[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Fencers]

8 more days,

[Cyclone Jack]

I spent most of yesterday cleaning up my stash tabs (mainly from the League merger), deleting old race chars, cleaning out chars that I plan to remake, and taking screenshots of the skill trees for all of my other characters. Too many times have I been caught off guard. Now I'll be able to view their old build while looking at the new tree.

Really looking forward to 1.0, but I don't plan on doing any serious HC playing for a week or so after launch, just in case there are connectivity/server load issues. That's why I keep a handful of SC chars to putz around with.

[Lagwin]

8 more days,

Now thats a nice use of the mechanics...spam away form the pack leap slam in to tow the spectral throw through the pack.
And even better i managed to find multi strike today

[Grizzly Willy]

I want to see spectral throw with claws. Please let it be used with claws.

[Nakotsu]

So i tried this and heres my thoughts its a bad diablo clone to be honest didnt like it at all. Yes its got a huge skill tree but the game itself seems so bad and boring and its a click type diablo clone. Too bad.

[Fencers]

I want to see spectral throw with claws. Please let it be used with claws.

I have a feeling it's not going to work with claws. Might be wrong, of course. Though I feel it's not a claw gem.

So i tried this and heres my thoughts its a bad diablo clone to be honest didnt like it at all. Yes its got a huge skill tree but the game itself seems so bad and boring and its a click type diablo clone. Too bad.

The only thing the game shares with Diablo is genre, to be honest. There are few gameplay similarities other than the broadest outlined by GENRE.

[Deleted]

So i tried this and heres my thoughts its a bad diablo clone to be honest didnt like it at all. Yes its got a huge skill tree but the game itself seems so bad and boring and its a click type diablo clone. Too bad.

Did you play only for a couple of levels or longer?
When you are a bit higher level, you will unlock different kinds of gems, which you can link together to create interesting effects. Here is where it gets really interesting to me.

But I personally would find it nice if one was able to start at the second difficulty level. Going through normal mode everytime is kind of a slog without much difficulty at all...but I guess that's part of the ARPG genre ^^

EDIT: that scion video looks awesome btw, can't wait!

[Repefe]

So i tried this and heres my thoughts its a bad diablo clone to be honest didnt like it at all. Yes its got a huge skill tree but the game itself seems so bad and boring and its a click type diablo clone. Too bad.

D3 is unimpressive game by many players standards ... there is no reason to try to make a good clone of it. Looking forward to 1.0 ^^.

[Deleted]

So, I see this game got a wee bit of pvp updates. How is pvp in this game? Can you level through pvp and when does it start (instant lvl 1 or lvl 10 or something)?

[Fencers]

How is pvp in this game?

Unbalanced and designed for fun.

Can you level through pvp

Of course not. Path of Exile is an ARPG...

...and when does it start?

Have to reach act 2 to speak with the arena master.

- - - Updated - - -

Chris posted some details on the upcoming balance changes and metagame in 1.0.0 last night.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/540498

Path of Exile's release next week brings some substantial content and feature additions that we've covered previously. In addition, we have lined up a set of extensive game balance improvements. This news post discusses what problems we're solving and how we're approaching it.

It's our design philosophy that if we're making significant balance changes, the best time to make them is at the start of new four-month leagues, such as the Domination and Nemesis ones that launch with Release. There are several reasons for this:

- The new four-month leagues encourage players to play new characters.
- Everyone is given a one-off passive skill respec which allows them to alter old characters to the new balance.
- Having a major metagame shift at a time when players are creating new characters is least disruptive.
- New players who start playing in a four-month league provide great data that is unbiased by previous balance decisions.

We're not afraid of changing balance during the four-month leagues (and we will be continuing to improve it). The following changes are being deployed at the start of the new four month leagues (which is Path of Exile's release day - October 23).

End Game Parity: Maps, Farming and Boss Runs
In the 0.11.6 version of Path of Exile, end-game Maps are the best place to play. They have a very high economic and attention cost associated with playing them, which some players are less interested in engaging with.

We've rebalanced some of the various end-game options as follows:

- Boss Runs: We're roughly doubling the rate of item drops from important bosses in Merciless difficulty. We want Vaal, Piety and Dominus runs to be a great way to stock up on rares and Unique items. While you won't find the absolute best top-tier gear from these bosses, they're probably the most time-efficient way to get a lot of wealth that can be traded with mappers.

