[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Deleted]

Now if you simply wanna play your build, on standard, 1 year after you started, no one is stopping you! Which is another great thing about it.

This is great news for me, i am far more interested in playing my builds in a way i like than in efficiency, if i can do both the merrier, but the latter it is not as important, so i am glad to hear it.

[Gatsbybutters]

This is great news for me, i am far more interested in playing my builds in a way i like than in efficiency, if i can do both the merrier, but the latter it is not as important, so i am glad to hear it.

You are going to hit a wall soon. At that point you can either start taking other people's advice, or end up shelving the game eventually.

This game has a huge amount of viable builds. "I just started PoE and made my own build", is simply not one of them. I'm not saying it's not working for you now, but when it doesn't anymore, adapt and use the resources already neatly compiled for you by knowledgeable people.

[potis]

This is great news for me, i am far more interested in playing my builds in a way i like than in efficiency, if i can do both the merrier, but the latter it is not as important, so i am glad to hear it.

What Gatsybutters said holds truth though.

New players hit a wall, depending how bad they are. Is it Piety? Act5? Kitava? T10 Maps? 15? Etc.

You must be willing to get advice especially on your passive tree.

[Schalde]

Is it possible to actually play many of the popular builds without using poe.trade? i know im only lvl 35 but i have only 2link gear at the moment. I just find the point of these games more interesting if you find your stuff instead of buying it. What do most people do?

[Gatsbybutters]

Is it possible to actually play many of the popular builds without using poe.trade? i know im only lvl 35 but i have only 2link gear at the moment. I just find the point of these games more interesting if you find your stuff instead of buying it. What do most people do?

Level your masters. Get one to 3. Make a hideout. Now grab each master, one by one, invite to hideout, put the craft item they have in your hideout, kick em, next. Pick 3 you want to level the quickest, as you get daily missions to lvl them quicker. You can add more as you level masters and get larger hide outs.

The assassin has a table that adds and links 4 links (and higher for not so cheap) for pretty cheap, easy for self found players, instead of relying on rng currency method.

They have a lot of no specific gear required builds on poe forums. They mostly say so in the title.

[Enjeh]

Level your masters. Get one to 3. Make a hideout. Now grab each master, one by one, invite to hideout, put the craft item they have in your hideout, kick em, next. Pick 3 you want to level the quickest, as you get daily missions to lvl them quicker. You can add more as you level masters and get larger hide outs.

you can get all the crafting benches by writing /claim_crafting_benches in the chat.

edit; nvm they have actually removed that command. It would seem that he have to invite each one manually the first time, in the next league you don't have to invite to claim the bench, It will be in the hideout tab with the decorations automatically.

[Gatsbybutters]

Also I kind of made it seem you can't have your own build. Think of "builds" as a base. At 50 to 70 is when you can tweak other stuff, poison or bleeds, or both, stuff like that.
Playing a self made build first time around is just tedious and unnecessary, go level up a build you think you'd like that works so you can learn and farm currency easier, and experiment from there.
Most builds have a "base" skill tree, customisation comes at higher levels.

[Fencers]

Is it possible to actually play many of the popular builds without using poe.trade?

Of course. There is a whole mode of the game for doing that; solo self found.

What do most people do?

Trade. Long term players and those engaged with the community are really playing the ladder. The ladder is about speed- trade is the best option outside of SSF.

If you are just playing for yourself or putzing around Standard league- do whatever. It only matters if you are interested in the meta-game; community, ladders. forums, build making, YT/Streaming, etc.

[Mahourai]

PoE came out to hit the market for the D2 crowd because D3 sucked as a "grinding game".

Every time any of those stuff is mentioned, that Scroll of ID/Portal arent needed, you get the same counter reaction of "ARPG" AKA "ITS HOW D2 DID IT!!!111ELEVEN".

