[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Darleth]

Hi, the game was enjoyable and stopped playing when there was no more storycontent available (the junction where you needed to unlock a map to get to the unmaker or something. Was wondering how the game is in present day. A few questions:

How is the story?
Are there any major changes made to the system?
Are there higher tiers of the gems now?
Do monsters drop new higher level gear to farm? (when I played lower level gear wouldn't necessarily be redundant, it depends on the type and prefix to combine with builds)

When did you stop playing?
The game is still the same pretty much. Instead of 4 Acts there are now 10 and a single playthrough instead 3x the same 4, with the negatives of -resistance happening after finishing act 5 and 10. Story evolved from escaping Wraeclast, killing the High Templar and their god, to going back to Wraeclast and getting assistance by Sin, another God and brother of Innocence who wants the world to be free of gods, so you get to kill more gods. After that, you have the map content which is the original endgame, where you complete maps with certain challenges to unlock the Elder and Shaper and in the end the Uber Elder fights (with Uber Elder being both Elder + Shaper present). Uber Elder is the hardest fight in the game, besides a very small amount of other stuff. Endgame in itself isn't just doing maps anymore though, since there is now Delve, which is basically a unlimited dungeon that gets harder the deeper you go for example. Atziri / Uber Atziri with the Vaal Fragment pieces, Breachstones, Beachhead/Harbinger, Betrayal, Uber Lab runs, Bestiary and Incursions of the top of my head and a lot more content in general.

Too many major changes in the past and present. Right now melee is getting entirely rebalanced and reworked to be more modern and better to play. A lot of the clunkyness that plagued it get's removed with 3.7 which launches on friday/saturday depending on where you live. All in all a lot of systems have changed for the better most of the time.

Gems are still locked to level 20 with 20% quality at max. You can use a Vaal Orb to get 20/23% or 21/20% gems. There are also other ways to improve gem levels via gear (+1 to socketed gems is an affix for example), which effectively can increase levels way higher than it would be possible. There are no "tiers" so to say. New gems get introduced every 3 months when a new league hits.

If you mean Unique items: every update brings new ones as well as a shitton of other items (divination cards, possibilities to craft etc.). Rares are still the best way at the very end to gain even more power instead of wearing uniques. Also, you are entirely wrong about "lower level gear not being redundant", because itemlevel of the gear itself increases the affixes' tiers. That means a ilvl 86 item can roll tier 1 affixes and everything below that can roll tier 2 affixes at best. Meaning: Tier 1 = 100 life for example, Tier 2 = 90 life at maximum roll. Obviously you want to have as much gear as possible with Energy Shield if you play a Energy Shield based character. You can even go further with Shaper/Elder items, which have entirely different pools of affixes aswell.

[Marrilaife]

Elementalist is literally a dead spec now. The whole proliferation isn't worth taking anymore, which kills a huge point in taking Elementalist. Inquisitor will now be the defacto choice for anything elemental caster related. Trickster nerfs are well deserved aswell, taking away its survivability. Occultist nerfs are deserving aswell, I just hope that they didn't overdo it for both Trickster and Occultist. Finding the perfect balance between these two is hard because of their overall passives.

Yep... Basically this is "burn the witch" patch. Ele had nothing to stand out over trickster / inquis except proliferation, and that got nuked. It was much more squishy than the other 2, and no crit / "more" modifiers really. Necro will be hit with the abyssal jewel nerf with added damage, since most specs were stacking lots and lots of jewels with +flat damage to minion attacks. Occultist got dumped on, basically lost an ascendancy node, if you play cold dot no clue what do you even pick as 4th node, if you were playing chaos... hope you like essence drain cuz bane & soulrend just got nuked (seriously why nerf those 2? I understand storm brand and winter orb, but soulrend was super slow and mana hungry and bane was literally unable to kill any boss without some 50 ex gear slapped on).

Trickster we'll see, cast speed and ghost shroud were op, so no wonder they got nerfed, still has some good stuff going on.

Jugg getting a small buff... why? How did Jugg need a buff when it was 3rd most played ascendancy after Trickster / Occu which both got nerfed?

Raider at least promised for 3.8 because atm it's obsolete after Berserker / Slayer got all the goodies so you can go crit or attackspeed build with them, Raider is worthless.

