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[Descan]

Yeah. Fireball and wand as witch, bow and I think ice-shot? Or burning arrow. As ranger. Driftwood scepter and glacial hammer as templar. Dual-strike and a shank as the shadow.

Everything else is random.

[Aklyon]

1h weapon (don't remember which) and Spectral throw for scion.

[Descan]

And whatever the duelist/marauder gets.

[Karkov]

So I finally beat the final boss on Merciless (not hardcore), that...  Guh.

33 deaths.  No uniques.

[Seriyu]

So I've tried to play this game, but I have the same issue as with every other D2 like, I have no idea what to save. I don't really know what mods are particularly good and what ones are garbage. I mean I assume stuff like +% damage is good, but what about life drain, mana drain, etc? Is it just something I'll have to figure out?

It's a kind've bizzare neurosis I didn't discover I had until I played D2.

Also, while we're at little nitpicks with the game, is it still required to basically solely chase life nodes around the grid or is the game a little bit more forgiving with characters that aren't constantly getting as much health as possible now? It's been a while since I've played.

[Karkov]

Health is still ridiculously good.  Lower life builds are possible if you stack tons of armor, but you tend to explode like a piñata at a frat party with low armor/health. 

On the topic of good modifiers:  Life Leech and Mana Leech are good, but you only need about 2% to keep you alive.  High armor and resistance values are really good.  Weapons eventually can get a +% physical damage modifier that are great, and base health is really good if you're stacking life nodes.  I have a friend who is determined to get himself killed via item rarity mods, which seems sorta like a waste to me.

Basically when I see an item, if it's a piece of armor I look for:
1)  % increased armor(or whatever else)
2)  Flat Health
3)  Resistances

On weapons I usually look for:
1)  % increased damage
2)  Attack speed
3)  Anything else.

Anything and everything else is gravy.  Sockets can be fixed via Jeweller's, Chromatics, and Fusings.  If it's a white and a tier above mine, I'll alchemy the thing if it's a good base (I'm probably going to stop that since I finally hit map drops).  Uniques are good in situational or build use, but they're ridiculously difficult to get.  I do any orb work I'm going to do on the item before I use Quality items on them; changing the orbs gets rid of quality on the item.

Hope that helps.

[Seriyu]

That very much does! I'll have to give this another shot sometime. Thanks!

[nenjin]

Well they've totally changed the leveling curve since the last time I played. My Scion is in the early 40s, about 8 levels behind my Shadow who is in Act 3 Merciless. The Scepter of God is murdering me, Caliga Imperatrix one shots me to the point I have to whittle him down by exploiting LOS.

The need for resists is, like, insane now. If you don't have 60% across the board by mid Act 3, prepare for the hurt.

[Cthulhu]

What should I be looking at passive and ability wise for a duelist?  Right now I've put most of my points in the strength boosts and now that I've got a good amount of health I'm heading down the Life slots to get to Master of the arena for the big percent hp and strength boosts.  As for abilities I'm mainly using Reave, the dex(? It's green, i'm assuming that means dex) ability that gets a bigger aoe for each enemy it hits.

This passive skill "tree" is fucking crazy.

[Astral]

Dual wielding, you'll want to pick up some tanky traits along with lots of physical damage increases, something like this:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBmSu9gavFR35lTYTZmy0XHVeXYEER1b6n0k3AD-_jY3A0kyXfG_qkGVjbU9-bg4TvdO1672BLBS1AoJ65IWASIF6Lz_i2QU4qKaU=

Notable passives include Iron Reflexes, which gives the equivalent in armor for any evasion rating, while removing evasion bonuses from Dexterity (not as bad as it sounds; your mitigation goes through the roof, without having to worry about a varying chance to negate damage). Add that to the dual wield block portion, and you become fairly tanky, fairly quickly, with fast strike that, if geared correctly, return mana and life on each (double) hit. Later, you can pick up the skill that makes it so that you cannot evade (which you won't be anyway) but can never be stunned, with practically no detriment at that point.

I'm having a blast with my duelist so far, much easier to level than my summoner Witch, though I feel it's worthwhile to level her for the initial gearless farming person.

