Bateau
1741
What do you plan to change about OFTRTA?
Romalar
1742
A key thing about loot filters that a lot of people don’t realize: you don’t have to hide anything. You can change the color, outline, size, and transparency of the item labels. You can even set up custom sounds for when things drop. I use a customized version of ZiggyD’s filter and have it set to not hide anything. However, I do make most stuff rather small and partly transparent to keep my screen manageable, but valuable currency and 5/6-links get big and bright item labels, and I have highlighting outlines on a lot of items I pick up when there’s space (e.g. chromatic items, ilevel 60+ rares for the chaos/regal recipes.)
The little utility Filtration is a nice editor for the loot filters as well.
Spock
1744
These loot filters are player-made mods, I assume? Is there an official filter available too?
The ability was coded in by the developers; the filters themselves are merely text files created in any text editor. Dunno if GGG made their own filter, doesn’t seem to be one.
It seems counterintuitive but you are slowing yourself down and making yourself poorer by doing it this way. Because time spent vendoring whites and useless blues is time you aren’t leveling and getting better drops.
A good rule for picking things up:
-
Any item with 3 or 4 links, always. Because this is such a force multiplier on your main skill gem, you want to get sonething to run it ASAP. It’s worth using a white piece of gear that fits your color needs as long as you do a decent job covering resists elsewhere.
-
Any piece of gear that represents an immediate upgrade (e…g you have a nothing white pair of boots, a blue or rare boots you can use drops, do it!).
-
RGB-linked gear, to vendor for Chromatic orbs.
-
Certain white or blue jewelry (including some belts) that’s has a max intrinsic roll. What you’re looking for: res rings (30 max single, 16 max two res, 11 max tri res. . . or was it more? Poe Wiki is your friend), coral rings (+30 life), Max dual (+24) or tri stat amulets (+16), leather belts (+40 health). Gold rings (+20% Item Find, iirc) and the related amulet (I forget the max), paula amulets (if you need mana regen, though I don’t pay attention to the max mod here, just any one).
-
Rares.
-
Currency and uniques. A lot of top players don’t evenb pick up scrolls but you should.
A lot of players do ignore bigger (3x2 and 4x2) rares. I don’t while leveling neessarily, it just depends on how long since I’ve vendored and how much I have in the backpack at the time. The same holds for larger RGB-linked items. But remember that once you gt there, 6s items are always worth picking up and vendoring.
If you run out of scrolls, vendor Trans or Augs for 4 IDs a pop. Trans/aug those max-intrinsic white jewelries (regardless of ilevel) unless you are already wearing something acceptable. If you are, you can skip picking the whites up. Always pick up the blues and ID them, you never knoww hat might pop out. Even low iLevel rings can get to +50% total resistances, which will see you a looooooooong way. Note that you don’t want to reroll these, must trans/aug and go. If something great comes out, awesome. If not, no biggie.
Certain builds might care about other types of jewelry, of course. Maybe you need a +single stat amulet to help cover your stat requirements. A physical damage build might be well served with a rustic sash (max +24% physical damage iirc).
Do not pick up any other whites or blues unless they fall under one of the initial rules. You will steadily acquire alts from the vendoring this way. Eventually scrolls will not be a problem. You will occasionally score awesome upgrades (like a +max intrinsic res ring that rolls more + resistance and a good + health). The rest just slows you down and gets in the way of getting to real ultimate power.
Bateau
1747
My Explosive Arrow build is shaping up to be quite amazing - at level 79 I already have 4.6k hp (next 12 points going into health nodes), 5 endurance charges, 6 jewel sockets, elemental equilibrium, 48% movement speed (40 default, 48 with frenzy charges) modifier, 9.2% health regen (!!) with frenzy and endurance charges up, res capped for Ele Weakness and 50% chaos res on merciless! Damage is also through the roof because I stacked double or triple damage mods on pretty much all of my jewels.
One of the most fun characters I’ve played so far, even beating my reaver in terms of fun.
Starting as a female archer character (ranger)? I’ve tried several of those since the beta days. I always die in Act 2 of normal difficulty with those. I can’t figure out how to survive to Act 3, let alone planning for a long term build like that. How on earth do you get that many hit points? Is that from health nodes and lots of +life gear?
Meanwhile, this flame totem witch I’ve made is hands down the most ass-kicking character I’ve ever made. And putting a cold damage modifier on the flame totem is so satisfying. Everybody gets frozen and shatters as they flames destroy them. Deliciously satisfying.
Bateau
1749
It’s a combination of lots of hp nodes and high life rolls on gear. You also get some life each time you level up.
Spock
1750
A flame-totem witch sounds fun. My newbie witch is level 17 or so now, and mostly I’ve invested in spell damage and summoned zombies; I can now summon four of them. Are summoned things a good long-term plan? Can I use them as well as totems? Still trying to wrap my head around the fascinating but complex passive skill tree.
PantsVZ
1751
I remember that people wouldn’t run late game maps with summoners at one point, but I think it had more to do with the horrible lag/skipping which seems to be much better now. (after the introduction of lockstep)
There are still some builds that annoy people like firestorm, that thing makes it near impossible to see what’s going on.
