Path of Exile free to play in about six hours.

[LochnarITB]

Color me confused.

I've never had much success of any calculations coming out the way I expect they should. I've gotten to the point where I just look for an improvement and then go with the numbers it ends up showing me. It kinda sucks for planning, but I've said before that I'm really not micro-managing with PoE. If I seem to be lacking in something, I look for the easiest/closest way to improve the situation. That's such a huge contrast to when I played WoW. I had to know exactly what the results of a change would be. It was, of course, much easier to do with all the folks having dug so deep into it and calculators everywhere to show players the way.

[MonTy]

On the other hand, the Barracks, and the charging Shield guys are murdering me...I didn't even have to time hit my granite flask.

Yea they're brutal. Just be aware you have to hit your granite flask before they charge. If you chug your flask while they're charging, the granite flask does not count for the charged hit. Have to get used to preemptively chugging your granite.

1.) Should I continue to use my current strategy? I'm currently using Arc.

I haven't used Arc in late-game, but I do know others that have. Like you said it's a good and quick way to spread shock status on enemies. Not the highest damage but faster casting will help get those shocks in.

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

Clarity and Discipline are amazing. Wrath is used for attacks only, meaning bows and melee attacks. Not spells. Go with Purity for help with resistances. If you have decent Dex you may want to consider Grace as Evasion can be amazing.

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.

Yes Reduced Mana is crucial for percent based auras. With a quality reduced mana, talents, and gear you can get up to 7 auras. But for your purposes I'd go for Purity. After that, and if you ever find a quality reduced mana, go for Grace if you have Dex, or Vitality if you have more strength.

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.

Yes, LL works on Spells. If you have a high enough ES, it's really good with Ghost Reaver. A lot of people use LL on spells, I do 90% of the time since I play Hardcore.

4.) I've noticed something odd with my Granite Flask I'm using.

Not 100% sure on the granite/armor math. I'll let you know if I sort it out.

BTW, did you ever find out why you were summoning extra minions at times?

[MonTy]

There's also some updates coming to the game on May 29th.

-More party loot allocation options
-Direct melee buffs
-Rebalance of monster damage
-Improved resync code. The scope of this patch doesn't include the more complex changes to the action prediction system, but will hopefully prevent deaths by resyncing more aggressively when needed.
-Some secret awesomeness that I'm not able to reveal just yet. It's bigger than the other changes in the patch.

I'm thinking the "secret awesomeness" is the ability to trade outside of the game. For example you make a post on the forums with your gear for sale, and someone offers you currency, you can accept and the transaction automatically happens, or reject (with a message?). Or have a set price and have people buy it automatically.

Melee sorely needs a buff, so that'll help a lot of characters out. The party options are also much needed. I don't know how many of you have partied, but it's really frustrating being "boxed" out of your item. People can surround any item that drops which make it impossible for you to reach it in time before it goes free for all.

[shoju]

I've been using wrath mainly for my minions, as another way to get the shocked stacks up.
I'll probably be looking into getting Ghost Reaver going. I'm not sure how long it will take me, but I'm thinking that it could be a good boost.

Well, then I'll probably start working on getting my reduced Mana to quality up.

I'm not sure what I'm going to work on getting the quality up on first, I picked up a 5% raise zombie, so I'm not sure what to go with to start.

But, I'm glad I finally have the links on the chest.

[shoju]

2 more levels, and then the experience penalty will kick in at the docks. farming that place for EXP is going great.
Farming it for drops.... Well, This game hates me when it comes to upgrading my gear.

I blew through 67 last night with no deaths in about 2 hours at the docks. Once I hit 70, I'm going to give the final temple a go, and see what happens. I'm sort of itching to do another map though.

I have 4+ the Unique to do.
I have a Crypt map: -23 PLayer Resists + 2 unique bosses
I have a dungeon map: 19.6 Chaos Damage per sec (lol at CI) and increased monster variety? Need to read up on that one.
Then I have an unrolled Crypt Map, and unrolled Dungeon Map, and the unique map.

I'll probably chance up the two unrolled maps, and see what I can get, but I think I'm going to try the dungeon map next. The Chaos Damage will not be a problem, just need to read up on the monster variety roll.

[MonTy]

I was pretty bummed about my first attempt at a level 70 map. I had made it 20 quality, alch'd it, chaos'd it, and the stats were very good. +70 IQ and 30ish quality. Only to get a map full of undead rhoas and tons of summoners. I tried as hard as I could but there was just too many summoners and rhoas that were constantly putting me near death. Had to give it up. I could have used a devouring totem or det. dead, but after killing about ten summoners and 30 rhoas I saw that I had about 10x more of that to kill. No thanks!

[LennyLen]

I played on the test Australian server today. 50ms ping is soooo much nicer than 250+

[shoju]

I experienced the box out last night in a public group.

Grouped to farm docks, Unique Robe Dropped I'm unsure of how tabula rasa looks when dropped, but it was a unique simple robe. So Tabula, or the other one. It was mine. I was excited. Well, I got boxed out from it, the timer went off, and YAY! someone else got it.

I'll never group with people I don't know again.

[MonTy]

I experienced the box out last night in a public group.

Yep, really horrible, and I'm sure it'll get fixed soon. I believe they said there will be additional party options in the near future, so maybe we can set it so everyone gets their own loot.

