[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Coldkil]

What are people planning on running for the new league?

Templar or Marauder sword and board tempest shield. Need to evaluate the ascendancy classes though guardian looks the best candidate for auras/additional block.

EDIT: wanting to be a fire/lighting based "caster", is it safe to mix the two types of damage? Explaining better - i'd like to have two main sources of damage to have less issues with X immune bosses/monsters, but i don't know if the investment would be too great to make it work.

[falagar112]

Will try a Queen of the Forest Blast Rain Totem char (pathfinder most likely, maybe raider) with the sole purpose of running some fast uber labs for currency.

Then when I have currency I will just play what looks interesting and spend the currency I made on that - that is what I usually do every league.

First char farm char, 2nd char progress char

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I have, with 4 of those jewels.
pro:
Damage is very nice, can do all but the 2 poison immune T16 bosses.(well they can be done but takes a long time)
Doesn't need to much gear, even with the boots you can do almost everything.
Can do Halls of the grandmasters.
con:
mana, you need to use mana potion, or invest alot in mana regen.
breaches are a big nono.
low health, i sit around 4.6k with capped chaos res(mings). Did try low life and CI, but doesn't seem worth the investment.

I use bino's , 1 mings,southbound , 4 coated shrapnels and a 6link chest(tabula/good rare/belly).

You forgot biggest con of them all :P
- you can move faster (so want to move faster) but not clear faster because... trap charges.. qq

[padie]

Will try a Queen of the Forest Blast Rain Totem char (pathfinder most likely, maybe raider) with the sole purpose of running some fast uber labs for currency.

Then when I have currency I will just play what looks interesting and spend the currency I made on that - that is what I usually do every league.

First char farm char, 2nd char progress char

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You forgot biggest con of them all :P
- you can move faster (so want to move faster) but not clear faster because... trap charges.. qq

If you take all the nodes, its not to bad. And you clear a screen with just 1 throw.
Are some builds faster? sure. But builds like AW are about the same.

[Shaiandra]

Templar or Marauder sword and board tempest shield. Need to evaluate the ascendancy classes though guardian looks the best candidate for auras/additional block.

EDIT: wanting to be a fire/lighting based "caster", is it safe to mix the two types of damage? Explaining better - i'd like to have two main sources of damage to have less issues with X immune bosses/monsters, but i don't know if the investment would be too great to make it work.

Yeah, you can easily focus on two elements if you'd like; just grab Elemental Damage or Spell Damage nodes (if you're using spells) rather than ones specifically for Fire or Lightning.

Note that no enemies have elemental immunities, just status immunities. Some bosses cannot be ignited or poisoned, but even they aren't immune to fire damage or chaos damage.

Penetration is also quite powerful if you want to stick to one offensive skill. Like if you want to stick to just one fire skill, you could simply link Fire Penetration on it and you'll probably do reasonably well against anything (Penetration can even reduce monsters' effective resistances from 0 to negative, so it's worth a full-time gem slot). Sure it might not be as great as using another element in some cases, but it could be far less effort/hassle than using multiple spells.

Though if say a secondary source of damage is a totem or something which you may use in conjunction with your primary skill, sure, you can have them be different elements.

[falagar112]

Templar or Marauder sword and board tempest shield. Need to evaluate the ascendancy classes though guardian looks the best candidate for auras/additional block.

EDIT: wanting to be a fire/lighting based "caster", is it safe to mix the two types of damage? Explaining better - i'd like to have two main sources of damage to have less issues with X immune bosses/monsters, but i don't know if the investment would be too great to make it work.

You can make it a crit build and play it on an Inquisitor (Inquisitor Ascendancy ignores all resistance on crits!) it's perfect for multiple element builds. Alternatively you can make use of Elemental Equilibrium and alternate the skills you want to use.

[Coldkil]

You can make it a crit build and play it on an Inquisitor (Inquisitor Ascendancy ignores all resistance on crits!) it's perfect for multiple element builds. Alternatively you can make use of Elemental Equilibrium and alternate the skills you want to use.

Inquisitor sounds way better and easier to mantain. Will check the passives and meddle up with something. Any suggestion on fire spells to use as main attack? Scorching ray looks really cool (i have an obsession with channeling and CWC XD), but also fireball spam looks nice.

