Well GGG is like a tenth of the size of the team that made D3. Or even smaller, relatively speaking.
Oh, yeah, I realize that. From the consumer perspective, though, it doesn’t matter; it’s the end result that people see. I like PoE a lot, but in the end, it’s nowhere near as polished as Diablo III. I play it because it’s different and more challenging, but I sure would love it if it had Blizzard’s level of fit and finish.
Of course, it’s also free :). I have zero complaints about GGG really. They seem to be doing a bang-up job for a F2P game.
I’m really enjoying my time with PoE so far. My marauder is in the early stages of act 3 (normal) and has been a ton of fun so far. It’s the perfect game for when I need something to just hop into and zone out for awhile. I’ve been working on a two handed build and with an orange hammer I found in act two, I can one shot most non special mobs. I couldn’t tell you the names of the skills I’m using but so far the mix I have is working out real well. One question, when I get a skill from the corrupted mini areas and the skill itself notes that its corrupted in red text, what does that mean?
Bateau
1584
Just keep at it! To be honest, I think leveling is much harder than maps themselves, especially if you keep them at magic rarity since it gives you more control over mods compared to rare ones. Act4 in particular is the biggest obstacle to maps right now.
And here’s a short video of my reaver at level 68, doing the first quest in act 4 merciless - it takes about 30 seconds or so before I can start using Vaal Reave but once that’s over it’s 120% fun. If I manage to get a 6L (have one but it’s the eva/es base, hard to roll the sockets I need :) I’m definitely going to put Increased Area of Effect in the 6th slot.
Souls baby! Vaal (corrupted) skill gems are powered by souls you collect by slaying enemies. When activated, the result is a souped up version of the base skill type.
To use a Vaal skill, its gem must first be charged by collecting souls. Each slain enemy provides one soul, assigned randomly to one of the character’s equipped Vaal skill gems. Souls will never be assigned to Vaal skill gems in the character’s secondary weapon set. Collected souls cannot be transferred between zone instances; instead, each instance maintains its own soul counter for each gem. In other words, entering a new instance will start a new counter for each gem, but returning to a previously visited instance will restore each counter to its previous value.
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vaal_skill
Ok thanks Sharaleo! That makes sense, so that’s what that meter is that shows up when I select a piece of equipment that has a vaal skill in it.
Piemax2
1587
My lead character-a marauder using 2H mace and sweep, just made it to A4 cruel. He’d been emphasizing life and armor, and had an easy time until A3 cruel, when he twice had to run away from Kole; then I remember about granite flasks. :) And even though he has 2.7K life and max resists, he got pretty hurt by the lightning of Dominus’s first form. Now I’d like to work him down the tree to rampart but it’s pretty far away- he’s gone more East and North.
That character is on the same account and stash as the one I play with my son, so I made a new account for a self-found summoner a la IneffableBob.
Bob, your tip about replacing flame dash with convocation was great, liking that a lot; she (a witch) just made it to A4 normal and didn’t even have to portal out to resummon.
So for grins I loaded my normal hardcore stuff to clean up the stash, and took a look at my Scion in A2C. Respecced her as heavy life/armor two-handed wielder…and nearly died to blues in the Crossroads. Ran away fast. Been forever since I played this character.
Just took my 27 Summoner into Tempest Act 3. She has 9 skellys coming out of a totem and 6 zombies. With a little bit of casting speed, I can keep about 6 Ragings in the fray. With the totem and me, that’s a team of 23. The only thing I’m nervous about in the near future is chaos resistance.
Chaos isn’t an issue until Cruel, usually, when you get the default -20% Chaos resistance debuff. Until then, don’t sweat it really.
Just got a Whispering Ice drop in cruel dominus fight from one of the sub-bosses. I’m thanking the tempest that was running to boost item rarity. I’m really actually looking forward to my next rip now, though this SRS summoner thing doesn’t seem like it’s in much danger any time soon.
