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For all of you who really wanted D3 to be be the proper sequel to D2, then you're in luck, because Path of Exile is the sequel you've been looking for. It's a F2P Action RPG made by some New Zealand sheep programmers, and it's very very well done.

Now, it's important to note that PoE is REMARKABLY different from the Diablo franchise (in just the right ways). The main difference is how skills work. First off you have a 'Passive Skill Tree', this is a single tree that contains EVERY class, with ~1400 different options. I think it's really important to repeat, EVERY class is on the same tree. It's just a matter of where you start. So the Ranger, a dex class, starts on a dex heavy side of the tree, while the Maurader, a strength class, is on that side, or a Templar, a hybrid Str/Int class starts somewhere in between.

For passive skills you get 1 per level, and nodes can be stuff like '+8% life' or '15% def from shield' with scattered big nodes (like '+18% life), and then the giant weird nodes that do stuff like turn all evasion into armor, or makes it impossible to miss but removes your crit chance. You have to put a lot of thought into your build, and even if you copy/pasta a build from the forums there is plenty of room to tweak it to give it your own personal flair. The important thing to realize is that classes are highly liquid. You can build a spell flinging Maurader or a super tanky Witch.

Then there are the Active skills (things like AoE attacks or 'leap slam' etc), and Support Skills (like 'Add fire damage). These come in the form of 'Skill Gems' that socket into your items. It doesn't actually matter which item you socket into, and they pop right out. What does matter is that your socketed items have to have the right color socket to put the skill gem in, and you will want to get 'links' between the sockets. If you have an active skill gem, like Leap Slam, and you have it linked to a 'Support skill gem' like 'Added Fire Damage, your leap slam will add fire damage. Or say you link Summon Skeleton to the support gem "Spell Totem" you will have a totem that spews out skeletons. Which is awesome.

The way your sockets lay out becomes incredibly important. Having the right colors linked to each other makes a huge difference. Like with that Skeleton Spell Totem. What I would really like is to also have "Added Fire Damage" and "Improved Minion Life" on there as well, to make the skeletons more beefy. As you can guess, socket layout can be almost as important as magical stats on an item.

Sound confusing? It is.

BUT WAIT THERE"S MORE!

Possibly the best part of the game is how the economy works. There is NO GOLD. Instead you get 'ORBS'. Orbs do all sorts of weird stuff. The low level ones will turn a normal item into a blue item, or reroll the stats on the blue item. The higher ones do stuff like changing the color or socket count or links on a weapon. But it's totally random. You can't just add one socket of some color. You have to use an orb and hope it comes out the way you want. The really high level orbs do stuff like turning a normal into a rare, or rerolling the stats of a rare. The rarest currency orb simply duplicates an item.

Anyways, this game is awesome and you should get it. There isn't any pay2win at the moment, all you pay for is increased stash slots (which is useful, but I've never needed it).

Oh yeah and they do all sorts of crazy ladders in this. Like twice a week they do a 'race' ladder where you start a new character and see how far you can take it in 5 hours. Personally I just play hardcore because the economy is always guaranteed to be better in those, but softcore is cool as well I would assume.

For someone who never played the Diablo series, didn't like Torchlight and can't seem to get into over the top view dungeon crawlers, would you recommend trying this or is this more a niche/genre kind of enjoyment?

I thought this was in beta only.

Messing around with the passive skill tree.

This dude is a dual-wielding maniac. But I bet after I play it a bit I'd do some stuff differently.

Relevant webcomic:

Nerf Now

Dave said:

I thought this was in beta only.

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It is still in open beta, but they're really starting to ramp up their servers and such. They've released their first major re-balancing patch of the open beta and are working on a content patch for their next major beta patch release. The game is really fun, the skill tree is a bit daunting but really fun to work with and experiment with (it's really nice not seeming like I'm being shoehorned into playing my character the way GGG thinks it should be played). And one of the things I like the most is that, when a significant number of players complain that one class is underpowered compared to the other 5 classes, the devs look at the class and then see what they can do to boost that class' power and playability to match the others, instead of nerfing everyone else down to the lower level, like Blizzard did oh-so-often with D3.

There are still some classes that are easier to play than others, that take less planning, etc., but there's only one class right now that's struggling significantly (Shadow), and the devs have said that they're working on re-tooling that class and hope to have some changes made for it in the next major patch. Theses devs are very responsive to the community, and it's great. Also, maintenance windows are nothing like D3 or WoW. I think the longest the servers have ever been down for maintenance was 3 or 4 hours, and that was because they were physically adding more servers to the pool. Most of their "outages" last no more than 5 minutes, if that long. They had some growing pain issues when the open beta first started, and they were resolved within a couple days (and didn't make the game unplayable while they were happening, they just required the use of a queue to keep everyone from bombarding the server at the same time).

Gilgamesh, if you didn't enjoy Torchlight, haven't played the Diablo series, and don't like top view dungeon crawlers, this probably isn't the game for you. You can try it if you want, it's free, but I don't know that you'd enjoy this one just because it's a better sequel to D2 than D3 was.

Yep. I'm having fun trying to build a nice hybrid duelist. It takes almost as long to decide where to put my next skill point as it does to level to get the next one.

--Patrick

I've started 4 characters now and each time I realize I've made a series of poor choices in the build at around level 30. You really have to plan early, but to do that you also have to have a knowledge of HOW to plan. One reason I really like HC. None of my characters survive that long anyways

Necronic said:

I've started 4 characters now and each time I realize I've made a series of poor choices in the build at around level 30. You really have to plan early, but to do that you also have to have a knowledge of HOW to plan. One reason I really like HC. None of my characters survive that long anyways

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That's part of why I've been playing almost exclusively HC as well. I've been doing pretty well with 2H Marauders and Bow Rangers, but lost my most recent HC char last night (a ranger) to a group of spark-throwing magical undead in level 3 Chamber of Sins last night. I do like the fact that when you die in HC you auto-res in SC, but I usually just wind up stripping the SC characters of all of their scrolls, rares, and any gems that I don't already have in my stash and deleting them anyway. I'll probably start either another marauder or a templar tonight when I get home, depending on which class I have more rares for in my stash right now. Or maybe a Duelist.

Downloading it now. Because I need another game to play.

Dave said:

Downloading it now. Because I need another game to play.

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When I downloaded this, just to give it a chance, I was actively playing Skyrim, Minecraft, Tropico 4, and The Cave (which is pretty fun, btw). Now this is all I play.

I'm close to finishing Borderlands 2 and still need to stay active in WoW.

Dave said:

I'm close to finishing Borderlands 2 and still need to stay active in WoW.

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Good luck.

One thing to keep in mind, though. Evasion/Dodge is useless. Armor or Shield is the way to go. Monsters in A3 and up hit way too hard to allow even one or two hits no matter how nimble you think you are.

Dave said:

I'm close to finishing Borderlands 2 and still need to stay active in WoW.

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I know that feel bro.

Dave said:

I'm close to finishing Borderlands 2 and still need to stay active in WoW.

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Really? Are they holding your kids hostage or something?

Frank said:

Really? Are they holding your kids hostage or something?

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No, but as the Guild Leader I feel obligated to show up.

And I downloaded and started playing this last night. I'm impressed, but I do NOT like the trade/orb system. At all. Your bags fill up WAY too fast and it's just stupid that all grey items get the same sale cost - 1/5 of a scroll of wisdom. So a superior maul gets you the same as a rusty dagger? That's just dumb. And magic items also sell for scraps. Not to mention the portal scrolls are a pain in the ass. So you find yourself just leaving behind TONS of shit.

CynicismKills said:

One thing to keep in mind, though. Evasion/Dodge is useless. Armor or Shield is the way to go. Monsters in A3 and up hit way too hard to allow even one or two hits no matter how nimble you think you are.

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Not entirely true. First off Evasion and Dodge are two seperate things (weird I know). Dodge is a flat umodifiable 20% dodge rate irrc, which is not bad if you are already near the skill node (Acrobatics I think). Second, Evasion is plenty useful if you are going to take Iron Reflexes (which turns evasion into armor), and even if you aren't GGG actually coded in some stuff to prevent 'bad luck streaks' with Evasion, so while over the course of 100 swings you'll still get X hits and Y misses, it's far less likely to get a string of bad luck.

That said I would never run Evasion in HC.[DOUBLEPOST=1361471798][/DOUBLEPOST]

Dave said:

No, but as the Guild Leader I feel obligated to show up.

And I downloaded and started playing this last night. I'm impressed, but I do NOT like the trade/orb system. At all. Your bags fill up WAY too fast and it's just stupid that all grey items get the same sale cost - 1/5 of a scroll of wisdom. So a superior maul gets you the same as a rusty dagger? That's just dumb. And magic items also sell for scraps. Not to mention the portal scrolls are a pain in the ass. So you find yourself just leaving behind TONS of shit.

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Well, you never pick up white stuff in any of these games, no real difference here. Well, that's not true. It's still worth looking at white stuff in this game. If it's a 3 color/3-link item you can get a chromo orb for it. If it's a 20% quality item you get an alchemy shard for it (I think), if it's a 6 slot item you get something for it....can't remember what.

Also, those scraps add up and are very important. The trickiest part of handling the blue items is that, unidentified you just get a plain old couple of alteration shards. But if you identify it you will get transmutation shards, AND it's possible you will get other shards, like alchemy and even some more goofy stuff.

The currency system takes some getting used to, and it also takes some caution. DONT USE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ORBS EARLY (<60)

-Chaos
-Alchemy (maybe at 40ish)
-Regal
-Blessed
-Gem Cutters Prism
-Exalted (just don't use this one period until you know what you are doing)
-Mirror (haha, jk you will never see this)

I don't know how you're out of space though. You have a huge stash to start out with.

Dave said:

No, but as the Guild Leader I feel obligated to show up.

And I downloaded and started playing this last night. I'm impressed, but I do NOT like the trade/orb system. At all. Your bags fill up WAY too fast and it's just stupid that all grey items get the same sale cost - 1/5 of a scroll of wisdom. So a superior maul gets you the same as a rusty dagger? That's just dumb. And magic items also sell for scraps. Not to mention the portal scrolls are a pain in the ass. So you find yourself just leaving behind TONS of shit.

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After a certain point in the game, you start seeing more scrolls of wisdom drop than you could possibly ever need, so there's no reason to even pick up white items off the ground unless it's going to be an upgrade to a non-magic or non-rare item that you're currently using. Heck, at a certain point, since the stash is shared across your entire account, you get to a point where there's no reason to pick up blue items unless they're an upgrade or they have a certain pattern of colored and/or linked sockets. Of course, if you find yourself with an exceptionally high amount of scrolls of wisdom (I have an entire row in one of my stash tabs full of stacks of scrolls of wisdom), you can convert them to whatever orb you need more of at the vendor that sells belts and flasks and jewelry. Here's a chart that gives a bit of a rough explanation of what various orbs are worth when you're not just stockpiling them for your own use later on. At a certain point, superior items do sell for a higher value orb than normal items, but I'm not sure what the break is. Also, items that have all three color of sockets and all three of those linked will get you better orbs (chromatic, I believe).

If you really, absolutely have to pick up white items off the ground, stick to gems, jewelry (rings and amulets), flasks, and belts. They take up less space in your inventory and they tend to be worth more anyway (and belts can be used for a lot of levels, starting at a fairly low level for most belts). Also, when it comes to using orbs, at low levels you're going to have a pretty good chance to pick up anything you need, rares and magic items included, fairly quickly. This means that it's generally not recommended to use orbs of transmutation (turn normal items into magic items) or orbs of alchemy (turn normal items into rare items) on low level gear, except for belts, jewelry, and (if you're playing a bow user) quivers. The same can be said about orbs of chance (turn normal items into a random quality item), unless you have a base item of any of these types, because you could possibly get the unique item from using the orb of chance - it doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

Now, does all of this necessarily help the fact that there's no monetary currency aside from orbs? Not really, but you'll be swimming in orbs and scrolls soon enough that it shouldn't matter anymore anyway. Oh, and I don't know how far in to the game you got last night, but you don't have to rely solely on those portal scrolls. There is a portal gem (it's rare), and there are waypoints in most zones - with the exception of zones with major boss fights. GGG have said that they will not put waypoints into the bossfight levels of dungeons.[DOUBLEPOST=1361472246][/DOUBLEPOST]Damn you Necronic and your ninja-ing ways.

Necronic said:

I don't know how you're out of space though. You have a huge stash to start out with.

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I'm not talking about my stash. I'm talking about how every item in the game takes up 6-8 spaces of inventory, which means you pick up a few items and then have to go back to town, or you just leave the stuff there.[DOUBLEPOST=1361476719][/DOUBLEPOST]I also have some issues with the passive tree. It's WAY too difficult to properly plan for stat enhancements. You are a marauder? Good luck getting enhanced Dex or Int. It's possible, but you can't just throw a few points into it at the next level like you can D2. Don't get me wrong - it's interesting. But it's also unnecessarily unwieldy and convoluted.

Takes a lot of planning and forward thinking. I've built 5 characters so far and I don't think any of them have optimal (or even good) trees. You can always just hit up their forums and poach a build though.

Is there a mac client? I get the most time to sit back and play shit while on the road, and that's usually with a Macbook.

Dave said:

I also have some issues with the passive tree. It's WAY too difficult to properly plan for stat enhancements. You are a marauder? Good luck getting enhanced Dex or Int. It's possible, but you can't just throw a few points into it at the next level like you can D2. Don't get me wrong - it's interesting. But it's also unnecessarily unwieldy and convoluted.

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If you head up from the Marauder's starting spot, there's a ton of Int. You won't see it until the teens or so, I think, but it's all there in the Templar's starting area.

SpecialKO said:

Is there a mac client? I get the most time to sit back and play shit while on the road, and that's usually with a Macbook.

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There's an unofficial Mac client. You can read about it on Path of Exile's forums here.

I'm going to put a more in-depth post here in a bit, but I wanted to quickly point out to start that a lot of the info here is ranging between lacking and flat-out wrong. There's a solid wiki for the game at http://en.pathofexilewiki.com - the vendor recipes are particularly important - and I'll get back to this with some more later on.

Hardcore. Level 16. I died. Resurrect you say? Sure! MY STASH!!!! FUUUUUUUU-!!!!!

hehe... yeah. If you die in HC, you get sent back to the Default league (softcore). I guess that way you don't actually lose all of the stuff you were wearing and you can keep playing (and keep testing out your intended build).

Started a new HArdcore character. All the stuff is still in the stash. Only hardcore can see it though.

Dave said:

Started a new HArdcore character. All the stuff is still in the stash. Only hardcore can see it though.

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Yeah, there's a separate stash for Hardcore and Softcore characters.

Okay, some upshot from the wiki that's applicable from level 1:

First, superior items are your bread and butter here. Magic stuff catches your eye, but it's the superiors that are worth the bag space. Selling superior items of one type (all weapons, all armour, all flasks, all gems) that add up to a 40% bonus gets you an upgrade token for that item type. 40% in armour is an armorer's scrap, etc. Do this enough and you'll be able to immediately and fully upgrade any of the really good rare/unique items you do happen to find.

