Path of Exile free to play in about six hours.

[shoju]

I'm having no luck anywhere else in getting people to respond to my inquiries about their gear, so here we go. Fellow Lurkers playing the game, I'm looking for 2 items.

1.) An ES Chest, that is 300+ ES, AND 4L at the minimum. Life is not an issue since I'm on my way to CI, Resistances are great, but not needed. What is needed, is a nice big fat ES number.

2.) A Wand. Preferable 3L, but I'll take the time to make it a 3 L if need be. For this, I'm looking for Mana Regen, and Cast Speed. Bonus points if it has Mana as well, but that's getting pretty specific. I'll settle for the regen and cast speed, since all I'm doing is Arcing and recasting my stuff.

I have some GCP's and Chisels (I know those are end game currencies people like) that I could put towards it, or I have good amounts of Chromes and Jewelers (I'm out of fusings right now... stupid boots.), and a few blessed orbs, and some other trash.

[shoju]

Holy Crap. People want a lot for gear. Found a 6s 4l/2l robe with health, chaos resist, and the ES mods. 7gcp.

I found a wand that I want. +2 lightning gems, a total of 59% Spell damage, 37% increased mana regen, and 11% cast speed. 3 gcp.

And here I was thinking that the wand would be cheap since it didn't have mana, or life, or resistances.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised the good gear is skyrocketing, and the mediocre gear is just not worth anything anymore.

[MonTy]

Holy Crap. People want a lot for gear.

Yea, I've found ES gear to be some of the most expensive to trade for. In my 20+ hours of map farming I've yet to come across a decent ES chest. I'll definitely keep a lookout, though.

I'm really excited for this month long league. It totally resets the economy and everyone is trading mediocre gear again Going for a leap slam build as it seems super fast at farming (although a tad dangerous).

Also hit 80 with my Hardcore Marauder, which I'm really happy with. Didn't think I'd make it this far, so everything else is icing on the cake. Going to try to tougher maps and see how I fare. Now if only I could six socket my awesome 2h maul.

Anyway, I hope to join other lurkers in the game some time. I took down my shop as I got tired of trading, but feel free to ask me in game if you're in need of something in particular.

[shoju]

Grats on hitting 80, that's a pretty awesome milestone.

I'm hoping that Vecindak sticks with the game. He doesn't have much time to play, but it is definitely fun to group up and run stuff, even low level.

[shoju]

I got the Unique Crypt Map! WOOT!

It made the awful time with lag and disconnects through the pyramid worth it. I don't know what was going on, because I could do anything else without problem, but POE was full of lag, crippling lag, desyncs, and a very frustrating time.

But, Vaal dropped the Unique Map, so I'll take it. I talked with Monty, and we were talking about running it together. I'd like to do that. I don't know who else is playing, but I'm not opposed to taking a full group of Lurkers in, and having a good time.

I already spent my 8 Chisels I had stored on it, and any I get between now, and when Monty is ready are going to it as well.

[swirly]

My play time has been limited and will be non-existent next week, but there is some info to update with anyway. I'm 65 and at the Barracks waypoint with the quest to kill Piety on Merciless. I think my plan is to get one more level and then attempt to kill her.

Changes to note with my build. I respeced out of being able to do 2 curses and the three nodes up to it so that I could speed down to reduced mana reserve. I couldn't notice any difference at all though. It didn't enable me to run another aura and the change to my mana pool was pretty small. So I decided that it isn't worth the trip to it and backed out something like 7 points. Basically back to where I have Body and Soul in the small node. Then I went down towards Body and Soul in the big node. I'm one point from picking it up which is why I'm thinking I will wait one level.

My thinking on going back to one curse is mostly just to speed up getting other places. I don't expect to have too many more levels in me so I had to make some compromises. I'm also thinking that it isn't too hard to know which curse you need in a situation. If you are going against something that is going to kill your minions and require some work to kill (like Piety herself) then flammability is probably the way to go to make the most use of fire trap and minion explosions. If you are fighting trash who won't kill many minions then Vulnerability is probably the way to go. So instead of putting both up I just put up which I think is optimal for the situation. It is slightly annoying, but again... compromises needed to be made.

In item news, I was able to get my Icetomb chest piece to six socket with a 4 link and a 2 link. So that is doing alright I think. Sometimes I wish I could get something different from Icetomb since the chill stuff on it is wasted, but the cold resist is still needed and the armor/ES is nice so I'll probably just stick with it. Feeling like my gear is being pigeonholed some though which is annoying. If I were to keep playing such that I could get more resistance passives maybe I could start lessening that. Though I also kind of feel like Armor+ES+Resist+Rarity Find+Quantity Find are the only stats that even matter. Everything else feels like I don't even notice if I have it or not and so I tend to be indifferent toward. So if I start getting resists from passives such that I don't need it on gear then I feel like it will start seeming like the gear doesn't even matter. All about the sockets, links, and colors with the stats hardly mattering. I'm clearly over-stating that some, but it is a general approximation of how I am feeling.