This doesn't make sense though because no one used ID scrolls in D2, you just went to Deckard Cain after playing for like 20 minutes. If they were really slavishly copying D2 you wouldn't even need ID scrolls because Navali would auto-ID your gear or something. PoE's ID system is even worse than D2.

[Deleted]

You are going to hit a wall soon. At that point you can either start taking other people's advice, or end up shelving the game eventually.

This game has a huge amount of viable builds. "I just started PoE and made my own build", is simply not one of them. I'm not saying it's not working for you now, but when it doesn't anymore, adapt and use the resources already neatly compiled for you by knowledgeable people.

The problem is not finding a viable build, as i explained, it is finding a build i like to play with, and believe me it is not so easy.
On the subject of playing a build that has been tested previously, well it is fine to look and research for certain mechanics i do have doubts with, it is in the "list" of things i have to do (it is a very long list BTW), but if after doing that research i am unable to come up with a working build by myself, i am sorry but for me that is a message from the game telling me to leave, because clearly then it is meant for people far better at grasping the game mechanics than i am.

- - - Updated - - -

You must be willing to get advice especially on your passive tree.

I really do not mean to sound arrogant, but the passive tree is quite self explanatory, specially if you check frequently the char tab, that has very detailed info of the multiplayers that are affecting your skills.
Another thing is knowing where are the limits of the rolled values on items, that have a heavy interaction with the passive tree, and the skills, that is a little more complicated and it is gonna take some time.
Also without experiencing each difficulty layer it is quite difficult to foresee the needs of the char to survive those layers, in terms of HP/ES pool, DPS, defensives, etc.

- - - Updated - - -

You are going to hit a wall soon.

Yeah, of that i am 100% sure, i am counting on it.
The thing is if i am or not capable of evading the wall, after being hit really hard by it.

[kaelleria]

Definitely having a lot more fun with POE this go around than my previous go round... Not having to play the same acts over and over again is a huge improvement when leveling a new character. Prior to this my highest character only got to 70 before getting fed up with the game. This time I've hit 89 in a little over a weekend and am currently running 13-15s.

My bf and I kind of short circuited the normal character progression because we found a really good market and made about 500 chaos over the course of a weekend. Either way, much more fun than the 1.0 days.

Knowing a bit more about the game than I did back then and having a resource absolutely helps. I would absolutely follow a guide for your first few characters otherwise you'll just get fed up and have to spend a ton on regrets and have regrets about wasted time. Walls definitely occur with crazy affixes....

[potis]

Yeah, of that i am 100% sure, i am counting on it.
The thing is if i am or not capable of evading the wall, after being hit really hard by it.

The problem with PoE is that many game mechanics work weirdly or arent displayed at all.

And because people do not know the exact walls, they simply play as i said earlier.."If you kill it first, it cant kill you".

Thats why there is the general rule in PoE of :

Cap resists, get 5k HP (Used to be get 7k ES) for starters to be safe at most maps.

Push resists to cap even with elemental weakness on, used to be something like 50? Resist above cap so somewhere 135 resists after the -60 , push HP to 7K (ES to 10-11K), enjoy half immortality with random crit luck.

Keep resists high with Kaoms and 92+ level, have 9-10K HP, be almost unkillable unless bad, or get 12-15k+ ES and faceroll the game, aka very expensive bis gear.

This has changed with 3.0 to be the same, with ignoring ES mostly, Belly of the Beast and 90 level + with good items to push 7k HP, 2hand specs + good items to push 9-10K HP with Kaoms.

Thats the general rule of PoE, you cant do around it unless you are very familiar with the game.

As example many Ranger builds, especially Pathfinder/Raider, even run and clear stuff with 4-5K HP instead of 5-7K, simply because they know the fights, those specs have like insane movement speed, making it a joke to dodge everything, but there is always that random 1 shot

- - - Updated - - -

This doesn't make sense though because no one used ID scrolls in D2, you just went to Deckard Cain after playing for like 20 minutes. If they were really slavishly copying D2 you wouldn't even need ID scrolls because Navali would auto-ID your gear or something. PoE's ID system is even worse than D2.