- Farming: Many players want to kick off their shoes when they get home from work and farm The Docks (or similar areas) for hours without having to think about the difficulty of running Maps or Bosses. While this strategy obviously can't yield the best items in the game, we've decided that players should be able to get to level 100 eventually by playing these areas. We're changing the experience equation so that you don't encounter as much experience dropoff farming late Merciless difficulty. This won't make it any faster than it currently is for players to get to level 100, but it will open up area farming as a way to get there (so that you don't have to be part of a 74+ mapping group to have a shot at the upper ladder).

- Maps: Maps are the best place to find end-game base types and high Unique items. This is appropriate because they're gated behind high currency requirements (to reroll the mods you want). In addition, the highest ones are great for experience gain. They also offer the highest challenge levels for extreme players who want to test themselves against brutal combinations of mods.

After these changes, there should be far more options that are equally appealing for end-game players to spend their time on.

Auras
We had two problems with Auras:

- Using various tricks like Blood Magic, end-game builds would run six or more auras at once. This resulted in very little aura diversity or interesting party synergies.
- Their effects were not impactful enough. If you had six active ones, it was a big difference, but each individual aura wasn't incredibly meaningful.

To solve this, we're making auras more powerful but are increasing their mana reservation costs. There are new aura cost reduction passives that allow you to specialise in having many auras if you still want to be a full-on aura character. Now each aura that affects you can really be felt and there's a lot more diversity in aura loadout. When we're testing high level characters it's amazing how different they feel when different combinations of auras are selected.

Item Quantity and Rarity
Far too many items drop towards the end of the game. You've all seen the screenshots from maps where the ground is literally plastered in items.

The party bonus to item drops is being changed so that it is more in the direction of Item Rarity and doesn't have as much affect on Item Quantity (you still find the same rate of Magic/Rare/Unique items as before). We're making sure that it has its full quantity effect on the drop rate of Skill Gems and Currency Items. The Item Quantity Support Gem and Item Quantity mods on magic/rare items do not spawn in the new Domination and Nemesis leagues (they still appear on Unique items). The results of this experiment will help us determine how much Increased Item Quantity should stay in the game.

We have globally altered the diminishing returns values for Increased Item Quantity and Increased Item Rarity so that they are a little less effective. It's not a major change - MF characters will still be quite useful, but will feel less mandatory.

Note that while this may seem like a strict nerf to item acquisition, we've made these changes in conjunction with other changes like doubling the drop rate of act bosses in Merciless and the addition of Rogue Exiles to the core game (which drop a lot of items). There's slightly less emphasis on personal MF values and more on environmental ones. We believe that's a good thing.

Damage over Time
We've added the ability to scale Damage over Time effects. This means that you'll have more tools available to specialise in this class of skills, but has also resulted in rebalancing of all DoT effects. Some may be weaker until augmented, which is appropriate considering skills like Poison Arrow and Viper Strike were powerful without support gems.

Socket Fusing and Level 40-55 Quest Rewards
These two topics may not appear related, but we're improving both as the result of a specific observation: some players have a very tough time after around level 40 and often fail to get to the end-game.

While it's completely intentional that poor character builds should struggle (to encourage people to plan a better character), we found that many players were giving up because their item progression was stalling their progress. We're making the following changes to address this:

- It's approximately 233% easier to obtain four linked sockets.
- It's approximately 25% easier to obtain five linked sockets.
- Quest rewards for Cruel difficulty onwards have been improved so that you receive more rare items as rewards.

We're specifically targeting these two areas because we believe that giving people easier access to (the relatively mandatory) four linked sockets and supplementing their progression with more random rares will help them keep up with the harsh character progression demands that these difficulties impose. We've purposefully picked changes that don't interfere with the end-game. Note that even after these increases, you may still get junk from quests rewards and take quite a few Orbs of Fusing to roll the sockets you want!

Improved Two-Handed Weapons and Mods
We feel that there should be more incentive to use two-handed weapons and to be exposed to additional combat risk by not having a shield.

We've increased the damage of all Two Handed Weapons and have introduced a new set of two-handed physical and elemental damage mods that they can receive.

The two-handed damage increases also affects bows. They now receive the new two-handed physical damage mods and the old one-handed elemental damage mods. In addition, the slowest high level bows have been given implicit mods to provide a more interesting tradeoff against fast bows.

