[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Vespian]

@Vespian
My point was that rare uniques, sets, and runes were all too rare to be found by playing "normal" d2, and I had this discussion before with someone who claimed to have self-found farmed infinity and enigma and a bunch of other impossible to get things. If we're talking about d2 in the last couple of years, sure, they massively buffed the drop rate of everything because the game is already dead so why not. If we're talking about d2 when it was relevant, I call 100% bullshit, poor memory, or not actually playing self found and trading, even if only for a few things. D2 was no friendlier as a self found than PoE is, I cannot imagine suffering through d2 as any class other than sorceress if trading weren't possible.

Concerning Runewords, 100% true. Pre-LoD, most of what you got came from Mephi (with a roof on the ilvl), or you ran Diablo and I personally hated the sanctuary. Too many curses and too slow farm. So in that sense, pre-LoD, I didn't have a maximized kit (though I have to try and recall very hard to figure out whether the "new" runewords were even in in 'vanilla'). Come LoD, I've created most builds for all but the rarest items and mostly excluding runewords, because selffound runewords are total BS. As I said, I found Call to Arms twice in ~3 years of LoD and that's because the highest rune actually drops from Mephi (if I'm not mistaken).

That said, 95% of all uniques ingame could be obtained from Baalruns, Pitruns, That ActII place from town, some ActV caves and of course the throne room, not to mention Lister. (With the highly enjoyable 'let me bug my FE in yo face little Pally').

But all of that came with the clear definitive pre-calculated security, that TYPE item, of ILVL, dropped in LOCATION from BOSS/RANDOM and the rest was up to MF. You knew where to go for the highest chance on what you wanted to have and many times you needed a specific build, or even entirely different character to be able to farm multiple location. Unless you were a poison necro or hammerdin with Enigma in LoD, because lolz. Having no Enigma, meant I had to farm all of it.

PoE Lacks that sense of purpose, direction, location, targeting, specification. In PoE it's much harder to obtain that one unique I want, because there's no pre-determined location where that specific unique has the highest chance to drop compared to others. It's just...farm everywhere, which is against the whole sense of farming a single thing. It's not targeted.

[Iamanerd]

Voltaxic for 2593 coins? Fuck yes, that was an easy 1.5 Ex.

[Aurimas]

So again, my problem isn't the 4x buffed rate or Cadiro, it's the combination of them that makes the whole economy very flat.

I think I agree with you that the economy seems very flat compared to other seasons (lots of items cheap). I think I disagree with whether it is good or not. Mainly because my paradigm is an infrequent buyer. Since I still don't have a good hold on what types of things people buy (except for the couple builds I've played), I've always had a hard time selling. Buying on mostly self-found currency feels nicer now. I imagine selling feels like shit.

Regardless, I think it will be fine if / when it is rolled into the main game. For instance, if it appears as much as bloodlines mods, or even a little more... I think its impact on future leagues will be negligible.

On another note: I finally made it to maps without ripping! Self congratulations are in order, but my arms hurt from patting myself on the back.

How many T1 maps does one need farm up in order to establish a pool from which one can stay permanently in the map system? Like 20 or so before they become self-sustaining?

[Redblade]

The fact that you can say this just shows me how delusional you are about the average PoE player and average gamer in general. You probably already know by name most of the people who actively use exalts during ordinary play. I stopped at level 90 last league and still ended up top 2000 if I recall correctly, and several of those characters would be alts from the really hardcore players/people racing to 100 that died along the way. And I never had enough money to ever even dream of using exalts myself, even after finding and selling a Shavs. Even if 400 people can piss exalts away like candy on a daily basis, PoE is still peaking at 40k players. That's 1% of the player base. That's 99% of players not using exalts. They aren't a legitimate crafting tool beyond "the 1%", they are simply currency. I think you simply do not realize how rich you are, and how poor most everyone else is, on average.

That you are so horribly inefficient at playing the game to not understand how easy it is to make a few exalts isn't my problem. You will have tons of players that never hit 90 who know how to get currency by the boat loads and use it. I sold 25x i-84 ammys to a guy last night and he wasn't even 80, I'm quite sure he wasn't going to wear them.

Stick on Sadima's and a little bit of rarity and farm dried lake for drops and unid chaos recipe and you make 1ex a day easy with enough playtime. Hell I'd venture a guess that the 6S you would find over a weekend would be more than 1ex in fusings.

