Path of Exile free to play in about six hours.

[shoju]

Had a few bumpy spots with my Summoner in Act III, mainly because I'm so close to the level of the zones that I'm running.

But........ I FINALLY crafted something worth something in this RNG laden mess that they call a crafting system. (Seriously. The more I play, the more I HATE the RNG of "crafting".)

My Summoner's new gloves

3 characters at 50+ and I finally crafted something that I'm thinking is worth a damn.

Also, if you look, I've spent some time getting my summoner in order. I'm rather pleased with how she is coming along.

I'm not sure what level I want to be before I try Piety on Cruel, I'm 51 now, and I've got the waypoint in the Battlefront. I should be 52 by the time I make it through Solaris to the Gemling Queen. Then, I'll probably do the docks until I hit 53, and then hit the crematorium, and then move towards the finale. I think 55 sounds like a good place to be against Piety. I know from my Normal showdown with her, she's going to eat my minions for dinner, so I'm going to need some more HP to make sure I survive.

At 55, I'll have and additional 26% Increased Life, and +20 strength from Passive Nodes.

Here is where I am
Here is where I will be at 54

Now... The question becomes Where should I go from here?

• I've been working through using Arc, and Wrath for Lightning Damage, SO I could see myself heading back over towards the start, and picking up the lightning nodes that include Lightning Walker 4 passive points would give me 30 int, 24% increased Lightning Damage, and 15% lightning Resist.
  
• Or I could go over to the right side of the start, and pick up Life and ES. There is a nice little cluster of it over there, and should take me into the early 60's.
  
• Or I could work towards investing the 7 points to pick up the last summoner node. This puts me over in an area where there are a few more Resist Nodes. And heading into Merciless, the -60% Resist is damn near petrifying.
  
• Which has me thinking that heading over to the Shield node, and investing 6 points into picking up 30% resist for wearing a shield, isn't a terrible idea either. I know right now, without upgrading my gear, I'm rolling into merciless around ~10-20% resist on my elements, and a whopping -52% on Chaos. (yeah.... A2 is going to suck in Merc..)
  

What would you do? I'd love to hear what other people think.