Path of Exile

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

The extent of the grind becomes really apparent when you aren't doing maps and leveling up. My low life dual spork witch is 78 just farming docks and merc merv. I'm running 284 rarity & 43 quantity. I haven't found anything worth a damn in days. A couple 1-3 chaos items, but that's about it. It's basically become Path of Spork and Path of Alt Farm. It really might as well be Diablo 3 with worse graphics, worse trading, and worse desync.

I'll let you borrow my Flamesuit +5, but I don't know how much it will help

 

[big_aug]

why don't you switch up and go for high quantity instead of rarity? outside of maps you aren't going to find awesome gear for your level.

Plenty of pretty awesome items can drop from Docks:

Rainbowstride
Marohi
Shavs
Windscream
Soul Taker
Andvarius
Aegis Aurora
Voidbringer
Searing Touch
Taryn's
Alpha's Howl
Abyssus
more...

Every item in the game can drop from Lunaris 3 if I recall correctly. I just don't like to solo down there and there's never a group. You act like 43% quantity is low. It's 284/43 on my spark, so it's on every kill. This isn't culling or anything.

 

[robble]

Every item in the game can drop from Lunaris 3 if I recall correctly. I just don't like to solo down there and there's never a group. You act like 43% quantity is low. It's 284/43 on my spark, so it's on every kill. This isn't culling or anything.

I wonder what you would have found it you had had 5x the amount of drops in both items and currency you had gotten.

 

[big_aug]

I wonder what you would have found it you had had 5x the amount of drops in both items and currency you had gotten.

How does quantity give 5x the amount of drops? I guess its another one of those hidden mechanics that don't work anything like the way its described in game? 43% item quantity actually gives more than a 43% increase in the number of items that drop? I don't need 500% item quantity to get 5x the amount of drops?

 

[robble]

How does quantity give 5x the amount of drops? I guess its another one of those hidden mechanics that don't work anything like the way its described in game? 43% item quantity actually gives more than a 43% increase in the number of items that drop? I don't need 500% item quantity to get 5x the amount of drops?

bleah, that was my lsd/shroom math. 284 being ~5x more than 43. probably not correct

 

[robble]

double post

 

[chockomonkey]

I'm up to 161 quantity, and I've notice a decent increase in currency. Now to get my rarity higher than 80.

 

[TwistedAegis]

Weird issue today; can any random person join maps you create? I created a map, no one joined my party; all of a sudden an entire other party joined the map I created, killing shit. Not only that, but it was on permanent allocation and drops were being allocated to them. I was pissed.

Plenty of pretty awesome items can drop from Docks:

Rainbowstride
Marohi
Shavs
Windscream
Soul Taker
Andvarius
Aegis Aurora
Voidbringer
Searing Touch
Taryn's
Alpha's Howl
Abyssus
more...

Every item in the game can drop from Lunaris 3 if I recall correctly. I just don't like to solo down there and there's never a group. You act like 43% quantity is low. It's 284/43 on my spark, so it's on every kill. This isn't culling or anything.

Also, thanks for saying this...got a pair of Sundance boots from docks today. My first high-level unique drop. Decent DPS boost; lose chaos res, but gain everything else.

 

[lilbabycat]

The extent of the grind becomes really apparent when you aren't doing maps and leveling up. My low life dual spork witch is 78 just farming docks and merc merv. I'm running 284 rarity & 43 quantity. I haven't found anything worth a damn in days. A couple 1-3 chaos items, but that's about it. It's basically become Path of Spork and Path of Alt Farm. It really might as well be Diablo 3 with worse graphics, worse trading, and worse desync.

You're simply not going to get a good loot/time ratio unless you're doing maps with someone reliably culling w/ high rarity/quantity and a full group. The disparity between solo'ing and grouping is huge, despite on paper that it does not. I emphasize the reliable part because i've often been the MF guy in the group and often notice many spikey skills beating me out on killing blows. People really don't understand how good blue mobs can be for loot, not just unique/rare mobs.

