[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Baconeggcheese]

You got a skill reset because you logged in for the first time since a major skill tree rework.
You don't normally get a skill reset, your level has nothing to do with it.

I see, that's odd. Third time I dinged today and it only popped up on that third ding. *shrug*.

[potis]

@potis Can I ask, why do you space out every single sentence?

People in mmo-champion ignore paragraphs when reading and always pick certain things that fit their agenda to quote.

So, small coherent sentences, spaced out so they cant do that, habit of having to "argue" with the cesspool on here.

[Baconeggcheese]

@potis Depends really, I quote bits because people will type an essay with lots of redundant points on a topic and I don't want to clutter up a thread by quoting an entire wall when I can snip one bit and respond to the whole wall. The person being quoted should be able to understand that difference. If they're the kind of person who's intentionally ignoring bits of an essay or not reading it, they're not going to read it or respond to it regardless.

It honestly just makes your posts hard to read (and makes me assume negative things), since logically you separate out bits based on points being made. But you'll have a single thought

spread

out

like

this

for

no

reason

[potis]

snip

Told ya, habit, the average mmo-champion argument is "MAH ENTITLEMENT", so its kinda irrelevant since they dont read anything that doesnt agree with them.

[Shaiandra]

@Baconeggcheese , are you familiar with Ascendancy classes? Each class has three Ascendancy options, unlockable after you complete the Labyrinth (which requires late Act 3 minimum). Except the Scion's Ascendancy works differently, but that's not important right now.

For example, the Witch can ascend to either Necromancer (specializes in minions), Elementalist (specializes in elemental nukes and golems), or Occultist (specializes mostly in Chaos and Cold DOTs and Energy Shield), and the three have a small new skill tree with passives unique to that Ascendancy. So if for example you want a certain Elementalist passive, then you have to play a Witch, and not a Templar or Shadow even if you stay along the top of the main passive tree.

That's not to say that if you want to play a nuker, you have to play a Witch/Elementalist. For example, a Shadow can ascend to Assassin which drastically increases your crit and such, so if you're a crit-based elemental nuker, that's also a viable class choice. Or you could also go Occultist or Shadow->Trickster just for the defensive benefits, even if it doesn't help your damage that much.

The system does give you a lot of choice, although admittedly it may not be intuitive and you're best off planning things kinda backwards. For example, you choose your favourite skill, say "I want to use Fireball", and then you look at the Ascendancy classes to see which one suits your needs the most, and then that determines what class you should pick.

I think the skill gem system is fine too. As you have a finite amount of gem slots, you have to make decisions on how many skills or supports you use, and adds additional decision-making between choices like two 1-handers or a 2-hander, or using some of the unique gear that has no sockets, or whatnot. Or the opposite, like using Tabula Rasa, which is a robe that has six linked white sockets (you can put any six gems in it), but has no defensive stats whatsoever.

There might be a number of things wrong with PoE, possibly including skill balance, but personally, I think the general design of skills and classes are some things I really like about the game.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Baconeggcheese , are you familiar with Ascendancy classes? Each class has three Ascendancy options, unlockable after you complete the Labyrinth (which requires late Act 3 minimum). Except the Scion's Ascendancy works differently, but that's not important right now.

Vaguely, I've barely touched the game outside of the first couple acts. Most of my knowledge about it comes from all the research I was trying to do ahead of playing so I didn't have an awful experience.

Issue was I kept getting bored, felt like I was forcing myself to play. This was especially true in that I'd look up end game content and just see people mass milling monsters for the most part with the rare and random monster that would kill them before they could even figure out what happened. If I was already bored 1 - 2 tapping monsters early game, its hard to imagine investing all the time and energy into learning the games unintuitive systems just to ultimately end up 1 tapping monsters with a different spell effect faster in 60+$ worth of MTX.

There might be a number of things wrong with PoE, possibly including skill balance, but personally, I think the general design of skills and classes are some things I really like about the game.

Plenty of people like the game, so its very much a me problem. I find that a lot of what people find most endearing I find poorly designed and unintuitive for the sake of giving people the illusion of complexity. The whole "easy to learn hard to master" being much better game design than "hard to learn, easy to master".

