Path of Exile free to play in about six hours.

[swirly]

Today I started feeling somewhat like a change of pace. Something different from my summoner witch. My summoner stands back so I'm thinking melee. That means no ranger. My summoner doesn't focus on damage and so I'm thinking one something that does. That means no templar. I;ve never been muc hof a fan of big slow hits so thinking no marauder. That leaves duelist and shadow. I was thinking duelist, but looking at it I feel like I'd just die too much. So I'm thinking Shadow with life leech to keep me alive. That means claws probably. I feel like I'm vaguely following Shoju heh. He made a summoner... I made one. He made a claw shadow... I'm making one. It isn't on purpose though! Just how things line up heh.

My summoner is roughly 83/120 on the passive tree so I'm going to aim for that with a Shadow build. That way I have a goal I know I can hit and actually play. I'm thinking Leech, high physical damage, and any evasion I can get. Something like http://bit.ly/13JCc7Y maybe.

A change from 1 life and high ES with the summoner to no ES and high life with this one. Though it is also somewhat the same in that it is ignoring some stats in favor of others. Should play different though. We'll see I guess.

[shoju]

Up to 61 on my summoner, getting ready to head into the pyramid, and get into A3.

Spent some time on hardcore. Wont do that again. I made it to level 7, was cruising through made it to the prison, walked into a room, and then got desynced backwards into another room, and just got obliterated by stuff that had come in from another room. Yay.....

Think I'm going to go and play the shadow for a bit. I'm pretty pleased with my summoner, I just need a break.

One thing to note Swirly, Templars can be all about damage if you want them to be. I've seen Dual Wield Elemental Cleave builds that do INSANE DPS. Just not something that I'm interested in.

[swirly]

I'm 63 and at the start of act 3. Not doing all that well though. I can progress through zones, but I seem to die enough right now that I'm not gaining levels. I think some of the issue was that I let my resistances lax some. Had max cold resist (cause of that legendary), but my others were in the 30-40 range. After realizing that I've adjusted some and got my fire up to 75 as well, but my lightning is at 44. So working on getting back to where I can survive and gain levels. We'll see how that goes.

Edit: The problem right now is when you go to find the guy in the crematorium piety attacks with a giant lightning ball. With my lightning resists not maxed it just keeps owning me. I need to either learn to dodge it or cap my resist.

[MonTy]

I'm trucking along with my 78 Hardcore Marauder. I've setup a shop and sold a dozen plus items for decent prices, crafted some nice gear, but also have failed horribly at crafting others. I recently leveled a few alts to 50+ but nothing has sustained my interest as much as my heavy strike/ground slam Marauder. I think my issue with other builds is the single target damage and survivability. I hate becoming squishy or weak single target skills. My Marauder has good single target damage (6k), acceptable AoE (3k), and decent defenses (4.8k life, 10k armor, max res). All around a solid character.

The dev team posted their intentions of possibly raising the levels in Act 3 Merciless, so the transition to maps is more smooth and you're able to find better items (and maps) outside of maps themselves. I think this change is much needed, as I remember the push needed to get my character to run maps without dying was insane, almost three weeks of pure grinding.

All in all I've had my fill of trying out the various builds, I'm probably at around 20 characters who are higher than level 40. If my Marauder dies I'll probably just continue playing him casually in Softcore. This game is a serious grind and I can't see myself sustaining several characters in the end-game

[Chesspiece_face]

With the absolute glut of viable F2P games coming out now I'm interested in hearing how people feel PoE compares now that they have had a chance to play for awhile.

League of Legends has proven to be evergreen for me personally, whereas I've played Dota 2 maybe 3 matches (and I have nearly 10 free gifts of it in my Steam inventory taking up space).

I question why I would pay money for Defiance when I've got the free option for Firefall sitting right here and if they make some decent improvements to the questing system in these last pushes it could be truly good.

It's very rare that I've found a F2P game that truly lasts. (I've probably spent hundreds of dollars on LoL and don't regret a dime.) For those of you seriously investing in Path of Exile can you say anything similar? Could you see yourself putting in even a few dollars towards it? If you have put money into it have you had buyers regret? I paid for my early beta access to the game, and I won't say I regret the purchase (I've gotten my dollars worth) but even having a free arpg sitting on my desktop I find it hard to validate investing time into it with so many other options.

Free to Play used to be an issue of "eh, it's free and I'm bored" but more and more there are offerings of triple A equivalants in the F2P marketplace. Where do you place PoE? "Eh, it's free"? or: "This is a real viable long term game"?