I also picked up a Limbsplit unique which I guess would be a Marauder item? Yet another unique to sit in my stash and collect dust really.

[swirly]

Oh and since I have a linked red-green-blue with nothing I need to put in it I am playing with Flame Totem + Blind + Faster Casting. Just to see if it does anything noticeable.

[shoju]

I have been having TONS of problems in Merciless. So much so that I went ahead and specced CI, and messed with other stuff. I'm still dying, and dying a lot more than I think I should be. I'm not sure what to do at this point, I'm pretty frustrated by the whole thing. Part of it has been just an insane amount of lag lately. I don't know if it's my end, or on their end. I seem to think it's not my end since I'm able to do pretty much anything else I want to do online, and have noticed no problems with it, just with PoE.

I finally got a new chest piece. It's a 5s, with a 3l and a 2l. I spent the fusings on my boots to get them to 4l, and shoved what I had in my chest in that, and put the stuff in my boots into my chest.

I'm sure my latest death was more not being used to CI, and overextending myself with only have 2100 ES right now. At this point, I just need better gear.

My gloves are pitiful, with a whopping 38 ES
My Belt is still a leather +life belt, I haven't had the time to go looking for a good ES belt with more ES on it. I'm sure that will help.
My boots are Unique summoner boots, so I know that the ES from there is going to be low.
Neither of my Rings have +ES.
My Neck is the unique Summoner neck, so no ES there.
I have a pretty good shield, but again, no extra ES, and it's an angelic Kite Shield. I might have to look into finding a Spell Shield to up my ES, and then work on getting resists that I would lose from the shield somewhere else.
My Helm isn't terrible, but it's a +2 Minion Helm, so I'm using it for now.

I really do need to start improving my gear more. I can tell that it's the weakness at this point.

[swirly]

I'm sure my latest death was more not being used to CI, and overextending myself with only have 2100 ES right now. At this point, I just need better gear.

Just to give a comparison point. I'm 65 and with Discipline Aura I have Armour: 1230 ES: 1961

So your ES is looking better than mine at the moment, though I am admittedly going more hybrid in my choices. I wouldn't say that I'm having a ton of problems, but I do die once a play session probably.

[swirly]

Oh and since I have a linked red-green-blue with nothing I need to put in it I am playing with Flame Totem + Blind + Faster Casting. Just to see if it does anything noticeable.

I've given up on this experiment. It just didn't seem worth while. Too low of a chance for too little affect. Instead I have gone back to something I used when younger and am loving it. Decoy Totem! You wouldn't think it would be needed with all the minions, but sometimes you get a mob or two stuck on you and just can't get rid of them. I've noticed this causing some of my deaths and the decoy solves it. Right now it dies in a hit or two, but it is enough to get the mobs off me and that is all I really need. I don't think I have seen any re-target me after since I back off after dropping it. Helpful against annoying ranged mobs like the Arcmages in barracks too. Gives them something other than me to shoot. Right now I have it with a totem resist gem and an increased aoe gem just cause I have the slots to support that. I'm thinking this one might stick around even if I need to remove supports eventually.

[swirly]

Well I have now killed Piety on Merciless at level 66. She dropped the unique named Aurumvorax. Sort of interesting. 45 resist all, but minus 20 rarity find. I would never use it since I over-value rarity find, but it is interesting.

Piety killed me once when I had her down to around 15%. Feel like I could have killed her without dying if I played a little better. Kind of disappointed that there was no real end. It never said "Congrats! You finished!" or anything. Just back to Sarn with nothing saying what to do next. I have 6 maps. 5 white and one blue. As far as I can tell the game has never told me what to do with them. Tooltip says they can be used at the Eternal Laboratory, but I'm going to have to google where that is. This is still Open Beta so that is excusable though I suppose. They could fix all these complaints before release. I'm doubtful they will though.

Overall I would say the game is decent, but lacks a polish that I've grown accustom to and don't think will be added after Beta. I'll keep playing for now. Try out these maps and such. It's been enjoyable and I don't regret playing the game. Despite me going to keep playing it, I don't think I would really recommend it to anyone though. If I had to rate it I would give it a rating of 'meh'. Decent, but unexciting. Apparently that is good enough for me to stick with for the time being heh.

Edit: Ah ha! Apparently I had read a dialog about the Eternal Laboratory from Lady Dialla and just never processed or paid enough attention to know that it added a waypoint location. So there is in game directions for it, but easy to miss in my opinion. Especially since by the time you get to Merciless you tend to not pay attention to the dialogs as much.