Even if coins weren't tradeable, you'd be able to sell offers, I don't see how GGG could possibly avoid that. Make him disappear if you declined his offer? That would just 100% screw over anyone who played in a party though. I think, if coins weren't tradeable, it wouldn't solve the issue of t1s being more common, it would just have a lesser impact on more common uniques, since most people would probably just keep saving coins for the big cash out, rather than buying stuff like whispering ice for 1k. In the end every Shavs offered would probably still get bought. The only way around Cadiro not making good uniques more common is to simply have him not offer them at all, I think, and if he never offered anything REALLY good people would just cry that league sucks and there's no point in farming coins at all.

They could tag the offer to the person who opened the map/instance for example. I'm sure there are other technical solutions to that problem if you really wanted to.

As far as him offering good shit or not, I mean you could roll back the 4x T1 buff and have Cairo offer good items. Like I said the problem to me is the massive amount in added supply we have right now. To be fair, Cadiro is what div cards and the 4x T1 unique buff rate should have been. It's just too many mechanics to solve one problem right now and it's causing a new one.

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How many T1 maps does one need farm up in order to establish a pool from which one can stay permanently in the map system? Like 20 or so before they become self-sustaining?

1-5 I'd say, T1-6 drop a lot of maps and it's only hard to sustain the very top end of maps.

[Redblade]

I dunno, I feel like your posts only serve to reinforce the idea that you're rather out of touch with the typical player.

Sounds like a "Small loan of a million dollars" situation going on here.

The idea that level has anything to do with the understanding of how to make currency is absurd in the first place.

[padie]

The idea that level has anything to do with the understanding of how to make currency is absurd in the first place.

I have played poe for over 1000 hours. I have gotten 2 ex drop in total.
If everyone would be farming chaos and sell them for ex, the price would be a lot higher.
Ex are rare. They should really make a vendor recipe for it.(6 5l for all i care).
For all the maths i traded for ex, I've only used 5, i think, to craft.

If you get lucky at the start of a League everything goes easy. If you miss the boat you'll keep missing them because everything gets inflated as the league progresses .

I really like the idea of the coins, and having the previous league uniques become available again ( and dont say div cards are doing that, go farm the doctor or the fiend , let me know how it goes)

[Deleted]

Trying to find a good dual weild build for a duelist I m about to lvl can anyone help?

[Fencers]

Just reiterating; I have played Path of Exile since the original closed beta (which was almost a year long!) to the current version of the game. At most I have taken a few days break here & there. I've logged thousands of hours between two accounts in that time.

I have acquired through gameplay- 2 exalted orbs in all that time.

Mindflay, Divination Distillate, Death's Harp and Dream Fragments were the best unique items I ever found in the same time span; closed beta to Ascendancy.

I did play a lot of Diablo 2. Thousands of hours- for years I played every single day. And legit found a Windforce and Cham runes. Legit drops- no mods.

The item hunt in Path of Exile is in my opinion, deeply unrewarding from a gameplay perspective. The game was designed in the wake of D3 and in a post-online gaming world. Whereas D2 wasn't really designed with the idea of gaming & the internet taking off as it did with such specificity around singular games.

All the top tier items I acquired in POE have been through trades; Shavs, Mjölner, Bino's, Void Battery, etc.

The fun, if you will, in POE is mostly in the building of a character rather than the obsessive item hunt of the Diablo series (or other ARPGs to be frank). Which is no slight to POE, and that is a great deal of the reason why I enjoy playing. But I can not personally say I played Path of Exile for the 'loot' as I obsessively did in D2 or TQ. Because that gains in Path of Exile for personal acquisition of loot as a solo or non-trading player are slim to none for all but the luckiest of edgemasters.

[Vespian]

Just reiterating; I have played Path of Exile since the original closed beta (which was almost a year long!) to the current version of the game. At most I have taken a few days break here & there. I've logged thousands of hours between two accounts in that time.

I have acquired through gameplay- 2 exalted orbs in all that time.

Mindflay, Divination Distillate, Death's Harp and Dream Fragments were the best unique items I ever found in the same time span; closed beta to Ascendancy.

I did play a lot of Diablo 2. Thousands of hours- for years I played every single day. And legit found a Windforce and Cham runes. Legit drops- no mods.

The item hunt in Path of Exile is in my opinion, deeply unrewarding from a gameplay perspective. The game was designed in the wake of D3 and in a post-online gaming world. Whereas D2 wasn't really designed with the idea of gaming & the internet taking off as it did with such specificity around singular games.

All the top tier items I acquired in POE have been through trades; Shavs, Mjölner, Bino's, Void Battery, etc.