[swirly]

For those of you seriously investing in Path of Exile can you say anything similar? Could you see yourself putting in even a few dollars towards it?

I'm not a good demographic for this cause I don't spend money on anything. So no... I wouldn't put any dollars towards PoE, but I wouldn't for any of the other ones either.

I'm also not a good barometer for this in that I debate going back to D3. I miss and enjoyed my characters in that while so far PoE is feeling very generic to me. I could make another character, but I look at the skill tree for them and it doesn't doesn't excite me at all. A whole bunch of mediocre points that is supposed to build up to a good strong fun character, but to me just feels bland. Right now I'm feeling like I'll keep playing my Summoner and maybe or maybe not play the baby shadow I made a bit. Beyond that I can't see the game holding me. I keep feeling these urges to go play my D3 DH or WD cause the play was better from what I have experienced and I felt excited about the characters and their abilities. In PoE I just really don't. On the other hand I do somewhat dread playing the zones in D3 again. PoE is better in that regard, but not by a huge amount really. Though I've not done maps yet so maybe that will help. Of course I didn't do D3 end game either.

So yeah... right now I'd say no to putting any money into PoE and am really not sure how much I like it. I'll keep playing for a while more, but I do see it waning for me soon.

[shoju]

I hate LOL.
I've never played DOTA
I like POE well enough. I like that the microtransactions aren't pay to win. It's Pay to look cool, and pay to have as much storage space as you want. I've tossed 20 bucks at POE, and I'll probably spend some more. I play it when I want, as I want, and I it's a good "fix" for me to replace some of the gaming I had w/ WoW.

[shoju]

Vaal Pyramid Merc can die in a fire. That shit is terrible. I opened a door to a room, and died before I could arc after dropping my skellie totem, through 1100 ES and 1500 HP, and max resists to everything in the room.

[MonTy]

Merc Pyramid is indeed tough. You'll want enfeeble to greatly reduce the lesser multiple projectile mobs. Those stats are a tad low, bit odd as it's low ES and low HP. Now might be a good time to focus on more ES, most would shoot for several thousand before progressing.

I had to grind Fellshrine until lvl 69 in order to progress, so you may want to buckle up and run that map for a bit.

[LennyLen]

For those of you seriously investing in Path of Exile can you say anything similar? Could you see yourself putting in even a few dollars towards it? If you have put money into it have you had buyers regret?

I've spent about $150.00 on PoE. $100 was for a Silver Supporter pack and another $50 on cosmetics and premium stash tabs. I don't regret a cent, and this is easily the most I have ever spent on a computer game. I usually buy from the $10 bins.

[shoju]

Merc Pyramid is indeed tough. You'll want enfeeble to greatly reduce the lesser multiple projectile mobs. Those stats are a tad low, bit odd as it's low ES and low HP. Now might be a good time to focus on more ES, most would shoot for several thousand before progressing.

I had to grind Fellshrine until lvl 69 in order to progress, so you may want to buckle up and run that map for a bit.

my gear

I make no bones about it, my gear isn't "great"

Keep in mind as a summoner, I'll have lower HP than other classes that aren't CI.

But, as we can see, none of my gear has "amazing" ES rolls on it.

I wish that there was a way to quickly get in and out of the Cave, as it's a level 61 zone, and I steamrolled that at 57 to start. I could pick up sweet XP if I were able to run it over and over without having to "re find it" every time.

My Current Build At this point, I'm unsure where I want to go. I have been banking my respec points, so once I do get a great roll on an ES Chest, I could respec some of my life nodes into ES nodes. I had thought about backing out 6 of my life nodes now, and picking up the Armour / ES / Body and soul Cluster over by the templar area. My reasoning being, that the other ES nodes are just 8% ES. These nodes give me the 8% ES, as well as 8% Armour (yes, I know, only my shield grants me armour) and ends with a 20% increase to ES, as well as 10% Resistances, which gives me a little more leeway to experiment with some of my gear slots.

But, I would also like to get a little deeper in the witch tree, and get some more passive Chaos Resist, since I have a little on gear, i would at least try and get it back to a 0%, as I'm still currently in the negs.

I guess I'll go farm some more (shudder), I really want to get to a point where I can start running some of the maps that I've picked up, but I know that I have some work to go on that yet.

[swirly]

My Current Build At this point, I'm unsure where I want to go. I have been banking my respec points, so once I do get a great roll on an ES Chest, I could respec some of my life nodes into ES nodes. I had thought about backing out 6 of my life nodes now, and picking up the Armour / ES / Body and soul Cluster over by the templar area. My reasoning being, that the other ES nodes are just 8% ES. These nodes give me the 8% ES, as well as 8% Armour (yes, I know, only my shield grants me armour) and ends with a 20% increase to ES, as well as 10% Resistances, which gives me a little more leeway to experiment with some of my gear slots.