[Gallahadd]

Templar or Marauder sword and board tempest shield. Need to evaluate the ascendancy classes though guardian looks the best candidate for auras/additional block.

Juggernaut is a lot of fun, playing it right now. They get INSANE Endurance charge generation and Fortify buffs, makes them naturally very hardy, leaving you more space to get damage stats from gear.

[falagar112]

Inquisitor sounds way better and easier to mantain. Will check the passives and meddle up with something. Any suggestion on fire spells to use as main attack? Scorching ray looks really cool (i have an obsession with channeling and CWC XD), but also fireball spam looks nice.

Scorching Ray isn't able to crit nor can it proc EE (it does not "hit") so it wouldn't be a good idea on inquisitor. However Scorching Ray+CwC is great - as for spells you can use with that, there are many. You can try what I played this league (icestorm/whispering ice staff) so scorching ray+cwc+icestorm. That would make you fire/cold - you can then convert the cold to fire (any combination of Pyre, Avatar of Fire, Cold to Fire support) so that you can doubledip on cold/fire dmg% passives.

You can also use Firestorm, it's the same AoE clear speed really, and would make you full fire which is a bit easier to manage.

Fireball is great and they changed the Fireball jewels to not need a treshold anymore, so I can see Fireball being pretty good as well for coming league.

If you go crit though, would consider Ice Spear too, that is a great spell for crit builds.

Something like an inquisitor with that cospris weapon to proc icespears/fireballs should work as well - and is very close to the idea you had for this league.

edit: even Spark is amazing for crit inquisitor

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/...ile/falagar112

if you check "TouchMyIceSpear" that is what I did on inquisitor a while ago. Used Blade Vortex + the vinktar flask + physical to lightning to make my BV do lightning damage that would ignore resists on crit

[Shaiandra]

As Falagar said, Scorching Ray doesn't hit, which makes it a rather unique spell. Which means the following various pros/cons:
- It cannot crit
- It cannot leech
- It's not affected by Penetration (though it is affected by other sources of lowered resistances, such as curses, Elemental Equilibrium, and its own debuff)
- It doesn't trigger Elemental Equilibrium, which is pretty nice; just throw down something like an Orb of Storms to reduce enemies' Fire and Cold resists then you can channel Ray without weaving other spells
- It cannot be reflected (which is another thing you should take into consideration as a whole; if you focus on one element then you only need flasks of that resistance to minimize the risk of blowing yourself up)

It's a pretty neat spell because of this, but yeah, it's not good for Inquisitor who'd likely build crit-heavy (and it doesn't benefit from the ignored resistances on crit).
But if you want to do CWC with a spell that can crit, Flameblast is another channeled option. Basically it builds up a nuke that gets larger and stronger as you channel, then explodes for tons of damage when you release.

EDIT: Oops, I said Orb of Storms lowers fire and lit resists with EE; it'd lower Fire and Cold.

[falagar112]

As Falagar said, Scorching Ray doesn't hit, which makes it a rather unique spell. Which means the following various pros/cons:
- It cannot crit
- It cannot leech
- It's not affected by Penetration (though it is affected by other sources of lowered resistances, such as curses, Elemental Equilibrium, and its own debuff)
- It doesn't trigger Elemental Equilibrium, which is pretty nice; just throw down something like an Orb of Storms to reduce enemies' Fire and Lit resists then you can channel Ray without weaving other spells
- It cannot be reflected (which is another thing you should take into consideration as a whole; if you focus on one element then you only need flasks of that resistance to minimize the risk of blowing yourself up)

It's a pretty neat spell because of this, but yeah, it's not good for Inquisitor who'd likely build crit-heavy (and it doesn't benefit from the ignored resistances on crit).
But if you want to do CWC with a spell that can crit, Flameblast is another channeled option. Basically it builds up a nuke that gets larger and stronger as you channel, then explodes for tons of damage when you release.

How did I forget Flame Blast??

Yeaa.. that is also an amazing option

[padie]

If they could have made vortex not around the caster. SR/cwc/vortex would be insane.

[falagar112]

If they could have made vortex not around the caster. SR/cwc/vortex would be insane.

Didn't they fix that?

They did fix it for Icestorm and Firestorm - at start of league both would get cast centered on your character, but they fixed that and now it casts centered on your mouse position.

[Shaiandra]

Actually at the start of Breach league it would cast those spells at the end of the Ray...