The fun, if you will, in POE is mostly in the building of a character rather than the obsessive item hunt of the Diablo series (or other ARPGs to be frank). Which is no slight to POE, and that is a great deal of the reason why I enjoy playing. But I can not personally say I played Path of Exile for the 'loot' as I obsessively did in D2 or TQ. Because that gains in Path of Exile for personal acquisition of loot as a solo or non-trading player are slim to none for all but the luckiest of edgemasters.

I have never before, been in agreement with Fencers to this extent.

[Deleted]

It's also the reason I haven't played as much.
It's hard to find the right balance. I think Diablo 3 showers you with Uniques too much, while in PoE it's just too hard (for the average player).
I played on and off since beta, and have found 2 exalts, and one Kaom's (post-nerf).

I did a fair amount of trading, but frankly just got tired of it.
I understand Redblade's argument that he doesn't want the game to cater to the casuals, but this game doesn't just require 'non-casual' play to get anywhere (achieving the goals each season for example). It requires 'no-lifing'. Which, in a sense, is fine. Each game needs its own niche. It does prevent me from wanting to play a lot though. Thinking of trying Grim Dawn instead.

[Lysah]

PoE Lacks that sense of purpose, direction, location, targeting, specification. In PoE it's much harder to obtain that one unique I want, because there's no pre-determined location where that specific unique has the highest chance to drop compared to others. It's just...farm everywhere, which is against the whole sense of farming a single thing. It's not targeted.

Divination cards exist and provide exactly what you are talking about. Want a 6 link chest? Go farm crematorium. Want a Drillneck? You can spam The Climb. There are cards for just about anything you could want already, and most of them have very specific drops, so they deliver exactly the sort of targeted farming you say you miss. You don't seem to care if things are absurdly rare and take years to farm, so what's the problem here?

That you are so horribly inefficient at playing the game to not understand how easy it is to make a few exalts isn't my problem. You will have tons of players that never hit 90 who know how to get currency by the boat loads and use it. I sold 25x i-84 ammys to a guy last night and he wasn't even 80, I'm quite sure he wasn't going to wear them.

Probably someone's alt, I buy stuff on low levels all the time. We aren't REALLY talking about me here, like I said, I am still a much more hardcore and dedicated player than the vast majority of PoE players out there. The point is that if it takes ME this long to farm exalts, you can bet your ass most players will pretty much never see even one of them in their lives. This isn't about how easy it is or isn't to farm if you have the know-how and dedication, this is simply about the reality of the game and the people playing it. Your entire issue with the league seems to stem from the fact that the game is "too easy" now, but this is still the farthest thing from the truth for most people. Most people struggle to afford 10c rares to cap their resists, the idea of having tier 1 uniques is beyond a dream. Trying to convince me that if I just dedicate myself to dried lake farming I can buy the whole world isn't really helping the discussion, I don't really care how easy it is, I care how the game actually plays out for everyone.

I did play a lot of Diablo 2. Thousands of hours- for years I played every single day. And legit found a Windforce and Cham runes. Legit drops- no mods.

I could believe a Cham, it was still like 12 times more common than Zod as I recall. I did end up finding a windforce myself, though it was off the back of a baal running bot that didn't pick it up for whatever reason.

And I think the problem with playing PoE for the loot is that the loot in PoE isn't very interesting. There are tons of items that give access to cool builds, but you have to already want to play those builds. You don't obsessively hunt down mjolner because it's such a cool item, you go for it because you want to make a mjolner build. D2 had items that were just "the best" so they were worth chasing no matter who you were, no such item really exists in PoE by design. They intentionally make uniques terrible to some degree, even the tier 1s, so that they cannot be objectively the best, and in doing so remove a lot of the excitement of item hunting. I would wager very few people get excited about finding items in this game, rather, they get excited about the money they might get when they sell the items.

[Redblade]

The point is that if it takes ME this long to farm exalts, you can bet your ass most players will pretty much never see even one of them in their lives.

Just because you're inefficient doesn't mean everyone else is. And lets say you're right why should the game be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator instead of expecting the player to inform him or her self of how to be efficient?

This isn't about how easy it is or isn't to farm if you have the know-how and dedication, this is simply about the reality of the game and the people playing it. Your entire issue with the league seems to stem from the fact that the game is "too easy" now, but this is still the farthest thing from the truth for most people. Most people struggle to afford 10c rares to cap their resists, the idea of having tier 1 uniques is beyond a dream. Trying to convince me that if I just dedicate myself to dried lake farming I can buy the whole world isn't really helping the discussion, I don't really care how easy it is, I care how the game actually plays out for everyone.

