second while a rare or unique enemy is nearby. This is really helping with syndicate fights and boss fights.
@Bateau, haven’t tried the brands yet. They look interesting, but vague enough that I went with a league starter I wanted to try last league: melee summoner, smite into dominating blow, herald of purity, etc.
Between this and X4, I have two addictions to manage!
I highly recommend Winter Orb as a midgame leveling skill. I’m planning on trying some of the revamped Ice Spear endgame but Ice Spear is a terrible leveling skill (and maybe just inferior all around, but I love it).
Haven’t hit maps yet, no idea if the damage holds up there but WOrb melts things in a 4-link while leveling. My preference is GMP, ice bite, and added cold. LMP/GMP are a must, Winter Orb feels terrible without the extra projectiles.
Increased duration could replace added cold and would make things go even smoother, especially if you have some decent spell damage gear. I preferred the extra raw damage for syndicate members though.
And on the subject of Syndicate members, I’m loving this league so far. Fighting ranked up Syndicate members reminds me a bit of the Invasion days when I gave up on hardcore for a while.
I’m running standard for this league and that’s probably a good thing, I’m sure even with a more cautious hardcore play style I’d have died a couple times already. With my “I don’t care, I’m going for it” standard attitude I’ve died about a dozen times so far. Great fun!
Friend clued me in on this build and I’m loving it so far. Grabbed Soul mantle at level 49 and a warding flask and I have a pseudo 5 link already. Damage is fantastic and it’s much more fun to play than arc totems.
After the abortive start with Shattering Steel, I rolled up an Arc Witch and it’s much more fun. Probably seems like old hat to most of you but I’ve never tried it before. (Actually I think I did run one back in the 3-act days, but it ain’t the same game any more!)
Back in the day, one of my biggest complaints about POE was lack of content. You’d get to an end boss and have to grind earlier zones to level up enough to have a decent shot against it. Man, have times changed! Hasn’t really been an issue since the 10-act revamp, but the sheer amount of stuff to do in this league is really driving the point home. I was level 50 before the end of A5 and that’s just doing all the Syndicate, Mining, beast hunting, corrupted areas, etc that I happened to run across.
Amen, brother. And I’ve repaid them by spending more on stash and cosmetics in this game than I’ve spent total on any other game, purchase price and add-ons combined. (Well, except City of Heroes.) Never would have come close without the great gameplay, constant updates, and well-designed business model.
Yeah, this league is fantastic. Really enjoying Betrayal even if the investigation is way overdesigned. Quality of life stuff and crafting revamp are outstanding.
Playing a Molten Strike life-on-hit DW Champion and it’s not bad. Not quite as fast-clearing as last season’s self-cast Arc Elementalist, but not bad. I keep exploding on certain Syndicate encounters; I should really figure out wtf is going in those at some point.
And fucking Brine King because doing that stupid fight with 27 lightning resist is not smart. I need actual resists in general; not being able to fill in with cheap AH 4Ls because of league start is starting to hurt, heh.
@ineffablebob Are you doing crit or nocrit EO? I really loved the EO version I played last league.
Self cast EO version of the Arc. Thus far only the Syndicate members have been any trouble, which is because they’re basically boss fights that can spawn anywhere with mechanics that are a pain to identify. But that isn’t the build’s fault, working great at the start of maps.
I had a 1300 person queue today at like 1:30pm EST. Just unprecedented.
I’ve played Arc, or a varient of arc, more than any other build (back to the beginning of the Georfi’s Crest/Empower/lotsa cast speed meta). For a variety of reasons I wanted to go with something familiar so I went Arc Totems again.Although I nearly went with Glacial Cascade (I was actually debating a GC mines build).
I’ve done one Safehouse. Here are somethreads, and a ZiggyD video, for anyone wanting more information.
I’ve done four, but not the top level one yet. Takes a good while to fill up that bar, at least the way I’ve been going. One of them was manned by Vorici, which was incredibly satisfying as I beat him into a crispy critter. I like the Trapped Lockbox mechanic where you get 8 seconds to pick an item, though so far all I’ve seen in them is currency. I’d love to get one with a half dozen uniques to choose from.
Speeding my way through maps as per usual, shocking all the fauna to death, when I murdered a group of frogs. Turns out they were blue with the Obelisk bloodline, but of course I had no way of knowing that since they died well before I had time to look at their mods. Which would have been fine, if I’d gotten them all…but of course one was hidden behind a crate or something. So all the obelisks popped up, spawning a million little shock orbs. And still I’d have been fine if I’d been smart enough to run, but instead I tried to kill that last frog to drop the obelisks. Nope, orbs got me first.
I had a safe house with two crafting benches yesterday, one of them added 1-2 white sockets to any item you put in. Pretty cool for those items that require lots of off colour sockets.
Also finally made it to maps. I wish I had more time to play but on the other hand I’m also really enjoying the casual pace. Maybe I’ll even stick with the league for more than a month because of it :)
Just did a safehouse that had a bench I hadn’t seen before - Tiny’s Trial. You put a white item in it, then you can apply an Alch and as many Chaos/Blessed/Divine orbs as you can click in 8 seconds to it. Or a Vaal, if you want. That’s some weird stuff but it was kinda fun, look forward to seeing that again.
Looks like the new Dread Banner skill can operate as a cheap defensive buff. I’m running it on my Toxic Rain + Heralds minion build as an extra defensive layer. It provides a constant accuracy debuff around me for 10% mana reservation, maybe a little physical damage, and every now and then I actually drop it for the group fortify.
I’m also running the veiled focus mod which triggers 4 spells in my helm instantly on one button with a 12 second cooldown. It’s an interesting way to run utilities at max level instead of underleveled in CwDT. Still trying to figure out the best setup there, but I’ve got it resummoning a golem, cursing, and chilling an area for hard packs. I want to set up some other veiled mods which buff me on focus, too.
Certainly some interesting new options.
The mastermind fight is a tricky one, BTW. Definitely not one to try blind in hardcore.
I’m running Warlord’s Banner for the accuracy buff. It’s fine. I should really drop it for Vitality or something though, since I think I can actually support that with Blasphemy mana-wise now.
Blasphemy + Flammability was absolutely huge for me, my goodness. Finally realized Herald of Ice was pointless as the damage buff was mediocre without the freezy Curse on Hit goodness (I’m running Avatar of Fire).
Then again spike damage is the only scary thing for me, really, since my Life on Hit fills me back up like an oldschool Vaal Pact + Quill Rain archer. Maybe something like Determination or Grace would make more sense than Vitality, idk.
Just discovered that maps you do in Zana missions count for completing your Atlas now, including the bonus if the map is the right rarity. Wasn’t in the patch notes as far as I can tell, but it’s a very helpful change for filling in the Atlas.
