So last night I decided to look up the other gems I’m missing from that build. It turns out Increased Duration and Reduce Duration are not available for sale to the Witch. And Vaal Haste, I think from my research it looks like Haste is not available to the Witch for sale, but even for the appropriate character, only Haste is available for sale, and then you use the Vaal Gem to corrupt the Haste gem, and there’s a chance that it will turn into Vaal Haste. And the last gem I’m missing from that build, Added Chaos Damage, isn’t ever available for sale from any vendor in the game, nor is it a quest reward. You just have to have it drop randomly as loot. So then I finally went to that PoE trading website you guys talked about above, and it looks like people are asking one or more blessed orbs for it. I forget if that’s the correct name. It’s what takes a yellow piece of loot and rerolls all the properties to make a brand new yellow.
So it turns out, all of these are really hard to get. So I won’t worry about them. I’ll see if I can make this witch survive through Cruel with what I’ve got, since I’ve got all the core components necessary for the build now that are easily accessible.
Bateau
1882
http://poe.trade/search/arotasezukohek
Sort by price.
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
1 chaos
If you’re short on chaos just offer to trade 15 alts or whatever the current exchange rate is right now.
That’s the right approach - if you can’t get something fairly easily, try something similar that you can access. There are a few edge cases where that won’t work (+max fire resist stuff for Righteous Fire, for instance) but in most cases it’ll be fine. In the case of Added Chaos Damage, since it’s a blue gem that adds damage, you might run Added Lightning Damage instead. Same slot color, same requirements, just a different damage type.
On the subject of Vaal Gems, I believe you can get one by corrupting it as you describe, but that’s not the primary method. Every once in a while you’ll run across a side “corrupted” area in your travels through the game. If you clear the boss at the end of it, there’s a special chest that drops either a Vaal gem or a special map component. That’s where most of the Vaal gems come from. There’s quite a few in the Tempest guild stash, because I found a bunch while playing Sarah that I knew I’d never use. Not so many in the Warbands guild stash, haven’t run across many (yet).
As for Increased and Less Duration, Witches may not get them but Marauders do. Bought you one of each and dropped them in the guild stash.
To use poe.trade to actually buy stuff, here’s what you do: specify the item you want, then near the bottom turn “online” to on. Click the search button. Then when you seethe result list, scroll down to the first item you can find that has a buyout listed (doesn’t matter what the buyout is, just that there IS a buyout) - click on the buyout price. That will sort by buyout amount, with the lowest buyout being at the top of your list. That will almost always give you multiple items with low buyouts. Then all you have to do is whisper each guy there until you get one, and offer to buy it (choosing ‘online’ makes it much easier to find someone online but a lot of people get busy and/or are not online when you check, so you need to be patient).
If you still need the item, re-search, and contact all those people who didn’t specify buyouts and offer them the lowest buyout you found before. Someone will undoubtedly take it (heck, I once had a guy sell me a 7q incinerate gem for “whatever you want, dude”).
I chipped in 50 points as well.
I should actually join the guild. Probably roll up a new Warbands toon (bow maybe?) once I get bored with D3 again, which will be in 2-6 weeks if history is any guide.
Took Porcuswine through Malachai Cruel into Merciless today. Nasty fight as always, but I have to say it’s a whole lot easier as a melee character than it was when I did it with a summoner. I did it at level 57, same as the zone level, which is a first for me. Willing to do that in Warbands, where in a hardcore league I’d have been much more cautious. Had to portal out quite a few times when my flasks weren’t refilling fast enough for me to feel comfortable, and there were two times when I’m not quite sure how I survived. Once right at the end of the first stage, and once just before taking out the third heart - in both cases my life bulb looked totally empty but somehow I lived long enough to hit a flask. The key was keeping Enfeeble on Malachai and my Fortify buff up; when one or the other dropped, I immediately got hammered. And of course, dodging the big attacks, which I was able to go pretty well with Leap Slam. Didn’t time it, but I’d guess probably around 6-7 minutes total fight time.
I’m pretty happy with this counter-duelist build thus far. All the counter attacks let him tear through melee enemies like crazy. Ranged stuff is tougher, but generally I can jump around to take them out fairly quickly. Molten Strike does reasonable damage to most stuff, though I did notice a marked slowdown when I hit Kaom’s areas with all the fire resist. Defenses are solid as long as I keep fortify up, which is linked to Leap Slam. I tried putting it on Molten Strike to make sure it stays up, but that really puts a dent in DPS. I really like the endurance charges from End Charge on Melee Stun linked to both counterattacks; I almost always have max charges after a short fight, and they stay around pretty well.