[shoju]

Grats sir.

I hope to get there soon. I made significant progress today. Thanks in large part from mr. Lochnar giving me the sexy wand. My mana regen is getting to the point where it's as much as the cost for arc.

I would like to get closer to 70 before I try and kill her, mainly because I still need to flesh out some things from the changeover from life to ES. 4 more points would make me feel an awful lot better about my ES. It would allow me to fill out the ES nodes behind CI, and should put me closer to 2900 ES.

I could still use some better gear.
I'm ok with my helm.
I'm ok with my wand (Thanks so much Loch)
I'm "ok" with my shield. I could use a better one, Mainly because There is a +armor on it, and a +life on it.
Obviously I'm ok with my boots, and my Neck
My rings are ok.
My Chest is "meh"
My Gloves are "eh"

So, I'm thinking Once I get to the Docks, Which should be soon, I'm going to go ahead, and spend some time farming therer, and see if I can get some good gear.

Swirly, if you would like to run the Unique Map with Monty and I, I would love to have you. I was talking with a couple of people from the forums, and they told me that I should wait until 70 or so before trying it. They said it was an incredibly difficult map.

[LochnarITB]

I'm ok with my wand (Thanks so much Loch)

You're quite welcome. I throw so much gear at vendors for scrolls and orbs, it was nice to find a piece someone would be excited about!

[swirly]

Swirly, if you would like to run the Unique Map with Monty and I, I would love to have you.

I leave town tomorrow (Monday) and come back the following Monday. Then I have raiding that night. I'd be up for joining you sometime after that, but it feels like a long time for you to have to wait. So I would say to do it without me if you get your levels before then. If you still haven't done it at that point then just tell me when and I will be there as long as it isn't Monday evenings. You said it was a Unique of Crypts right? I have a white version of that if it would be helpful to run that first so we have a clue what we are getting into.

[shoju]

So I've taken a little break from my witch the past couple of days, and I'm leveling my ranger. Talk about being clueless... I'm in the mid 20's now, and I'm sort of, kind of, building what I think a Physical Bow ranger would be? I uh... Yeah, I don't know much about this side of the skill tree.

My ranger, build and gear

Right now, I'm using

Puncture
Split Arrow
Poison Arrow
rain of Arrows
Bear Trap
Fire Trap

I like the idea of puncture, because they should be moving towards me, triggering the heavier bleed. That's the thought anyway. My main AoE stuff is the Poison Arrow, and then Split Arrows, unless they get grouped up on me, then it's the Fire Trap + Rain of Arrows.

At this point, I'm just sort of tinkering with different skills, and while this isn't "main" potential, I do enjoy gunning things down. (Would LOVE to see a Crossbow model in the game BTW)

Should I go more life and evasion since I'm going to try the acrobatics? (So far it's been interesting)
How many Bow Nodes should I go for? I had sort of "put off" getting more defensive stuff while I was just sorting out getting to acrobatics. This is really as far as I had thought ahead. i figured at this point, I'll probably need to figure out how I'm going to stay alive.

I have some life nodes nearby on this (13 of my next 14 points could all be life if I wanted) Or I could start making my way towards beefing up my Evasion, something I'm sure I'm going to want to do at some point.

If this character were to live long enough, my thought at the end of the day was:

Puncture - Life Leech - Mana Leech
Rain of Arrows - Life on Hit - Mana Leech - Chain?
Poison Arrow (on ranged attack totem) - LMP
Fire Trap
Bear Trap

I'm not sure what I would link to the traps, and I'm not sure about auras, but this is about as far as I had planned ahead.

Thoughts? Am I way off? Is this a terrible Idea?

[MonTy]

So I've taken a little break from my witch the past couple of days

I've also taken a break from my main and playing a ranger. Focusing on Rain of Arrows, but with elemental damage. The reason for this is because Rain of Arrows always hits, and if it crits, well elemental effects start happening (shock, burn, freeze). But people have successfully built physical ranger bows, you'll get nice tooltip DPS.

Puncture
Split Arrow
Poison Arrow
rain of Arrows
Bear Trap
Fire Trap

All good skills. I haven't used puncture past early game, so not sure how good it is later on. But everything else is usable in Maps if geared correctly. Poison Arrow tends to fall off in Merciless, but less so if you can keep upgrading to a high physical bow.

Be careful when using Chain/LMP. It severely cuts off your damage (but hits more targets). Chain won't work with RoA, but it's good with Split Arrow, since Split Arrow already has an inherit LMP effect. Personally I'd stick with Poison Arrow and Rain of Arrows since you're going physical damage. Be sure to have Temporal Chains so they stay in your Poison Arrow cloud and your Rain of Arrows.