Blast through a bunch of 66 maps as a public group, I personally prefer short allocation. I'll usually make the group name something like "66/67 maps w/ MF, no cull/siphon, 75+ KEEP UP"

p.s. you're really bad at making analogies to this game and diablo 3.

 

[big_aug]

You're simply not going to get a good loot/time ratio unless you're doing maps with someone reliably culling w/ high rarity/quantity and a full group. The disparity between solo'ing and grouping is huge, despite on paper that it does not. I emphasize the reliable part because i've often been the MF guy in the group and often notice many spikey skills beating me out on killing blows. People really don't understand how good blue mobs can be for loot, not just unique/rare mobs.

Blast through a bunch of 66 maps as a public group, I personally prefer short allocation. I'll usually make the group name something like "66/67 maps w/ MF, no cull/siphon, 75+ KEEP UP"

p.s. you're really bad at making analogies to this game and diablo 3.

Yea, I know all of this. I never realized how bad it was until I went solo and stopped grouping/running maps. More confirmation that this game is completely broken. Want to find something good? Make sure you're in a full party with a dedicated full MFer last hitting rares.

p.s. My analogies are fine. You're one of those individuals who refuses to see how many issues this game has with its fundamental gameplay mechanics.

 

[chockomonkey]

You're simply not going to get a good loot/time ratio unless you're doing maps with someone reliably culling w/ high rarity/quantity and a full group. The disparity between solo'ing and grouping is huge, despite on paper that it does not. I emphasize the reliable part because i've often been the MF guy in the group and often notice many spikey skills beating me out on killing blows. People really don't understand how good blue mobs can be for loot, not just unique/rare mobs.

Blast through a bunch of 66 maps as a public group, I personally prefer short allocation. I'll usually make the group name something like "66/67 maps w/ MF, no cull/siphon, 75+ KEEP UP"

p.s. you're really bad at making analogies to this game and diablo 3.

Crazy I never thought of culling strike being used this way. Maybe once I get my rarity up I'll have to do this. I'm guessing though that you'd want fast attack speed, which I do not. Maybe I simply need to go through with my plans of creating a character for farming only. But man that'd be gay.

 

[Rizen]

So, I'm checking this game out now and it seems much deeper on first look than Diablo 3. (That is, for me personally, a plus). Does anyone have any guides / important information for new players that may not be obvious? I'm playing a Ranger.

 

[lilbabycat]

p.s. My analogies are fine. You're one of those individuals who refuses to see how many issues this game has with its fundamental gameplay mechanics.

Yes, game has issues, but your analogies are terrible. Need I remind you:

The Diablo 3 equivalent would be making people pay to unlock runes...

----------------

Crazy I never thought of culling strike being used this way. Maybe once I get my rarity up I'll have to do this. I'm guessing though that you'd want fast attack speed, which I do not. Maybe I simply need to go through with my plans of creating a character for farming only. But man that'd be gay.

Decent attack/cast speed, depends on how fast your group is killing mobs. Really powerful groups I'm lucky to keep up, even with my sparks flying all over the place.

On an unrelated note, I find that sometimes my sparks just simply don't damage or hit anything at all. I can stand and cast (undesynced) and watch dozens of them hit a barrel or a skeleton, and nothing happen. Usually at/near point blank range. Can be quite annoying.

----------------------------------------------


I'm not sure if anyone has linked this yet, but Qarl from GGG made a lengthy post about game balance:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/468826

I was asked in this thread to comment on our balance decisions and how we approach balance in Path of Exile. I started writing up a reply, which turned out quite long before I even covered my first point, so I will make my comment in a multi-part post.

This first part covers the general balance philosophies of the game. In the next part I will talk about the passive tree. After that, I’d be keen to talk about progression, and balance for specific playstyles. Later on, I’d like to get into the specific numbers, and balance of specific game stats.

The free to play games that have been successful (like League of Legends or MapleStory, for example) and the games with online persistent economies (for example Eve Online or World of Warcraft), have been ones that have evolved over time. They have regular updates, additional content, and an evolving metagame. These changes keeps players involved in the game.

