1501

Yeah, I’m aware of that. Problem is I needed RRBG. Due to the item I had trouble getting the Green socket.

1502

You can always try with artisan workstation but those costs ramp up quickly at 3 chromes per roll for 1 guaranteed socket color.

1503

Artisan workstation? Is that something you get after Act 3?

1504

Workbenches in your hideout, courtesy of the masters.

Vorici’s workbench lets you do some crafty socket, um, crafting.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Master

1505

Agreed. D:C is easily my favorite thing to come out of the races. I tend to die on the Brutus-type boss a lot, but it’s still fun.

I was right to be wary of Malachai in Cruel. Sarah lived, but just barely, and it was a major struggle. That’s at level 63, so the maximum +6 levels you can get against the level 57 zone without running into the XP penalty for being overleveled. As I said in the journal:

I am really glad that’s over. I have no intention of going anywhere near Merciless Dominus, unless I get to the point where I no longer care if Sarah dies. End of the league, maybe, if I live that long. And I’m sure glad they nerfed the Normal/Cruel fights, because I can’t imagine going through all that with even worse incoming damage. I still think the end of the second phase needs downward adjustment in terms of the sheer amount of area damage…making those fire circles smaller and/or slower would be a good start. I’m pretty sure I survived only through dumb luck as there was too much going on to dodge intelligently. And that’s with a build focused heavily on life and ES, and having ground out every possible level short of the XP penalty cap. A player who doesn’t do those things would be in a world of hurt.

And now I get to look forward to basically no XP for most of Act 1 Merciless, since the zone level curve is horrible. Bleh.

1506

And just like that, my level 26 marauder is dead. Tempest League, Act 2, in a corrupted dungeon place in Vaal’s pyramid, first time I’ve found such a place. I was having such an easy time with the game too. But this one room had something casting a million totems, and a guy with a big hammer making his way through the totems. I’m not sure if he was casting totems, or just taking advantage of them, but I had half health, coming up slowly, and then suddenly I was dead. I’m not sure what happened. Too many lightning totems stacked on one another in my vicinity maybe? I did stop trying to kill totems for a second and started concentrating on the guy with a hammer. Maybe that was my mistake.

Damn it. This is the part of playing hardcore I hate. Starting over with a new character in Act 1. Act 1 gets good later on, but I just hate doing the beach.

1507

This guy:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Haviri,_Vaal_Metalsmith

Known for being quite rippy pre-multiple nerfs when first introduced:


(also note the desync!)

1508

Yea, before I go into any corrupted area I look up the boss on the wiki; some of them are just too nasty for me to bother taking on.

I’m a bit of the opposite though when it comes to hating to restart, I actually rather enjoy my RIPs as it’s just another chance to get a build going and with whatever low level gear I’ve saved up I can get a bunch of levels quite quickly. Sort of like racing, only with better starting gear.

1509

I didn’t know that there bosses for the corrupted zones are fixed.good to know, thanks!
We (son and I) did our first races since coming back to PoE last night.
Inferno has fires golems are totems everywhere including in town ( though they don’t do anything there.) I managed to die twice in the starter zone but we still made level 9 as a team. The next race was solo ,embersomething and easier at least at the start.as expected my son got farther (level 15), i just made it to 11 but I already know some things I’d do differently next time.

1510

That does sound like the guy that killed me. In that video, I notice they have a window that shows what effects are being cast and stuff. I’ll have to figure out how to display that. It sounds boring but it might help me stay alive next time maybe.

Outlandish: The part you’re talking about, starting a new build with saved up low level gear, I do like that part, but again, I usually get going with that part after the beach. The beach is still boring, and the levels are too low at that stage do anything interesting with a build. It’s only when you enter the area where Piety blocks your path that the build and the gameplay gets interesting, and your level gets high enough that you can start using some of the nice equipment the last character stashed away.

1511

I’m playing around with a Duelist, a class I have not played much. I like the idea of a trigger/reaction based character, but it does seem you have to put those skills on your hotbar even though you can’t actually use them directly? Most of the builds like that I’ve seen rely on a couple of main attacks, a curse or two, and the rest of the slots are for the triggers. Anyone tried this? It seems pretty interesting at least.

1512

You certainly do not need to put things like Riposte on your hotbar. Man, that’d be awful.

1513

If the skill is triggered there’s no need to put it on the hotbar. I remember back in the day playing a no-attacks witch. High block shield with Tempest Shield, Cast on Damage Taken and Cast on Stun linked to stuff like Enduring Cry and Molten Shell, and Fire Trap. I’d run around to gather a bunch of mobs, throw down fire traps, and wait while they killed themselves by hitting her. Not a hardcore build, obviously, but it was surprisingly durable. Had a hard time with bosses, though, since they’d hit hard enough that she could only take one or two hits.

1514

So I’ve been playing my bob-esque summoner. She’s still pretty fun.

Biggest annoyance is that I’ve run out of hotkeys. Clicking over to activate my auras on login is fine, but having to skill-switch to resummon my golem is obnoxious.

Skeletotem is still the absolute all-star of the build. I’ve been running Minion Speed on them and love it. The extra speed really helps their slow asses be much more useful.

Found a Tabula Rasa (6L unique chest with no mods) and hooked up Specters, Zombies, and Spirits to Minion Damage / Increased Crit (idk) / Multistrike. Hell if I can tell if Multistrike is actually working on my dudes. All the guides say to put Multistrike on SRS, but…eh?

Switched Desecrate over to a normal hotkey instead of having it on my switch weapon, and it is the best. My minions have gotten a lot squishier in A4N here (I’ve been focusing on my own +life on the passive tree, and thank goodness for that), so being able to drop extra corpses during tough/boss fights for Flesh Offering / Zombies / Specters is great.