[Facekillz058]

When I was playing my duelist, I had a two-handed sword and used cleave with a life steal gem on it.
Needless to say, everything died and I didn't.

[Biowraith]

My duelist (level 27 so far) has gone 1h+shield, and initially grabbed all the melee damage, +life and +liferegen from his starting area, along with the evade/armour node that removes movement speed penalties, and the 12% resist keystone at the bottom (which is conveniently just through a hefty chunk of +life and +liferegen).  I then grabbed the mana-on-kill nodes (conveniently just along from the resist node) as his Infernal Blow + Melee Splash + Added Fire Damage combo was kinda taxing.

Currently his build is:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBBS0Y2x3oIWAl30CgQ-dHflPfWNtgS2VNbml07XTxeu-E2YTvmSubg565q8Wsr72BvqfAD8S40k3V-OSx

Gear obviously plays a big part of it too, but so far he's steamrolling through everything and is easily my most survivable character - it's rare that either health or mana drops below 80% for him, and he's facetanked all the bosses he's met.

Longer term I plan to continue to boost his tankiness - more life, armour, evasion, block, regen, leech, and some attack speed and physical damage where I can get it en route to the tanky stuff.  I've got a couple possibly dumb (or at least sub-optimal) things I want to try with him - if it turns out they're stupid newbie mistakes I've got 6 more characters to fall back on :p

[Karkov]

If you go into the game with the mindset of, "The Passive tree is for defense, my skills and gear are for damage," you'll probably do just fine.  I've got a Marauder but I've built into the duelist, scion, and even the templar's tree to steal all of their life/regen passives.  It seems dumb, but it works wonderfully.

[nenjin]

I found I preferred dual strike to cleave or double strike. Just seems to do more single target damage than either of the others while dualwielding.

Dual Strike + Life on Hit + Melee Splash = Love.

If you go into the game with the mindset of, "The Passive tree is for defense, my skills and gear are for damage," you'll probably do just fine.

Until you hit bosses and uniques in Cruel that take 5 minutes of uninterrupted DPS to kill. I'm not saying the Passive Tree shouldn't be relied on mostly for defense and stats to wear the gear you need.....but you shouldn't slouch on offense. That and I find that consistent weapon upgrades get slimmer and slimmer as time goes on, because your socket needs continue to get more specific.

[Karkov]

Until you hit bosses and uniques in Cruel that take 5 minutes of uninterrupted DPS to kill.

I admit, they're there, but with the extra regen/leech and stuff I don't have too many problems with them.  If you get to the point where you're using one skill consistently (as I am), you don't have as many socket problems as you used to have, that and it's always possible to spend some currency items (fusing, chromatic, jewellers).  My main attack has three supports, everything else I'm using is just extras.  Getting a 4 socketed item isn't too hard, and can be done on all the pieces of armor.  Having 5 or more sockets all linked is ridiculously rare anyway, and if you're not already using end-game equipment and have a 5 socket skill that you just can't live without, I think you sort of caged yourself in at that point.

My skills read like this right now:

Main attack:  Cyclone (Green) + Blood Magic (Red) + Melee Damage (Red) + Reduced Mana (Red)
Secondary Fun Stuff:  Cast When Damage Taken (Red) + Rejuvenation Totem (Red) + Molten Shell (Red) + Enduring Cry (Red)
Tertiary:  Cast When Damage Taken (Red) + Vulnerability (Blue) + Ice Nova (Blue) (Ice Nova's pretty useless in this regard)
Auras:  Reduced Mana (Red) + Vitality (Red) + Purity (Blue)

And then my boots are stuffed with stuff that doesn't even need to be linked.  The hardest thing I have to get with that is a 4 socket, 3 link with one green and three red sockets.  If you keep your setup simple, it's pretty easy to upgrade everytime without going broke.  It's also fun to realize that you don't need to put attack gems on your weapons, they can be on your boots if you're into that.  Whenever you're into end-game equipment (Kaom's Primacy or some ridiculously good Rare), it's better to start looking towards upgrading your main skill to unknown levels at that point.  When I finally get my Kaom's, I'm going to use so many Jeweller's orbs that I won't have anything left trying to make it six socketed.  As is right now though, everything's set up and can be easily replicated when I get a replacement.