Pretty sure Deckard wasnt free from the start, and its not only that, Scrolls are part of the "starting experience".

Whatever shit excuse they give, its just archaic and retarded, PoE simply lacks QoL changes to stop being annoying and become more fun.

Items should simply ID by right-clicking,i would prefer on pickup but the unidentified trading was always a thing, some still like it.. no scrolls, portal should be a button like in D3, whatever keybind each person wants.

[Mahourai]

Pretty sure Deckard wasnt free from the start, and its not only that, Scrolls are part of the "starting experience".

That's why I said "after 20 minutes", because it takes you that long to rescue him from Tristram. After that you never use ID scrolls again pretty much.

[potis]

That's why I said "after 20 minutes", because it takes you that long to rescue him from Tristram. After that you never use ID scrolls again pretty much.

Well rarely you do, the book is there, especially for noobs or SP you do use them a lot, when you become better and learn trading prices you obviously dont cause you dont pick anything up.

But thats another problem with PoE.

They have what, 700 uniques by now?

1-10 Brokenly OP always, HH/Skyforth/Kaom bla bla.

1-10 OP, locked behind stupid mechanics like past leagues.

1-20 "New spec discovered" for fun, but mostly gimp specs.

Rest are useless garbage.

D2 didnt have this issue, because it didnt have that much crap currency to scale the items.

Oh, i found 10 Titan's Revenge today! Easy 10 Ist, easy this, easy that.

You get my point, no need to write more

While, getting 10 Siege Axes dropping on a T15 map cause Bloodline procced is a must identify as example.

Generally it all depends on how you look at the game, in this league i finally got 2 exalted dropping after nothing all this time (Not that they are anything pricy, just bad luck this league).

All i sell is Boots, dual, tri resist movement speed hp boots, from 5 to 25C, which makes me pick up every single Armor-Evasion/combo boots...Trust me i run out of Scrolls a lot

[kail]

Is it possible to actually play many of the popular builds without using poe.trade? i know im only lvl 35 but i have only 2link gear at the moment. I just find the point of these games more interesting if you find your stuff instead of buying it. What do most people do?

Yes, "possible". Though many popular builds require specific uniques, or even worse...specific uniques with specific corruptions. Even if a unique is valueless in poe.trade, you can go for a super long time of not getting the specific ones required for the build.

But it is very possible to find basic builds that can clear maps with crafted gear alone.

[Mahourai]

There's no reason not to use poe.trade as it makes it insanely easy to buy anything you want. You can also sell currency very easily without the premium stash tab or addons, the only irritating thing about it is selling gear.

I'm at endgame now for the first time and while there's a lot of cool stuff to do the biggest absence for me is something in between T15 map bosses and Vaal Temple/Shaper Guardians. The jump in difficulty there is enormous. I can beat Kaom or Malachi in T15 extremely easily, sometimes without taking any damage, while the tuning on Chimera means I have to deathzerg it or repeatedly chicken out to refill flasks. I feel like Shaper Guardians should be T17 with some intermediate content after T15 but before them that prepares you better.

[Schalde]

Thanks for all the advise on playing the game without buying stuff. Sometimes i just dont understand why people would buy every item on poe trade... then there is nothing to grind for or am i misunderstanding something in POE?

FYI I am not saying there is nothing wrong about it, i just want to hear peoples opinion why trading is so popular in a game where you grind for gear :P

[I Push Buttons]

Thanks for all the advise on playing the game without buying stuff. Sometimes i just dont understand why people would buy every item on poe trade... then there is nothing to grind for or am i misunderstanding something in POE?

FYI I am not saying there is nothing wrong about it, i just want to hear peoples opinion why trading is so popular in a game where you grind for gear :P

Because the chances of getting what you need are so astronomically low its basically negligible.

Its not Diablo 3. Loot doesn't drop tailored for you. It is 100% random.

