Path of Exile free to play in about six hours.

[LennyLen]

I don't care if the tree is the worst thing ever. I'm making a "Prot Paladin". 1her, shield, and all of the shield talents I can.

I like it. All my builds have been fairly standard, so I'll have to come up with a quirky one sometime soon

ES/CI Wand Marauder?

[bldavis]

funny shoju...that is the same build i was going on MY templar....

[Jabberwolky]

I'm currently working on a Templar. I believe I just hit 20 today. Enjoying the game so far. Jabberwolky is my name. Looking forward to linking up with you guys.

[shoju]

Is anyone playing a shadow/duelist/ranger? My stash is overflowing with green gems that I will NEVER use, and I'm hoping to Unload the "good ones" to people who want them, and then use the bad ones to get some LR Gear.

That's pretty funny that we're going for the same build BL, I didn't figure anyone out there would be so "shield crazy".

Jabber, that's awesome to hear you're playing. Will have to see if I can catch up to you in game.

[shoju]

Dear Jerks who took every single awesome L5R name in the freaking game: You suck.
Deak Jerks who took all the "interesting" L5R Names in the freaking game: You suck even more.

OH well, At least I was able to get Onisu for my Marauder.

[shoju]

Normal done!

Level 40, and here I am wondering what do I do? Push on through Cruel? Farm up some gear? My gear is a hot mess. Running the Strand back to Lionseye was a breeze for sure. Easier than the end of Act III for sure.

But, my weapon is lagging behind (it's a magic item with +physical damage, but nothing else) My hands are from the teens, I've only held onto them because of the resistances, My belt is a rare level 18, My boots are good. My Chest is good. One ring is from 19, the other is from 24. My neck is a +19 att from 22, My helm is from the early 20's. But, I never found anyting good while leveling, and I'm still a little sketchy on trying to craft my own yet.

I have to say, the piety fight was AWESOME, even if it was sort of a letdown in difficulty after that vicious Melee guy on level 2. I swear, I died to him quite often.

[Jabberwolky]

I keep going back and forth between the templar, marauder, duelist, and shadow. No clue who i'll stay with as of yet. I think I'm about finished with the templar. I do enjoy the marauder. I'm focusing him down to 2hand maces with bloodmagic. The templar has been built so far as a tank but honestly I'm starting to get bored there. I'm going to focus on leveling the shadow up to the 20's and see how I like that class.

[MonTy]

Normal done!

Level 40, and here I am wondering what do I do? Push on through Cruel? Farm up some gear? My gear is a hot mess. Running the Strand back to Lionseye was a breeze for sure. Easier than the end of Act III for sure.

But, my weapon is lagging behind (it's a magic item with +physical damage, but nothing else) My hands are from the teens, I've only held onto them because of the resistances, My belt is a rare level 18, My boots are good. My Chest is good. One ring is from 19, the other is from 24. My neck is a +19 att from 22, My helm is from the early 20's. But, I never found anyting good while leveling, and I'm still a little sketchy on trying to craft my own yet.

I have to say, the piety fight was AWESOME, even if it was sort of a letdown in difficulty after that vicious Melee guy on level 2. I swear, I died to him quite often.

Grats on the progress. I'd recommend fighting your way to the Ledge and running that a few times. It's really great XP, mob density, and easy to run. Then go back and do the side-quests.

I hear you on gear, my new Marauder is having a hell of a time with upgrades. Finally got some, but it was a rough 10 levels. He just hit 48 in hardcore and hoping to finish up Act 2 Cruel tomorrow. He's kind of gravitating towards the same type of build from my previous Marauder, but I realized I can just undo the talent blood magic when I have sufficient gear to link in my blood magic gems. I'll be switching to blood magic skill gems instead of the passive in order to maintain the Auras Vitality, Determination, and Grace for extra Armor & Life per second. Should help my survivability in hardcore greatly.