I'm sorry but all I hear here is a complaint that boils down to "I don't want to learn how to/ I don't want to play that way" and instead expect the game to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator so you/others don't have to. The fact remains that it is easy to farm enough chaos to buy an exalt, it is still easy to farm sacrifice fragments to sell and with perandus it is easy to farm coins to pick a good offer or sell the coins.

If people chose not to figure that out or don't want to make the effort then they shouldn't complain they don't have exalts either.

[Vespian]

And I think the problem with playing PoE for the loot is that the loot in PoE isn't very interesting. There are tons of items that give access to cool builds, but you have to already want to play those builds. You don't obsessively hunt down mjolner because it's such a cool item, you go for it because you want to make a mjolner build. D2 had items that were just "the best" so they were worth chasing no matter who you were, no such item really exists in PoE by design. They intentionally make uniques terrible to some degree, even the tier 1s, so that they cannot be objectively the best, and in doing so remove a lot of the excitement of item hunting. I would wager very few people get excited about finding items in this game, rather, they get excited about the money they might get when they sell the items.

But those items existed in D2 as well. The fact that Shako became a general purpose headgear was mainly due to the additional MF on top of everything else, including a socket for either more MF, or more res, in fact, all MF builds definitely had sort of one general line of itemization, but that's absolutely false for anything else. Tal Rasha set offered various bonuses towards specific spells that made that set more ideal for that build, while several different unique weapons (orbs mostly) offered bonusses towards their own individual trees and added gimmicks that might function better and one build over the other. A Necro summoner build was entirely different from a Necro poison build, as was a Bowazon vs a Javazon and even within one of those, there were several different options.

I've built my main sorx with Stormshield and Thundergods Vigor, netting roughly ~160% MF, while being RES CAPPED while being cursed ánd afflicted by aura with -res, with the additional perk of having ~75% block and ~50% damage reduction. Once I found Call to Arms, there literally was nothing that could still destroy her. Not SSFFANA DOLLS, Not SSFFANA Bulls (dualwield frenzy I think, god they were scary with blocklock), nothing. The only thing that destroyed her in the end was me being stupid enough to trust the wrong friend to only touch my mules.

And what about Crushing Blow builds?

Your view on D2 is wrong on so many points it hurts.

[Redblade]

"Efficient" meaning "having the time to farm one place a ton" in this case.

There are a few ways to efficiently make currency atm but, yes, it involves playing the game and farming...it's an ARPG after all.

[Hermanni]

That you are so horribly inefficient at playing the game to not understand how easy it is to make a few exalts isn't my problem. You will have tons of players that never hit 90 who know how to get currency by the boat loads and use it. I sold 25x i-84 ammys to a guy last night and he wasn't even 80, I'm quite sure he wasn't going to wear them.

Yeah I think it's pretty safe to say that you're a little out of touch here in regards to what the average player is like. It's probably a bit different between SC and HC players because in SC a lot of people seem to content themselves in being level 80-85 and dying a little in maps instead of working towards 90+ which is what you do in HC where you're always making progress or starting over. Majority of traders prefer SC anyway which is enough of a reason to stop me from ever going there.

I have a group of 7-9 friends that usually hit 90+ 3-4 days into every HC league (and end up getting 90+ on multiple characters.) This is already very far from average, yet most of them don't see a full stack of exalts at any point in a league and most of them don't ever use exalts on items. I myself have exalted an item 3 times, and I've played every HC league since Nemesis.

If you play the game for the sole purpose of raising currency with a bunch of people who have the same goal it's easy to become disillusioned from the fact that most people do struggle to put together 3 exalts for a Lightning Coil. Certainly it's possible to abuse the economy for a lot of profit, but most people don't want to go there and don't even have enough base currency to get started with flipping. And if more people started doing it it would be almost impossible for anyone to turn a profit. Hell, I've noticed that a lot of divination card sets in PHC could be bought and turned in for a pretty good profit but I just can't be bothered with all that trading.

Not to mention tier 15 maps... I'm yet to get a single tier 15 map drop this league, and I've had as many as 1 tier 14 map. And that is after spending several exalts in buying tier 10-12 maps, not to mention the currency used in chiseling, rerolling and onslaughting them. I did run some t14's and a single t15 that a friend had but those were a rare treat.

[Deleted]

I would think the vast majority of Path players play it to try out new builds, or play old builds that have been changed a bit and they want to continue again. The builds are pretty much done and seen by level 80 or so, at which point people are free to roll a new character or move on to some other game. Pushing toward 100 and maxing achievements is, I'm quite sure, a thing for the vast, vast minority.