The chances of you getting/crafting anything in particular (with decent rolls) is like .0000001%... Multiplied by every single slot... Even more so when you need specific uniques because outside of a few you can get through divination cards, there is no way to target them.

All of this is fine and good if you just want to casually level or get into early maps, if you want to go far then it is a huge waste of time.

---
To answer the question though, you grind for currency. People aren't selling the gear for free. Or can you magically conjure exalts out of thin air? :P

[Cyclone Jack]

Mainly because the drop rates are so poor, combined with the huge pool of unique items, that finding the one build-enabling item is all but impossible. Also, as much as people bitch and moan about an auction house, they are all about instant gratification. Their view is that trading is part of the game, but it has to be made so obtuse and annoying that only the most masochistic will bother with it. Plus, the devs apparently used some 3rd party site to find/trade items in D2, so they wanted to mimic that. Its a niche thing that became a major feature for whatever reason.

Luckily, if you just focus on rares and the uniques that have dropped for you, there are still plenty of builds to play. You'll just be locked out of the builds that are built around specific unique items until you draw that 1/700+ unique drop. Or you do what everyone else does and use the auction hou...er...poe trade.

[endersblade]

If you're playing this game specifically for farming perfect drops for your character, you're playing the wrong game. I never understood the sadists who play SSF.

When I come up with an idea for a class/spec combo, I will do some digging online and see if anyone else has done so already. Once I'm settled on it, I will buy most of the gear they'll need at end-game (and just deal with random drops until then for the most part). I have gear for characters I haven't even rolled yet. I have characters in the 80s who have equipped their, more or less, end-game gear, though some of the rares could definitely have better rolls. I still enjoy playing those characters. Getting gear in this game just allows me to enjoy PLAYING the game, not the other way around.

And for the record, it is entirely possible to get all the currency you could ever want or need, it just takes effort. I have successfully turned a stack of several thousand ID scrolls into a few Exalts. It required upgrading to one currency, then another, then another, until I ended with Exalts, but it's entirely possible. I pick up any and all currency drops I see, no matter how common or seemingly worthless they are.

The only valid excuse I can ever accept for not wanting to use poe.trade is the intimidation factor. It takes some getting used to. It also requires dealing with people, and everything that comes with that. I've met some truly shit-headed people in trades.

And just some basic rules when using poe.trade:

1. If it says 'fixed' for the price, don't even bother trying to haggle.
2. The website has a link next to the seller's name that lets you click on it, it then copies a blurb of speech to your clipboard. Just go in-game and past it to chat. No need to come up with your own "hey, I wanna buy something" speech, the site does it for you.
3. If something has been up for 4+ months, the price isn't marked as fixed, and you think the item is either worth less than what is posted or you don't quite have enough, try making an offer. A lot of times people will just be happy to get rid of the item and get some currency. I have actually had people who posted things for an Alch or Fusing just GIVE me the item because they were tired of it taking up space in their storage.
4. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INVITE THE SELLER TO A PARTY. Send the message that you're interested in the item. If they want to sell, they will invite YOU. A lot of times the seller is on another league and will need to switch over.
5. After the seller invites you, YOU have to go to THEM to get the item. This is just common courtesy. Nine times out of ten you'll just meet them in their hideout. Right click their portrait, click "visit Hideout", and make the trade there.
6. If someone does not respond to you in a decent amount of time (consider someone is running a map, they see the whisper from you. They have to get to a stopping point, drop a portal, go to the hideout, find the item in the stash, and then send you an invite.), move on. If you continue to try and spam the same person, they are likely to just put you on ignore.
7. If you find ONE person who is selling the ONE perfect item for you, But they aren't responding, send them a message 1-2 times a day. Send it once, if no response, send it again in about half an hour. No response, try again tomorrow. If determined enough, you'll either get your item, or they'll just put you on ignore. Just follow #6 and don't spam them several times in a row.

I think that about covers it. Find the item you want, whisper the seller, go to their hideout, make the trade, you're done.