Staves can now receive new two-handed spell damage mods.

There are plenty of other balance changes coming - we'll be posting full patch notes early next week. Also please remember the above changes are still in testing and may be different in the final version.

Many people have asked if they can get access to the new Passive Skill Tree earlier than the patch deployment time. This is both difficult from a technical point of view (our site version is based on the current patch that is on the realm) but also because the tree is currently changing on a daily basis. We're very aware that it'd be awesome to have it up early and will do what we can to achieve this, but no promises!

[Sinnermighty]

New aura change is going to be interesting, as most flat ones are being changed into % as well. Glad they buffed 4L/5L fusing though, really needed for lower-end players for more motivation to push through merciless.

[Cyclone Jack]

End Game Parity: Maps, Farming and Boss Runs
This should be a welcome change. I think we'll see a few more build because of this, mainly those that are built to farm a specific boss, but more the merrier.

Auras
I welcome this change. I always thought it was too easy to stack so many auras without serious node investment, but I also felt that just having 1-2 auras didn't seem that powerful. It was a catch-22 for me. Hopefully this fixes that issue.

Item Quantity and Rarity
I think this will be good for the game overall, but we'll have to wait and see the outcome from the new Challenge Leagues.

Damage over Time
This could be good, especially if they added some DoT nodes and/or a DoT Support Gem.

Socket Fusing and Level 40-55 Quest Rewards
This is a VERY welcome addition. I know a few people that left specifically because it was getting too tedious for them to progress past Cruel, specifically because they couldn't find good gear to support the gem slotting they currently had. I know I've had numerous characters suffer due to this.

Improved Two-Handed Weapons and Mods
I think this is good, but I don't really use 2Hers, so I don't have enough experience with them.


I'm REALLY looking forward to 1.0.0. The only concern I have is with my DW Evasion/Block/Dodge Ranger, since she's already very limited on mana and runs both Clarity and Grace. I hope I don't have to delevel my gems too much. On the flip, the extra evasion from Grace may let me swap out my Ignomon for Lazhwar.

[Fencers]

I like the idea of boss runs alot in the context of POE. You really can't just run Vaal or Piety alone, you have to fight/rush through pyramid or temple. Which can be interesting when at Merc.

Though I worry the risk/reward will be too low and farming bosses with a endgame character @Merc will be trivial.

[Dezerte]

Liking the planned changes, especially the change on auras.

[Fencers]

Preview of the full tree in 1.0.0: http://i.imgur.com/eYMxcli.jpg

Notables in 1.0.0: http://i.imgur.com/YzL1KtX.png

It's leaked, but Chris said it was okay. Looks like significant buffs to mines/traps all over the place now.

[Dezerte]

I'm also liking the v/o for the Scion (yes, that stuff matters), I'll be making plenty of Scions for sure.

[Redblade]

By the looks of the new tree it's going to be Path of Scion... =/

GIEF PASSIVE PLANNER NAO!!

[Fencers]

I'm okay with the game being path of Scion. Actually liked the way the game was way back when we all started in the center. GGG admitted that a major reason they create little walled off zones of the tree was to give the classes easily identifiable paths. Too many people were confused by a Witch being a dual sword wielding, leap slammer that used melee attacks at range. Because that type of build was totally open to you back then.

I dislike rigidity in class design. I am one of those who didn't even like the idea of GGG having "classes". Liked when the characters were referred to by just numbers too- c4, c6 and c3, etc.

And I HATED with a passion when they made the starting areas so class specific. I like the Witch but I hate magical bullshit. Don't want to pick up 22 nodes of spellcasting garbage to get to my shield/axe nodes as a Witch.

Scion, for life. But I wish she had dark hair like me.

[Grizzly Willy]

I'll probably stick with my Ranger for my Bloodseeker/shield build. It looks like it would be easier to build that, since I need the claw life leach notables as well as Eldritch Battery, and starting with Ranger let me pick up more health and evasion nodes than I would be able to pick up were I to start with the Scion. Being able to grab the evasion/energy shield nodes easily helps as well.

[Deleted]

By the looks of the new tree it's going to be Path of Scion... =/

GIEF PASSIVE PLANNER NAO!!

nah, they will make so that you can't get a god build by adjusting some key nodes .