This is the kind of success we are interested in, so we do intend to add more content, more skills, and more keystones. We also expect the balance to change, with different elements of the game waxing and waning in strength over time.

We want decisions about your character build to really matter. Part of this stems from the game being, to a very strong extent, about items. For them to be important, the items your character wears need to matter. We don't want items to be strictly tiered and transitive in nature. In many games, you want the gear for your class, and then you want to keep upgrading the tier of those items, until you get the maximum tier item for your character. While this does work for those very character-centred games, in Path of Exile we want the items to take more of the limelight. Items are not just supporting pieces to a class progression you walk through.

We want items to have intransitive relationships, as well as transitive ones. Intransitive means that the items are not comparable by strictly looking for bigger numbers. Rock-paper-scissors is a game with intransitive relationships between the moves, as opposed to a game where a bigger number always wins. So, for intransitive relationships between gear, sometimes we will want an item with smaller numbers for specific purposes. The answer I most like to see to the question “Which of these two items should I wear?” is “It depends.”

If the gear your character uses matters, then how you build your character matters. We also want character build decisions to matter, because it fits the style of game we like to play.

This leads to few things that impact how we handle balance:

(1) Decisions matter. You can make your character better by making better decisions about its build. As this is possible, you make your character worse by the decisions you make. So, in this case, balance isn't about making everything equal. Having decisions matter means that randomly built characters tend to be much weaker than ones that are well thought out. (Although, it should be noted that we want to make it easy for people to see what they need for their character, and have early paths of strength obvious).

(2) Synergistic options. These create a great deal of potential for making a good character by choice. The game system has to allow for different things to work together in positive ways. This makes balance more difficult, as things cannot be balanced in a vacuum.

(3) Build versatility and emergence. We want players to have lots of tools available to them, and we want them to be able to be combined in different ways. A player has access to gear stats, skills, supports, keystones and flasks, all with interacting elements. This gives a lot of flexibility, and leads to players being able to discover emergent things that had not been considered. We design to make this possible. We try to make things in a way that allows for interesting things to happen. Things would be much easier to balance if we restricted players’ options.

As the game has this kind of emergence, many of our balance decisions have to be reactive. We have to react to balance problems that crop up due to how the game is played. This is not the only way we balance, but it has to be a factor. If something becomes too dominant, it has to be addressed.

An example of an emergent thing we didn’t expect making the game better would something like Ruby Flasks being used as a moderator for Righteous Fire characters. An example of something that needed to be balanced after being introduced would be the first versions of multistrike (and multicast), that dominated the game immediately after being added.

On the flipside of this, we sometimes balance things based on their perceived weakness, even though we know they are actually much stronger. We have to be careful with this, though, as it can come back to hurt us (and lead to reactive nerfs as the power gets discovered).

An example of us not buffing something "known to be weak" is Eldritch Battery. We had players demanding this be strengthened for a long time, but we did not change it, as we had seen it being used well. In the last few months, the community view of the power of this Keystone has basically reversed with no change to it. Burn damage also fits this; we were told for a long time that it was the worst status ailment, and that it needed to be buffed. We knew it was strong, and did not change it. Over time, it has gone from being considered very weak to very strong without us changing it. All that changed was the discovery of its usefulness.

(4) Build-based characters, not class-based. The synergistic options and versatility and decisions mattering are things we value. They don't make things that easy. The freedom players have in making their characters makes it very easy for players to converge on imbalances in the game. Very slight imbalances between options can result in characters gravitating to very similar builds very quickly. We work to avoid that, but our players are very canny. We are sometimes told that there are only a very few builds that work in high-level play, but when we look at high-level characters, there are more builds represented here than in many similar games. However, when players do converge on similar options, we need to make changes that can be less than popular.

Our players usually start our game thinking in terms of the class they choose first, and then work out what builds they can do. After playing for a while, they start to think in terms of build, and then work out which class best supports the build they want to make. Because of these two styles of play, it changes how we approach balance changes to the passive tree.

I’ll talk more about passive tree balance and development in a followup post.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

On an unrelated note, I find that sometimes my sparks just simply don't damage or hit anything at all. I can stand and cast (undesynced) and watch dozens of them hit a barrel or a skeleton, and nothing happen. Usually at/near point blank range. Can be quite annoying.