Going Evasion is tough. Very tough. You'll need high life for spike damage. When you get hit, you'll get hit hard. Also you may have problems with mobs that attack quickly for small amounts. People have tried, I watched a streamer do it but stop in frustration.

But if you're going for it, I'd continue and just see how it goes. Worse case scenario is that you make it your group character, so when you play with others you won't be the main target (and have high dps).

Just be sure to get more life. You'll need Int more than Str, due to curses, so you'll want to pickup those nodes. If you're going Evasion there's no reason not to get Arrow Dodging. If I were to draw up a quick skill tree, I'd go with this. If you need more Resistances go for Nullification Passive which is in the Shadow area, it'll get you more Evasion as well. Lastly, don't forget the Aura Grace.

[shoju]

Opened the Lab, Went on a my first map run. A Dried Lake I had in the bank. Didn't get anything of note, but it was a good time, and I'm almost ready to hit 67, unless something else happens, and my zombies stop attacking, and I die. That was a fun bug this morning.

[MonTy]

The new Merciless Piety is no laughing matter. Her cold form took off nearly 2k HP each hit, with 85res.

I really like the changes to the monster levels, catacombs is also an ok farming spot if you're out of maps or want to do chest runs.

Had a scare with my 81, was cruising along a lvl 68 spider lair map when my HP starting dropping when no monsters were around. It went down to the hundreds (out of 5k) before I was able to log out, thankfully in time. Buy I never saw what was hitting me.

Will probably be playing a bit less due to the D3 patch. Enjoying the fast paced combat.

[shoju]

I finally was able to hit 67. God that felt like it was never going to end.

I'm in the barracks area, but That was a little rough. My gear is desperately bad at this point. I think I'm going to farm docks to 70, and see if I can get anything upgraded. After that, I'll probably head over to the catacombs and farm a little there. I've got 3 more maps + the unique map to do, but right now, I'm really focused on upgrading my gear to a point where I can take on Piety. If her cold form is taking off 2k per hit with 85 Resist, she's going to kill me and my 2500 ES and CI and only 75 Resist. And Piety seems to be a real bitch about killing my minions right off the bat. On Cruel, she destroyed all of my minions within 10 seconds, and I was scrambling to get more minions, raised, and keep my skellie totem up.

If she's no laughing matter, I'm seriously going to need my gear.

[shoju]

Gravicious Merc was easier than any other version of him.

On the other hand, the Barracks, and the charging Shield guys are murdering me. I got out of the way point, Dropped my skellie totem so that I had some protection and they just ran past the skellie totem, and the skellies, and pounded me into the ground. 2 charges and I was dead. the second, I didn't even have to time hit my granite flask.

On another note, I was finally able to get my chest to link up as a 4L, so I've come out 100 Mana ahead thanks to my reduced mana gem and my auras. It hasn't put me far enough ahead to allow me to run another aura (yet) but it has me wondering a couple of things.

1.) Should I continue to use my current strategy? I'm currently using Arc, but i've backed out of the extra Shock Nodes for the time being to help build up my survivability. Is arc still going to be worth running to spread shock? I think so, because it adds the most "benefit" from what I can see. BY getting Shock on my targets, it's upping the DPS of my subsequent Arcs, as well as the DPS of my minions. And I've actually found with this strategy, I like running one of the mages from the barracks (that also arc and cast Lightning Thorns), and 2 of the mages from the Battlefront (who cast Spark and Lightning Thorns)

I'm torn though. I'm not sure what I would replace it with, But I'm definitely open to suggestions.

2.) Am I running the right auras? I'm running
Clarity
Discipline
Wrath

I would love to get to a point where I'm running Vitality as well, but it's a flat 40% reserve. Will that be affected by Reduced Mana as well? I'm not sure what other auras I could run, but It has me wondering.

3.) Does Life Leech work on Spells? (Support Gem) I'm curious if I could add Life Leech to my Arc, and then run down to pick up Ghost Reaver, and leech back my ES. I'm just not sure if the Support Gem works on it.

4.) I've noticed something odd with my Granite Flask I'm using. It's a 20% Flask. It has
77% Increased Armour for the Duration.
I currently have just my shield that gives me armour. It gives 162
I have +100% Armour from my Passives. That puts me at 177% Armour for the duration
324 Armour Walking around
When I pop the Granite Flask, I Should go to
((162 + 4000)*1.77) + (162+4000)
(4162)*1.77 + (4162)
11528.74 Armour.

Instead, I'm up over 15k.

Am I not doing this right? Is it actually taking it as
4162*2 = 8324 (for the extra 100% from passive)
And then 8324 * 1.77 = 14733.48 (For the increase from the flask)?

But then, that's still ~500 Armor less than what the Character sheet is showing..

Color me confused.