Oh yeah, aurabots with blood magic got nerfed too with the removal for 50% reduced life reservation from auras if you spec into Blood Magic cluster.

Think I'm gonna play a bow build next season, melee gear is gonna be expensive af since everyone will play it, casters got completely dumpstered. Was thinking of herald of agony, but since they nerfed that too guess it's gonna be self cast bow build. I wonder if ele hit will still be good after we lose access to op synthesized bows.

Another option would be holy fire totem Chieftain, Chieftain got some good buffs after already being solid this season, and since it's not exactly a "melee" build it won't use the same gear as other melees (yeah, don't wanna run into territory of Inpulsa / Eternity Shroud from "caster" seasons, that stuff is way too expensive and I expect something similar will happen with other items when meta shifts into melee oriented).

Worst part is the anticipation for the new talent tree especially if you actually wanna play Berserker / Slayer, since they announced reshuffling melee and weapon talents around so you can't plan your build until basically 1-2 days before season start. But it is kinda needed especially if you wanna play crit Berserker there aren't that many talents to support that playstyle in convenient places.

- - - Updated - - -

Are there any major changes made to the system?

Depends low long ago you quit, there are many past season mechanics and bosses that are layered on top of typical "map grind" end game, so there's plenty stuff to do. The season that just ended won't have its mechanic added currently, but the ones before that are in, bestiary, delve, immortal syndicate, alva temple, breaches, abysses, prophecies, all these are from old seasons but vastly enhance variety of available content.

There will be also new season mechanic which seems to revolve around killing armies to gather enough fragments to assemble a massive battle boss fight. Typical a-rpg business but has potential to feel truly epic, 5 army battle sounds quite cool. Ofc with brand new loot drops, which we don't know all yet, but one are jewels that change talents on the tree into something completely different and it seems like there are tens of thousands of potential combinations (damn that sounds daunting to me).

Do monsters drop new higher level gear to farm? (when I played lower level gear wouldn't necessarily be redundant, it depends on the type and prefix to combine with builds)

I don't think it will ever be "kill mobs, loot item, equip item", nearly all wearable gear is either crafted or traded. Personally I'm not a crafting person so I couldn't play on the no-trade mode (SSF league). I find it easier to farm currency then buy items and yeah, farming harder content usually gives more currency.

[Darleth]

Holy mother of god. Cyclone is going to be absolutely nasty.
Physical tag, inc AoE with Quality, 300% attack speed... That pretty much cements Cyclone as the best ability this league.

[nVIDIA]

Path of Exile: Legion Patch Notes

[SirCowdog]

Holy mother of god. Cyclone is going to be absolutely nasty.
Physical tag, inc AoE with Quality, 300% attack speed... That pretty much cements Cyclone as the best ability this league.

Considering how long it's been shit tier, it's about time. I have no complaints with this change.

[nVIDIA]

A visual comparison between 3.7.0 and 3.6.2 skill trees

green = new; orange = changed; red = removed

[Coldkil]

Holy mother of god. Cyclone is going to be absolutely nasty.
Physical tag, inc AoE with Quality, 300% attack speed... That pretty much cements Cyclone as the best ability this league.

ARGH Slayer looks like to be going another Cyclone character XD Any good spell to pair with it? Arc? BV? EK?

EDIT: i don't get the changes to viper strike. More conversion to chaos, added flat chaos dmg, it should be a buff right?

[WoWGoneBad]

A visual comparison between 3.7.0 and 3.6.2 skill trees

green = new; orange = changed; red = removed

Hmmm this will be interesting for my TotemMancer build. 10 Zombies with 20 Spirits(Totem), 10 Skellies(Totem) that is quite the army without the 2 Specters, Guardian and Golem. And their damage output . Meaty shields with a punch and me behind em all. Delving should be fun this time around.

[Darleth]

Considering how long it's been shit tier, it's about time. I have no complaints with this change.

I wouldn't say it was ENTIRELY shit tier. It got used by plenty of builds. The main caveat was that Cyclone on its own was bad and was only good with bleed damage if anything. Cast on Crit builds mostly used Cyclone because of the general proc rate of crits.

With those changes in general, Cyclone is able to stand on its own again and I'm happy for that. It's definitely a tier 1 skill now for melee again.

ARGH Slayer looks like to be going another Cyclone character XD Any good spell to pair with it? Arc? BV? EK?