Blue items are trash once you've geared up in the basics. There's a very small chance that they'll have a stat that's worth an alchemy shard, but that's really not worth the hassle of picking them up, blowing an identify scroll, and then potentially carrying them around and having to go back to town sooner. If it's not a slot that's empty, and it's not superior, just leave it on the ground.

Yellow items are potentially good. If it's a weapon/armour type you can equip and you're not wearing something amazing, pick it up and ID it, maybe it's an upgrade. Even if you can't use it, it may turn out to be something you want for a different character. These are generally worth the trouble.

Items with linked red/green/blue slots get you a chromatic orb from vendors. Main point here is that it's possible for those same vendors to stock these, and you can buy them and immediately flip them back. It's worth looking at the slots on gear drops as well, these are worth picking up and selling.

Regarding the passive tree: if your goal is to have a bunch of INT, roll a class that uses it as a primary stat. While you can move around and cherrypick from all over the place, it's typically better to just focus on what your class is good at, especially while you're getting familiar with the game. As far as unwieldy or convoluted - no, it's just requiring you to plan ahead. There's a buy-in with this game, and if you're just planning to reactively spend points according to your whims or gear drops, you're going to hit a wall and get killed. Figure out ahead of time what you want to do, how you're going to do it, and then stick to the plan. "Throwing a few points into it" to solve a short-term problem is a bad thing (though it was a bad thing in D2 as well, when it comes down to it).

Likewise inventory management. It's a thing you need to think about, and it was designed that way intentionally. You need to evaluate which drops are worth picking up, which are worth identifying, how frequently you're willing to go back to base, how freely you'll use your scrolls and items and how much you want to stockpile in hopes of hitting vendor recipe turn-ins. It's a big system, there's a lot to think about, but that's kind of the point. They don't want it to be simple, because complexity can be fun.

One other thing to keep in mind is the reset timers on maps. You have about 10 minutes, give or take, maybe 15 at most, before the map resets completely. The waypoint lets you return to the map (usually near an exit, but not always!) but the map itself can still reset. It's something to keep in mind when going deep into a dungeon, especially when trying to determine what items to pick up and what items to leave to avoid a full inventory when you kill a boss.

I have to disagree with your point that blue stuff is just trash, or Superior > Magic Effects. First off they are worth picking up just for the alteration/transmutation shards. You won't use them all the time, but when you run across a Superior Flask (ok superior is super important here) you will transmute/alter them repeatedly until you get the affixes you want. Same is true of rings. You need heavy cold resist to fight the Act 1 boss, and you will definitely burn some transmutation/alteration orbs on bringing those up.

Later in the game the best way to build the 'uber' rare you want is through transmuting/altering a white into the two main affixes you want and then regal/exalting them. Yet again you will probably burn through a ton of alteration orbs with that.

Second, Superior can only up the physical damage of an item by at most 20%. I have, many times, seen elemental damage give as much as a 100% boost to weapon damage. Also, there are +physical damage affixes that can run well over 20%, I think I have one that was 100%. So, blue/magic items will get you tons of good stuff.

Later on you'll see that armor scraps/blacksmithing stones are pretty common. Even working with a rare you will only need 20 of them to max it and you'll see that after level 30 or so you can get 20 somewhat rapidly (also you won't be doing this very often, maybe every 10 levels on each item).

Not saying armor scraps/blacksmithing stones are worthless, they aren't, but I wouldn't waste my slots picking up most white stuff except chromatic.[DOUBLEPOST=1361511052][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh yeah though, one note/major exception on quality. If you have a quality support gem and are playing HC, don't use it. These are worth quite a bit, in some cases multiple exalted orbs. If your in SC use it to your hearts desire. I wouldn't suggest buying any though because the SC economy is going to fall through the floor in the next few months.

Meh, tried it, don't really like it.

I have to say, the butt-hurt on the forums after last night's security patch is downright mind boggling. Never before have I seen so many people bitch about have to enter their password each time they log in, even after the misconstrued belief that having a dynamic IP would require you to get an email with a one-time use code each time was cleared up. Is this seriously the level we've reached in gaming? People are too fucking lazy to type in a six to eight character code when they want to do something? These people are going to be fucking shocked if they ever find a job that requires them to use a computer.

Gared said:

I have to say, the butt-hurt on the forums after last night's security patch is downright mind boggling. Never before have I seen so many people bitch about have to enter their password each time they log in, even after the misconstrued belief that having a dynamic IP would require you to get an email with a one-time use code each time was cleared up. Is this seriously the level we've reached in gaming? People are too fucking lazy to type in a six to eight character code when they want to do something? These people are going to be fucking shocked if they ever find a job that requires them to use a computer.

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Pfft, I have WoW set to require my password AND authenticator code every single time. These guys are wussies.

Gared said:

I have to say, the butt-hurt on the forums after last night's security patch is downright mind boggling. Never before have I seen so many people bitch about have to enter their password each time they log in, even after the misconstrued belief that having a dynamic IP would require you to get an email with a one-time use code each time was cleared up. Is this seriously the level we've reached in gaming? People are too fucking lazy to type in a six to eight character code when they want to do something? These people are going to be fucking shocked if they ever find a job that requires them to use a computer.

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What's really funny is all you have to do is re-check the save login box. So far the only thing I've had to re-do since that patch is choose my region.

I had to re-enter my password. That was it. Didn't have to rechoose my region, didn't even have to recheck the save password box, just had to retype (once) my 8 character password and keep on playing like before.

Gared said:

People are too fucking lazy to type in a six to eight character code when they want to do something?

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If they're using a 6 - 8 character password they're not helping security at all.

Both times I've tried to play, the game's been unavailable. I thought "diablo 2's real sequel" would have learned from one of the biggest sins of diablo 3 and allowed for offline play. Silly me.

GasBandit said:

Both times I've tried to play, the game's been unavailable. I thought "diablo 2's real sequel" would have learned from one of the biggest sins of diablo 3 and allowed for offline play. Silly me.

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You must have incredibly bad luck, considering the longest downtime I think I've experienced since the beginning of open beta was a 2.5 to 3 hours, and most downtimes are 5 to 10 minutes long at most, even when they're rolling semi-significant patches. But no, there's no offline mode.

I have to log onto my email adress everytime my IP-adress changes for GW2 to allow acess for the new IP.
And I appreciate the extra layer of security.People in general are lazy and entiteld.

I feel like they kept so much of the bad things that D3 actually did do a good job of getting rid of, such as inventory being more even to fit more, having a mini-map with way markers, auto potion refills. Being a carbon copy of D2 doesn't make it a better game. The talent trees are intriguing, but from everything I've been reading, it's not nearly as robust as it looks. For a free game, yeah, it's OK, but I don't think it's even as good as D3, frankly.

Bowielee said:

I feel like they kept so much of the bad things that D3 actually did do a good job of getting rid of, such as inventory being more even to fit more, having a mini-map with way markers, auto potion refills. Being a carbon copy of D2 doesn't make it a better game. The talent trees are intriguing, but from everything I've been reading, it's not nearly as robust as it looks. For a free game, yeah, it's OK, but I don't think it's even as good as D3, frankly.

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Potions refill a certain number of charges every time you kill something, so as long as you're not chain-chugging like D2 you're fine. I do agree about personal inventory space, but by the time I got about halfway through the first Act I had at least 20 portal scrolls so going back to sell was easy enough. The Passive tree is a bit misleading in that you can't take, say, a Marauder and get him all the way to the opposite end of the tree while still being viable in any way. Really, the specific builds are only super-important if you're playing Hardcore.

The other thing is I think this game just appeals to a different sort of ARPG gamer. D3 took out a lot of micromanagement that D2 had, whereas PoE kept it. Personally, I like stumbling on quests moreso than being constantly bread-crumbed into them, but that's just me.

Torchlight 2 removes a lot of the micromanagement, but still has quests all over the place that you stumble upon. I'll just stick with that one until they get out of beta on this one. Maybe when it goes gold, they will have worked on that a bit.

I'm actually liking this a bit more, even though it's tough to learn things about the game without constantly looking at the wiki. But since I haven't been hording every white it's been a load off my mind. Still, I'm running out of identify scrolls at a pretty good clip. I just can't let myself sell a magic item without looking at it first.

Trading non-identified items usually gets you a number of shards that, when stacked to 20, make an orb that can enchant a white weapon into the rarity the orb lists. Anytime I stumble on a superior white item I hold onto it for a couple levels in case I get an orb for enchanting.

GasBandit said:

Both times I've tried to play, the game's been unavailable. I thought "diablo 2's real sequel" would have learned from one of the biggest sins of diablo 3 and allowed for offline play. Silly me.

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To be fair, this is still in beta. Diablo 3 had a week of downtime at its actual launch.

Ravenpoe said:

To be fair, this is still in beta. Diablo 3 had a week of downtime at its actual launch.

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Pfft. We're gamers. We've long since lost interest in being "fair".

Dave said:

I'm actually liking this a bit more, even though it's tough to learn things about the game without constantly looking at the wiki. But since I haven't been hording every white it's been a load off my mind. Still, I'm running out of identify scrolls at a pretty good clip. I just can't let myself sell a magic item without looking at it first.

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Even though I'm not that far in the game, it seems like the slots matter more so you can have the correct skills and support gems that you want. Having a magic modifier on it is just icing. So I only identify the ones with the correct slots I want. Or like cynicismkills said, save the superior white ones with slots you want and use an orb on those to make them magic or rare.

Rovewin said:

Even though I'm not that far in the game, it seems like the slots matter more so you can have the correct skills and support gems that you want. Having a magic modifier on it is just icing. So I only identify the ones with the correct slots I want. Or like cynicismkills said, save the superior white ones with slots you want and use an orb on those to make them magic or rare.

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Also, hold onto the orbs that allow you to alter the number/color of slots. They randomize, but if you're a Marauder with some super-sweet axe that's full of blue slots you'll be glad to take the chance to get a couple reds on it.

CynicismKills said:

Trading non-identified items usually gets you a number of shards that, when stacked to 20, make an orb that can enchant a white weapon into the rarity the orb lists. Anytime I stumble on a superior white item I hold onto it for a couple levels in case I get an orb for enchanting.

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Unidentified will give you shards for Transmutation. Identified will give you shards for Alteration (re-rolls the item), and sometimes shards for Alchemy depending on what the identified affixes are. Both are very useful. You will go through a lot of Alteration orbs trying to get the right affixes on a potion.

Bowielee said:

The talent trees are intriguing, but from everything I've been reading, it's not nearly as robust as it looks.

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This is simply wrong, no other way to say it. There are a ton of different possible builds. For instance, with a witch you can:

1) Summoner CI build - Stays in Witch tree mostly, except to grab the summoner nodes near the templar tree. Probably grabs dual curses
2) Summoner Tank/health build - Moves to Templar tree and starts focusing on health.
3,4,5) Cold/Lightning/Fire Crit CI - Pick a color and go for crit nodes while keeping ES high
6,7,8) Cold/Lightning/Fire Crit Tank/health - Same as above but run to Templar tree

Right there are 8 basic builds. BUT WAIT. Do you want to run Dual Totems? Dual Curses? If you're running CI do you want Ghost Reaver? What about Vaal Pact? Do you want to take some weapon nodes along the way?

There are tons of ways to build these characters. Sometimes its better to think of a class external to the in game classes, like a bow/Blood magic character. You can build that with either the Duelist, the Ranger, or the Shadow. The Shadow has a CI build option, the Duelist/Ranger have Resolute Technique options.

And of course all of this leaves out the ACTIVE skills. The possibilities that arise from different active/support skills open up tons of different options, and the way you choose your actives affect how you build your passives. If you want to run Lightning Strike with LMP you probably want some +Lightning dmg nodes, and will probably need Blood Magic at some point.

Well, I got it to play. I wish I could zoom out further. I realize it's the genre to be pulled in tight to limits that make archery a farce, but I find myself always rolling the mouse roller back, hoping. Also, not a fan of inventory-tetris.

Apart from that, I like the setting, the controls are ok, the barter system is kind of interesting... the passive points feels like FF8 to me. I'm only level 15 (Marauder) but I was kind of grumpy that every one-handed sword after the copper one seems to want dex. Had to switch to a hammer finally, losing cleave in the process, but doubled my damage... and leaping is pretty much as good as cleaving anyway. Actually, I got a red support gem of +hp on strike and attached it to the leaping strike gem... now it's hilarious when I get bogged down by trash mobs, I just start jumping up and down like a maniac, my life going up and they all get squelched into a pile of juice and bile.

I keep thinking of reasons to not like this game, but I keep going back to play more.

Weapons are inherently linked to a certain stat, so all swords will require good dex. I think Axes are strength only though, and you can use Cleave with them. That's part of what makes building a character so interesting/challenging. One AOE skill that you can use with pretty much any weapon is Lightning Strike. Its fantastic. If you're running 2h though I suggest you go to Sweep. It's Cleave +180 deg.

One note to you new guys though, there are a number of skills that involve both a move and an attack (like Leap). These are known to cause de-syncs from time to time. Once you learn how to recognize a desync it won't matter much, but if you keep hitting the same guy and his life isn't moving....well you're gonna have a bad time.

I think I'll stick with 1 hand and shield, I like shield rush for getting in and out of trouble and I'm starting to not miss cleave with the bounce of death (Leap Leap Leap). Also Leap comes in REALLY handy for jumping up/down those annoying 2 meter cliffs.

As for axe vs hammer... I dunno. I guess whatever I find that does more damage. But my hammer is now a yellow, so...

I was wrong before, Axe is Str/Dex. So unless you plan on taking some dex nodes (not really a good idea for most maurader builds), I would go hammer (straight str, and bonus phys dmg intrinsic property)

This is exactly what I was talking about before when I said it's too difficult to build characters using the passive tree. You have to have dex for everything except hammers? So my fighter character needs to range FAR outside his strengths to grab some dex just to use a fucking sword?!? That's dumb as fuck.

Dave said:

This is exactly what I was talking about before when I said it's too difficult to build characters using the passive tree. You have to have dex for everything except hammers? So my fighter character needs to range FAR outside his strengths to grab some dex just to use a fucking sword?!? That's dumb as fuck.

Click to expand...

It does seem pretty inane. Even the 2 handers seem to require dex. Because, you know, a sword or axe takes WAY more dexterity to swing than a hammer.

It makes a more sense the more you get to understand the passive tree. First off even in the maurader tree there are Dex nodes here and there, including a couple +30s. If you look at Axes the Str required for the top one is 147, the dex is 65. This means that with a little careful planning on the passive tree you can easily use Dex. Many mauraders will likely grab Blood Magic, which puts you near the Deulist area. That area is replete with Dex nodes.