But, I would also like to get a little deeper in the witch tree, and get some more passive Chaos Resist, since I have a little on gear, i would at least try and get it back to a 0%, as I'm still currently in the negs.

What I look at with your build is trying to swing a switch like I did with my summoner. Not to CI, but to starting from the other side of the witch tree. Something like this: http://bit.ly/17l52tx

That is the same number of spent points as you have currently. You lose

• 10% spell damage
  
• 30 Int
  
• 20 Str
  
• 24% max life
  
• 16% max mana
  

You gain

• 60 Int
  
• 20 to max mana (not a percent)
  
• 8% max mana
  
• 8% ES
  
• 20% ES cooldown recovery
  
• 24% chaos resist
  

Whether that is worth it or not is debatable, but the extra upside is that you then are in position such that there are 6 life nodes in reach with no wasted points to get to them. (3 of those you are in position to get now though) There is another 3 8% life and 1 10% life nodes which are only 1 30 STR node away. You might need that node anyway since I took 20 STR off. I'd prob respec a 8% max mana node for now to grab it if necessary. There is the 8% ES followed by the 18% ES node with no wasted points to get to them. You can re-pick up the two 8% max mana nodes I took away from your build if you want to too. It just seems to me like it has a lot more future growth potential than where you are right now.

Now the downside is how to make it happen. It is 9 points to reconnect. Getting rid of the 3 life and 2 mana nodes that is part of the plan is 5. So you have to burn another 4 respec points. Reconnect. Then burn 6 more respec points to get rid of the old connection. Then use all those points to fill out the wants you have and refill the 4 you had to respec to free room. So you are looking at burning 15 respec points. Which is quite an investment.

Still... I do feel like it positions you to where you have good areas to grow into and have the chaos resist passives you want/need too.

[MonTy]

I make no bones about it, my gear isn't "great"

I think farming Fellshrine will do you some good. Perhaps get some upgrades or currency to buy gear from others. Best way to go about this is to search http://poexplorer.com/ and put in your parameters and see if they're online (green dot). You can get specific colors, link, and gear this way.

Keep in mind as a summoner, I'll have lower HP than other classes that aren't CI.

I'm well aware of this, but your Energy Shield is still incredibly low. I think you have to make a decision whether to go for ES and CI, or focus on Health and get Eldritch Battery.

But, as we can see, none of my gear has "amazing" ES rolls on it.

No, but you've also devoted zero passives into ES. If you decide to go ES I agree with going into Templar area for body and soul, then to witch for ES. If you go for health you'll want to eventually get into the templar and marauder starting area for health nodes (get there through the middle which you've worked on).

I wish that there was a way to quickly get in and out of the Cave... without having to "re find it" every time.

Fastest way would be to leave the zone then enter by CTRL+Clicking the entrance and entering a new instance. If you leave by the bear boss you'll be further away from the entrance, but you'll know where it is so you can run to and ctrl+click creating a new instance.

I guess I'll go farm some more (shudder)

Good idea, you'll need it for map content :P PoE is the first game where I've needed to put on movies/audiobooks in order to progress. I've had to grind fellshrine/docks so much to get my characters to progress in the end game. But again, the devs are considering to smooth out the transition to maps and make A3 Merciless higher level. Regardless of that, you'll want to farm Fellshrine for a long, long time before moving on. Unless you have amazing equipment waiting for you already.

[LochnarITB]

I can progress through zones, but I seem to die enough right now that I'm not gaining levels.

This is true for me, with a twist. I don't get myself killed. Just last night, I died at least three times in merciless - almost half a level xp - to de-sync. It seems to have gotten worse. I hadn't noticed this happening until just the last patch. It seems like a crowd of baddies (I HATE! the spin kick bleeder guys in the marketplace) is much more likely to de-sync the game and then bye-bye 15%. They say they are trying to make it better, but I think they made it worse.

[shoju]

I just checked I have 9 respec points. When I get a chance I'm going to look and see what I can do.

I'm thinking more about going CI. All of the gear I would use would have ES on it, so pumping my ES And making myself immune to chaos would just make sense.

I could dump the life nodes now, and start pumping my ES and pick up CI. I have 9 points, so I could dump the life, pick up the body and soul node and get CI. I might wait to get CI until I know that I have enough ES.