Anyhow, I hope the drops improve for you. And yes, the Piety fight is pretty rad. Don't you worry, she gets much harder on Cruel & Merciless :)

[LennyLen]

I'd recommend fighting your way to the Ledge and running that a few times. It's really great XP, mob density, and easy to run.

I'll second this. I was in the same position going into cruel difficulty - all my gear was low level. I spent a few hours farming the Ledge and replaced nearly every thing I had plus gained four levels in the process.

[shoju]

Will start making my way to the ledge then. I do find it odd that I can farm Hillock.... Not that he drops much, but It's jsut weird that he is so easy to get to, and so infinitely farmable. I've killed him 3 tmies, and I've picked up no less than 3 magics from him, as well as a handful of superior items.

I know most of you will probably be higher level than me, but If you have chars <35 and are looking for gear or gems, I'm keeping a list of what I have to get rid of over on the PoE forums. I have a freaking awesome Rare Shield for level 34 (caster), and a Good 1h'd Mace. Both are already 6 modifers, and 3S 2L. I also have a pretty sweet Templar Chest, with 5 modifers, one of them being Chaos Resist. It sadly only has one socket, and I have no orbs to try and make it nifty.

If Lurkers are interested in things, I'm not too worried about the price. I'm more interested in helping Lurkers than making profit.

Piety was a great fight. I think my build made it pretty easy. I burnt through my flasks to recover from the lag spike I took at the beginning of the fight, and then the "phases" of the fight with Life Leech, Life on Hit, and Warlord's Mark really stabilized me. But I guess now that I'm in cruel, I'm going to need to start looking into getting more resist. -20% doesn't seem too terrible, but I'm only running at about %75 Resist on everything but Chaos. I can't seem to find any good gear that has Chaos resist on it.

One last thing, What level do maps start? Is that a solely "End Game Merciless Difficulty" type thing? Or should I be keeping an eye out for some soon?

[MonTy]

One last thing, What level do maps start? Is that a solely "End Game Merciless Difficulty" type thing? Or should I be keeping an eye out for some soon?

They start dropping in level 60 zones, so in some Act 2 Merciless maps (Church Dungeon, The Cave, Dead Thicket, & Waterfall Cave). All of Act 3 is 61+

Mobs in maps start at level 66 and you'll usually find one every other run, so it's usually recommended to farm up a dozen+ maps before you start, so you'll have less of a chance to run dry right away. I do recommend this.

Remember you can turn your maps magic and rare as well, but I recommend saving alchs for higher end maps. Some of the easier/better map stats were Area Size, Pack Size, More Rare & More Magic.

Be careful of the bosses. Lost my 72 Marauder to Brutus with 3.5k life. I wouldn't attempt him again without 5k+ life and ~10k armor (not that armor helps a lot against hits that big).

I do hope they increase the drop rate of maps. The only time I've been bored with the game is when I ran out of maps and had to farm Act 3 zones. A lot of people run Docks but I prefer to mix it up with all of the later A3 zones. Still would rather run maps as they were hilariously random and fun. I won't forget the first map I ran that had zero of the charging Rhoa's so I figured I was safe from them being in this zone. Next thing you know a massive boss Rhoa comes charging at me and knocks me to a quater of my life after I barely got off a granite flask.

[shoju]

So I was cruising along breezing through A1, and had the quest to go to the Fetid Pools. I thought... "I'm going great!" Then I hit the pools, and got CRUSHED

Wait. Crushed isn't even a good descriptor. I got destroyed. it was terrible. So I went to the ledge, and and started farming. I'm not sure what I'm going to do to survive the pools. the charge/knockback of the skele bird things just destroyed me.

[MonTy]

So I was cruising along breezing through A1, and had the quest to go to the Fetid Pools. I thought... "I'm going great!" Then I hit the pools, and got CRUSHED

Wait. Crushed isn't even a good descriptor. I got destroyed. it was terrible. So I went to the ledge, and and started farming. I'm not sure what I'm going to do to survive the pools. the charge/knockback of the skele bird things just destroyed me.