Also, you would never want to use swords with most Maurader builds late game. Why? Two reasons. First, Swords have an intrinsic crit bonus, and you have little easy access to crit nodes. Second, you have little access to accuracy nodes, which means you are more than likely going to take Resolute Technique pretty early, which eschews crits but means you will always hit.

So, you really would never WANT to run swords on a Maurader. But you WOULD want to on say a 2H Deulist, Shadow, or Ranger, which has a lot of Crit and Dex nodes.

The passive tree is immensely complex, so it takes quite a while to understand, but when you do you will see that it is remarkably well balanced and intricately planned.

I see plenty of Maurader bow builds, so getting Dex shouldn't be difficult. You'd have to head south on the Passive tree, down into Duelist territory, I think.

Good point. This is something a lot of people don't fully appreciate until they've logged a decent amount of time. Forget your preconceptions about what a class is. It's all about what you can build in the passive tree. I've also heard there's a solid Dual Wand build for Mauraders. Which is insane.

The main thing is the skill Fire Trap being one of the best abilities in the game right now, so everyone tries to keep their Dex up so it can stay at a decent level.

So the game tells me what kind of fighter I have to be to be effective? Sounds great.

Remember, I've got a level 30 Maurader, so I'm not just talking out my ass. A fighter that has to jump through hoops to use a sword is fucking stupid.

Dave said:

So the game tells me what kind of fighter I have to be to be effective? Sounds great.

Remember, I've got a level 30 Maurader, so I'm not just talking out my ass. A fighter that has to jump through hoops to use a sword is fucking stupid.

Click to expand...

Boom, 13 skill points used and you're at 100str and nearly 90dex, more than enough for most swords. Also puts you in range of crit multipliers, accuracy and health nodes, armor, and within a few levels you could have life leech and some 2h bonuses. This doesn't even take into account any str/dex bonuses on armor you'd likely have by then.

I can't load that at work, but I assume it goes into the duelist tree?

Yeah, and you have to eschew EVERYTHING ELSE up to that point to get it. You have to steer away from the +health, +1 hand damage, and shield areas.

Sorry, guys, the way this game defines swords, and what is required to use them is retarded. I'm with Dave. 13 points into never-never land to raise dex is 13 points not going into something else when hammers don't have that prereq, which automatically gimps a marauder comparatively not using a hammer, which is an unsatisfactory situation.

That said, I'm still gonna play it. It's just the game has some pretty bullshit ideas and there's way too much metanonsense going on under the hood.[DOUBLEPOST=1361821209][/DOUBLEPOST]

Necronic said:

I can't load that at work, but I assume it goes into the duelist tree?

Click to expand...

Here you go -

Well I'm looking at bare-bones getting some Dex. You can stop along the way and pick up whatever you want.

I dunno, up to this point I've been able to use swords just fine on my Templar who's in basically the same boat as the Marauder. If you have a certain weapon or set up you want to use, you've gotta plan ahead for it. The game's like Diablo 2 in that regard, unless you've been lucky in Orb of Regret drops.

If you wanted to you could go through that first big circle with the 1h or 2h DPS buffs also, there's a big 20 or 30 dex plus accuracy right there too.

The problem you're going to have, though, is being level 30 and pretty well-set on a route in the tree. You'd have to veer off somewhere to snag more dex (unless you reroll equipment for more dex).

Yet again though, let me ask the more obvious question. WHY do you want to use swords? Swords are a dex/crit weapon. Mauraders aren't well positioned for dex/crit. You can still do it, but like you pointed out, you have to go pretty far out of your way.

Is it purely an aesthetic thing? You know this isn't Hello Kitty Island Adventure right?

Necronic said:

Is it purely an aesthetic thing? You know this isn't Hello Kitty Island Adventure right?

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Well you don't need to get condescending about it, dude, it's not like he's personally insulting you by having a preference.

It's GasBandit. I wouldn't be surprised if he used the title "This isn't Hello Kitty Island Adventure" as the title of his next crochety Andy Rooney style rant/blog (which are p funny).

ed: Good catch on that other early dex node, I was sure there was one there.

That is a terrible route. For starting off a route this would be better http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...kUeeuMfswGXA-oLT7qlcN2WEZLiftffU9DySLfLvzccT2
It takes you through your 1handed melee nodes to up its damage, then leaves you right near a sword node and the templar start area to grab his health and one handed damage nodes as well. Heck you can grab another 20 dex while you are in there too if you need it. There is a 30 intelligence node if you want that too. You are right by resolute technique. Plus you got the shield bonus as well. Then you can easily go down lower left, grab the sword and health nodes. Then work down towards blood magic or unwavering stance or whatever you want grabbing sword and health nodes along the way. There is also another dex node near blood magic and that sword node that you can have too.

Another way to hold out until you get to a dex node is with items. Rings and amulets are good. If you sell a green blue and red gem with any amulet, you get an amulet that gives you plus to all stats. Experiment with different gems to get one that gives you plus 20 and that should hold you til you are able to work around to one.

It's me as well, remember? It's a FIGHTER. Fighters should be able to use any weapon. They should not have to jump through hoops to be able to use the most common weapon on the friggin' planet.

I'd say clubs and maces would be way more common than swords, especially in such a shitty place.

Dave said:

It's me as well, remember? It's a FIGHTER. Fighters should be able to use any weapon. They should not have to jump through hoops to be able to use the most common weapon on the friggin' planet.

Click to expand...

You simply will not be able to make a good endgame character that can use both a Mace and a Sword without severely gimping the build. One is a pure dex weapon, the other is a pure strength weapon. You can do it with a sword, or with a mace, but not both. Well.....maybe you could even do both but it would be pretty hard to do that and not end up with too many nodes wasted on stats.

Think of it this way, you are tuning yourself to be a true master of a weapon. You wouldn't expect a Sword Saint in D&D to be good with an axe would you?

Necronic said:

You simply will not be able to make a good endgame character that can use both a Mace and a Sword without severely gimping the build. One is a pure dex weapon, the other is a pure strength weapon. You can do it with a sword, or with a mace, but not both. Well.....maybe you could even do both but it would be pretty hard to do that and not end up with too many nodes wasted on stats.

Think of it this way, you are tuning yourself to be a true master of a weapon. You wouldn't expect a Sword Saint in D&D to be good with an axe would you?

Click to expand...

I would expect them to be able to still use another weapon effectively. They are still a fighter, regardless of the prestige class taken later on.

Ok, lets look at the reppurcussions of that. At the highest difficulty levels there really aren't varying levels of effectiveness. It's either "it works" or "you die". So, with that said, the ability to use all weapons effectively would mean:

1) No weapon specific nodes on the talent tree (because we wouldn't want one weapon to be more effective than another)
2) No crit/stun build/elemental nodes on the talent tree (because we wouldn't want one weapon to be more effective than another)
3) No synergy between any nodes and weapon types, basically weapons would have to be interchangeable parts or the talent tree would have to be scrapped.

You can't have a jack of all trades in a game like this. You can build your character so that he can use swords, or hammers, or wands. But he can't do all of them effectively, if he could then what's the point of the tree?

He can't do any of them effectively with the exception of hammers, according to you.

I'd like to see some sort of happy medium. I'll give this a shot when I actually have time to dig into the talent trees. As it stands it gives me flashbacks to the FF10 sphere grid and I literally don't have the time to waste my time on it.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. He can do any of them, it just ends up making for a more complicated build. But by the end of the game (middle really) you have to start focusing heavily in one area. The more you play the more you learn to recognize certain regions in the tree. Summoning is nw, duel wield is se, shield is w, ES is ne. Knowing that along with the key nodes (like Iron reflexes or Resolute Technique or CI). So while you can build a CI-ES Marauder, it's very tricky. An Iron reflexes sword build is easier, but add a shield and it gets trickier.

Right, because no fighter should be able to easily use a sword and shield.[DOUBLEPOST=1361832205][/DOUBLEPOST]For the record, I like this game, but I think the passive trees and the way they handle stats is just dumb and needlessly complicated. You say it gives you many choices, I say it limits them. If you find out you are 30 levels in and you fucked up then you are just totally screwed and should start again. They need to have respecs at the very least. (Besides the 1 or two points here and there that don't matter.)

Dave said:

Right, because no fighter should be able to easily use a sword and shield.[DOUBLEPOST=1361832205][/DOUBLEPOST]For the record, I like this game, but I think the passive trees and the way they handle stats is just dumb and needlessly complicated. You say it gives you many choices, I say it limits them. If you find out you are 30 levels in and you fucked up then you are just totally screwed and should start again. They need to have respecs at the very least. (Besides the 1 or two points here and there that don't matter.)

Click to expand...

THIS X 1,000,000,000

It's the number one reason that I can't even consider getting into the game.

Again, I DO like this game. And at the price of...free...it's well worth it. I've seen games that were $60 be less polished. I just think it could be better.

And I did spend $20 on a micro-transaction to get more stash tabs, even though I hardly use it. I wanted to support the guys & gals who made this.

Yeah you will definitely play a bunch of characters and have them crap out at 30ish. It's happened to me wih about 4 characters so far. But you keep the currency and you get to try something new each time, which to me is a lot of fun.

Necronic said:

Yeah you will definitely play a bunch of characters and have them crap out at 30ish. It's happened to me wih about 4 characters so far. But you keep the currency and you get to try something new each time, which to me is a lot of fun.

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It's funny because that's exactly where I am so far. My Templar and Duelist are both just about level 30.

Fuck me....just figured out that my shadow build wont work. I can still respec it but it will be costly

I hopped back on my Templar, trying to figure out what I was doing with him. He's mainly going str and 2h damage, so I have to figure out what to do from there. If I could find some more decent long-range spells I'd like to make him a bit of a Shaman type character with 2h staves or mauls, and then focus on spell dps from here on out. I'd love to turn him into a Deathknight, going 2h damage with curses and auras, but the passive points for those are waaaaaaaaaaaay off from where I am for now.

Necronic said:

Yet again though, let me ask the more obvious question. WHY do you want to use swords? Swords are a dex/crit weapon. Mauraders aren't well positioned for dex/crit. You can still do it, but like you pointed out, you have to go pretty far out of your way.

Is it purely an aesthetic thing? You know this isn't Hello Kitty Island Adventure right?

Click to expand...

Swords are only a dex/crit weapon because the eggheads at Grinding Gear Games (and I hate that name too, it brings back horrible flashbacks of MMOs I now hate) decided to make them such. I wanted to play a sword'n'board tank. This is the first fantasy game I have played ever to statistically insist to me that I have to spend points being a nancy to swing a sword. Even a super duper gigantic ultraclaymore zweihander, I've found, has a dex requirement whereas a hammer of equal (or even lesser size) does not. It's completely immersion shattering - it's an arbitrary ruleset for its own sake designed to add an extra, obfuscating, unnecessary layer of calculus to the experience. It wouldn't be so bad if there were some dex nodes stationed in the same spot as the one hand damage nodes for marauders, but as it stands, when my copper sword was to be replaced around level 12 by a saber (which requires dex), I would have had to level 13 MORE times to be able to do so? Does that not strike you as mindblowingly poor design? I know, I know, the fanboys and stat whores will just shrug and say "so whatever use a hammer." That's not how that's supposed to work. Every sword is not an epee.[DOUBLEPOST=1361857379][/DOUBLEPOST]

Dave said:

Right, because no fighter should be able to easily use a sword and shield.[DOUBLEPOST=1361832205][/DOUBLEPOST]For the record, I like this game, but I think the passive trees and the way they handle stats is just dumb and needlessly complicated. You say it gives you many choices, I say it limits them. If you find out you are 30 levels in and you fucked up then you are just totally screwed and should start again. They need to have respecs at the very least. (Besides the 1 or two points here and there that don't matter.)

Click to expand...

Yes, the passive trees are horrible. But... don't they have respecs? Do those 2 respec points I have that I never used just undo ONE node? THAT would be full blown pants-on-head retarded.

There's no full respec. You use Orbs of Regret or the Respec Points from quests to drop talents.

CynicismKills said:

There's no full respec. You use Orbs of Regret or the Respec Points from quests to drop talents.

Click to expand...

That said... still playing. Though I probably will stop when I get to the point where I suddenly realize I'm not allowed to live any more because of how I manipulated an arcane, inscrutable, arbitrary and apparently unforgiving game mechanic from the start.

GasBandit said:

That said... still playing. Though I probably will stop when I get to the point where I suddenly realize I'm not allowed to live any more because of how I manipulated an arcane, inscrutable, arbitrary and apparently unforgiving game mechanic from the start.

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Well, we know why Necronic likes it.

Okay, a few things, but bear in mind I haven't played the game. I don't have the time to play a game where you're practically forced to restart a couple of times at level 30 until you've got the right build. (I played through both Diablo III and Torchlight II exactly once. I'd play T2 again but I just don't have the time)
Dave, you seem to be confusing something. You're saying you want a fighter. But you're not playing one. Similar to GB: he wants to make a sword&board fighter. Fair enough....But then why start out as a Marauder? Yes, in D&D, the base class would be Fighter. That class isn't around here. For S&B, I'd imagine "Templar" would be a more obvious starting point. For a true Sword Master, you'd probably be a duelist or something. Yes, they're hybrid fighter classes. But a Marauder, who's "pure strength" isn't a Fighter in D&D, he's a Barbarian. You can make a Barbarian that uses S&B, but it isn't exactly the most efficient way.

And GB, as far as "even a Zweihander needs dex, whereas a mace or hammer doesn't"....Well, you go and try those in real life. If you're going to be using a big sword without finesse, you're just using it as a big bludgeoning tool. Admittedly, by the late medieval era, most heavy swords and two-handers were used as a bludgeoning device, but still. Using a sword for swordfighting does require some agility. I'd hope the dex requirement on a Bastard Sword would be lower than that of an epee, and the strength requirement higher. That's not "shitty design", that's "fine-tuned differences". A dagger just takes lots of dex. An epee takes practically no strength, lots of dex. A longsword takes equal measures of both. A heavy sword takes more strength than dex. A maul requires no dex to speak of.

That said, if I actually played, I might find that too granular and limiting, myself - but I don't think it's a design flaw, necessarily.
As alast point, why are they making so much of this passive tree? It's nice, sure, but it doesn't look that much more elaborate than, say, Skyrim's Constellations?

Frank said:

Well, we know why Necronic likes it.

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God forbid I appreciate a challenge.

Also thanks for pointing that out Bubbles, I was going to say that swords DO require dex in real life.

ed: And fwiw if you don't like having to respec/risking making a bad character, then do your research. There are a million good builds on the forums. You can either copy those flat out or use them to learn the tree better. I definitely appreciate that most people don't have the time to create 20 characters to get a feel for the game, but there are many ways to avoid that.

The fact that there isn't a respec option really shouldn't matter, your build should be well thought out from the beginning. This game requires a lot of forward thinking and patience. Which is weird since it's a twitchy hack and slash, but there it is.

Necronic said:

God forbid I appreciate a challenge.