Is frustrating because I want to like it, which is why I keep trying to pick it up again. Trying to figure out where people are finding the magic. A lot of the "issues" with the unintuitiveness would likely be non-issues as well if they actually gave us a decent way to respec. Just seems needlessly punishing for no benefit.

I'm kinda just dying for something new that scratches the itch here, and there's just not a lot in this market right now that isn't meh.

[Marrilaife]

But if every league is tailored towards the top 1% crafter, that know how to play the market and craft things that might be mirror worthy in the end, its a bad design. Thats one of the reasons why I didn't like synthesis. Not to mention the bugs and "complex" systems it has, which needed a 3rd party website to look up what pre- and suffixes would result in the wanted implicites and what the threshold for said implicites are... that was a huge fucking mess.

Yeah, bothers me as well when I compare my character to the "top dps" on poe ninja and he / she has 5 times more dps than my char and only major difference in gear is this super duper crazy multicrafted weapon I could never be able to afford. The power creep disparity feels just too large. I can understand double the dps, but it can literally be anywhere from 5x to 20x more.

I honestly don't get why they decided to go the socket route for skills. The whole thing is just odd to me, I'm trying to figure out what people like about it.

It means your class isn't pigeon holed into specific "class" spells, so allows more variants of the builds. Still the talent tree limits them in a way for example casters are mostly classes on the top half of the talent map, but exceptions happen.

Also you sound like you do the usual mistake of "I will play this ability".

PoE doesnt work that way.

Its more like:

"Will i play MF, Ranged/Caster or Melee"

"Will it be critical based or not?"

After that, the majority of the builds are the same from like 60 to 90% because of the "big passives" in the tree.

Not true, "same nodes" are mostly hp (unless you play pure energy shield), but the rest depends on are you doing physical / elemental / chaos damage (and elemental has also split between fire / lightning / ice), then you have stuff like weapon nodes or shield / dual wield / 2h nodes / bow, and lots of types of spells have dedicated nodes for example: totems, brands, traps, minions.

Yeah crit nodes are fairly generic but then you have specialized stuff like channeling nodes or cast speed / attack speed or damage over time nodes, there's lots of stuff that will apply to spell X but won't work for similar spell Y, depending how that spell is classified. One thing I didn't know at start because in many other games it's different is that dots can't crit or leech (super weird).

The part about finding out which skills are good and that a lot of the early game skills suck is definitely a valid critique. I've never denied that.
There are only a few skills CURRENTLY (might change a lot with 3.7) that are good early on and can even result in a great endgame build. Melee has a lot of those "suck" cases, which might change heavily now with the upcoming changes, because A LOT of melee mechanics are getting changed. Most starting spells up until Merveil where you get some more advanced skills and then act 3 where you can usually get your "main skill" to use from a "guide perspective" are good. There have always been some early game skills that have been successfully used in endgame builds. Bow skills also need a ton of changes, which I hope are included in the melee rework at least a bit, because right now there are only a handful of skills that are good when it comes to bows.

Yep, it's kinda a risk trusting on someone else's word "this skill is amazing end game" when you try it at early level and it kinda sucks. Then you have these skills that feel good at low level then kinda drop off and you're left wondering if that's intentional or you're doing something wrong. Personally I'd be scared to spend weeks / months grinding to buy items for a build only then to find out that it either sucks or I don't like it.

[Shaiandra]

Plenty of people like the game, so its very much a me problem. I find that a lot of what people find most endearing I find poorly designed and unintuitive for the sake of giving people the illusion of complexity. The whole "easy to learn hard to master" being much better game design than "hard to learn, easy to master".

Is frustrating because I want to like it, which is why I keep trying to pick it up again. Trying to figure out where people are finding the magic. A lot of the "issues" with the unintuitiveness would likely be non-issues as well if they actually gave us a decent way to respec. Just seems needlessly punishing for no benefit.

I'm kinda just dying for something new that scratches the itch here, and there's just not a lot in this market right now that isn't meh.

I can't fault you at all; I've had at least four friends try the game and quit before finishing Act 1. I wouldn't say the game is 'easy to master' either... hard to learn, hard to master sounds a bit closer to accurate. Not that it's necessarily much better, but eh, I guess GGG knows what sort of playerbase/audience it wants to keep...

Sometimes I take long breaks from PoE too but then don't know what other ARPGs are worth trying out so I just return to this free one...