Summoners can be quite strong, but everything I have heard and read says that until around level 50 your zombies are going to die off quite a bit. So leveling to 50 is slower than other specs (still quite viable, though). You definitely want to head for the +1 to zombie/skeleton nodes (and get a +1 to minion gems hat to put your gems in too).
One thing that’s especially fun is a summon skeletons gem on a spell totem. Plop down the totem wherever you want a bunch of skeletons. This avoids the issue of the skeletons moving like slugs dipped in molasses.
I’m leveling a tanky Incinerate Scion. It’s a fun idea: pump your regeneration really high and have a bunch of skills on Cast When Damage taken gems (I have 3 separate CWDT gems in my gear, all linked to multiple items). Gameplay consists of hitting incinerate and chatting on the phone at the same time! Early in A1C it’s going ok. A4N was brutal… I thought I would die for sure, since it seemed my damage was so low and my tankiness was not really evident. However, I might have turned the corner though. When something hits me hard enough to trigger the CWDT gems my guy casts Molten Shell, Chaos Golem, Firestorm, Frost Wall, and curses like mad. It’s like fireworks going off!
Eventually this character will have Chaos Inoculation (1 hp, immune to chaos damage) and a ton of Energy Shield. Which will be interesting… History says I won’t make it that far but you never know!
As an exploration character for learning the game, trying multiple things (i.e. minions/spell damage/totems) is fine, but you should know that once you get up past about level 40-ish, things get tough enough that you’ll need to focus on one thing. In your situation, I’d keep on with your newbie witch as long as she’s fun, then when you start having a hard time with non-bosses, pick whatever thing was most interesting to you and start a new character focusing on that.
If flame-totem sounds interesting, check out this build guide. If you like the minion idea, I have some small expertise. That’s a giant thread that you probably don’t want to read all at once, but the first half-dozen or so posts are a good introduction. Or if you like the idea of focusing on spell damage, there’s a bunch of ways to go with that, like these arc-based builds (one, two).
I should never have clicked on this thread. I haven’t played in ages but now I’ve reinstalled the game and started a duelist.
Its crazy getting back into PoE. I remember everything being about the passive tree keystones before but now all the build talk is about gems not nodes.
Spock
1755
Wow, Bob, that’s quite a thread on summoning. I’ll read it and try to digest it over the next couple days.
Yeah, I sorta guessed that focusing on one thing is optimal. You really can’t do a full respec in this game, can you. I have a whopping 2 respec points. Still, for now it’s fun just to play and experiment with stuff.
When you make a new character, you always start at the start of Act I?
Except in races and special events, yeah, new characters start on the beach there in Act I with a rusty piece of metal or a stick they find on the ground. Of course, eventually your stash is full of twink gear at least.
There seem to be full respecs with certain big patches, and maybe even when the leagues recycle (for the characters that are now in “standard” leagues, having survived the temporary league). And there are those point by point respecs available, which generally are good for fixing oopses only.
I have a question, though, about my flamethrower toting Templar. The guide I’m using (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1347222) is pretty clear on using wands/scepters with +1 to socketed fire gems. Not a problem, have been able to find or make those (blues at first, had a rare too which is nice). But that’s only one of the abilities; I’ve got Incinerate on my 3L right now with added lightning and faster casting. Flame Totem though also is supposed to go on something with +1, and the only thing I’ve found that allows both to be used at once is a spell caster’s small shield (varies in material as you level) for the off-hand, which is what I’ve been doing. The guide never mentions that, and only talks about socketing both Incinerate and Flame Totem in weapons, but Templars can’t dual-wield, can they? I tried using the weapon swap, but that meant some fancy foot (finger?) work, because if you toss a totem then switch to the other weapon set, the totem vanishes. It works if you toss the totem and only switch to Incinerate if necessary, but I’ve much preferred having both available at once.
Thing is, finding those off-hand shields with +1 to fire gems is like, um, hard. I’ve been lucky to find/roll a couple, but there are no recipes for them that I know of, unlike for wands/scepters.
Am I missing something there? So far, the build has worked, as I’m in to Act III (the Vaal Guardian was a s’more before he could blink) but juggling links is now getting to be a challenge. I’m at the point I really am starting to need very specific 3Ls and 4Ls, as well as resistances. I have a Paua necklace I guess it is with -5 mana from spell costs which is nice but I don’t want to ditch that for better resists, but I may have to. I am running Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder and Clarity (swapping Ice for Arctic Armor if necessary) and my regen is enough to keep Incinerate up most of the time if I’m careful with potions and don’t fumble my fingers. But I only have Elreon at level 3 so I don’t have any access to his mana cost reduction stuff yet.
So when you buy an Elreon ring, that’s actually an affix and not an implicit mod. Duh, yes, but don’t alt it up like me to try and get a better second affix. Heh.
Yep, it’s better not to count on any kind of respec. Like Wombat said, occasionally you’ll get one after some kind of major patch, but those are rare and unpredictable…and likely to totally ruin your ideas with some major nerf anyhow. :) You get a total of 18 respec points if you finish all the quests in all three difficulties, so there’s a little bit to play around with, but not enough for a total rework of a build.
I don’t see why not. I know for sure you can do two Wands. I’ve never tried two Scepters, but it seems like it should work. The downside is loss of the shield defense, of course, but sounds like the build is more focused on offense anyway.