Also thanks for pointing that out Bubbles, I was going to say that swords DO require dex in real life.

Click to expand...

2-handed swords do NOT. In fact, they took damned little dex at all. They would heft them up and let them fall on the heads of the enemy. There was damned little finesse in fighting with a 2-handed weapon.

2Hers represent a bit of an issue, no doubt. You could argue that all 2hs should require extra strength, which they don't. It really is a bit absurd to have straight dex on a 2h anything.

But you have to admit that the point stands for the 1hers. It is necessary for the design of the game that one of them be pure dex. Between an axe, a mace, and a sword, the sword is clearly the most dex oriented of them.

ed: It's also probably worth pointing out that, in terms of immersion, Landsknetch are clearly duelists, not mauraders. Which would make swords easy for them to use.

Depends on the sword. In this game all swords are the same, while all axes are the same as are all the hammers.

I'm really going to stick to my point that immersion wise Landsknetch are duelists, and there are strong 2H sword duelist builds. I mean, just google a picture of them. They are definitely a lot more Johnny Depp than Arnold Swartzennager

Ed: And immersion wise Battle Pope is a Templar.

Dave said:

Depends on the sword. In this game all swords are the same, while all axes are the same as are all the hammers.

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In contrast, giving all two-handed weapons, axe, pole-arm, mace, maul, hammer, sword, the same requirements would make them little more than an esthetic choice. You can play around a bit with attack speeds and reach, maybe damage types (well, no - if you're using your twohanded sword as a bludgeoning tool, you're doing the same type of damage as a hammer), but in the end, they probably added different requirements to differentiate the weapons more. It may be game logic, but then again, you're playing a game.

Holy fuck, this is stupid. Arguing the realism of how a weapon is wielded in a game where you put gems into a weapon in order to shoot blasts of magical fire with your innate pool of mystical mana. They made swords dex weapons so there'd be a difference between duelists and that other class I'm suddenly drawing a blank on at 7 am and marauders not because of some nonsense about how swords require dexterity to use realistically.

Frank said:

Holy fuck, this is stupid. Arguing the realism of how a weapon is wielded in a game where you put gems into a weapon in order to shoot blasts of magical fire with your innate pool of mystical mana.

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They are using the realism argument, I'm using the argument that the game makes you choose a weapon at 5th level and you can't change it because doing so screws you. Hell, Mr. "You gotta plan way ahead" Necronic just posted above saying he screwed up his build and keeps saying he's screwed them up. If someone that is THAT anal about the game can screw it up, how can anyone get it right? It's the Eve Online of RPGs.

Thing is though I'm not that anal, which is why I keep screwing up. I consider myself a "Maverick", I'm trying to find somethig outside of the box that will work. It's how I got through A2 Inferno in Diablo before the difficulty nerf and before the vast majority of players. It's just that in this game it can get very expensive when you make mistakes. I still think I can fix this build, it's just going to be tough.

Necronic said:

God forbid I appreciate a challenge.

Also thanks for pointing that out Bubbles, I was going to say that swords DO require dex in real life.

ed: And fwiw if you don't like having to respec/risking making a bad character, then do your research. There are a million good builds on the forums. You can either copy those flat out or use them to learn the tree better. I definitely appreciate that most people don't have the time to create 20 characters to get a feel for the game, but there are many ways to avoid that.

The fact that there isn't a respec option really shouldn't matter, your build should be well thought out from the beginning. This game requires a lot of forward thinking and patience. Which is weird since it's a twitchy hack and slash, but there it is.

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I shouldn't have to do homework just to play a game. If we were talking about min/maxing, I'd understand, but from what I'm hearing, if you fuck up your build, you literally can't proceed with the game. That's stupid as hell.

Someone who says a 2 handed hammer doesn't require dexterity has never tried to drive a spike into the ground. Yes, swords "require" dexterity in real life... to the extent that swinging ANYTHING does. Here's an idea - Play baseball. Does it require real life dexterity to hit the ball? I'd say so. It's silly for the gaming system to imply that using a (non-fencing) sword requires more dexterity than using a hammer. And not just "to use it best," to use it AT ALL. I mean, give my marauder a saber and he'll be all "I have no fucking clue how this works, it's WAY more complicated than the copper sword I was using before. How do I hold it? Do I put it between my fingers? Hold it with my ass cheeks? I'M MYSTIFIED BECAUSE MY DEX IS TOO LOW SO I CAN'T EVEN TRY TO HOLD IT IN MY HAND."

That... is stupid. Of the designers.

Name a game that has a complex leveling system that doesn't require effor on the part of the user to develop an optimized character for end game.

WoW: insanely min-maxed. Respec is easier but gear grinding is incredibly important

D2: same as this game, worse really since there is no way to respec and only 1-2 viable end game builds per class

D3: No leveling system really but an insane gearing min maxing required

EvE: Gearing is incredibly min/maxed, leveling doesn't really exist in the traditional sense but you have to focus/plan

Morrowind and/or Oblivion: insanely min/max leveling, to the point that you would take skills you couldn't accidentally level so that you would get the max stat gain on level. No respec.

Borderlands 1/2: never played end game much but I assume you min/max your tree. And have fun being good with every gun.

Only games I can think of where you didn't min max for end game that much are Skyrim, which had a terrible difficulty scaling.

Remember; you do get a lot of respec points. With these and orbs of regret you can repair a build.

WoW: Respec all you want or use dual trees.

D2: You can respec once per difficulty after the Den of Evil (and again by combining the essences of the stage bosses into a respec token).

D3: Sucks.

EvE: The game for Accountants.

Morrowind/Oblivion: No respec necessary. Yes, the leveling system was broken, but that was only because if you had your main skills as your primary, you'd level so fast there's no way you'd get to end game. Not even remotely the same game, though. I could use any weapon I wanted, just one may not be as effective because I hadn't trained it up.

Borderlands: You can respec all you want. And use any gun, even though you might suck at some of them.

At level 30 in PoE I've seen a grand total of 4 respec points and 1 orb. And since I didn't find them all at once, repairing a build was problematic. Unless you discover it right away it's not worth your time to try and fix.

Necronic said:

Name a game that has a complex leveling system that doesn't require effor on the part of the user to develop an optimized character for end game.

WoW: insanely min-maxed. Respec is easier but gear grinding is incredibly important

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Respec is ubiquitous, and oh look, THE WARRIORS CAN USE SWORDS.

D2: same as this game, worse really since there is no way to respec and only 1-2 viable end game builds per class

D3: No leveling system really but an insane gearing min maxing required

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That's as may be, I haven't played a diablo since 1.

EvE: Gearing is incredibly min/maxed, leveling doesn't really exist in the traditional sense but you have to focus/plan

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That's getting pretty close into apples to oranges territory.

Morrowind and/or Oblivion: insanely min/max leveling, to the point that you would take skills you couldn't accidentally level so that you would get the max stat gain on level. No respec.

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Didn't play them but that sounds like a bad design decision too. Funny how they apparently got rid of that for Skyrim.

Borderlands 1/2: never played end game much but I assume you min/max your tree. And have fun being good with every gun.

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AHA! Finally one I know! You're wrong here. You can be good with any gun you choose so long as you are willing to put the time in to using it, because your skill with a weapon solely depends on how much you use it, and doesn't figure into leveling. My Roland was a whiz with SMGs and Sniper Rifles - and his class is supposed to be about Assault Rifles and Shotguns, but I never found any of those that could compare with The Maliwan Inferno and Hellfire. So I took the Siren's SMGs and the Hunter's sniper rifles... and was frickin AWESOME with them, with no added level of inconvenience/leveling/extra gear required specifically for those weapons. Borderlands is a good example of how to do it right.

Remember; you do get a lot of respec points. With these and orbs of regret you can repair a build.

Click to expand...

There's no "repair" though for having to put points down a path to never-never land. When min-maxing is so important, the marauder apparently can't spare the distraction to spend 13 levels worth of points to be able to know how to hold a sword in his hand. Max level is, what, 100? That's 13% of your spec points!

In Borderlands 1 you got skill points in a certain weapon the more you used it, effectively locking you in. It was a bad system and they removed it.

In Borderlands 2 you have a lot of skill nodes that are to a specific weapon, like Roland who has a ton of Assault Rifle nodes. Or Zero who has a ton of Sniper nodes. Of course you CAN run Zero with assault rifles, or Roland with Sniper rifles, but its tricky because you lose out on a lot of build options. No different from this game except that you can respec easier. Also its different because there isn't another levelling game around that is more fun at early levels than Borderlands 2. Ahhhhh Claptrap.

And while a Warrior can use swords in WoW, can he effectively spec to both 1h and 2h? Not really (unless they've dumbed the game down even farther from the last time I played, wouldn't be surprised.)

I read somewhere that this was a game by hardcore gamers for hardcore gamers. I read that as 'the necessity to plan is purposeful'.

Besides this, on the whole swords discussion, meh. In Diablo, for instance, you had many weapons that were class specific, didn't you? Here that wouldn't make much sense because the classes are not closed, so the different weapons rely on different stats. Seems natural. Maybe the sword shouldn't be a Dex weapon? Maybe the types of weapons shouldn't be sword/axe/hammer/etc but heavy/light/Dexranged/Strranged/wands or something like that? Maybe such a choice would make the game more inmersive, but it's not a good solution either if it's not very easy to distinguish the different kinds of weapons (plus, it doesn't allow for the granularization there is in this game)

But the point is that ALL swords are str/DEX and ALL hammers are STR and ALL axes are STR/dex. You can get to a sword build - as I did - where you can get bonuses to sword weapon speed, damage, and accuracy...and then not be able to USE any because there is no dex along that path. That's just stupid. Essentially, you can train to be an expert in a weapon you can't fucking use!!

Necronic said:

Name a game that has a complex leveling system that doesn't require effor on the part of the user to develop an optimized character for end game.

WoW: insanely min-maxed. Respec is easier but gear grinding is incredibly important

D2: same as this game, worse really since there is no way to respec and only 1-2 viable end game builds per class

D3: No leveling system really but an insane gearing min maxing required

EvE: Gearing is incredibly min/maxed, leveling doesn't really exist in the traditional sense but you have to focus/plan

Morrowind and/or Oblivion: insanely min/max leveling, to the point that you would take skills you couldn't accidentally level so that you would get the max stat gain on level. No respec.

Borderlands 1/2: never played end game much but I assume you min/max your tree. And have fun being good with every gun.

Only games I can think of where you didn't min max for end game that much are Skyrim, which had a terrible difficulty scaling.

Remember; you do get a lot of respec points. With these and orbs of regret you can repair a build.

Click to expand...

Every single game you mentioned, I played start to finish with the same character without having to go through and start over from scratch to complete the game. With the exception of EvE online because I've never really played it beyond a few hours.

Having to completely scrap your character because you took a wrong turn somewhere in your skill tree is retarded.

tegid said:

I read somewhere that this was a game by hardcore gamers for hardcore gamers. I read that as 'the necessity to plan is purposeful'.

Besides this, on the whole swords discussion, meh. In Diablo, for instance, you had many weapons that were class specific, didn't you? Here that wouldn't make much sense because the classes are not closed, so the different weapons rely on different stats. Seems natural. Maybe the sword shouldn't be a Dex weapon? Maybe the types of weapons shouldn't be sword/axe/hammer/etc but heavy/light/Dexranged/Strranged/wands or something like that? Maybe such a choice would make the game more inmersive, but it's not a good solution either if it's not very easy to distinguish the different kinds of weapons (plus, it doesn't allow for the granularization there is in this game)

Click to expand...

The crazy thing is there are swords that are dex weapons, mostly fencing type stuff for the duelist, which makes sense to me. A claymore, however, is not a dex weapon, and it is foolish to instate rules that say a musclebound menace can't even figure out how a 50 pound sword works because his dexterity is too low, and then, as Dave points out, make it onorous/buildkilling to get the dex necessary to make it so he can.

Necronic said:

In Borderlands 1 you got skill points in a certain weapon the more you used it, effectively locking you in. It was a bad system and they removed it.

Click to expand...

Oh, I disagree that it was a bad system... and even if you weren't "as skilled" with a given weapon, you at least still had the capability to hold and fire it. Here, it's DING LEVEL 13, ONO I FORGOT HOW TO SWROD.

(slight correction to Dave, not all swords require dex... the ones from copper down to rusty don't)

Okay, this build goes right to Legendary Swordsman in 12 levels. So my character is really, really good with a sword. But then when I get to the next couple of levels I either stay with the minor weapon I have or I'm screwed. Or I could go to a dex node - which is very, very close - but it goes nowhere! Unless I want to loop back and get more sword stuff. Other than that, I've wasted points going that way. And what do I give up to do that? Life, 1-handed skill, armor or shield abilities.

Bowielee said:

Every single game you mentioned, I played start to finish with the same character without having to go through and start over from scratch to complete the game. With the exception of EvE online because I've never really played it beyond a few hours.

Having to completely scrap your character because you took a wrong turn somewhere in your skill tree is retarded.

Click to expand...

First off there is no way you played D2 into Hell Cows without rerolling or researching your build, unless someone twinked you to 99. That game had a more unforgiving spec system than this one, and Blizz had a tendency to patch the game in such a way as to completely wreck the builds.

For Oblivion/Morrowind (which one was it that you min/maxed your levels in that weird way???) the problem was mostly with difficulty scaling. Those games did not scale well difficulty wise. Same could be said of Borderlands 1. There really wasn't an "end game" in those, it was just "Oh wow I am so overpowered this isn't really even fun anymore". To me that hurts the game, it's not a good attribute.

I get why people don't like not being able to respec easily, but I also get why they don't allow respec. It causes a couple of problems:

1) It will allow people to palytest min/max builds instantly which will remove the 'discovery' aspect of build design from the game, and would probably reduce the game down to 1-2 builds, including respeccing at different difficulty levels, or even at different boss fights. It would really make it harder to balance.

2) It allows people to match their gear to their skills easier. If you find some amazing sword you can just respec to use it. This also accelerates player motion through the difficulty levels too fast.

I mean, I realize that what I am saying is that "It's good because it's difficult" and you guys are saying "It's bad because it's too difficult". We just have a different approach to games. I like a game that is a never ending chasm of research and progress. I don't want to hit end game quickly in a game, I want it to take a while, and I want it to punish me for making mistakes.

I've been looking on the forums at builds. All the "good" ones seem to beeline around that massive mess of a skill grid bypassing 99% of the stuff along the way for key skills and powerups. That looks to me like that bloated mess is either poorly designed or designed to intentionally fuck you up by taking lesser nodes.

Frank said:

I've been looking on the forums at builds. All the "good" ones seem to beeline around that massive mess of a skill grid bypassing 99% of the stuff along the way for key skills and powerups. That looks to me like that bloated mess is either poorly designed or designed to intentionally fuck you up by taking lesser nodes.

Click to expand...

So....there are only a couple of viable builds for endgame content? Now where have I heard that before...?