Thanks, fellas! Added 15 points myself which got us to 100, so I could get two more tabs. More room for all that junk you’re not using. :)
Piemax2
1889
My marauder RIP’d to the merciless Val Oversoul, of all the silly things- the overlord was more than half dead, he was just about 1/2 health and I was thinking of running for the portal for the second time when -boom-. He had 3600 life, maxed resists (except for chaos but he carried a chaos flask) 70% damage reduction + fortify when in melee. It didnt look like the Oversoul was lobbing ice balls at the time, I guess it was a crit? Anyway this is the farthest I’ve gotten, and the first character to get any map drops. I’ve never played a map so at one point I will push him on to A3 to try them out.
Ouch. At least you croaked to an actual boss, as opposed to how I usually die, which is to random packs of mobs…
fdsaion
1891
The listed DR is misleading, by the way - 70% isn’t accurate, its some kind of expected reduction against all monsters of your level.
In reality, each point of armor blocks 0.1 points (buffed recently from 0.08) of damage maximum (it’s polynomial up to your max, so it’s not a straight subtraction where you take 0 damage from attacks less than 1/10th your armor). So a single big hit is basically reduced by almost nothing in percentage terms from armor.
IIRC it’s been passed around that the smash is something like 3k/3k physical/fire (some have suggested 4k/4k, which would make it completely untankable for almost everyone at the boss level). So thats 3750 - 0.1*armor damage taken not considering fortify (or 5000 - 0.1*armor if the 4k is correct). Don’t know if it can crit, but 3.6k life is enough to tank that from full, especially with fortify up (you sure that was up and didn’t just expire?). But if you got hit by something immediately prior or after (e.g. falling rocks, which also hurt), that could do it too.
Thanks for the Death Harp and wild leather uniques in the guild stash. My poison arrow ranger is wearing it for a little while as I finish Act 3 normal.
Does anyone have rough guidelines about where you should expect to be DPS wise at the end of Act 3 normal? I have this nagging feeling that both of my alts are underpowered even though I’m clearing everything without significant worries.
Bateau
1893
There are no set guidelines. You can’t even compare tooltip dps 1:1 between skills because they often have secondary effects or underlying mechanics. As long as you can reliably 1-2 shot white packs you’re on a good track.
My only real complaint with this game so far is just how fast things happen. Diablo 2 had a slower, more deliberate pace, especially when played on “Players 8” activated. Enemies took some time to beat down, and enemies also took some time to beat you down, so you had time to get out of there. Every time I’ve died in Path of Exile, it has happened really, really fast, almost instantly, before I even knew it was happening. The exception is the bosses. The bosses go down slowly and took me down slowly when I died to them.
fdsaion
1895
I don’t really think so. The actually dangerous stuff in D2 killed you just as fast. Corpse explosion, Diablo’s lighting stream, anything with multishot lightning enchantment (especially if melee), getting cursed with Iron Maiden (and thorns in general) are all stuff off the top of my head.
Blizzard’s games tend to have better UIs and better communication with the player, with visuals and text, about when bad things are likely to happen. PoE sort of wham bam thank you ma’am’s you more often.
I’m currently playing a dual flame totem witch and while she has good DPS, I am starting to feel like she’s just a hit or two away from buying the farm (currently at the start of A4C). I even have maxed resists and a whopping 25% chaos resist but man does her health drop when she’s getting beaten on. When I get to this point in a toon’s life, I start thinking “wouldn’t it be better to have a really tanky character!” So when this chick dies, that’s what I’m doing :D
Is the guild cross-league? Can I join it if I’m mostly playing Tempest league?
I’ll give you Corpse Explosion. That’s how I died to Nilathak on my final death in Hell difficulty. But me and my friends learned to fear lightning enchantment pretty early on and never died to it again. Same with Iron Maiden. Diablo’s lightning stream actually took some time to kill you. My initial and only run through softcore I died to that lightning stream a lot, but in Hardcore we always build up our lightning resist to maximum as early as we could, so that one always took time to kill us. Lots of time. In fact, my Barbarian and Paladin and Druid characters would just sit there and take the lightning stream the whole time, since I had enough hit points to survive it with max lightning resists.
The other thing is that in Diablo 2 it always seemed more obvious what killed me. Oh, it was the lightning enchanted monster. Must have more lightning resist next time. Lesson learned. Oh, fire enchanted monsters explode when you kill them, lesson learned, need more health and fire resistance. Oh, the undead kids explode when they die. So it was the sorceress in my party that killed them all with a meteor while they surrounded my barbarian. Lesson learned: don’t party with a trigger happy sorceress. She will kill you despite there being no friendly fire in the game.
The deaths in PoE seem more mysterious to me, where I die so fast, I’m not sure what killed me.
This is mitigated in Warbands/Softcore, because I’m able to go back to the scene of my death and find out more. I think maybe at least in Hardcore they need to put on the screen when you die the exact reason for death. You were killed by So and So who used this and this.
You hit the nail on the head–it’s clear in Diablo games what got you usually (some exceptions, sure) but in PoE, it’s often a head-scratcher.
Both games would benefit from a detailed combat log, a la MMOs, though.
Bateau
1900
Yup. I just started a Tempest character myself - shield block focused scion.