[Cyclone Jack]

I would think the vast majority of Path players play it to try out new builds, or play old builds that have been changed a bit and they want to continue again. The builds are pretty much done and seen by level 80 or so, at which point people are free to roll a new character or move on to some other game. Pushing toward 100 and maxing achievements is, I'm quite sure, a thing for the vast, vast minority.

I know I fit into this category. I think I have mapped with only a few characters, just to waste some time. Most of my characters are "done" by early-mid Merciless, and only a few of those will push forward and complete the difficulty. Since I'm not a big fan of Act IV, that means I kill Merci Dom and move on to my next character. However, I do expect this to change a bit now with the Labyrinth, since I enjoy clearing that place out. And yes, I do acknowledge the irony of not enjoying the map grind in a genre that is all about the grind, while enjoying the Lab grind. I think this is because, like quests, the Lab breaks things up a bit. Maps are just boring and monotonous to me and don't really serve a purpose (fwiw, I wasn't a fan of the maps in TL2 either).

[Redblade]

Yeah I think it's pretty safe to say that you're a little out of touch here in regards to what the average player is like.

What they are like matters little in comparison what they are able to do. If they choose not to do something doesn't mean they can't.

I have a group of 7-9 friends that usually hit 90+ 3-4 days into every HC league (and end up getting 90+ on multiple characters.) This is already very far from average, yet most of them don't see a full stack of exalts at any point in a league and most of them don't ever use exalts on items. I myself have exalted an item 3 times, and I've played every HC league since Nemesis.

Then it's because you're not aiming to get more than a stack of exalts...or are you trying to tell me that you nor your friends could work out how to make 10ex if you really wanted?

If you play the game for the sole purpose of raising currency with a bunch of people who have the same goal it's easy to become disillusioned from the fact that most people do struggle to put together 3 exalts for a Lightning Coil.

I don't, seems to be a common misconception that I'm some big time flipper just because I like the economy the way it was and that there are super rare items that I might never own.

Not to mention tier 15 maps... I'm yet to get a single tier 15 map drop this league, and I've had as many as 1 tier 14 map. And that is after spending several exalts in buying tier 10-12 maps, not to mention the currency used in chiseling, rerolling and onslaughting them. I did run some t14's and a single t15 that a friend had but those were a rare treat.

And this is one major reason why the "but if everything is cheaper it doesn't matter" argument is flawed, the cost of mapping is much harder to offset when drops are worth less as the cost to roll them remains the same.

Personally I got lucky this league and chained around 7 or 8 T15 before I dropped down again.

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The builds are pretty much done and seen by level 80 or so

I'd disagree, builds are more or less done in the 90-95 range, the points after that is just gravy. The 80-90 points are when the real power of most builds comes in to play.

[Deleted]

The 80-90 points are when the real power of most builds comes in to play.

Yeah... To do what though? By 80, most builds will be have been seen. More power at that point just means you'll want to run higher level maps and so on and so on. High level maps and Atziri and so on are for the minority. Well, that's my experience anyway. People just roll builds, level to around 80 or so, then reroll or quit. A bit like in D3 you your gearset with most items ancient, do your achievements, and quit the game.

That's why I was kind of hoping the league itself would've had something of interest, but Cadiro is pointless. The Labyrinth, obviously, isn't a part of the league, since that's where we'll have to go forever now to get our subclass passives.

[Hermanni]

What they are like matters little in comparison what they are able to do. If they choose not to do something doesn't mean they can't.

Then it's because you're not aiming to get more than a stack of exalts...or are you trying to tell me that you nor your friends could work out how to make 10ex if you really wanted?

I'm pretty sure all of them would like to get a lot of exalts, but many of them can't. All of them do sell their items but most don't want to waste more time focusing on playing the currency game instead of the Path of Exile game. At the end of the day I know at least some of them would, if they had to, rather login to jsp if they really had a burning need of currency rather than spending hours doing boring shit in-game.

And this is one major reason why the "but if everything is cheaper it doesn't matter" argument is flawed, the cost of mapping is much harder to offset when drops are worth less as the cost to roll them remains the same.

It doesn't really, because chaos orbs used as trading tool doesn't consume the orbs, but rolling maps does, and the amount of orbs in the economy is pretty much unchanged. Besides the real treat in high level maps are the better rares which still cost the same - if not more. And in my experience, the high level maps were much harder to sustain because of the drops that never fucking happened. Every great unique I ever found was when comfortably farming mid-tier maps.