Now, if they allowed for some stat updates or even had automatic stat updates per level based on class (Marauder could have +4 STR, +2 DEX, +1 INT per level, for example) then this would be a great game and balanced. You could min/max to those specific nodes and be uber powerful or you could take some of these more specialized nodes and remain a viable build.

I have yet to play this game, but this sounds a little like they they wanted to make a thinking man's version of the Kingdom's of Amalur build trees but it got away from them.

Dave said:

So....there are only a couple of viable builds for endgame content? Now where have I heard that before...?

Now, if they allowed for some stat updates or even had automatic stat updates per level based on class (Marauder could have +4 STR, +2 DEX, +1 INT per level, for example) then this would be a great game and balanced. You could min/max to those specific nodes and be uber powerful or you could take some of these more specialized nodes and remain a viable build.

Click to expand...

If you did that then you would prevent Marauders from being viable casters.

I'm really enjoying my Duelist so far. Bow for ranged, dual-sword for up close, and picking skills to match. Granted, I'm not even level 20 yet, but the build feels solid so far.[DOUBLEPOST=1361904201][/DOUBLEPOST]

Dave said:

If you find out you are 30 levels in and you fucked up then you are just totally screwed and should start again. They need to have respecs at the very least. (Besides the 1 or two points here and there that don't matter.)

Click to expand...

Aren't you getting orbs of regret? I keep getting the things and stockpiling them. I just haven't seen the need to use any yet.

--Patrick

Necronic said:

If you did that then you would prevent Marauders from being viable casters.

Click to expand...

Now you're just being deliberately obtuse.[DOUBLEPOST=1361904847][/DOUBLEPOST]

PatrThom said:

Aren't you getting orbs of regret? I keep getting the things and stockpiling them. I just haven't seen the need to use any yet.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

I've only seen 1 orb of regret and 4 respec points at this point.

Dave said:

Now you're just being deliberately obtuse.[DOUBLEPOST=1361904847][/DOUBLEPOST]

I've only seen 1 orb of regret and 4 respec points at this point.

Click to expand...

I'm not being obtuse. You just have to think of this game differently from others. Every instinct you have from previous games like this tell you that when you roll a maurader you end up with a melee character. When you use a ranger it's a bow character. But that's not right in this game. The character is whatever you choose to build on the tree. The starting points/characters only matter in that they are starting points.

Honestly this may be the mos confusing/difficult aspect of the game, it took me a while to figure out. Mauraders can be casters. Witches can be dual daggers. Rangers don't have to use bows. You choose the playstyle you want then figure out the build, it may or may not be in line with the characters.

That's why I keep saying there are so many builds. There are at least 4 highly viable classes for a variety of bow characters (Maurader, ranger, duelist, and shadow), and you could probably do it with all six (some strange CI bow witch or something.)

I don't think I've clearly explained this yet, so when I get home I'll post a bunch of different builds to show you what I mean.

You were being obtuse and snarky because I'm not saying they should change the passive tree, just give some bonuses to stats each level. You can still build towards spellcasting as a Marauder, using the same methods you used. In fact, it'll be easier because you won't necessarily have to go out of your way to hit stat nodes.

No, it wouldn't. If the Witch got 4 times the base Int from levels that the Maurader got then you would never want to run a caster with a Maurader because it would be completely gimped compared to the witch. Not trying to be snarky. Just looking at the full reppurcussions of that.

Necronic said:

No, it wouldn't. If the Witch got 4 times the base Int from levels that the Maurader got then you would never want to run a caster with a Maurader because it would be completely gimped compared to the witch. Not trying to be snarky. Just looking at the full reppurcussions of that.

Click to expand...

You wouldn't want to run a Marauder caster NOW as opposed to a witch. That would be foolish. You'd have to put too many skills into getting to a viable build and you'd be a crappy caster and a crappy fighter. Just like you would be the other way.

The tree is, and can be, a little poorly thought out, and I agree with Dave a lot about how ridiculous it is to have a bunch of sword based weapon proficiencies right next to the Marauder starting node and then leave you stranded for the amount of Dex you need to even wield a medium-low level sword. I'm sure the tree will be tweaked before too much longer - I suspect part of the reason for the open beta race season is to see what classes are most successful, which ones are lacking, and what builds people take most often so that GGG can rebalance the classes. I also like the fact that when they discovered that Shadows were really underpowered, they boosted that one class instead of nerfing the other 5 or just ignoring it like a certain other big game dev would have done.

As for that massive skill grid, I assume we're talking about the one in the middle of the tree, which, as I understand it, is either there only because GGG felt the tree seemed too empty aesthetically without something in the middle, so they tried to put a bunch of easily balance-able passives in there OR because in Alpha, everyone started there instead of having the individual starting nodes per class. Regardless, no matter how noble the intentions of the devs of any game are regarding balance, players will always manage to find some way that's easier to level than another way, and then the majority of people will start playing that path in order to not be left behind by the leaders of the pack. It doesn't necessarily mean that some of the other builds aren't just as viable as the one everyone is playing, it just may take more work, or more strategy, or more time; and some people will play those builds and be very good at it, but most people won't. Though there are some completely inappropriate builds that just won't work at high levels no matter what you try, and there are a lot of things that need to be retooled. Marauders being unable to use claymores because they're not dextrous enough, or Rangers having to spec into Iron Reflexes because they can't take more than 1 hit in Cruel or Merciless, for example. Let's face it though, in this age of readily available theory-crafting data, gameplay video streaming, and internet celebrity - any builds Kripparian or Nugiyen play are going to be immediately copied by a sizable number of people, and before long it's going to feel like there are only a select few playable builds in end-game content.

Oh, and yes, the drop rates for various orbs are wildly random. I've had characters that made it to level 30 and had 7 or 8 orbs of alchemy and I've got a level 42 Ranger that hasn't seen more than one drop in all of that play time. I think I only have 3 orbs of regret total in the Default league (where I've been spending most of my time recently, since it doesn't seem like they've fixed the permastun issue that melee characters seem to be frequently running into since 0.10.1d was released, and I'm tired of losing hardcore characters because they're suddenly unable to do anything except drink potions), and I've run probably 8 or 9 characters up to level 30 and two of them up to 40+ so far.

Dave said:

You wouldn't want to run a Marauder caster NOW as opposed to a witch. That would be foolish. You'd have to put too many skills into getting to a viable build and you'd be a crappy caster and a crappy fighter. Just like you would be the other way.

Click to expand...

No you can totally do it now, and it's pretty viable late game (it's the dual wand Maurader I was talking about). It's a goofy(ish) build. You grab a lot of life/armor/resists from the Maurader tree and just blitz straight up to the witch tree, grabbing some of the more interesting passives along the way (like the elemental damage stuff in the Templar tree). Going that way, or in reverse from the witch tree to the maurader tree, is one of the few ways you can run a witch without having to grab CI.

ed: Think of it like a Barbarian Shaman.

So do you think, Gared, that adding minor stat updates on level based on class would help with the viability of builds? I say do it this way:

Marauder (STR): +5 STR, +2 DEX, +1 INT (per level)

Duelist (STR/DEX): +3 STR, +3 DEX, +1 INT

Ranger (DEX): +5 DEX, +2 INT, +1 STR

Shadow (DEX/INT): +3 DEX, +3 INT, +1 STR

Witch (INT): +5 INT, +2 DEX, +1 STR

Templar (INT/STR): +3 INT, +3 STR, +1 DEX

Dave said:

So do you think, Gared, that adding minor stat updates on level based on class would help with the viability of builds? I say do it this way:

Marauder (STR): +5 STR, +2 DEX, +1 INT (per level)

Duelist (STR/DEX): +3 STR, +3 DEX, +1 INT

Ranger (DEX): +5 DEX, +2 INT, +1 STR

Shadow (DEX/INT): +3 DEX, +3 INT, +1 STR

Witch (INT): +5 INT, +2 DEX, +1 STR

Templar (INT/STR): +3 INT, +3 STR, +1 DEX

Click to expand...

I don't know. Honestly, I'd rather that they just rework the stat requirements of weapons (strip Dex requirements off of larger, heavier swords and axes, look into the Int requirement on most daggers, etc.) than try adding in a possibly further complicating mechanic. For instance, they'd likely need to take the pure stat nodes out of the tree (or at least most of them) if they went that route, because my ranger has about 240 Dex, 80+ Str, and 40+ Int as it is; and adding +5 Dex per level, +2 Int per level, and +1 Str per level would give her 450 Dex, 120+ Int and 120+ Str with her current build at her current level, and that could be just ridiculous since bow damage is based off of Dex (unless I take the passive that grants the Str bonus that usually only applies to melee weapon damage to bows as well, and then it would be even more insane). As it is, I'm completely fine with keeping some swords restricted to high-dex characters, like the rapiers and knives for the duelist, and maybe even some of the 1 handed axes. Just not two-handed swords and axes.

Gared said:

I don't know. Honestly, I'd rather that they just rework the stat requirements of weapons (strip Dex requirements off of larger, heavier swords and axes, look into the Int requirement on most daggers, etc.) than try adding in a possibly further complicating mechanic. For instance, they'd likely need to take the pure stat nodes out of the tree (or at least most of them) if they went that route, because my ranger has about 240 Dex, 80+ Str, and 40+ Int as it is; and adding +5 Dex per level, +2 Int per level, and +1 Str per level would give her 450 Dex, 120+ Int and 120+ Str with her current build at her current level, and that could be just ridiculous since bow damage is based off of Dex (unless I take the passive that grants the Str bonus that usually only applies to melee weapon damage to bows as well, and then it would be even more insane). As it is, I'm completely fine with keeping some swords restricted to high-dex characters, like the rapiers and knives for the duelist, and maybe even some of the 1 handed axes. Just not two-handed swords and axes.

Click to expand...

Or, maybe if they just scaled the dex requirement more appropriately, and maybe threw a few dex nodes into the 1-handed area of the Marauder tree. That could work too.

Point taken on the stats adding up. It would be impossible for them to take the stat nodes out of the tree. I agree they need to figure out the weapons balance better.

Why not just use a deulist then move to the Maurader tree? I'm still having a very hard time understanding the problem you are trying to solve.

ed: Unless you just want to be able to use any melee weapon with a Maurader regardless of stats. That seems simply untennable.

GasBandit said:

Or, maybe if they just scaled the dex requirement more appropriately, and maybe threw a few dex nodes into the 1-handed area of the Marauder tree. That could work too.

Click to expand...

Yeah, they could scale it back some and add some dex nodes into the tree. I wouldn't necessarily want them just in the 1-handed area though, since I tend to play mainly 2-h Marauders and I'd still love to be able to use some of the massive two-handed swords that my ranger keeps selling off because she doesn't have the strength for them. Either put a fair amount of dex into the Marauder tree and split it between 1-h and 2-h weapon areas, or throw them into/near the sword specific areas of the tree.

Necronic said:

Unless you just want to be able to use any melee weapon with a Maurader regardless of stats. That seems simply untennable.

Click to expand...

Why?

Just to chime in here, most builds you see on the forums are likely set up for Hardcore progression, so they'll skip a lot of things for +health and the like. I'm building my Templar how I want, not according to any builds, and I'm about done with the first difficulty. It's going pretty well so far, though I do need to get him some more survivability.

It would seem like they could remedy some of what Dave is talking about by making the nodes that border the two regions (i.e., the ones that go "straight" out from the hybrid classes) into nodes which grant 1/2&1/2 skill (e.g., some str/some dex) rather than all nodes being "pure" stats, but I can see that instead angering those people who just want to go pure.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

It would seem like they could remedy some of what Dave is talking about by making the nodes that border the two regions (i.e., the ones that go "straight" out from the hybrid classes) into nodes which grant 1/2&1/2 skill (e.g., some str/some dex) rather than all nodes being "pure" stats, but I can see that instead angering those people who just want to go pure.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

There's a couple nodes like that, but they're few and far between. Adding more wouldn't be a bad thing but odds are they'd be closer to the hybrid areas (duelist/shadow/templar) than the pure areas (everyone else).

Necronic said:

Why not just use a deulist then move to the Maurader tree? I'm still having a very hard time understanding the problem you are trying to solve.

ed: Unless you just want to be able to use any melee weapon with a Maurader regardless of stats. That seems simply untennable.

Click to expand...

Because I want to be a sword and shield tank. Not a dual wielding epee-fop. Call it aesthetic if you want, the way it is currently is asinine. I don't want "any" weapon, just the weapons that a burly Conan expy would reasonably be expected to be able to wield in-world, before any figuring about what's going on under the hood preventing it. Hammers, axes, broadswords, . Those sort of things. Not necessarily the lighter fencing/stabbing swords, as those make more lore sense for the duelist exile.

As I said, the whole thing could probably be fixed by putting in a few dex nodes around appropriate areas of the marauder tree, and/or reworking the scaling of the dex requirements on the heavier swords and axes.

Or making some of the nodes be +10 to any stat. So like every 3rd stat node or so could be any stat.

More like all stats. So the intersection would be a +10 to all, and then you can choose to take a side loop that is nothing but the stat you want most.

--Patrick

Okay, Dave? I've played Diablo II to death and back again, and IF there's a respec after the Den of Evil, it was added after the latest patch gearing up for D3 release. Den just gave you 1 extra skill point up to that point.

Bubble181 said:

Okay, Dave? I've played Diablo II to death and back again, and IF there's a respec after the Den of Evil, it was added after the latest patch gearing up for D3 release. Den just gave you 1 extra skill point up to that point.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it was patched in fairly late in the game's lifecycle.

Which, by the way, I liked. I don't really like respecs, especially unlimited ones. It was perfectly possible to play through the first difficulty (and the second if you were somewhat decent) with any build; making a correct build only really mattered over level 60, going into Hell.
A game's difficulty in speccing should be such that a casual gamer who doesn't want to use spreadsheets or look up forums, should be able to play through the normal difficulty. I think it's reasonable to expect people who want to finish a game on the hardest difficulty need to plan beforehand. If you're playing an MMO or other such gale where both are - by nature - intertwined, yes, you probably do need some respec capabilities.

Necronic said:

First off there is no way you played D2 into Hell Cows without rerolling or researching your build, unless someone twinked you to 99. That game had a more unforgiving spec system than this one, and Blizz had a tendency to patch the game in such a way as to completely wreck the builds.

For Oblivion/Morrowind (which one was it that you min/maxed your levels in that weird way???) the problem was mostly with difficulty scaling. Those games did not scale well difficulty wise. Same could be said of Borderlands 1. There really wasn't an "end game" in those, it was just "Oh wow I am so overpowered this isn't really even fun anymore". To me that hurts the game, it's not a good attribute.

I get why people don't like not being able to respec easily, but I also get why they don't allow respec. It causes a couple of problems:

1) It will allow people to palytest min/max builds instantly which will remove the 'discovery' aspect of build design from the game, and would probably reduce the game down to 1-2 builds, including respeccing at different difficulty levels, or even at different boss fights. It would really make it harder to balance.