[Baconeggcheese]

I can't fault you at all; I've had at least four friends try the game and quit before finishing Act 1. I wouldn't say the game is 'easy to master' either... hard to learn, hard to master sounds a bit closer to accurate. Not that it's necessarily much better, but eh, I guess GGG knows what sort of playerbase/audience it wants to keep...

Sometimes I take long breaks from PoE too but then don't know what other ARPGs are worth trying out so I just return to this free one...

Hey, I made it to act 2 this time! See how far I'll get when this next league comes out, I'm interested to try it and see if the melee changes make it feel any better or not.

I say "hard to learn easy to master" in that its one of those knowledge based games that are generally really easy to execute once you have said knowledge. I hate over simplifying games but no matter what build you go down the majority of your time will be spent just zipping down maps instantly destroying mobs. Shaper seems to be the only thing people mention when they talk about any actual challenging content, and even then from my understanding a lot of the challenge in that is just A: Having the knowledge to have a good enough build and B: having invested the time to be able to afford a good enough build. The actual execution is seemingly not that difficult.

I raided in WoW in a top guild for the past few xpacs and I always said it was a knowledge based game and not much of a skill based one in that same way. If you knew when to use what nothing was terribly difficult to execute. It was all just in the knowing.


To shift gears, could you point me towards any guides for melee builds with the female classes for this next league? Or even just what'll be popular builds for them too. I wanna see if maybe I can find something that looks cool enough that It'll motivate me to work towards it and then just kind of ignore whatever the hell I'm doing and just blindly follow the guide to see how far I can get this time.

[Fencers]

Vaguely, I've barely touched the game outside of the first couple acts. Most of my knowledge about it comes from all the research I was trying to do ahead of playing so I didn't have an awful experience.

Issue was I kept getting bored, felt like I was forcing myself to play. This was especially true in that I'd look up end game content and just see people mass milling monsters for the most part with the rare and random monster that would kill them before they could even figure out what happened. If I was already bored 1 - 2 tapping monsters early game, its hard to imagine investing all the time and energy into learning the games unintuitive systems just to ultimately end up 1 tapping monsters with a different spell effect faster in 60+$ worth of MTX.

This just really sounds like you don't like ARPGs. Because the inherent appeal of the genre is grinding the necessary skills, items and combination of what-ever-the-fuck-thingys to plow through hordes of enemies.

What exactly was the end point goal of Diablo 2, Titan Quest or Van Helsing if not to have bigger, better stuff to kill faster the tougher and greater numbers of enemies before us as players? You don't get to the end of Diablo 2 and chat with the monsters in a text battle of wits. Nor do you engage in a delicate duel of precise strikes and complex button taps to overthrow the big bad guys.

There is rarely the ARPG that is designed to not have such an end point experience. So even claiming some things were "poorly" designed or unintuitive with an incorrect notion 9in mind from the design intent is suspect in validity.

[Baconeggcheese]

This just really sounds like you don't like ARPGs. Because the inherent appeal of the genre is grinding the necessary skills, items and combination of what-ever-the-fuck-thingys to plow through hordes of enemies.

There is rarely the ARPG that is designed to not have such an end point experience. So even claiming some things were "poorly" designed or unintuitive with an incorrect notion 9in mind from the design intent is suspect in validity.

I've played lots of ARPG's, I definitely like them. While they all tend to have the same trends they don't all handle them the same way. I think the way PoE handles certain things is both unintuitive (it definitely is) and poorly designed. Like I think there are much better ways they could handle skills, or the passive skill tree, and net the same end result while getting information across to the player in a better or even less punishing way.

I guess that's a really good way to put it, systems as designed are horrendously bad at getting information across to the player without needing 3rd party resources. That's imo bad design.

*that doesn't mean I think its a bad game, I just think certain things could be done in a better way.

[Fencers]

I guess that's a really good way to put it, systems as designed are horrendously bad at getting information across to the player without needing 3rd party resources. That's imo bad design.

This is more substantial.

I think the tooltips are well written and logical for the most part. Aside from a few wording choices that mention mechanics that remain largely hidden to the player (Luck), I can't think of too much that is not immediately understandable in the game mechanics.

Least of all requiring third party tools w/r/t core mechanics. Now I do think some of the recent leagues have had mechanisms that I thought were too obtuse and just had you jumping through hoops for the same old stuff.

