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[Rex_Nex]

Good question. I'm currently farming him with my 85 ice trapper, and he's been pretty safe for about ten levels now. That's with 5k HP and -60 chaos res, so I'd assume very few if any of his attacks deal chaos. The only one that seems like it might be chaos is when the ghost above him casts those green magic missiles.

You gotta be careful though, one of his attacks is a windup into a ranged wavebeam. It can easily do 4.5k damage if you get unlucky. It doesn't look like chaos (it's probably phys), but it's something to keep in mind. It's probably going to be safer for you than it was for me since I was evasion, but then it's probably going to take you like five times longer to beat the fight if your char is the kind that needs to whittle things down.

[nenjin]

Nope, yeah. it's that wave beam attack that flattened me the last time. Once he's hopped up on power charges that thing wrecks, and I don't do enough damage to keep his power charges down with the pylons, and ensure he ends the fight with as few as possible.

I know my HP is pretty low for face tanking so I'm going to be focusing on that. I also have gotten this far without taking my non-uniques very seriously and I know there's a ton of room to improve there. So I have plenty to do for the future. I already got Gladiator unlocked so I'm not in a huge rush for the last two Ascendancy points.

[Sinistar]

Life Leech build? I find it causes me to vastly overestimate my actual tankiness. Sure I face tank hordes of guys and bosses. But spike damage? That just comes down to raw HP at the end of the day. Even with 50% physical reduction, up to like 62%, spell damage added on usually takes it way over the top.

And chests are pretty much king of spike damage, at a time when few synergies are active. I basically don't open or re-roll the ones that freeze on opening, it can't be avoided and even on low end maps I still almost get ganked by them.

Actually no, no life leech what so ever, if you ignore any random "+x HP on enemy killed" I get occasionally on weapons. And if you don't count life gain on hit gem I have on my primary skill, frost blades. So yeah, I think I have to re-think my build. It's probably a good indicator to take a step back when your own DPS is higher than your HP. Well, at least that's something new to me.

As for chests - I can take normal, that is, non-Perandus one totally fine. I've got one decoy totem to support me and it works pretty nice. But Perandus? It happened to me in few fights I was doing ok-ish, putting down totem, kitting and whittling the guardians down, but one small misstep and I was nuked. Like, 1s nuked. :\
But as I said, this was kind of a wake up call that my build might be lacking. I think for the last 10 or so levels I was focused too much on getting +cold damage nodes and not nearly enough pure dex. Thinking now, maybe I should go just for pure +physical damage nodes, but that cold damage ring on the top of the tree was just to tempting. We'll see.

In my thoughts about the labyrinth I forgot to mention one thing though - I'd be lying if, for all the trouble it gave me, I wasn't compensated. Loot, damn. Even without beating Izaro, even without cleaning maps clear and going just for obvious caches and rare monsters, it still feels like rare output is significantly higher than normal (is it? DIdn't read patch notes, as usual). I can fill my inventory full with yellow before even reaching the trial. Recently, I got this. I like it. No way to use it, currently, but that makes a 3rd or so item I have in my inventory right now that gives this or another bonus to minions. Maybe I should finally roll a summoner char...

[Sinistar]

For a few coins more...


It would have looked good on my Duelist. Eventually, at least, when the league ended. Speaking of Perandus league, I'm still raging occasionally at Perandus chests minions damage, Armok almighty I did Kaom without dieing OR even teleporting, with some difficulty but it was satisfying, but that "in-debt poacher" chest guardian? Man, she can 2-3 shot my Scion like it's nothing. And she did, multiple times. Granted, Kaom vs. that thing might not be a fair comparison what with all the different fight dynamics but I'd be really interested to hear how much DPS that poacher is supposed to be doing.

Also, guess Labyrinth is actually easier if you do it with a properly equipped and leveled char. Ran it few days ago with mentioned Duelist and man did I face-tank Izaro like a champ. He IS lvl. 50 and that was fight on normal but still, I'm really satisfied with how he turned out. Hitting full elemental res even before finishing Act 3 and still going strong, currently ~50% damage reduction, good HP and nice DPS... It's only current weakness is his DPS is aoe focused, while it does it job perfectly fine, I did fail Elreon's mission that had me destroy 5 or 6 (or was it 8??) corrupted relics and I managed only 4. Need heavy strike or something.

Also, turns out I really should have started reading patch notes. I thought you fight Izaro 3 times total, that is, one Aspirant's trial is one fight and that's it. If only. Good thing I didn't manage to beat him with my Scion, I would not be able to go through that punishment for 3 times in a row.