I wonder if this is a LOS/geometry issue. I noticed this with a spork shadow not long ago, but skills like Cyclone don't seem to suffer the same problem.

 

[big_aug]

How do you guys not understand that anaology? Modifying skills in PoE is done through links. Getting links comes with finding gear and eventually, in most cases, buying/trading for it when it comes to 5l/6ls. In Diablo 3, runes are what modify skills. These are granted through levels. Diablo 3s equivalent of POE would be charging players for runes, or making the drops. The high runes would be extremely rare and expensive just like 6ls.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

How do you guys not understand that anaology? Modifying skills in PoE is done through links. Getting links comes with finding gear and eventually, in most cases, buying/trading for it when it comes to 5l/6ls. In Diablo 3, runes are what modify skills. These are granted through levels. Diablo 3s equivalent of POE would be charging players for runes, or making the drops. The high runes would be extremely rare and expensive just like 6ls.

No. If it was analogous, D3 would have many more ways to modify skills, plus the ability to stack up to 7 modifiers on one skill. You would also have the ability to stack multiple modifiers on multiple skills at the same time. D3 has none of those options. The methods to modify your skills are also much more limited and 100% predetermined in D3. The equivalent would be gear affected synergies, which D3 has in an extremely limited fashion. Plus, anyone can make their own linked items.

Give it up. Nobody is buying your shit anymore.

 

[Alyosha]

So, I'm checking this game out now and it seems much deeper on first look than Diablo 3. (That is, for me personally, a plus). Does anyone have any guides / important information for new players that may not be obvious? I'm playing a Ranger.

This is definitely a deep game. I've been playing for a couple months and I feel like I'm only just getting a firm grasp of it. As for guides, a quick youtube search for path of exile beginners guide will get you a few good tutorials. Really, though, there's so much to learn that you just have to educate yourself a little bit at a time. Play the game and when you find something you don't understand, go look it up and figure it out. The official forums are pretty good, too, but, like the game, the shear number of sub-forums can be a little overwhelming.

 

[TwistedAegis]

Most of the skills are handed to you as you level up. Rarer ones can only be found. I like that design decision.

It also allows for crazy build diversity. Grouped yesterday with a duelist who was a skeleton-summoning archer. Awesome.

Question about maps and builds. I can clear most maps and types pretty easily; there are a few that give me trouble (50% less regen is tough). However the bosses at the end are very hard for me to solo; they just do huge amounts of damage to me. Blacksmith, Loath, Crazed Roa, all I can handle in a group but solo I nearly always die at least once, which is a huge EXP loss. Any help?

 

[LeninGHOLA]

Get tricky with enduring cry and immortal call. Try traps.

 

[Archaea]

I'm forming a party of my friends for the 2 hour hardcore PVP league party run on Sunday. We are talking about how to make the best team.

Here is the team I suggested: But we haven't tried this before. We don't expect to win or anything, but just have fun. At the same time we want to make a six person team that has a shot.



2 Marauders with sweep to centrally draw enemy focus, and yet still damage everyone who might come up around them. Early game marauders are the best melee class – easy to get two hander weapons, best damage, highest health starting out. This is a early game run – We probably won’t make it past level 12 or so in a 2 hour run like this with a group of guys that plays in their free time and isn't too dedicated to memorizing the skill tree- etc? So the extra health and damage advantage might be pretty critical at low levels in Player vs Player. I was wondering about 2 assassins instead, but they don’t really find their legs until you get some good weapons or life stealing claw right? They have no area of affect attacks at low levels, and if an assassin gets stormed by four other human players – he’s going to die faster than a barbarian with sweep (sweep having a hammer and stun). (or at least do less damage before he gets taken out)

2 Cold Witches to slow/chill/freeze on enemy players. Cold damage is one of the better damage types for PVP ---- slow em down!