EDIT: i don't get the changes to viper strike. More conversion to chaos, added flat chaos dmg, it should be a buff right?

Less damage scaling for Viper Strike because of the reduced damage effectiveness via different damage sources, more converted phys damage to chaos and added physical damage as a trade-off.
Since I'm bad at figuring out calculations, I'm not sure if that is a buff, a nerf or is equal to before, though my guess is the 3rd option, but I wouldn't be surprised about this being a huge buff.

To the other question: Arc was used with CoC Cyclone before. BV and Arc should both work fine with Cast while Channeling.

Edit: Fucking hell Occultist is literally dead. Lost a shitton of ES and a whole node with no replacement.

[kail]

I need the 3.7 updated tree - i have to plan out the build beforehand. Also update the old ones lol (i had a CoC Cyclone Scion that worked pretty well - now with Cyclone being channeled i can swap build completely and focus less on crit and more on pure spell/phys damage).

PoB working on it last I heard. Thank the gods this author exists.

Usually only the day before because that is when the gem info gets revealed, so Thursday.

ZiggyD is a good channel to watch for basic guides and better explanations of league mechanics. Want some more in depth advise on how to endgame fast and efficiently? CuteDog_'s stream put me in my place making me realize how sluggish I was playing.

[Marrilaife]

Fucking hell Occultist is literally dead. Lost a shitton of ES and a whole node with no replacement.

Imported my Occultist into POB with new talent tree. 2k ES went poof. Also Vile Bastion nerfed from max 30 stacks to max 10. Back to building life boiz.

[Mamut]

Edit: Fucking hell Occultist is literally dead. Lost a shitton of ES and a whole node with no replacement.

And yet Im making ED/Contagion/Bane Occultist (first CI then will move to LL) as my first build in Legion Maybe this all doomsayeres will lower the price of dense fossils?

[Darleth]

And yet Im making ED/Contagion/Bane Occultist (first CI then will move to LL) as my first build in Legion Maybe this all doomsayeres will lower the price of dense fossils?

Dense Fossils got nerfed aswell if you weren't aware of that:

• The Dense Fossil can no longer craft increased Armour, Evasion or Energy Shield suffix modifiers and now has new mods it can craft on each slot.

• The Dense Fossil modifier "15% increased Energy Shield from Body Armour" was incorrectly acting multiplicatively with other sources of increased Energy Shield. This has been fixed, and affects all existing items with this modifier. To partially (but intentionally not entirely) compensate for this change, it now grants 20-30% increased Energy Shield from Body Armour. Existing items with this modifier can be updated to the new values with a Divine Orb.

Trickster is literally the best way to go now for Chaos and ES builds.
ES in general got nerfed HARD. The ES nodes at Witch are measly 10 flat ES. Thats nothing compared to losing 250~ flat ES from the ascendancy alone. Not to mention that Wicked Ward, while still okay, got nerfed the crap out of it. If anything, building occultist into a hybrid is now the only thing that really works well with the build while leveling/doing early maps, until you can afford to craft GOOD ES gear again. Just by using Shavronnes you will have a lot less ES, because Chest is the main ES item that you'll need.

Not saying that you cant make LL/CI work, but it will be a lot harder and probably raises the cost of seriously good items.

[Ladyoftheforest]

The game is still the same pretty much. Instead of 4 Acts there are now 10 and a single playthrough instead 3x the same 4, with the negatives of -resistance happening after finishing act 5 and 10. Story evolved from escaping Wraeclast, killing the High Templar and their god, to going back to Wraeclast and getting assistance by Sin, another God and brother of Innocence who wants the world to be free of gods, so you get to kill more gods. After that, you have the map content which is the original endgame, where you complete maps with certain challenges to unlock the Elder and Shaper and in the end the Uber Elder fights (with Uber Elder being both Elder + Shaper present).

Ah, I meant to say Shaper, not Unmaker. That's where I stopped because the endgame wasn't really appealing.

Depends low long ago you quit, there are many past season mechanics and bosses that are layered on top of typical "map grind" end game, so there's plenty stuff to do. The season that just ended won't have its mechanic added currently, but the ones before that are in, bestiary, delve, immortal syndicate, alva temple, breaches, abysses, prophecies, all these are from old seasons but vastly enhance variety of available content.