2) It allows people to match their gear to their skills easier. If you find some amazing sword you can just respec to use it. This also accelerates player motion through the difficulty levels too fast.

I mean, I realize that what I am saying is that "It's good because it's difficult" and you guys are saying "It's bad because it's too difficult". We just have a different approach to games. I like a game that is a never ending chasm of research and progress. I don't want to hit end game quickly in a game, I want it to take a while, and I want it to punish me for making mistakes.

Click to expand...

When I say finish, I mean that I was able to play through the main campaign of the game. Anything beyond that is getting into Min/Max territory. Something that I care nothing about. I just want to be able to enjoy the game through at least the main campaign. You obviously enjoy never ending treadmills, which is the opposite of fun for me.

Well shit, you can do that in this game too. I didn't even consider that being a possibility of the discussion. You can beat normal with pretty much any build you want.



Ok, so 2H sword maurader build is here (25 pts)

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...OR354DXloe4yE2YdqkGykGalzqZSrxb6KvqfBBMbY3D0=

64 dex which will let you use any sword up to level 36. This took me like 2 minutes to build



And here's the Sword and Board build. (26 pts)

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...Y23gNeWh7jITZkHSbg6QZq8W-ir6nwQTcPeRR5673Kw==

100 some odd dex, you can now use 1h swords up to level 50 or so. Guess how long this one took.

Only 26 levels to be able to use swords for the next 24 levels, eh?

.... ....
What a deal.

The problem is one or two of those dex nodes needs to be in among the sword nodes for marauder, rather than having to go 13 (or 26) nodes out of your way.

GasBandit said:

The problem is one or two of those dex nodes needs to be in among the sword nodes for marauder, rather than having to go 13 (or 26) nodes out of your way.

Click to expand...

I think this kind of argument makes a lot more logic inside the logic of the game. Would another way of putting it is that those sword nodes are almost useless for a while?

If you look at the nodes one of the first ones you get is Versatility (for some reason I forgot to take it on the sword and board build.) It gives you +20 dex at level 6, which lets you use swords up to level 15

I think the big thing is it forces you to go after those dex nodes so early in the game that is a big pain. Almost any build will eventually work its way around to them but instead of being able to grab the things near your starting point, the game forces you to travel a ways, ignoring health and damage to get it. Yeah you can grab those things later but it is not very satisfying to have your last 8 lvl ups be only the stat point that your character is situated in. I started playing a few characters and I always have to rush to get those +30nodes.

Necronic said:

And here's the Sword and Board build. (26 pts)

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...Y23gNeWh7jITZkHSbg6QZq8W-ir6nwQTcPeRR5673Kw==

100 some odd dex, you can now use 1h swords up to level 50 or so. Guess how long this one took.

Click to expand...

You wasted almost right away (9th & 10th level) 2 points in 2-Handed weapon skills. Wasted points. At 15th level you waste a point on Int. Also, with that level of STR you'll be limited in your damage. So you can use swords, but can't hit worth a crap. Yay. So this build wastes talent and limits your character simply because the system thinks a fighter shouldn't use swords.

Sorry, man, but these builds are asinine. And that's not your fault, but the fault of the trees themselves.

Dave said:

So this build wastes talent and limits your character simply because the system thinks a fighter shouldn't use swords.

Click to expand...

This has already been pointed out, but the class isn't Fighter. It's Marauder. Pretty different connotations, and if you're dead set on using swords, there is a class designed around that.

Vrii said:

This has already been pointed out, but the class isn't Fighter. It's Marauder. Pretty different connotations, and if you're dead set on using swords, there is a class designed around that.

Click to expand...

It was already pointed out...3 minutes before I did. So it's probably because I was in the tree poking around and Rovewin is a faster typist.

But the Marauder is the game's pure strength character. Duelist is the hybrid STR/DEX. So I would argue that Marauder is the pure fighter and Duelist is more like a swashbuckler/fencer. And most swords are NOT fencing weapons, but fighting weapons. I disagree with your assessment that a Marauder is not a fighter.

You don't have to grab those 2h nodes, it's just a shorter path. Here's the normal path

level 5
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEBIQIq9jH7e4znrg==

you can use swords till like lvl 15 or so

Level 12, dex = 54 you can use swords up to lvl 25
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEBC2EhAir2MBkx-1W1cD55aHuMoLTBBOeu6hg=

lvl 25 dex = 84 you can use swords up to lvl 50 or so, and you're now in a good position to start taking 1h nodes in the deulist tree (like water dancing)
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...wGTH7R35VtXA-eA15aHuMhNmgtKQZq8W-ir6nwQTnruoY

edit: These builds are NOT asinine. Take it from someone who has clocked quite some time in the game.

What's asinine is locking yourself into a weapon early on. Most players will tell you that its a bad idea to take weapon nodes early in the game.

The path I gave you on the page before this one shows a path to become a Sword Master...and you can't use a sword unless you take nodes out of your way. This is craziness. You should not have to take nodes you don't want to be able to use a basic tool of the craft.

Rovewin said:

I think the big thing is it forces you to go after those dex nodes so early in the game that is a big pain. Almost any build will eventually work its way around to them but instead of being able to grab the things near your starting point, the game forces you to travel a ways, ignoring health and damage to get it. Yeah you can grab those things later but it is not very satisfying to have your last 8 lvl ups be only the stat point that your character is situated in. I started playing a few characters and I always have to rush to get those +30nodes.

Click to expand...

Versatility is the thing you grab right next to you. People go all over the place in their builds. Most people don't stay in their area for very long at all.

this is a very good bow ranger build, stays in its area more than most do

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...jaudS7Djtg-4O7m_vDu9O8B_yL_T49kj3Mve--Ov60vzF


Here's a dw ranger build, almost immediately leaves its own area

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...dDd7G37_nCudS6mLtg-8O707vevAf8i_z3fZI9776sfzF

Here;s a dual claw shadow build I am trying to sort out

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...mf6p_qrisurGztMW1SM_40hnW0d-_53TtQe9O_MX_kw==[DOUBLEPOST=1361981361][/DOUBLEPOST]

Dave said:

The path I gave you on the page before this one shows a path to become a Sword Master...and you can't use a sword unless you take nodes out of your way. This is craziness. You should not have to take nodes you don't want to be able to use a basic tool of the craft.

Click to expand...

I don't know which node you're talking about, didn't see one called sword master. There is one called Legendary swordsman near Blood Drinker, which is one I would definitely take with either of the sword builds I listed since I would likely go to Blood Magic later on

Yeah, that's the one. I wasn't in the screen at the time.

Ah well that's a great one to get. You probably wouldn't take it too early, but you would grab it alongside the Blood drinker node (since you would probably want blood magic later in game.). I jus wouldn't suggest grabbing it too early in game. There are plenty of 1h melee dmg nodes that don't specify swords. The reason is that you may come across an axe or a macs that you really want to use. People don't usually specialize that much too early (some exceptions of course)

Dave said:

It was already pointed out...3 minutes before I did. So it's probably because I was in the tree poking around and Rovewin is a faster typist.

But the Marauder is the game's pure strength character. Duelist is the hybrid STR/DEX. So I would argue that Marauder is the pure fighter and Duelist is more like a swashbuckler/fencer. And most swords are NOT fencing weapons, but fighting weapons. I disagree with your assessment that a Marauder is not a fighter.

Click to expand...

Actually it was pointed out yesterday? The day before? You have a preset expectation for the class which doesn't match its design, and you're mad that you can't force it into what you're looking to do without some effort. "fighter" isn't a term with any meaning in this game, and using it to justify a need for swords to be usable by everyone makes no sense.

Basically, if you want to a) use swords and b) make optimal use of the passive tree, you want to roll Duelist. That's the game's design. If you want to be a Marauder because they're more of a "fighter," and you absolutely have to use swords for whatever reason, that's not going to be optimal. You can do it, you can maybe even do it well, but it's not the core design of the class so you're going to have to sacrifice something for it. You can dislike it all you want, but that doesn't make it a flaw in the game.

I mean, you can still roll a sword character from the maurader tree, and there may be a good reason to do it (like earlier access to life and leech and resist nodes.). You just have to have a plan.

Vrii said:

Actually it was pointed out yesterday? The day before? You have a preset expectation for the class which doesn't match its design, and you're mad that you can't force it into what you're looking to do without some effort. "fighter" isn't a term with any meaning in this game, and using it to justify a need for swords to be usable by everyone makes no sense.

Basically, if you want to a) use swords and b) make optimal use of the passive tree, you want to roll Duelist. That's the game's design. If you want to be a Marauder because they're more of a "fighter," and you absolutely have to use swords for whatever reason, that's not going to be optimal. You can do it, you can maybe even do it well, but it's not the core design of the class so you're going to have to sacrifice something for it. You can dislike it all you want, but that doesn't make it a flaw in the game.

Click to expand...

This feels like trying to have an argument with a brony.

Gotta say I agree with Vrii here. Dave has a lot of preconceived notions about how things "should" work based on how they work in other systems/games/philosophies. I might get mad that my herb-using "Druid" character can't make potions (like my Druid from M&M VI could) and complain that I shouldn't have to choose a science-based class named "Chemist" because Druids should be able to make potions. Short truth is that if I want to make potions my mainstay in NewGame, and the designers of NewGame put all the potion perks in the Chemist tree, then I probably want to roll a Chemist instead of a Druid, no matter what my inclination might be.

--Patrick

I don't agree with the "if you want to use swords roll a duelist" argument because there are two distinct types of swords - those clearly meant for duelists (epee/foil types with high DEX requirements) and conventional types (broadsword/claymore types with high strength requirements and just enough DEX to make them inconvenient for marauders). The STR requirement on the latter is MUCH higher than the DEX, so clearly somebody also thinks they're marauder inclined, given that he's the "pure" STR class.

But the point Dave and I are making is that the sword-n-board pure tank is a trope so common it's supposed to be a given. A fantasy game not providing such an archetype is the equivalent of... oh I don't know, a restaurant not taking credit cards. I mean, sure it's their restaurant, they can do what they want, but in this day and age doing so is bewildering given the number of people who will probably assume that such a standard option is naturally available.

Please show me how the two builds I linked would not allow you to use swords with a maurader?

I'll also point out that my current highest-level character is a mid-40s marauder using a 2h sword.

GasBandit said:

I don't agree with the "if you want to use swords roll a duelist" argument because there are two distinct types of swords - those clearly meant for duelists (epee/foil types with high DEX requirements) and conventional types (broadsword/claymore types with high strength requirements and just enough DEX to make them inconvenient for marauders). The STR requirement on the latter is MUCH higher than the DEX, so clearly somebody also thinks they're marauder inclined, given that he's the "pure" STR class.

But the point Dave and I are making is that the sword-n-board pure tank is a trope so common it's supposed to be a given. A fantasy game not providing such an archetype is the equivalent of... oh I don't know, a restaurant not taking credit cards. I mean, sure it's their restaurant, they can do what they want, but in this day and age doing so is bewildering given the number of people who will probably assume that such a standard option is naturally available.

Click to expand...

God forbid a game try and take a different approach to conventional fantasy archetypes.[DOUBLEPOST=1361986081][/DOUBLEPOST]

Vrii said:

I'll also point out that my current highest-level character is a mid-40s marauder using a 2h sword.

Click to expand...

My Templar (str/magic for those keeping score) used a 2h sword from 25 to about 32, when I finally decided to make him focus on staves.

So anyways I am really liking the Templar for starting areas. Tons of resists, tons of life, great elemental damage. I'm just not sure if I want to take it south through the Maurader tree or up into the witch tree. Any thoughts?

Ed: oh yeah you know there are attribute amulets right? Need a touch of dex just grab a jade amulet

Thinking about this long running conversation, I actually rolled a new Marauder last night in HC to see if I could make a viable HC 2-h sword Marauder - and I gotta say, it's been working great so far. Of course, the character is only level 13 so far, but I only have slightly less Dex than I do Str (60 Str and 54 Dex). Here's the build. And yes, I've bypassed several nodes that could be very useful, but I'm not so far away from them that I can't go back and pick them up from where I am now - it's not like you can only go forward in one linear path, so as soon as I pick up those armor nodes at the end, I can go back and pick up more of the sword specific nodes or some health nodes, or jog up from the last major curve and pick up some of those reduced mana cost nodes. All in all, it's probably one of the more fun Marauder builds I've had.

Necronic said:

Please show me how the two builds I linked would not allow you to use swords with a maurader?

Click to expand...

I'm going to try some of them out and see how they work before I kibitz. I haven't had an opportunity yet though.

CynicismKills said:

God forbid a game try and take a different approach to conventional fantasy archetypes.

Click to expand...

Eliminating expected options does not originality make. "We're going to have a wild west game... where cowboys can't use pistols. Just rifles. If you want to shoot pistols you have to be a gambler. Because gamblers use derringers, thus all pistols are for gamblers. BRILLIANT"

Wait a damned second Gared. Are you saying you actually PLAYED THE GAME to see if there was actually an issue? Madness I say.

GasBandit said:

I'm going to try some of them out and see how they work before I kibitz. I haven't had an opportunity yet though.

Eliminating expected options does not originality make. "We're going to have a wild west game... where cowboys can't use pistols. Just rifles. If you want to shoot pistols you have to be a gambler. Because gamblers use derringers, thus all pistols are for gamblers. BRILLIANT"

Click to expand...

Which doesn't relate to this game at all, because absolutely every class is capable of using swords.

Vrii said:

Which doesn't relate to this game at all, because absolutely every class is capable of using swords.

Click to expand...

So long as they don't care about the endgame.

GasBandit said:

So long as they don't care about the endgame.

Click to expand...

So the optimal builds should all conform to genre standards? Or what's the argument here?

Necronic said:

Wait a damned second Gared. Are you saying you actually PLAYED THE GAME to see if there was actually an issue? Madness I say.

Click to expand...

Well, to be fair I've tried the two handed sword marauder before and failed, but that was one of the first few characters I played and I didn't really know the system or the tree as well as I do now. So, we'll see.

Vrii said:

So the optimal builds should all conform to genre standards? Or what's the argument here?

Click to expand...

Well, mind you I obviously haven't gotten there myself yet, I'm going entirely off hearsay, but the impression I'm left with is that to be effective in the endgame (that is, upper levels hardcore) you are pretty much railroaded into one path because the points you have to divert to getting nodes that allow your marauder to use swords are thus not spent in other "core" areas, and for example, hammers don't have this issue because their only requirement is STR, which the marauder can't help but spend points as he moves around his side of the table. Thus, it's really not an issue of the game conforming to standards, but the players having to conform to the minmaxed build with only the illusion of choice - particularly when it comes to gear and especially weapon type. Would you say that is an inaccurate statement?

Is this the impression you've gottten by the people in this thread who have almost zero experience with the game? Because there seems to be some serious tribal misinformation snowballing in here. I'll repeat this ONE MORE TIME.

