1901

Well said, Rock8man. That’s why I don’t play HC in POE – like I said upthread, to my mind survival is more of a matter of game knowledge (knowing what esoteric affixes on which monster types are instant death) than actual careful/defensive play.

1902

I know, this was just a convenient summary statistic; actual armor numbers are 6777 w/o determination, 9962 with it.

You’re right that fortify was probably expired at that point, and it must have been a combination of rocks and an attack. I think I had the gear to survive it with more careful play, I wasn’t paying enough attention.

1903

I’d love to have more feedback as I’m usually not able to absorb the information on the screen while also running around and hitting pots. And indeed in many ways it would make more sense for me to play on Warbands, but I’d need to get over my mental block about that first…

1904

2.0.3 Development manifesto.

Coming this Thursday to a server cluster with a gateway located near you somewhere.

Highlights:

  • Goldrim and Brightbeak are being returned to T4 unique rarity (or maybe they were T3). . . whatever they were pre-awakening. No changes to stats. Devs acknowledge they are super powerful/awesome but “game is more fun when people have easier access to them”. Stormcloud and Wake of Destruction were also made more common.

  • All “rare” and “super-rare” items drop 4 times as often. Not sure what this means beyond the T1 uniques, but I assume it also means the T2s.

  • Many div cards are now more common.

1905

I feel like it’s too little too late, at least for the majority who seems to have already quit the temp leagues. I welcome these changes with open arms however.

1906

You’re welcome! I figured those would go really well together. I found them back to back.

Today I found 4 or 5 more uniques that I put in the Guild chest. Including a really badass face mask, and probably the best low level leather belt I’ve seen so far. Should be great for some starting characters up through normal difficulty. And I found a two handed unique sword that’s completely geared toward summoners. That could be interesting.

Thanks to whoever deposited that armor/energy shield type unique armor. I put the orb on it that randomizes the nodes on it until I got 6 nodes! Unfortunately I don’t have the chromatic orbs to be able to convert it to all the right colors. But the 4 chromatic orbs I had left finally got it to a point where I can use a flame totem pretty effectively. I just didn’t get a green node yet, so I can’t use faster projectiles anymore. Chromatic orbs are funny aren’t they? You’re collecting them forever and then suddenly you run out because sometimes it takes 20 tries to get enough red nodes on an armor that should be rolling red nodes more often than any other color.

1907

Shield block lazy static strike pally is your friend.

1908

Can someone explain Master Daily Quests to me? I have a master at level 6 (I think) and I tried to do his daily quest with a level 55 guy but I got the message “You have not completed Cruel difficulty yet.” So there must be some sort of restriction on daily quests; but heck if I can find how it works.

1909

I don’t have the exact details, but at some level (4?) the daily Master missions switch to Cruel difficulty, and then at a later level (6?) they move up to Merciless. I suppose it matters due to the resistances penalty. Sure would be nice if they’d show that somewhere before you accept the mission, rather than just telling you “nope, sorry” when you try to enter the portal.

1910

Master missions are teh debil in HC. At least, I find them very very touchy.

1911

Depends. Haku is a jackhole, for sure, and Vagan can be surprisingly spiky sometimes. Vorici can mostly kiss my butt anyway since my highest/main is a summoner, heh.

1912

Yeah, it’s mostly Haku I hate.

1913

Vorici is an ass. “Don’t kill this, don’t kill that.” I’m an Exile, all I do is kill shit! I fail his damn mission at least half the time, even after doing things like slotting lower level gems and removing Culling Strike.

1914

I was really sad when MURDERMURDERMURDERMUR or whatever the name character limit was was taken, as was plain ol’ MURDERMURDERMURDER, so I ended up having to go with MURDER_MURDER_MURDER for my summoner’s name.

1915

Really. I mean, when I push the button for, say, Incinerate, I don’t usually look to see WHAT I’m incinerating…

1916

I bought a 5-link chest armor in Tempest today for my flame totem marauder, and was shocked to only pay 1 chaos for it. Admittedly, it’s not great. Corrupted, so I can’t do anything to it, only 516 armor, and not much in the way of resists. But still, it’s a fifth link for Flame Totem, and dirt cheap.

Also, I’ve added zombies to his build. No minion nodes, don’t plan to take any, but I had some open gem slots and nothing that was really useful to put in them. Which is weird, since most characters have the opposite problem - too many useful gems and not enough slots for them. But this guy really only needs spots for the main Flame Totem link, Lightning Warp, CoDT/Immortal Call, and the misc single-gem stuff like Herald of Thunder and Enduring Cry. I have no idea if the zombies will ever actually be useful with no passive tree support, but since I can’t use anything that does damage directly from me…hey, why not?

1917

I added the Flame Golem for that same reason. Once you take Ancestral Bond, there’s not many options on what to do with Gem slots that are actually useful. And Flame Golem adds to the damage of the Flame totem, and serves as a distraction sometimes. Double bonus! :) He can’t kill a damn thing though. Sometimes I’m standing there playing inventory tetris so that I can pick up something else, and a stray enemy or two walk by and attack. The Golem engages them! Nice! Something to entertain me while I play inventory tetris. Nope. Not entertaining. He uses his 3 spells, they pound on him. No one ever gets anywhere. He’s worthless at actually killing stuff, but hey, distraction and damage bonus, not a bad thing.

1918

Ah, I think he had just hit 6 so I think that explains it.

Yeah, it’d be nice to see the restrictions on the daily mission before taking it. And heck, why not scale them to the level of the character taking the mission? I wouldn’t complain if the XP reward is scaled down to the mission level. It’s so frustrating in HC to have a high level character die and then be unable to do daily missions until you get the next character up to the proper level range.

1919

Some minor balance changes in the new patch:

  • Increased the base damage of Ground Slam at all levels. (80% base damage to 85% base damage at level 1, progressing at the same rate to level 20).
  • The starting Melee Damage node for the Marauder now also grants 16 additional maximum Life.
  • The Born to Fight notable passive skill now grants 20 additional Accuracy Rating.
  • The Strong Arm and Butchery notable passive skills now grant 25% increased Physical Damage with One Handed or Two Handed Melee Weapons (up from 20%) and 5% increased Attack Speed with One Handed or Two Handed Melee Weapons (up from 4%).
  • The Versatility passive notable now grants 4% increased Attack Speed.
  • Added Flame Dash to the Shadow’s quest rewards for The Caged Brute.
  • Removed Freeze Mine from the Shadow’s quest rewards for The Caged Brute. This gem is still available from the vendor in town after completing the quest.

So mostly changes to the passive tree on the Marauder side.

1920

I’m starting to feel this way about my dual totem Witch. It’s a pretty neat character, but I’m suddenly itching to play a character in which I’m more active. I might actually go back to my old Hardcore characters from the beta days that are still alive in Act 3 (from the days when Act 3 used to be a game-unbalancing difficulty spike compared to Acts 1 and 2).

I had a level 35ish Dual-Axe wielding Marauder and a Elemental Damage Paladin, both of those characters were pretty tanky and way more active in terms of skill usage than this Witch character. I’m just scared that playing in Warbands has changed my thinking too much and made me too relaxed. Just watch, I bet within an hour I’m going to get one of these two characters killed tonight.

One thing I’m not looking forward to is my Hardcore stash. I used to be so disorganized back in those days. Every one of my Premium tabs was filled 100%. Even if I wanted to keep a new ring I just found, I had to first get rid of something in my stash first. That’s how completely full it was. Every. Single. Tab. Luckily, I bought that other Premium Tab bundle again recently, so I’ll have some extra space to breath.