Picked this for safety after ripping my 3rd mapper, this time at level 79. Must hit that 82 for the achievement challenge dang it.
I’m struggling with my SRS summoner right now. She’s level 38 nd in A4N, piddling around in the mines area (as an aside, I really, really hate the mines + the fire tempest. I can’t go 5 feet without burning ground, fire golems, flame totems, etc… so annoying in these narrow passages). I’ve got my flaming skulls plus a 5 zombies, 2 spectres, a chaos golem and a skeleton totem that does 7 skellies. But I seriously feel like I spend 90% of my time resummoning stuff - I don’t bother looking for suitable spectres since they seem to die so easily.
I vaguely recall this is how I end up feeling about most summoner builds. I know your mobs get much tougher later but man is it trying my patience now.
You’re in the worst of it right now, Charlatan. Looking back at my journal for the first Sarah:
Next, worked my way in succession through the mines levels 1 and 2 (Shrinking Tempest in both), and the Crystal Veins (Battering Tempest). Could not keep a spectre alive for more than a fight or two, no matter what type I raised, so I just picked up random corpses whenever I had a free moment, and otherwise ignored them. The rest of the horde was doing fine without them anyway. The Chaos Golem held its own just fine against everything except the Burning Man’s big explosion, so I don’t think there’s any need to worry about its survival. Did another mission for Catarina in the first mine level and freed Deshret on the second. Fought Pikerivet, Hammerstorm, and the Burning Man…the last was the most dangerous, but I just enfeebled him and then stayed as far away as possible while the horde went to work.
The current Sarah is in the same spot right now, and I expect it’ll be more of the same. Things get a little better in the Kaom series of zones, since you’re not stuck in the tiny corridors any more. The Arena side can be pretty bad, though. If you can, wait out the worst tempests (Molten, Static, Glacial, Battering) in any of those zones where you’re stuck in small passages.
Switching to Purity of Elements made a big difference in keeping my guys alive through there. Otherwise yeah, the constant area damage is awful to deal with.
Can you reset a zone to get a different Tempest?
I think it’s on a timer of some sort, so pretty sure resetting doesn’t change it.
According to this, the tempests change every hour.
Bateau
1597
Small update on my reaver - got REALLY lucky last night and got Maligaro’s gloves (current price in Warbands is 5-10 exa, holy shit) and treated myself to Bino’s Kitchen Knife today then burned up all my regret orbs to respec to crit dagger build. And it’s beautiful, it’s exactly what I wanted from a build when I started playing softcore in this league - a spec that can blow up entire screens at once.
Again, here’s a short video that shows me doing a lvl 77 Plateau map. My character here is level 80 but the dps won’t go much higher since I mostly have hp nodes left.
And yeah I suck at picking up things :(.
Grats on that drop!
I spent all of my gaming time last night … reorganizing my stash tabs. Yeah, pretty exciting stuff. My stash was a mess in Standard (had a bunch of old expired league remove-only tabs from dunno when). And between all the leagues I tended to organize things slightly differently. So I decided to standardize tab names and organization in all 4 leagues (Standard, Hardcore, Warband and Tempest). So I spent my time renaming and organizing tabs and moving crap around. For the most part I ended up selling the gear I had stashed. I always save a bunch of yellows when I’m leveling, thinking “oh, I’ll use these with another character.” For the most part, I don’t do that (mainly because a lot of them are just not good). So I just said “screw it, I’m selling all the crap that’s in here.” The only things I kept were currency items, gems, flasks, jewelery, and uniques.
Yeah, I reorged all of my stash as well, and sold off most everything that had only one socket unless it was a unique. The vast majority of rares are trash.
Warbands prices right now seem a little crazy to me. I didn’t get to play much since the weekend, but Brightbeaks (a 1h hammer with tons of attack speed and + res all. Good off hand for leveling) were going for 18-22 chaos. I swear I’ve seen them at 1c in leagues before. And prices in leagues tend to settle somewhat quickly. Within a couple of weeeks they’re close to where they get usually.