1 Fire Witch to cast firestorm – good AOE.

1 Ranger with poison arrow which is very good AOE damage early on. (spec nothing but speed – get that poison on top of the marauders fighting in the center as fast as possible. If I’m not mistaken, poison is chaos damage which ignores energy shield.

 

[lilbabycat]

I would be to join in with you but I need to know times based on eastern time zone...and I would prefer an easier duty (one of the 2 marauders) if possible as I am guaranteed to be a bit hungover.

I like the *idea* of races, but for whatever reason they don't click for me.

 

[ounumen]

I'm forming a party of my friends for the 2 hour hardcore PVP league party run on Sunday. We are talking about how to make the best team.

Here is the team I suggested: But we haven't tried this before. We don't expect to win or anything, but just have fun. At the same time we want to make a six person team that has a shot.



2 Marauders with sweep to centrally draw enemy focus, and yet still damage everyone who might come up around them. Early game marauders are the best melee class – easy to get two hander weapons, best damage, highest health starting out. This is a early game run – We probably won’t make it past level 12 or so in a 2 hour run like this with a group of guys that plays in their free time and isn't too dedicated to memorizing the skill tree- etc? So the extra health and damage advantage might be pretty critical at low levels in Player vs Player. I was wondering about 2 assassins instead, but they don’t really find their legs until you get some good weapons or life stealing claw right? They have no area of affect attacks at low levels, and if an assassin gets stormed by four other human players – he’s going to die faster than a barbarian with sweep (sweep having a hammer and stun). (or at least do less damage before he gets taken out)

2 Cold Witches to slow/chill/freeze on enemy players. Cold damage is one of the better damage types for PVP ---- slow em down!

1 Fire Witch to cast firestorm – good AOE.

1 Ranger with poison arrow which is very good AOE damage early on. (spec nothing but speed – get that poison on top of the marauders fighting in the center as fast as possible. If I’m not mistaken, poison is chaos damage which ignores energy shield.

Looks good but you can put the Mara in with shields as 2h weapon damage and 1h weapons damage at low levels is pretty close and you can specialize into maces easily. Besides that looks like a solid plan.

 

[Hornet]

Today is probably my luckiest day in PoE, found a GCP, white 5L armor and exalted while leveling a new marauder My other 2 exalted was found when I was leveling my witch months ago. Probably just my luck but I've yet to find anything as valuable from months of farming docks and doing low level maps.

 

[robble]

Today is probably my luckiest day in PoE, found a GCP, white 5L armor and exalted while leveling a new marauder My other 2 exalted was found when I was leveling my witch months ago. Probably just my luck but I've yet to find anything as valuable from months of farming docks and doing low level maps.

Almost all the gcp and above that I have found were found with a low level character.

 

[robble]

Bought a face breaker and some +physical damage jewelry/belt today. Dps jumped from 7k with heavy strike to almost 12k with infernal blow. When I hit lvl 67 and can use the helmet bringer of rain, I expect my dps to jump to over 20k.

 

[robble]

Had good luck running maps tonight. I had one lvl 66 map I found in lunar. ran it and found a map. Ran that one and found two 66 maps and two 68 maps. Ran one of the 66s and found two more 66 maps. Also my a marauder made lvl 64 during the third map run. I discovered that while infernal blow has about 5k dps more than dominating blow, dominating blow was still easier due to all the minions.

 

[erf]

What exactly are these maps I keep seeing mentioned? I JUST started playing last weekend...level 8 witch.

 

[robble]

What exactly are these maps I keep seeing mentioned? I JUST started playing last weekend...level 8 witch.

you've got a while before you'll see them. They are end game content. After you complete all the acts 3 times you'll have access to the maps. They are basically instances of higher level than the acts.

 

[nHanS]

cool thread! gonna check the game out based on reviews!

 

[Climber]

So, I'm checking this game out now and it seems much deeper on first look than Diablo 3. (That is, for me personally, a plus). Does anyone have any guides / important information for new players that may not be obvious? I'm playing a Ranger.

PoE is considerably more in depth than D3. D3 felt more like a game designed for beginners or for a casual romp fest. PoE is way more advanced in gameplay, trading, items, and characterization.