THERE ARE OVER 40 POSSIBLE IN GAME BUILDS THAT I CAN RATTLE OFF QUICKLY. There are probably a lot more than that.

Yeah, there are a bunch of builds available for each class, weapon type, spell selection, etc. It's definitely not a one-build-per-class thing like most MMOs or whatever.

Necronic said:

Is this the impression you've gottten by the people in this thread who have almost zero experience with the game?

Click to expand...

Actually, one of your posts was one of those that most firmly drove this home to me -

Necronic said:

I was wrong before, Axe is Str/Dex. So unless you plan on taking some dex nodes (not really a good idea for most maurader builds), I would go hammer (straight str, and bonus phys dmg intrinsic property)

Click to expand...

[DOUBLEPOST=1361993307][/DOUBLEPOST]PS. This IS Hello Kitty Island Adventure! It's just the cats seem to burst into flames whenever I pet them.

Damnit...ok you got me.

But I still stand by that point to a degree. Here's why, I said MOST. One of the big reasons to take a maurader is early/easy access to Relentless Strikes or whatever it is. You can't miss, but you can't crit either. The intrinsic property of a sword is increased accuracy. So, if you did a sword maurader you wouldn't be taking relentless strikes, which implies a non-obvious build.

But here's where the synergy of the tree starts being awesome. If you don't get relentless strikes then you will need dex and accuracy nodes to prevent misses, and you might as well start building crit up as well. Well, guess where the good place to do that is? Over in the duelist tree. So by running your marauder skills through the duelist tree you start seriously optimizing swords. But you also get the added advantage of some great early life and resist nodes, plus easier access to blood magic.

So you can totally do this and it makes sense.

Yeah... turns out that build is not viable. I made it as far as the Cavern of Anger, where I was rather quickly killed by a roving band of exploding spawn. I suppose the build might still be somewhat viable, in that I could have farmed some of the lower areas to get more levels before going to CoA, but as it was, not viable in HC - not enough survivability.

I think exploding mobs do a bit too much damage anyway for how much health they seem to have. Made the Siren ridiculously hard to kill on my Duelist.

I'm beginning to think NerfNow was right.

Guide for picking passives:
1) Find a passive
2) Does it increase health?
Yes: GET IT
No: Find a different Passive, goto 2.

I think I finally have a viable build for HC now. I finally made it into cruel difficulty with it. It's basically a lightning strike Templar that has dual specters with LMP. The lightning shocks and improves dmg for the specters/minions. We'll see how it goes.

My sword testing is really running into difficulty because my level 15 yellow stone hammer is astonishingly overpowered. It hits harder than the level 20 war sword. And those purple assholes in the western forest have to die fast before they splode.

Yeah, my level 25 marauder is still using a yellow tribal club because the fucking thing had like 2 elemental damage stats and an 80% damage boosts. Nothing at 25 comes close in damage.

GasBandit said:

I'm beginning to think NerfNow was right.

Guide for picking passives:
1) Find a passive
2) Does it increase health?
Yes: GET IT
No: Find a different Passive, goto 2.

Click to expand...

Everywhere I've looked and the few convos I've had in global all say health > all in terms of survivability. Armor isn't even worth taking save for maybe one node if you need to get to something past it.

CynicismKills said:

Everywhere I've looked and the few convos I've had in global all say health > all in terms of survivability. Armor isn't even worth taking save for maybe one node if you need to get to something past it.

Click to expand...

I'm starting to see that as well. My armor rating is going up hugely with some upgraded gear, but I seem to be taking even more comparative damage as if I had less. I switched from chainmail, which had a mixture of armor and energy shield to superior copper plate which had more than triple the armor but no energy shield... and I think I was doing better with the chainmail, as energy shield is kinda like extra health.

As the game is in beta... I wonder if there will be a "passive shake up" in the future if armor gets retooled to be more useful, throwing everyone's builds into turmoil.

GasBandit said:

I'm starting to see that as well. My armor rating is going up hugely with some upgraded gear, but I seem to be taking even more comparative damage as if I had less. I switched from chainmail, which had a mixture of armor and energy shield to superior copper plate which had more than triple the armor but no energy shield... and I think I was doing better with the chainmail, as energy shield is kinda like extra health.

As the game is in beta... I wonder if there will be a "passive shake up" in the future if armor gets retooled to be more useful, throwing everyone's builds into turmoil.

Click to expand...

Quite possibly. I know they already adjusted armor numbers in an earlier patch to make the numbers for armor bonuses fall more inline with the numbers for ES or EV bonuses. Pretty much, even though they've said there's not going to be any more character or account wipes between now and when the game actually launches, I wouldn't count on any specific character and/or build to survive the rest of the beta.

Honestly the passive tree needs some serious re-tooling. There are simply too many passives that are just not worth taking at the moment. Lots of those generic +8% whatever nodes that don't lead to a bigger node. You will almost never take these (except for life nodes). Although....I am taking +2 block nodes I probably would never have considered taking before. Maybe it's just super build dependant.

Necronic said:

Honestly the passive tree needs some serious re-tooling. There are simply too many passives that are just not worth taking at the moment. Lots of those generic +8% whatever nodes that don't lead to a bigger node. You will almost never take these (except for life nodes). Although....I am taking +2 block nodes I probably would never have considered taking before. Maybe it's just super build dependant.

Click to expand...

Wait, you're questioning the perfection of the skill system?

Necronic said:

Honestly the passive tree needs some serious re-tooling. There are simply too many passives that are just not worth taking at the moment. Lots of those generic +8% whatever nodes that don't lead to a bigger node. You will almost never take these (except for life nodes). Although....I am taking +2 block nodes I probably would never have considered taking before. Maybe it's just super build dependant.

Click to expand...

I think my favorite node type for needing re-tooling is the +x% to various elemental resistances. Unless it's the Diamond Skin (+15% to all elements) or the exceedingly rare +x% to chaos resistance, it's really not worth it. You can stack so much resistance from gear that there's really no point, unless you're really struggling for +stats or early in the game you're struggling with your mana and health levels and want to use coral and paua rings, you're most likely going to be running with rare prismatic rings that you've hopefully saved up plenty of chaos orbs for in order to get the best stat rolls possible on them, or even rare topaz/sapphire/ruby rings.

Also, the -5% mana cost nodes. Unless you're really going to load up on them, why drop a point into something that's going to shave very little mana cost off of an ability when you could put those points in either +INT or +x% Maximum Mana, or even some mana regen nodes?

Absolutely. I never said it was perfect, i just felt that the complaints around swords were founded in a complete lack of understanding of the game. It's like saying that the partisan politics of Washington are problematic, while dismissing claims that the government is run by a secret illuminati of Jews as ridiculOus.

I also figured out I think I probably made a very newbish, boneheaded trade earlier in the week... one of the early quests gave me a level 11 orange ring that made you immune to freezing and had high cold damage resist. I traded it for a level 27 orange sword... that I didn't look very closely at. I don't think I could even offload this in trade for anything else... I mean how many 2-hand sword-using witches do you think there are?

GasBandit said:

I also figured out I think I probably made a very newbish, boneheaded trade earlier in the week... one of the early quests gave me a level 11 orange ring that made you immune to freezing and had high cold damage resist. I traded it for a level 27 orange sword... that I didn't look very closely at. I don't think I could even offload this in trade for anything else... I mean how many 2-hand sword-using witches do you think there are?

Click to expand...

Witches? Don't know. Summoner rangers? Maybe you could find someone there. I wouldn't necessarily mind playing a bow ranger with minions to take care of those damn purple bastards in act 2 or the exploding spawn in Act 1.

That sword is fucking amazing

Ed: I will give you something for that

Ed2: I WANT THAT SWORD

Ed3: Oh wait it's 2h.....could still use it, just not with this build.

Yeah, a 2 handed minion sword. I'll let it go for a marauder orange. Heck, maybe even a pretty good yellow.

GasBandit said:

I mean how many 2-hand sword-using witches do you think there are?

Click to expand...

A better question might be…how many Shadow/Templars are there who went summoner?

--Patrick

GasBandit said:

Yeah, a 2 handed minion sword. I'll let it go for a marauder orange. Heck, maybe even a pretty good yellow.

Click to expand...

Sadly, the only Marauder orange I have is Limbsplit, and there's no way I'm giving that up.

I need to find out how much that one is worth, I may offer a GCP for it

Well just to illustrate my newbishness, the item I traded for it was a Dream Fragments

Which to me, seems like a whole lot more useful to a whole lot more people.

No you got completely trade raped, let me be clear. That is worth ~15 GCPs.

Necronic said:

No you got completely trade raped, let me be clear. That is worth ~15 GCPs.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I had that feeling. I was barely 12 and still hadn't gotten a handle on what was worth something and what wasn't, and I just wanted a sword. I figured an orange ring for an orange sword was probably in the neighborhood. Hoooo boy.

I hadn't yet figured out the whole marauder-sword thing yet, and was blissfully unaware of how many ways this game invites you to go fuck yourself, item and stat wise.

Yep. True enough it does. Hold onto the sword though, there's some cool stuff you can do with it (that said I checked the price with a friend and he was going to the me his for like 1-2 chaos, so it's not 15 times more valuable, it's more like 30-45.).

Got my Templar to Cruel difficulty, going to let him rest a bit and goof around with other classes. Got a Duelist at 26 or so, almost done with A2. Trying to build him as a dual-wield beast, hopefully with a focus on swords once I find some good ones to Orb. My stash is filling up with good Rares, so I've got plenty of options for every class. Hoping to work out a Claw Shadow, a cast and blast Witch, and a plain old Bow Ranger. The issue is figuring out who is okay to use Evasion, and who needs to just stack armor or take the Evasion -> Armor conversion passive (took it on the Duelist and he takes hits like a champ).

CynicismKills said:

Got my Templar to Cruel difficulty, going to let him rest a bit and goof around with other classes. Got a Duelist at 26 or so, almost done with A2. Trying to build him as a dual-wield beast, hopefully with a focus on swords once I find some good ones to Orb. My stash is filling up with good Rares, so I've got plenty of options for every class. Hoping to work out a Claw Shadow, a cast and blast Witch, and a plain old Bow Ranger. The issue is figuring out who is okay to use Evasion, and who needs to just stack armor or take the Evasion -> Armor conversion passive (took it on the Duelist and he takes hits like a champ).

Click to expand...

I have a bow ranger about 1/3 of the way through Act 2 cruel that made it through Act 1 cruel just fine with just evasion, but really needed to take the Evasion -> Armor conversion passive because she was getting her ass kicked.

Gared said:

I have a bow ranger about 1/3 of the way through Act 2 cruel that made it through Act 1 cruel just fine with just evasion, but really needed to take the Evasion -> Armor conversion passive because she was getting her ass kicked.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been noticing on my little Shadow that you can't depend on Evasion much. He's got a ton, maybe 60% or so, but one good hit from any Extra Damage monster and he's in trouble. I guess I should look into getting some more ES gear to compensate for his lack of health.

Blerg, my summoner Templar is hitting a bit of a wall. It's not that the build doesn't work, it just needs some better socketed gear. I was doing good with a DW Shadow for a bit until I realized I needed to go ES/dagger instead of BM/claw. Got a great DW dagger though so I may respec him. The shadow tree in general needs a bit of love though. Just not enough resist nodes anywhere near him. Think I may go back to my bow duelist for the time being.

I think Shadow's issue is having all those evade nodes when evade isn't a very strong stat past like the midway point of Act 2, when things start hitting really hard. One borked evade and you're down most of your ES, if not all of it and some life to boot.

I "downgraded" to ringmail (low armor, +energy shield) from plate (high armor) and suddenly everything got way easier. Like, effortless.

Yeah, they're going to need to do some serious retooling work on the defensive stat system. Right now evasion is only good though about Act 2 Cruel before you have to take the passive that converts evasion to armor because you can't evade all of the hits anymore and two hits kill you, and armor is only really good for a short time more, if that, because energy shield is a lot more useful than just straight armor. Hell, I'm running a marauder in HC right now that almost never takes any damage (still in Act 1 normal) because he has 26 points of ES that I picked up from rings or his belt or some such.

Anyone know whether armor/resist will reduce incoming damage before it is applied to your ES? 'Cuz that sounds like some tasty double-dippin' right there.

--Patrick

It does. It's just hard to get armor and ES.

You'd have to find the chain-type armor and, at least so far for me, I don't see much of it. I mainly seem to get full evasion and full armor types.

Trying to decide who to level next while I give the Templar a break. Debating between Shadow and Duelist, as I have a shitload of equipment for both. Tried Witch and I don't really like where she starts on the tree. It's pretty boring outside of minion stuff I've been grabbing.

I just made a Shadow that I'm leveling as dual-claws. Holy hell! I thought someone said the Shadow was hard to play! I'm kicking serious ass! I'm already 18th level and in Act 2.

My current build: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...AIuomlS5FPWVO51VLbWxte39_koCaF7MOtUjN6ujW_5M=

Think I'm going to Acrobat? Hell no! I'm headed for Spirit Raker! I don't want to give up my 150+ Energy Shield!

Claw Shadow is insane, yeah. That's what I've been working on also. The only issue I have right now is mana consumption is really high with how fast he attacks.

The problem with a claw shadow is the lack of a good AOE or fast move. You can AOE with LS + LMP (which will give you insane LoH btw), but you really have no gtfo button.

I'm trying to put together a dual claw + Vaal pact + blood magic build, but it looks like its easier to start from the duelist tree for it tbh.

You know, you don't have to use acronyms for everything. Not everyone is as anal about the game as you.

Sorry, just used to talking on the Path of Exile forums, I'll define them:

LoH = Life on Hit
LS = Lightning strike, common attack due to having multiple projectiles. Synergizes really well with LoH.
LMP = Lesser Multiple Projectiles (this is one of the best support gems you can get), it will add 2 extra projectiles. So for LS it will bring it up to 5 lightning blasts.

Thanks! I personally don't care for lightning strike. But I do love Flicker Strike and whatever the spell is that surrounds me with lightning.

The little woman told me PoE is the most boring game she's ever watched me play, and has no inclination to play it with me. I can't find a way to explain to her why I'm playing.

I WAS feeling overpowered, and then I got trashed by the vaal soul guy thing at the top of the pyramid. Holy shit.

Flicker strike is a good one, but you will probably wan at least one AOE later in the game.

Anyways, meant to mention this. They are currently running a 1 week HC race right now. It's a bit absurd to actually try and keep up with these guys. In 4 hours they were already lvl 40. But if you play HC then races are amazing because the drop rates are increased. In the first hour or so I got 2 chaos orbs.[DOUBLEPOST=1362420131][/DOUBLEPOST]Oh yeah Vaal will one shot you with that hammer. Be careful.

I've fought Vaal as a Templar and a Shadow, and both times he was ridiculously hard. I'm terrified to try him on the next difficulty.

As for my Claw Shadow I've got Ice Nova on him, and that seems to do the trick for AoE.