I've heard more hardcore deaths from that area than any other place. Those undead rhoa's are a serious threat in random end-game maps as well.

That summoner is a real PITA too, fighting him in Merciless HC was probably one of the hardest fights I had since he decided to get smart and run across the map. He casts resurrect soo fast :(

[LennyLen]

That summoner is a real PITA too, fighting him in Merciless HC was probably one of the hardest fights I had since he decided to get smart and run across the map. He casts resurrect soo fast

That's where having a high crit-chance Ice Witch comes in handy. Raise Undead does not work on frozen shattered corpses.

And I just use corpse explosion on any others.

[MonTy]

That's where having a high crit-chance Ice Witch comes in handy. Raise Undead does not work on frozen shattered corpses. :)

I've always kept that idea in the back of my mind, but I never have any free gem slots :P

Working my way through Merciless with Marauder #2 in Hardcore. Just about to hit 60 and finding this non-blood magic spec to have much better survivability, even with worse gear than my previous Marauder. Those Auras seriously help, especially Determination. Before going 100% into Armor I wanted to try out a split defense/evasion build, but unfortunately I couldn't even pass through Brutus on Merciless without investing fully into Armor. As soon as I took Iron Reflexes it gave me a huge armor increase thanks to the Auras Grace and Determination, went from around 27 physical reduction to almost 55. Brutus fell shortly after.

Now I have a lot of farming to do in Fellshire due to my horrible gear, I'm still wearing a few 40 life & 10 resist magic items. I literally had five or six times better gear with my first Marauder by this point :P

What's everyone else up to in the game? I'd be interested in hearing the play style and skills you guys are using.

[shoju]

Gained a few levels, upgraded some gear, and tried the pool again. That place is going to ruin me. I'm going to have to level up, and then just suicide run it, so that I don't lose a bunch of Xp. I don't know what the deal is, but the Rhoa packs just roast me. Maybe I don't have enough HP? I'm at 43 and have just over 1k HP.

[MonTy]

Gained a few levels, upgraded some gear, and tried the pool again. That place is going to ruin me. I'm going to have to level up, and then just suicide run it, so that I don't lose a bunch of Xp. I don't know what the deal is, but the Rhoa packs just roast me. Maybe I don't have enough HP? I'm at 43 and have just over 1k HP.

Biggest help I've found is to cast totems ahead of where you walk, to have the rhoa's charge it instead. Also groups them up nicely for your AoE spells. I think it's a tad low on hp? I forget what I had at that level, but it was certainly higher, want to say 1.5ish.

So I lost my 2nd Marauder (lvl 60) last night to dsync, was a tough loss as I had hopes for getting him further than my 72. Ahh well, it's giving me a good reason to try other classes. Currently playing a caster Shadow who plans to focus on cold spells, but I'm not quite sure which ones are the best. Thankfully I have a stockpile of cold spell gems to try out, so I'll see what's up.

Anyhow, good luck with the fetid. Let me know if you're absolutely stuck and need help, have my Marauder on SC available, but I'm currently playing under "Ziralith".

[shoju]

I'm going to work on my spec a little, and I'm going to try running with my Decoy Totem Again, (I have an 11% er) and I'm going to do a little more farming. While I've "improved" my gear, I realized it still does leave a few things to be desired.

[Frag]

Btw, Shoju, make sure to pick up "Punishment" for your 'Paladin', you won't regret it with those skills.

[shoju]

I will have to find Punishment. I haven't seen it yet.

I'm 46, and into Act II Cruel. The totem was perfect for getting through the Fetid Pool. Now, to try and to Act II right this time. I ended up having to do most of it in darkness last time, because I didn't realize that the Vaal line was the "end" of the Act, so I pushed through it fast.

Thanks for the tips, I'm hoping now to get to level 50+ before I even attempt the last boss of Act II. That thing was a suicide run in Act 1 for me because of the lag.