God help me I need cast speed. Kicking myself for picking up the extra Energy Shield route from character start instead of the cast speed route. Totally sucks.

Also, is it me or is Energy Shield by far the shittiest of the defenses? I hates it. Hates it!

1515

I do that too, but my golem almost never dies so it’s a pretty minor annoyance. You may find that it gets better as you level up the golem a bit. Are you using Enfeeble? That can help quite a bit with keeping minions alive, especially against bosses.

Interesting, I’ve never tried that. Usually I’ll just resummon the totem if I find that the skeletons aren’t in the spot where I want them. Currently I’m using Culling Strike with them, and eventually I may link an Item Rarity too (once I get all the gear slots organized the way I want).

Nice find with that Tabula Rasa! I can’t remember ever finding a 6-link item. Got a few 5-links back in the day, but never a full six. Having no +life/+resists on the chest is tough, but other gear can make up for it.

Multistrike on the zombies and spirits really does help, but I hear you about not being able to see it very well. Too much going on in most fights to see what individual minions are doing. Spectres are a different beast…unless you’re using melee attack guys (which is usually a bad idea since they die so much), Multistrike isn’t helping. I’d suggest you move the Spectres out to another item, which gives you one more spot to put another useful gem for the zombies and spirits, like Melee Physical Damage or Faster Attacks.

As for the spectres, link them to Lesser Multiple Projectiles which is helpful on any ranged attack spectre, and then whatever other gems fit with the links you have. I’m using Increased Critical Strikes and Innervate on mine right now, basically using them to shock enemies more than do a ton of damage. If you’d rather have more damage out of them, Minion Damage is always good, and maybe Added [pick your favorite Fire/Cold/Lightning] Damage.

Yep, and you’ll probably want to keep that through the end of Normal. As you move up, it becomes less necessary as the minions start to live on their own and you can use whatever they kill for your Flesh Offerings.

I haven’t missed cast speed bonuses in large part due to linking either Faster Casting or Spell Echo to my Raging Spirits. You might want to consider eventually moving the spirits to a 4-link item and focusing all 6 links in the Tabula Rasa on zombies. Spirits+Spell Echo+Multistrike+Minion Damage is all kinds of effective, and you get a lot of spirits out really quickly.

I don’t mind ES as a defense, but then I’m very careful with Sarah and it’s a rare fight indeed that she gets hit more than once. 99% of the time that something hits me, I can retreat a bit and the minion horde will eat it before there’s another hit, so the ES is back up by the time another hit happens. Of course, the other 1% of the time does kinda suck, which is why I prioritize life and resists over the amount of ES when choosing gear.

1516

Ooh, I didn’t think of Spell Echo on SRS. That’s a good call. FC + SE + MS + SRS sounds amazing.

I’ve seen a lot of people advocate Culling on the skeletotem. It doesn’t seem that great on paper…what’s the bonus there?

Been thinking about moving Specters out to its own item, yeah, for exactly the reasons you list. Innervate is an interesting idea. I see that everyone loves LMP on specters, but mine don’t really stay alive very well so it’s hard to want to add anything but very general supports since I tend to run with whatever is around rather than grabbing Flame Sentinels or whatever.

I am indeed using Enfeeble, and it’s great. Been dealing with a lot of AOE damage that disrespects the skeletotem meatwall, though, and have little in the way of elemental resists for minions, so my zombies are still squishy.

I’m also running Wrath right now for bonus minion damage, which seems okay? Hard to say. I’ve got the mana for it anyway, especially since I picked up Sovereignty. My regen is through the roof with Clarity.

1517

On big stuff, the insta-kill at 10% can save you a decent chunk of work. Malachai and Dominus, for instance. On smaller stuff, it doesn’t do a whole lot in terms of speeding up kills, but later on if you have a 4-link free then you can add Item Rarity. The extra rarity works only on stuff killed by skeletons, and with Culling Strike they’ll be getting the killing blow on most everything but normal white monsters.

You’ll likely be doing that all the way up into late Cruel. I find that LMP is worthwhile since 90% of the time there’s some kind of dead projectile monster laying around, even if I have to resummon every few fights. But nothing wrong with just going something that helps all types, like Minion Damage or Innervate or Increased Critical Strikes, and not worrying about the type of spectre at all.

Ah, that may be the difference in minion survival from what I remember from the area you’re in…I was running Purity of Elements instead of Wrath. The extra resists are good for the minions, and as a bonus it makes things a whole lot easier for you to max your own personal resists. I find that defensive auras are better than damage auras for this style of summoner. The minions are going to eat most things quickly enough anyway, as long as they’re still upright…so more defense translates to more damage anyway.

1518

I was running Purity for a while, but then my resists were maxed in Normal without it so I dropped it for Wrath. You may well be right that it’s actually more damage for me than Wrath anyway. And I could deemphasize resist on armor, which would be nice.

Totally didn’t put the pieces together to understand the Culling + Rarity combo. That’s a great idea, I’ll totally check that.

And yeah, I definitely favor ranged monsters for specters anyway, so LMP might be worth it.

1519

Okay, so after screwing around with gems I ended up with SRS + Echo + Multistrike + Culling, and it was pretty amazing.

Malachai was a complete pain in the ass, unsurprisingly. Echo was actually a problem here, as it stuck me in place too long and I ate way too much damage. Died once (I am, of course, a hateable softcore savebaby because at least for now fuck A4) but had to portal out to refill minions + flasks like 5 times, which always feels like cheese to me.

Easier than on my Reaver, though, he died like 6 times or something on Malachai.

I hate that fight. There’s just so much bullshit going on that it feels chaotic and retarded instead of cool and tactical. Dominus is a much better encounter IMO.

1520

Swap faster casting for echo for that fight, maybe.