Firestorm and Icestorm can be targeted though; Vortex is always centered on you no matter where you try to cast it. Just like Ice Nova and Shock Nova.

[Coldkil]

Uhm, ok - anyway the idea was to use the ray to cast other stuff for the benefit of negating the mana cost. Afaik all spells caster through that are still susceptible to crit/leech/etc and the idea was to make them the biggest source of damage while using SR+CWC to cast them. I also read that SR is extremely good with flat damage increases because they're subject to the increased damage while channeling making them 75% stronger.

Anyway i'll probably stay away from that just to change gameplay style.

i've seen your templar @falagar112, anyway i find always odd that to make a "working" build most of them just fly away from the starting point to get very far nodes. Example there are the huge fire/lighting/cold nodes on the top side that no ones seem to care about. Maybe it's just me being tricked by them, but they look powerful enough to be considered.

EDIT: i want also tempest Shield to play a big part on the build, so i want to invest into block nodes.

[Archimand]

need a build for the new league, im thinking about going firestorm or Essence drain but cant decide whats better for leveling.


also open for other intresting start of league builds with 0 funding.

[padie]

Didn't they fix that?

They did fix it for Icestorm and Firestorm - at start of league both would get cast centered on your character, but they fixed that and now it casts centered on your mouse position.

vortex is centered on your char without cwc(firestorm/icestorm aren't), so no it still casts on you.

[Enjeh]

Legacy League Challenges and Rewards

[falagar112]

Uhm, ok - anyway the idea was to use the ray to cast other stuff for the benefit of negating the mana cost. Afaik all spells caster through that are still susceptible to crit/leech/etc and the idea was to make them the biggest source of damage while using SR+CWC to cast them. I also read that SR is extremely good with flat damage increases because they're subject to the increased damage while channeling making them 75% stronger.

Anyway i'll probably stay away from that just to change gameplay style.

i've seen your templar @falagar112, anyway i find always odd that to make a "working" build most of them just fly away from the starting point to get very far nodes. Example there are the huge fire/lighting/cold nodes on the top side that no ones seem to care about. Maybe it's just me being tricked by them, but they look powerful enough to be considered.

EDIT: i want also tempest Shield to play a big part on the build, so i want to invest into block nodes.

They are always considered, they are not bad nodes. One needs to look at it through a "what do I get back for investing x points" and compare it to other routes on the passive tree to compare.

As for the traveling, that is because of the major nodes being character defining, they are such gamechangers that combining a few, despite the traveling required - is really nice.

But the same goes for them, see how many points it costs to travel and compare to other possible routes

The block thing - I think you're trying to squeeze a few things to many into one build, making it a jack of all trades but not really good at anything in particular. While those builds are fun because of diversity and lots of skills, they also are not as endgame viable as a build that builds for one thing alone.

[Shaiandra]

The block thing - I think you're trying to squeeze a few things to many into one build, making it a jack of all trades but not really good at anything in particular. While those builds are fun because of diversity and lots of skills, they also are not as endgame viable as a build that builds for one thing alone.

While I agree it's best to specialize, I think using Block as a defense and then focusing on elemental spells as Offense should be fine.. ?

Although just to add more options into the mix, I think the following are the best Block-based classes in no particular order:
Templar - Guardian: An additional +50% block every 5th second, and can't be stunned after blocking recently
Duelist - Gladiator: While it's more for weapon attacks, they get a lot of block chance and also gain 100% of block chance applied to spells
Scion with Gladiator and Guardian: Decent block chance and 30% of block chance applied to spells
Witch - Necromancer: An arguably odd sounding pick, but the Mistress of Sacrifice passive makes Offering Spells affect you, and Bone Offering is a buff that grants upwards of 35% block and spell block and restores a lot of Life on block.

And to Archimand, I'd say Essence Drain (with Contagion) is easier to play than Firestorm.

[Coldkil]

While I agree it's best to specialize, I think using Block as a defense and then focusing on elemental spells as Offense should be fine.. ?

Although just to add more options into the mix, I think the following are the best Block-based classes in no particular order:
Templar - Guardian: An additional +50% block every 5th second, and can't be stunned after blocking recently

That was my initial pick - though inquisitor looks way better for a spell caster/elementalist. I will focus on tempest shield and the main fire attack only.

EDIT: crit-based caster looks pretty good. Should i focus on life or Energy Shield?