We'll see how it works out I guess

[shoju]

I.... Screwed up respeccing my points Go me.

So now, I have to go pick up a pair of Orb's of regret, so that I can right my mistake. On the upside, I was able to swap ~300 HP for ~500 ES, so I'm making strides and gains. I also hit 62 in the church, and realize that I really like farming the church. I can go in at the waypoint, clear out level 1, go clear out level 2, go back and clear out level 1 again, hit the waypoint, empty the bags, and start over again.

I've yet to find anymore maps, but I'm pleased with the way it's going so far.

Once I'm done respeccing my points, I will still have enough STR for my current levels of Spell Totem and Life Leech (on the Spectres), and be set up to pick up the second Body and Soul Node (the one closer in the Templar starting area.

So. Once I visit the vendor to get the regrets, I will look like this:

Fixed

Not a huge change, just dropping the life, and focusing on the ES Nodes. My Next four points will take me to:

This

And I figure I will end up being close to

This When it's all said and done.

I wish I could go after CI first, but I just don't see a viable way to run up there without having to invest in scourings to lower the level of my STR Gems I'm using. Not a big deal, I'll get there, and Probably in the early 70's.

If I can round enough regrets up, I could completely change things up a bit, and go with This But that would be a long term type of thing, that will end up requiring another 6 regrets on top of what I already need, and a lot of levels to make it all come together.

All in All, I think this last build is what I'm going to work towards getting to. I should be in the low to mid 70's by then, maybe closer to 80. That's as far as I'm willing to plan in the future at this point.

[Chesspiece_face]

I.... Screwed up respeccing my points Go me.

If you are in Default League I have 3 Regret Orbs that you are welcome to.

Character name is Sketh.

[MonTy]

I've yet to find anymore maps, but I'm pleased with the way it's going so far.

I have a ton of 66 maps if you would like any, I could bring them down to Softcore, it's not a problem.

I also hit 62 in the church, and realize that I really like farming the church.

Actually a lot of people use that strategy, clear church one and two and logout. This is a very popular method in races.

Also if anyone wants anything from my shop I'll gladly hand it over for free. If you're in softcore I can just bring it down. I'd much rather help some loungers out than sell them.

Lastly, I spent a good amount of currency on a huge amulet upgrade last night. Probably my biggest purchase yet. But it really helped my character as I was able to respec into more health nodes and I'm at nearly 5.5k health now. I think my gear is good now, lots of high +health items and decent resists.

[shoju]

well, running the church has been great for my orbs. I'm up over 60 jewelers, I picked up more blessed orbs, a couple of chaos, a few chromatics, and a unique neck for a tanky character. It's the 50% block to spells neck. I'm unsure who would use it, but hey, now I have two of them I guess. I've also picked up some rares. I'm not sure if they are any good yet. I haven't spent the time to take a look at them.

I was able to get to 63, though there were a few times that have been difficult in this transition so far. I did realize, that I'm probably not going to try the pyramid until I get CI. I've really lost a lot of HP (about half) so far in the change over of my build, and chaos damage has destroyed me a few times. But, It's getting there.

I'm still trying to find a new chest. That's really my weakest slot. I need to find one with plenty of sockets / links, and even though my orbs are picking up, I don't yet have the types of orbs that would be able to purchase a high quality ES chest off the forums. Most of those seem to go for ~1 Exalted. I have no exalted orbs. The "best" orb I have is a single GCP, that I found on my ill fated HC character.

Really, all of my gear could/should be replaced for more ES Sporting pieces, but I know that you can get massive returns out of the chest, so that's what I'm looking for first. After that, I'll probably try and find a better weapon for my build, as my current wand isn't really "suited" for a summoner. I'm just not sure what I should be going after. If I could find something that increased cast speed AND mana regen, I'd probably be pretty happy with it. Arc doesn't do a lot of damage, so it's not like I need something that will get me a lot of damage from spell power, I don't wand, so I don't need something with added damage. Maybe a high spell crit, mana regen, Cast Speed. We'll see.

I'm going to keep plugging along. I figure if I hit the pyramid in the late 60's, I hope to have found a better chest than what I'm currently sporting (fingers crossed), and maybe a few other upgrades.

[shoju]

I am now 65. I've ground out a few levels, and am moving along quite well . At this point, I'm sticking around the church until

1.) I get a Unique Shavronne's Chest (would have to drop off a rare, or off of Geofri)
2.) I get a Necromancer's Silks or Destroyer's Regalia 4L to drop that I can roll into at least a respectable amount of ES.
3.) I get CI (5 more levels)