Summon Skeletons is weird. They only last for 20 seconds then go poof. It’s tough to tell how effective they are in those 20 seconds. What I should do is stop using everything else, and just cast Skeletons and see if they kill stuff quickly.
Chris Wilson posted on reddit about some bug fixing progress, and noted that they are discussing auto-organ pickup and will talk more about it tomorrow. Or later today. I can’t even tell because he’s in the future anyway.
Bateau
4708
You’re supposed to be recasting them.
As for how effective they are - I’m now in act 6 and they delete every group I cast them in the middle of instantly. Once you link them with Feeding Frenzy and get some movement speed they start zapping around like crazy. It’s a really great skill.
edit: Made a short video to show you. It includes killing a boss from the new league mechanics, that a lot of builds during leveling process struggle with.
So I started a minion build, and have reached the awesome level of seven or something. I am doing this mostly to get a feel for the game again as it’s been a while since I played (though I do have like 290 hours in it or something overall, so I’m not totally clueless on the basics).
I have done three metamorphs I think. They drop some decent stuff. It’s kind of a cool mix and max Frankenstein thing too.
As always, I’m playing a Hardcore character (which is why I’ve never ended up playing maps because, well, either my HC characters die or by the time I level one to the end game I’m burnt out by the tension!). I figure that if I do die at least I’ll learn a lot, etc.
It’s been a while since I’ve played HC because I have too many networking issues to make it viable. After the first lag death, HC loses its appeal very quickly. I do have some advice nonetheless…go for defenses first! Minion builds have a lot of flexibility in terms of gear and passive tree choices. You can prioritize stuff like Heart and Soul, Discipline and Training, and Purity of Flesh over going after the far-flung minion nodes, such as the Righteous Army wheel, Death Attunement, and Ravenous Horde. Your kill speed might be a little slower but it’s not gonna matter until you’re into maps, anyway, and you’ll have a better chance of surviving to get there. As for gear, prioritize life and resists over everything else, even if it means you have to use a 3-link instead of 4-link, or have to remove a utility skill like Convocation (you can put the extra gems on weapon switch so they still level up), or temporarily don’t have enough Str/Dex to level up a gem.
I level this minion build this morning to level 20-ish and it is as fast as everyone is saying! If you are playing hard-core though, I advise you leaving the metamorphs alone until you are reasonably sure your minions will survive. You don’t want to take an early death because of one of those strong goobers.
Yeah, I usually buff up survival skills and defenses, though there’s a lot to be said for killing stuff fast as the best defense. Risky though, and doesn’t work with all builds. The metamorphs are tricky, yeah, but so far I’ve been able to run fast enough…
Neat. Got Death and Taxes, Olmec’s Sanctum, and Poorjoy’s Asylum out of it.
Got SaraOfEnDor and her burning skeletons past Kitava and into maps. Died once because I was dumb, forgot to bring a burning flask and got caught in the Flame Breath of Doom. Otherwise, no real trouble. So far my worries about boss damage haven’t been an issue, but we’ll see what happens when I get into yellow and red maps.
The new little miniquest to open up maps was kinda cool. I like it when they shake up the endgame story. Wish they hadn’t dropped that giant ugly map device in my hideout, though. Had to replace it with the old one. The new atlas format will take some getting used to, we’ll see how it goes.
I just had my first perandus metamorph with no Cadiro. So either something changed in the patches or it wasn’t 100%. I’m now 4/5.
This was my first one in maps, so perhaps the rules are different in maps.
Boy, the metamorphs in maps are sure tougher than the story zones! Died to one on the tier 1 beach - with no majorly bad mods - after it spread some kind of poison ground crap that killed me before I could react. By the time I registered that my life globe was dropping, I was dead. I don’t remember seeing that at all while leveling, though it’s possible it just did so little damage that I didn’t notice. Came close to dying to the one at the end of the tier 1 pier map, too.
peacedog
4717
FWIW I had one such Perandus while sill in the story campaign (act 8). Alas, it appears it’s not guaranteed. I think I’m 2/3 now?
Bateau
4718
Yup it’s crazy how insane the damage can get in something like t4 if you just mindlessly click the leftmost components lol.
I fricking love this league mechanic though, I really do. Probably my top 3 leagues (mechanics wise). And it still blows my mind how GGG continuously iterates on the game and makes improvements and changes to meta, balance and endgame, all to make the game feel fresh.
They’re so far ahead of every other arpg studio that I legit feel sorry for the competition. And not just arpg to be honest, if every game had this level of thought put into balance and impacts on gameplay it would be mind blowing.
But I suppose it’s for the best this way, a day only has so many hours in it and what little is left for gaming might as well be spent on PoE.
Cadiro has offered me Inpulsa’s and Kaom’s Heart so far. When I finally get that many coins together all he’ll offer is garbage, I know how this works.
I love the new background on Zana’s story. Someone had a good time using “you crazy players keep coming back and slaughtering everything repeatedly” as a hook.
As predicted, I started the Storm Burst trickster but then got distracted by all you physical skeleton goobers. So yesterday I leveled her up through Act 4. But then, in an unexpected turn of events, I re-played my Storm Burst guy and recalled how much fricking fun HE is! So I’ve played him a bit more.
Incidentally, I blew about 5 Vaal Orbs to get a Vaal Summon Skeleton gem for my Necro. And then of course the next 2 Vaal side areas I completed each dropped a Vaal Skeleton gem - so I threw them in the Guild Vault (and I notice someone else did too!).
Zephyr
4722
I ended up going with freezing pulse totem and is pretty great so far. Have all my core uniques and some starter map gear. May take it a bit slower until patch as picking up all of the Metamorph items is getting annoying.
Looks like we weren’t “intended” to get so many Cadiro’s and the appearance rate will be nerfed now.
edit: this did come with a bunch of bug fixes and crashes, it wasn’t just to deny us Cadiro deals.
peacedog
4724
Someone on reddit got offered a Headhunter for like 34k coins or something.
I got tired of Steam patching shenanigans and downloaded the standalone client. Holy cow, what a difference! The latest patch applied in less than a minute. Admittedly I have a fairly powerful machine with lots of RAM and the game is on an SSD, but still…that’s about 5x faster than the last time Steam did a tiny patch.