I've lost a lot to this as well, with no chance of getting it due to the box out. I respecced my 81 to Lightning Arrow, which has been much easier to run maps with than Ground Slam/Glacial, but it's also much harder to get your drops in time.

Really wish I had a softcore character to group with you. I'm sure I'll die soon enough, or like I said, if you want to make a new character I'll be down for leveling with you.

[shoju]

I have a level 1 Duelist that is sitting on the beach. I haven't done anything with him yet, as I'm trying to figure out what to do with a duelist. I'd like to do something as a 2h'd sword guy, Not sure if I want to do something elemental or physical. I've seen some interesting ele cleave things, but I'm just not sure what to do. The Duelist tree seems just so foreign to me.

[MonTy]

Duelist is incredible for physical Leap Slam builds. This is because Leap Slam does not factor in weapon speed, only the +attack speed modifiers, and the Duelist has some good passives that support that.

He's definitely not the best for elemental cleave, which is better suited for Templar or Marauder. Generally you'll want two 1-handed weapons for Ele cleave as well.

If you go for something like this, you'd have to go for a decision on whether to run Auras or take the Blood Magic Keystone. I prefer taking the Keystone until I get five or six links. Here's a tree I drafted up quick. You may need more Int nodes depending how much +stat gear you have, to run curses. Amplify near the Templar tree is crucial for this build, as it'll really help with your Leap Slam AoE range.

For gear and links you'll want to start with Leap Slam, Added Fire Damage, Faster Attacks, Melee Physical (RRRG). For single target use the same thing but Heavy Strike in place of Leap Slam. Grace is mandatory for this build, and equip it as soon as you can use it (lvl 31). be sure to have Iron Reflxes keystone by then, and link it with reduced mana so it takes less life from you. Other skills would be decoy totem, Vulnerability, Enfeeble, and you may want to link them to Faster Casting, Inc. AoE, and/or Inc. Duration.

End-game for this build would be getting five or six links and switching over to Auras, which would require a bit of re-speccing and be around lvl 80.

[eppie]

I started playing this again (well the little time I have) after having had a closed beta invite a year or so ago.
Of course I had to start all over again, but nice that there is a 3rd area now (and probably more).

What really annoys me is that in area 3 (marketplace and farther) it keeps crashing, giving some errors. I read on the forum that more people have this and there is no real cure for it.

So you just have to be luckt you find a waypoint in time, or finisgh the quest in time.
Hopefully this will stop once I finish area 3.

For the rest....very nice game.

[MonTy]

Plan to start a default character tonight. Will be making a cold crit caster (Freezing Pulse/Ice Spear). I've had one in HC that I retired, due to how squishy it is. But it'll be perfect for SC.

I'm not bringing down any items so may be a bit weak leveling. but I'd love to level with anyone if they're interested.

[shoju]

I'll gladly level with you, if I can keep up with you.

[shoju]

Piety dead. F that fight, and the stupid way that I lose all of my minions in 5 seconds.

[LochnarITB]

Piety dead. F that fight, and the stupid way that I lose all of my minions in 5 seconds.

Grats! I still haven't gotten to her (the final one) in merciless. I really hate the last level before her, the shooter whipper guys kill me so easily seemingly from off screen. I'm mostly just trying to grind a couple levels more. I really don't want to give her a fair fight.

[shoju]

Piety dead. F that fight, and the stupid way that I lose all of my minions in 5 seconds.

Grats! I still haven't gotten to her (the final one) in merciless. I really hate the last level before her, the shooter whipper guys kill me so easily seemingly from off screen. I'm mostly just trying to grind a couple levels more. I really don't want to give her a fair fight.

Yeah, I could imagine that without my legion of undead, it would be a lot more difficult. I've actually started another witch, and I'm debating on if I'm going to take this one freezing pulse, or Power Siphon. I'd rather do PS, but at this point, I'm still up in the air.

[shoju]

Anyone have an Exalt they can part with? (kidding sort of)

I have a killer chest now, and I can exalt it for 1 last prefix, and my options are:

+ES (my desire)
+Life (would I guess make it pretty sellable)
Thorns (FU THORNS FU)

It's already sitting pretty with +Mana, +%ES, and triple resists. If I can knock it out of the park with the +ES, I doubt I'll need another chest piece for a long time.

[MonTy]

Piety dead.

Grats! And impressive, after the buff to monster level she is not easy. Did you die at all? They increased the chance for maps to drop from Piety now, so just think, you can farm her for maps *eyes roll*.

Anyone have an Exalt they can part with? (kidding sort of)

What's the chest stats, exactly? How much ES total so far? What's the item level (this is important to determine how easy it is to six socket/six link). Exalts are extremely valuable and rare and should not be used except for items that are already have all of your needed stats. Essentially you'd want +ES, +%ES, +Res already, not exalting to wish you'll get one of those.

[MonTy]

New patch coming up, really disappointed they're nerfing curse effects on major bosses. Enfeeble and other curses will be 50% less effective against Piety, Vaal (urgh), Merveil, and Brutus. Other map bosses will have a 40% effectiveness.

This is the opposite of what melee needs. The problem is melee has to get in close range to do damage, but they don't necessarily do more damage, and they don't even have more defenses. I respecced my lvl 82 to a bow build and I'm clearing maps three times as fast. That's with a pretty bad bow, compared to my 2H maul which is one of the higest DPS mauls in Hardcore league.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/388195