Also also, currency stash tab is now a thing. It's pretty neat.

[nenjin]

On a whim I decided to start playing my Witch Necromancer again.

Holy shit. 15 Skeletons, 10 Zombies, 1 Chaos Golem and 4 Spectres on steroids.

And THEN you dump Vaal Summon Skeletons in for a total of 60! minions, each with at least +100% Life and Damage, and the Spectres at probably 200% for both. Add in a good Spectre mob with an all party buff (I like the Apes that give Frenzy charges, and the Hairy Bonecrushers that give themselves Endurance charges) and you have a nigh unstoppable army. Exploding for Fire damage and leaving a Caustic Cloud on death are the icing on an already delicious murder cake.

Fucking. Destroyed. Cruel and Merciless. Bosses disappear in a mass of minions and are stripped of their HP. Unique bosses? Pfha. Dominus? Didn't even see him, I kept him off screen while I nuked anything that came near me and the minions did all the work. Piety Human Form? Downed in 7 seconds.

Compared to playing a Melee character this shit is so easy. Sure I'm still a cupcake. Brutus dropped me in a second flat with those ground spikes. Kaom was a pain in the ass, I died several times. I had to do the Cruel Trial of Ascendancy about 4 times because Izaro kept killing me.

But compared to a 20+ minute hack-a-thon against bosses while playing melee, always under threat of being one-shot due to crits or lag, this is paradise. Almost makes me want to abandon my Scion as my main because honestly my Witch could probably clear higher levels maps that she can (Witch is 70, Scion is 85) in a fraction of the time.

It's like...I was playing late one night and realized I had completely spaced off thinking about something else for almost half the dungeon. I've never had that experience in PoE because inattention leads to you losing experience in Merciless. But the game is so easy playing as her that my mind is free to wander.

[Sinistar]

Interesting you mention Witch necromancer, I've recently made just same char! Well, still just level 30, currently, but I'm having tons of fun. Plus Queen's Decree helps me with rocking that sweet tiny girl with big sword image I wanted to do for a while now.


One thing I've found out though. I found myself lacking some direct damage skill that would support my zombie force, so at the beginning I was using fireball... Until I tried Summon Raging Spirit. I was told a while ago this skill is apparently *sunglasses* all the rage these days. Anyways, didn't pay much attention but boy oh BOY. This shit is intense. I'm pretty sure I downed Brutus in 4-5 seconds. It's enough to make me seriously consider making a new char centered just around SRS.

Try it, I dare you.

[nenjin]

I'm enjoying Storm Call with reduced delay on it too much. Once I get better AoE for it, it's literally going to hit the entire screen at 700-1400 damage, twice, every 1 to 1.5 seconds. Hard to beat that. Although I haven't committed any points to elemental specific damage so there's still time to change. I wish there were more options for Chaos-based attacks other than melee, Contagion and Wither, but such is life.

Plus Queen's Decree helps me with rocking that sweet tiny girl with big sword image I wanted to do for a while now.

I'll admit that, that daydream? It was about a kawaii desu~ web comic featuring the witch with a too-big animu sword riding Ghost Bears and having conversations with Ghost Apes, while all her skeletons and zombies stand around in the background looking derpy or reacting to what she does. I've never been a web comic guy or much of an animoo devotee but....well, I went there in my head for a solid 20 minutes before I remembered I'm playing PoE on Merciless.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/nenjin - Link to her shizz.

[Aklyon]

See, thats why my first character was a summoner. Not because it was a great idea at the time (minion ai was rubbish until they improved it, there wasn't a golem yet, and I was not especially impressed by old spectres), but because its fun to have an army 'o dudes smash stuff for you!

[nenjin]

For me it's more "Gosh, it took me 40+ hours to get from 70 to 85 on my scion in merciless, and my Witch will do it in about 10."

Between the challenge of the game, the still abysmal fidelity of movement skills and ridiculously overtuned bosses, melee is simply a chore to play. It's an entertaining! chore, because you're literally a couple seconds away from dying pretty much all the time so winning tough fights without dying feels good. But to be able to play PoE in Merciless without the constant threat of getting one-shotted, or not having to divide your time 9:1 between avoiding damage and dealing it, makes it feel like an entirely different game.

That said, it's pretty obvious the difficulty and experience curves changed massively after Awakening.