 

[ounumen]

PoE is considerably more in depth than D3. D3 felt more like a game designed for beginners or for a casual romp fest. PoE is way more advanced in gameplay, trading, items, and characterization.

Word. I am on my second character and have yet to see the 3rd play through. I enjoy the difficulty of the game.

 

[Alyosha]

So, after the last patch, I decided to take my ranger in the "pure evasion" direction The patch was supposed to make that a more feasible build and, with the change to Iron Reflexes no longer taking dexterity into account, it seemed like a half way reasonable choice. So far, I'm surprised at how well it's going. I have absolutely crap gear at the moment and, even then, my evasion rating is close to 6k and has me at 52% chance to evade. Coupled with 20% chance to dodge all attacks, and an extra 20% chance to dodge projectiles and I have yet to die after a week of playing through act 2 of merciless. Better gear should help get the evasion up even higher, as well as my life (which is around 1700 right now I think). And I very much need some more linkages as I have only 1 4L right now. But, all that said, this is seeming like a fairly decent build for leveling. I've yet to get a character to end game yet though. That could well be a different story...

 

[Alyosha]

"New" vendor recipe for a 20% quality gem.

 

[Hornet]

Interesting recipe. Though I'm not sure if I want to actually reset my gem. It's really hard to level a gem to level 20. My highest gem is only level 18, and the exp required is insane.

 

[Alyosha]

Interesting recipe. Though I'm not sure if I want to actually reset my gem. It's really hard to level a gem to level 20. My highest gem is only level 18, and the exp required is insane.

I guess it's a matter of what takes more time - leveling a gem to 20, or collecting enough GCPs to increase the quality of a gem yourself. Both are going to be a huge time sink.

 

[lilbabycat]

The xp required to level a gem from 1-20 is about equal to leveling to ~85. I think i got my first gem to 20 in my late 70's (yeah i died that much).

 

[rangda]

And I very much need some more linkages as I have only 1 4L right now. But, all that said, this is seeming like a fairly decent build for leveling. I've yet to get a character to end game yet though. That could well be a different story...

Make sure you check all the vendors on every level up; I picked up several 4L's that way (and you can usually find 2-3 RGB's to sell for chromatics as well).

 

[TwistedAegis]

Any of you have any particularly good ranger builds? What primary skill are you using? Just hit 31 on my ranger, she's quite fun but I'm not really sure what direction to go.

 

[Alyosha]

Any of you have any particularly good ranger builds? What primary skill are you using? Just hit 31 on my ranger, she's quite fun but I'm not really sure what direction to go.

I just posted my ranger build a few posts above. I'm not sure it's particularly good, but I'm having fun with it. It was loosely based on this build until the last patch when I went full evasion.

That said, lightning arrow is a great skill, especially when coupled with lesser multiple projectiles and life gain on hit (as a basic starting point). With more links, increased elemental damage is great, and I'm sure there are a lot of others. With LMP and this skill's inherent ability to shock nearby targets, it's a fabulous life gain on hit skill. You'll often be hitting half a dozen enemies at a time - it's enough to fill my health all the way up sometimes.

For single target skill, I've been using burning arrow. A lot of people like frenzy, but seeing as I've invested in some elemental damage nodes for my lightning arrow, I wanted to use another elemental skill. The frozen arrow (ice shot?) could be just as good, maybe better, but I don't have one. Add to one of these faster attacks, increased burning (or cold) damage, and life leach and you're doing good. Elemental proliferation or increased elemental damage are good add-ons as well.

Poison arrow is a great supplementary skill, especially with fork, you can fill vast areas with chaos damage. Typically, when I hit a mob, I cast projectile weakness, fire a couple poison arrows, and then hammer away with lighting arrow. It's fairly effective.

 

[TwistedAegis]

Awesome, thanks, I will try lightning arrow as my main and ice as my single (which I'm using now). I could of sworn I had lightning arrow at some point, don't know where it went. Would be nice if they added some kind of automated skill gem tab; automagically takes them and puts it into a book, listed alphabetically, and you could grab out which ones you had and needed.