Where POE has suffered for me over the last two season is exactly in the league design. They were mostly simple mechanics that either paid out too little and thus became annoying or were complicated in a way that wasn't engaging at all. Delve had some fun bits but afterward I felt the league got pretty stale for ideas.

I would agree the game is starting to show it's age too.

[Gallahadd]

I was actually planning something similar but for my Second character. Gonna start with something stupid like a strength stacking witch with the baron just stacking health on zombies so I can blow them up. Probably won’t work but should be fun to try.

See, that sounds like exactly the kind of fucky character I would build second. Start with something that's a solid farmer/lab clearer. Then try something fucky, to see how it plays. Then settle in on something OP, to try and push as far as I can, but get burned out on that, and go back to my dependable farmer.

Seriously. EVERY league.

[Darleth]

I've played lots of ARPG's, I definitely like them. While they all tend to have the same trends they don't all handle them the same way. I think the way PoE handles certain things is both unintuitive (it definitely is) and poorly designed. Like I think there are much better ways they could handle skills, or the passive skill tree, and net the same end result while getting information across to the player in a better or even less punishing way.

I guess that's a really good way to put it, systems as designed are horrendously bad at getting information across to the player without needing 3rd party resources. That's imo bad design.

*that doesn't mean I think its a bad game, I just think certain things could be done in a better way.

See, after playing PoE I can't play ANY OTHER ARPG's anymore, because they are often times way too easy in every aspect. Diablo 3 is one of those games that I played through, killed Diablo on Inferno back in the day, and never touched again until RoS released. I really hoped that they are going to do a lot more with D3 and it never happened, so I just sticked with PoE and got free content every 3 - 4 months.

I dont know what you think unintuitive about the game or it being poorly designed. In which regards is it REALLY poorly designed? The Skill tree is inspired by the Final Fantasy 7 one. Skills being sockets has the simple reason of "you have a choice" how to build that skill, and also to prevent using 500 skills at the same time.
The only thing I can agree on is getting information across the player on some stuff.

They are actually working on stuff like 3rd party ressources and things being available ingame for that. They definitely want to improve on that side. Thing is, it has a lot of different interactions and mechanics that people usually find out by themselves. GGG WANTS people to experiment. Thats a good thing.

[Baconeggcheese]

I dont know what you think unintuitive about the game or it being poorly designed.
The only thing I can agree on is getting information across the player on some stuff.

I mean.

10c

[Darleth]

I mean.

10c

That is just a SMALL fraction of "poorly design" though. You make it seem like you have a shitton of more problems.

[Baconeggcheese]

That is just a SMALL fraction of "poorly design" though. You make it seem like you have a shitton of more problems.

That'd be you projecting on what I'm saying. Also how small that is is up for debate, I don't believe saying two of the main core systems of the game are designed poorly is a small thing.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

See, that sounds like exactly the kind of fucky character I would build second. Start with something that's a solid farmer/lab clearer. Then try something fucky, to see how it plays. Then settle in on something OP, to try and push as far as I can, but get burned out on that, and go back to my dependable farmer.

Seriously. EVERY league.

See that would be the reasonable thing to do yet I’ve never actually done the reasonable thing first. This time I’m sure my funky idea will work though!

[Darleth]

That'd be you projecting on what I'm saying. Also how small that is is up for debate, I don't believe saying two of the main core systems of the game are designed poorly is a small thing.

Well, instead of complaining about it not being available ingame you could have... you know... googled it already or asked stuff either here in this thread or on the reddit instead.
See, i dont think that those are "huge" problems, because most of that information is readily available on the internet already, because the game has been out for almost 6 years now. And you know what? People had to find that stuff out on their own. GGG's design might be problematic FOR YOU, but it really isn't. Finding out how stuff works is the way that GGG wants it to be. They explain what you need to know about the league mechanics and explain certain skill/item/stat mechanics if it's needed.

[kail]

I honestly don't get why they decided to go the socket route for skills. The whole thing is just odd to me, I'm trying to figure out what people like about it.

Insane customization that requires investment to get the most out of them. I can't think of a better system so far that other ARPGs offer. Last Epoch is introducing something cool with each skill having it's own tree but that game still needs plenty of work.