[miljan]

Rant/Opinion on Currency and Public Stash Tabs: Path of Exile 2.2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCUFHpat08

[Sinistar]

I'll admit that, that daydream? It was about a kawaii desu~ web comic featuring the witch with a too-big animu sword riding Ghost Bears and having conversations with Ghost Apes, while all her skeletons and zombies stand around in the background looking derpy or reacting to what she does. I've never been a web comic guy or much of an animoo devotee but....well, I went there in my head for a solid 20 minutes before I remembered I'm playing PoE on Merciless.

Feel free to share the link to that comic.

That said, it's pretty obvious the difficulty and experience curves changed massively after Awakening.

Also, as someone obviously less familiar with the game, I am quite interested about that. Do explain, if you feel like it.

Rant/Opinion on Currency and Public Stash Tabs: Path of Exile 2.2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCUFHpat08

Been waiting for something like that. I'll check it tomorrow thought.

[nenjin]

I'm not a hard core follower of PoE patch notes so this is all anecdotal. But...

Pre-Awakening, the XP differential was a lot steeper. (Being that there were only 3 acts to the main game instead of 4 now.)

So like, you'd do a 68 Map as a level 72 character and make.....like maybe half a bar. Now, I'm doing 68 maps at 85 and still making about that. And it only goes up from there. So if I do a 74 or 75 map, I'm making several bars of XP per run. Compared to Pre-Awakening, one death doing an easy map could set you back an entire day worth of effort. Now, at least sub-90, you lose an hour or two at most. Does wonders for your willingness to keep grinding at higher levels.

Secondly, enemies just seem a lot easier. That could be due to Ascendancy classes, reworked life leech or half a dozen other changes since before Awakening....but I noticed it immediately on logging in for my first run at Ascendancy. I was flattening map bosses with little risk compared to the last time I played.

Of course there's still plenty out there that will wreck your shit. But it seems like easy bosses and mob packs aren't as threatening as they used to be. As a standard scrub, it's never been easier to level at 80+ than it is now, at least from my point of view.

[Rex_Nex]

I think the biggest change was that all map tiers went up by 2. Previous to Awakening, the lowest tier of map was a lvl 66 zone. Now, the lowest tier of map is a 68 zone. It makes leveling quite a lot easier for everyone.

The only thing that was nerfed was farming extremely underleveled zones. Previously it was almost more efficient for an extremely high level char to level up to 100 in tier 1 maps than it was in mid or high tier maps, just because of how fast, safe, and cheaply they could do low tier zones. After Ascendency they dropped the minimum xp by half, so it's never more efficient to run zones that give you next to no xp.

[Retropunch]

Secondly, enemies just seem a lot easier. That could be due to Ascendancy classes, reworked life leech or half a dozen other changes since before Awakening....but I noticed it immediately on logging in for my first run at Ascendancy. I was flattening map bosses with little risk compared to the last time I played.

I've just come back to this after a really long time (way before Ascendancy) and it's so, so much easier. I think it mainly seems to be enemy life (or my damage) that's had a major overhaul, as I never really seemed to be able to just obliterate tons of enemies in one hit.

Quick question - do curses (or marks) stack?

[nenjin]

Enemies can only have 1 curse active on them unless you have the passives to allow for more. And AFAIK two of the same curse cannot stack, they will simply overwrite each other.

Rant/Opinion on Currency and Public Stash Tabs: Path of Exile 2.2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCUFHpat08

His argument is predicated on only a couple points:

-Trading is an advantage that everyone should partake in.
-Currency tabs and premium public tabs are QoL features that everyone needs because it facilitates trading.

My response would be:

-I've played the entire game, 300+ hours, without trading except once to get a gem before gem vendors were a thing. It's not a requirement. It helps, but it's not required.
-I've played this long without ever amassing more than 200 of any one currency. I imagine people that aren't 24/7 playing PoE take a while before they have so much currency they'd need a tab for it. True, once you hit the endgame in merciless, it's not unusual to spend hundreds and hundreds of different currencies on a single item to get the best possible results, and so a currency tab starts making a lot more sense. But I think that's for a minority of the player base who either a) play to that point or b) get so invested they're willing to dump all their currency into making the perfect item.

So basically I don't see it as a problem. The people who seem the most upset about it are, strangely, not the newest players or the lower level ones but the uber veterans who basically already have everything in great quantities and are worried on behalf of the rest of the playerbase. Personally by the time I'd hit the merciless end game I'd spent so much time with PoE I didn't mind spending to get QoL features.

When they put better hit detection or movement abilities actually activating the first time you click them instead of the 3rd, 4th or 10th time, behind a paywall then I'll get salty about paying for QoL features. For trading and making it convenient to store shit loads of currency, it simply isn't that relevant to how I play PoE for me to care.