There will be also new season mechanic which seems to revolve around killing armies to gather enough fragments to assemble a massive battle boss fight. Typical a-rpg business but has potential to feel truly epic, 5 army battle sounds quite cool. Ofc with brand new loot drops, which we don't know all yet, but one are jewels that change talents on the tree into something completely different and it seems like there are tens of thousands of potential combinations (damn that sounds daunting to me).

I don't think it will ever be "kill mobs, loot item, equip item", nearly all wearable gear is either crafted or traded. Personally I'm not a crafting person so I couldn't play on the no-trade mode (SSF league). I find it easier to farm currency then buy items and yeah, farming harder content usually gives more currency.

The standard league is where my character is. Do I need to replace everything and farm and buy new things? This is how I left her when I quit:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/...awn/characters

[Darleth]

Ah, I meant to say Shaper, not Unmaker. That's where I stopped because the endgame wasn't really appealing.

The standard league is where my character is. Do I need to replace everything and farm and buy new things? This is how I left her when I quit:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/...awn/characters

You will pretty much replace all of that gear. You have 0 resistances and running full uniques is a really bad way to play the game. Siege Ballista hasn't been used since AT LEAST 2 years.

The Map system is still the "true" endgame though. I can see why it might not be appealing to people, but that is where you will spend most of your time farming and leveling in the end.
If anything, you should definitely give the new league a go that starts on friday/saturday depending on where you live. Thats a fresh start for everyone because of a new economy and you get to see the new league mechanic, which in itself has its own "endgame" content. Delve is another place that might be more to your liking as "endgame" content. There is some farming in terms of sulphite for it though, which means you will have to map either way.

[Mamut]

Dense Fossils got nerfed aswell if you weren't aware of that:



Trickster is literally the best way to go now for Chaos and ES builds.
ES in general got nerfed HARD. The ES nodes at Witch are measly 10 flat ES. Thats nothing compared to losing 250~ flat ES from the ascendancy alone. Not to mention that Wicked Ward, while still okay, got nerfed the crap out of it. If anything, building occultist into a hybrid is now the only thing that really works well with the build while leveling/doing early maps, until you can afford to craft GOOD ES gear again. Just by using Shavronnes you will have a lot less ES, because Chest is the main ES item that you'll need.

Not saying that you cant make LL/CI work, but it will be a lot harder and probably raises the cost of seriously good items.

My endgame build dont use Wicked Ward, it was nice with Vile Bastion to boost ES pool while starting maps. Later I will use Malediction/Withering Presence. Im not saying ES is not nerfed. But the Occultist still will be fine and strong. People like always overreact over nerfs.

[NoiseTank13]

jesus christ theres a batshit amount of nodes near duelist

its like im at costco

and how do I fuckin' path to that Soul of Steel node with my build

and I want Overwhelm Ascendency node but I don't know if I can live without the 20% culling strike or Leech doesn't end at full health node

[Marrilaife]

The standard league is where my character is. Do I need to replace everything and farm and buy new things? This is how I left her when I quit:

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/...awn/characters

Tbh not sure if I grasp what was the plan for your build, tornado shot is ok for a skill, but you have lightning, frost, fire and poison damage all around, feels like spreading too thin, no idea what do you want to focus on. Not an expert on tornado shot but best bet would be to find a guide and follow that if you want to upgrade your character, for example do you want crit, or added damage of specific element, or what stats are the "end goal".

Afaik Lioneye bow and Drillneck quiver are good items, rest of your equipment... no idea really, that's why it's easiest to find a youtube or forum guide that focuses on that specific spec and says which gear and stats are "go to".

Talent spec will be reset when the talent tree changes get implemented in the patch on Friday, so probably good moment to recheck what stats you need from there (some stuff will be moved around).

[Gallahadd]

Man, the new tree is pure love. The Duelist starting area, hooking up around toward Marauder is amazing... I honestly don't know how I'll narrow down my choices.

It looks like my B3 build will be fairly strong! Going to focus on the insane Bleed, Guard and Charge nodes, making sure to pick up any Sword and Shield nodes, where I can.

Huh... I wonder. Will the "Chance to generate an Endurance Charge when hit" node work with blocks, as well? Or do you need to actually take damage for them to work?

[Edge-]

So many changes but no freakin time to look at them! I'm going to be so lost when I log back in -_-