I like Viper Strike. Hit 4 times, run away. Wait for the DoT to end. Repeat. It also gives me time to pop potions, etc.

Seems like you could try and add a leap gem somewhere if you just needed a GTFO button.

--Patrick

CynicismKills said:

I've fought Vaal as a Templar and a Shadow, and both times he was ridiculously hard. I'm terrified to try him on the next difficulty.

As for my Claw Shadow I've got Ice Nova on him, and that seems to do the trick for AoE.

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Man I never thought of ice nova for claws....that's fucking brilliant.

Just started cruel on my marauder after cruising through normal. Silly amount of health and health regen. Just mashing Ground Slam and Sweep with health on hit while my 1400 health regens at warp speed. I did die, so, it happened, but it only happened because I was staring at the minimap rather than the huge blob of enemies that happened to have a relatively dangerous yellow mob in it.

Frank said:

Just started cruel on my marauder after cruising through normal. Silly amount of health and health regen. Just mashing Ground Slam and Sweep with health on hit while my 1400 health regens at warp speed. I did die, so, it happened, but it only happened because I was staring at the minimap rather than the huge blob of enemies that happened to have a relatively dangerous yellow mob in it.

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Sweep and Cleave are hilariously good once you've got a nice weapon. I hear good things about Ground Slam, but I haven't used it much.

Necronic said:

Man I never thought of ice nova for claws....that's fucking brilliant.

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The best thing about it is even if they don't full-on freeze, they still get slowed, which allows me enough time to Double Strike my way to victory (because Double Strike is insane).

On my marauder (level 30-something) I can go for days without seeing an orb of alchemy.
I start a witch today on a whim? 2 alchemy orbs before I hit level 5. W. T. F.

Should I just be rollin' noobs to farm level 1 zombies for frickin rare orbs?

Yeah I heard someone talking about that today. Apparently they nerf drops of orbs if you are too high above a monsters level. Then since the low level monsters have a really small list of equipment they can drop, the chances of them dropping currency items, which are not affected by %rarity of items, is higher than the average monster.

So for basic orbs yes. The higher level ones, chaos and exalted, its easier to farm rare drops and sell those to get them. http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Vendor_Recipes has the recipes. The new patch is supposed to have high item level rares sold like the chaos orb recipe result in an exalted. Im not high enough level to be able to confirm that though.

I've found all of maybe 6 Alchemies across the 4 characters I've played past 15. Not much luck with Chaos or GCP either (about 8 and 1, respectively). Only gotten one character into Cruel, though funny enough he's not the one that found the GCP (it was my level 10 Witch).

Oh, fucking seriously? So because I'm doing all of every area, I ended up about 6 levels ahead of each zone I was going into and thusly was gimping my chances of getting useful currency orbs?

Fuck right off.

Honestly Alchemy Orbs aren't that big a deal. You're probably going to find so many rares that you won't know what to do with them (I've got the 4 base stash tabs, 3/4 are rares/uniques at this point), and if you don't like the stats you're better off looking/trading for something else or using a Chaos Orb.

Chaos, Regret and GCP are just rare as hell to begin with, so that doesn't really factor much into level issues, and any Orbs worth a shit aren't going to drop much until late Act 2 and beyond, I figure, like Chromatics/Linking/etc. I've just recently found my first Blessing Orb, for example, and have yet to find more than one GCP even working in Cruel.

If you want to farm, your best bet is to wait until Cruel/Merciless and run the Twilight Strand or whatever (the very first map in the game) on Cruel/Merciless. Time-wise it's the most efficient as there's a guaranteed Unique monster plus a couple rares if they're along the shore while you run to Brutus.

I would avoid using any GCP, or alchemy, chaos or exalted orbs until you look at the forums and see what you can buy for them. If you're under level 50 chances are you can buy gear many times better than what you can make

Edit: oh yeah and the patch last night made some major changes to the duelis tree.

Frank said:

Oh, fucking seriously? So because I'm doing all of every area, I ended up about 6 levels ahead of each zone I was going into and thusly was gimping my chances of getting useful currency orbs?

Fuck right off.

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Isn't it the opposite? Because the lower level monsters have apparently more probability of giving orbs, it may have been worth it to trade some future chances of getting them for increased chances with those slow level monsters? I guess it depends on the exact quantitative nature of that 'gimping'.

It's really not worth it to grind low level monsters.

Necronic said:

It's really not worth it to grind low level monsters.

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Act 3 on my barbari... excuse me, "marauder," FEELS way more grindy than spending an hour on a lowbie alt, when it means more gear upgrades for my marauder in an hour than I've gotten in the last 3 days on him.

Something is wrong with this setup.

The problem is that they are so averse to using gold, they unwittingly have set up an "unbalancable" system. With other games you can't grind low level monsters and make a go of it because they only give like a couple coppers or gold if a gold-only game. Later in game you'll get like 100 gold for stuff so the game can dictate the relative worth of the monsters and the conquest of same. In this game, however, you can be first level, kill a first level monster, and possibly get something that a level 30 character would want to trade you for. That makes no sense. I like the fact that you can use these orbs for improving stuff or trade them to other players for better gear, but it still is terribly unbalanced toward newer characters.

It seems that way sometimes, but the drops later game really do get much better than the early game. I usually can get 1-2 alchemy (or equivalent) on my higher ranked duders, and I don't come close to that in early game. Like, you will never get a rare in early game that is worth anything, and you are far less likely to find Chromatic or 6 socket items (you flat out won't find 6 socket items), or a unique. All told late game gives much better rewards. Those fall out all over the place in late game, you rarely see them early game (and they are pretty useful, you will need them for getting good potions.) And of course all of this ignores the additional issue of not being able to find much +quant items at low level.

I'm not saying that you don't get some crazy streaks early in the game, you totally do, but it's wrongheaded to think that those streaks are superior to later game rewards. Their RNG needs some work, but I don't think it's really broken. I don't see any serious players farming low-levels, and with the kind of min-maxers I play with....if that worked they would do it.

Necronic said:

It seems that way sometimes, but the drops later game really do get much better than the early game. I usually can get 1-2 alchemy (or equivalent) on my higher ranked duders, and I don't come close to that in early game. Like, you will never get a rare in early game that is worth anything, and you are far less likely to find Chromatic or 6 socket items (you flat out won't find 6 socket items), or a unique. All told late game gives much better rewards. Those fall out all over the place in late game, you rarely see them early game (and they are pretty useful, you will need them for getting good potions.) And of course all of this ignores the additional issue of not being able to find much +quant items at low level.

I'm not saying that you don't get some crazy streaks early in the game, you totally do, but it's wrongheaded to think that those streaks are superior to later game rewards. Their RNG needs some work, but I don't think it's really broken. I don't see any serious players farming low-levels, and with the kind of min-maxers I play with....if that worked they would do it.

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You are addressing late game, and early game, I'm in the doldrums in "mid" game. The low to high 30s. Shit just ain't droppin, yo. The vast majority of gear I've had to get, I bought a white from the merchant and had to use an orb of alchemy (and even orbs of chance once or twice) to get out of having mostly blue gear. Because I'm finding in act 3, even with a few levels above the monsters, blue gear just does NOT hack it.

Rovewin said:

So for basic orbs yes. The higher level ones, chaos and exalted, its easier to farm rare drops and sell those to get them. http://en.pathofexilewiki.com/wiki/Vendor_Recipes has the recipes.

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Until you posted this, I had no idea the vendors acted like a Horodric Cube.

Necronic said:

Edit: oh yeah and the patch last night made some major changes to the duelis tree.

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What??? Hmm, better go check. So far the only character I have is a duelist.
--Patrick

GasBandit said:

You are addressing late game, and early game, I'm in the doldrums in "mid" game. The low to high 30s. Shit just ain't droppin, yo. The vast majority of gear I've had to get, I bought a white from the merchant and had to use an orb of alchemy (and even orbs of chance once or twice) to get out of having mostly blue gear. Because I'm finding in act 3, even with a few levels above the monsters, blue gear just does NOT hack it.

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Yeah, Act 3 is really the first test of your build. Also, I've not had too many problems with drops there, but I've definitely had some dry spells.

Duelist got some substantial buffs to their starting area, a lot more double-bonus nodes and some more attack speed/damage nodes. Just respecced my 26 Duelist, going to take him through the rest of A2 tonight and see if he feels stronger. Before the change my Claw Shadow trounced his progression.

Also pick-up groups Suuuhhhhhk... but when is that not the case no matter the game, amirite?

GasBandit said:

Also pick-up groups Suuuhhhhhk... but when is that not the case no matter the game, amirite?

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I haven't even done one. Plus, the board is flooded with fake buy-my-shit groups. I've done some duoing with my brother, but he got sucked back into LoL so I've been back to soloing.

CynicismKills said:

I haven't even done one. Plus, the board is flooded with fake buy-my-shit groups. I've done some duoing with my brother, but he got sucked back into LoL so I've been back to soloing.

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I've done two (and I've seen the buy my shit groups, but they're easy to avoid)... and, well... both times were pretty bad. Sometimes the people in them would make absolutely no effort to even end up in the same place, just wandering around doing their own thing. Two marauders together ends up being "I'm gonna hit that NO I'M GONNA HIT THAT but I CAN'T FIT THROUGH THE DOOR", and all in all they just seem like generally unrewarding experiences. Little coordination, little cooperation, bad communication... just all in all would druther'a been alone. Probably better if you're playing with people you know and are in ventrilo/skype/teamspeak.

I actually had some good experiences with a group last night. It ended up being me and 2 other people going through the entirety of act 2. There was no loot stealing, we stuck together as a group with me being the meat shield and the others making sure to keep killing things and staying close enough that their auras were actually on me. We actually talked about what mission we wanted to do next instead of someone just taking off to go do them.

Most groups though you have 2 or 3 good people and then 2 or 3 people who could care less about being in a group. It is more rewarding for me doing it solo through an act first. Then I replay the act in a group with a second and third character just to see how it goes and because better loot drops when grouping. Plus my poor ranger is too fragile to go it alone Plus having a few different play styles makes it not be monotonous.

Do we still have a vent server? If so we should jump on comms and play together some. Looks like the guys I play with usually are taking a break and I have no one to play with. Much more fun with others. The one guy I could always count on to play with lost 2 50+ lvl characters in the last day of the 1 week hardcore race.

Ironically enough, the multiplay (old minecraft server) vent server still functions as well, though obviously is not administratable.

So in other words, why did I pay for this one...?

Dave said:

So in other words, why did I pay for this one...?

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Eh, could be useful if you want more than 1 channel. The old one just has a lobby and that's it... so the DND players and the WOW guilds would end up in conflict.

I was playing a 1h-axe and shield Duelist in hardcore, and was seriously thinking that they'd made duelists a bit too easy when they redid their skill tree options. Then I died in one hit from the damn Oversoul.

My Duelist has an easier time of it, but I think that's from snagging the Evasion to Armor passive. Aiming for the No Evade/Can't be Stunned next.

CynicismKills said:

My Duelist has an easier time of it, but I think that's from snagging the Evasion to Armor passive. Aiming for the No Evade/Can't be Stunned next.

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Yeah, that might have helped. It was sad though, because it was the first time I'd even really been in danger of dying. I'd come close once before that, way early on in Act 1 before I was decked out completely in yellows/uniques. Also, the hit came from out of nowhere. Though, the most painful part about it is the fact that I've now lost two characters while each of them was wearing a "Fairgraves' Tricorne" unique hat.

Ouch.

Gared said:

Though, the most painful part about it is the fact that I've now lost two characters while each of them was wearing a "Fairgraves' Tricorne" unique hat.

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Do you lose your uniques when you die or something?

Dave said:

Do you lose your uniques when you die or something?

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I just assumed he was talking about hardcore characters, which get put back in the default league on death, at which point most hardcore players abandon/delete them.

CynicismKills said:

My Duelist has an easier time of it, but I think that's from snagging the Evasion to Armor passive. Aiming for the No Evade/Can't be Stunned next.

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That's my path as well. Though of course I will be disappointed if "can't evade" turns out to be "your evasion is permanently reduced to zero" which will just destroy my recently improved armor rating.

--Patrick

GasBandit said:

I just assumed he was talking about hardcore characters, which get put back in the default league on death, at which point most hardcore players abandon/delete them.

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Exactly. I haven't deleted the two characters, but their uniques are no longer available to my HC characters, leaving me with a sole unique item in HC - that stupid Lapis Amulet.

I've had awful luck on uniques. I got that fairly terrible Coral Ring, and some low level ES gloves that're okay, but not great.

CynicismKills said:

I've had awful luck on uniques. I got that fairly terrible Coral Ring, and some low level ES gloves that're okay, but not great.

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I've picked up 5 of them, so far. I got Limbsplit fairly early on in open beta, and then a Stone of Lazhwar (lapis amulet) in Default, followed by a Stone of Lazhwar in HC, and then on back to back characters I managed to get Fairgraves' Tricorne to drop in HC. And on back to back characters, they became default items, because the characters died.

Edit: Five, not six. I can math, I swear.

Finally got a hardcore character past the damn Oversoul and into Act 3. Kinda worried about the city of Sarn.

So the game is now live, they released it on Steam. They added a Scion class, the tree starts in the center. The tree itself has been tweaked quite a bit. They've also added 2 leagues, Domination (softcore) and Nemesis (hardcore). Game is as fun as I remember it. Anyone playing?

I still play. When I can. Which ain't often.

--Patrick

I got away from playing it for a while. Since we've already got it do we now have to pay?

Nope. Only if you want to set yourself apart with cosmetic changes. They have stated they are very much against the pay-to-win model.

Still, I wish I'd paid closer attention and snagged one of the beta packs while they were still available so I could badge myself as a beta player. Ah well.

--Patrick

Dave said:

I got away from playing it for a while. Since we've already got it do we now have to pay?

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It's a free to play game.

Ravenpoe said:

It's a free to play game.

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I knew it was during beta but wondered if now that it's live it went to a paid game.

And I did a microtransaction when I got my profit sharing so I have essentially paid $50 for the game.

Still free. But now also on steam, which it wasn't in beta.

Yep, I'm still there. Got a level 30 something Ranger on the second quest in Act 3 Nemesis on Normal. I really like the tree revamps.

Next league is now up. The hardcore league in this (Invasion) is one of the most insane things I have ever played. Me and my buddies have all died at least once before level 6. 3 of the top 10 positions on the ladder died last night. People be dying like fruit flies in this one.

The softcore league seems pretty fun as well.

Damnit, since I moved I haven't been able to find my computer speakers, so I haven't been playing anything other than Rogue Legacy and Banished because they don't really need sound. Now I'm going to have to go buy new ones so I can get back into PoE...

The HC league is simply evil. One of the guys I played with was farming Mud Flats in normal because the underground passage was too dangerous. I had to skip granddaddy crab.

Excelsior!

--Patrick

God that title made me a little nervous, until I heard Chris's voice. You have to love those developers.