A 4 days lvl 51 Duelist feedback

I started to play this game like 4 days ago, only because I liked the concept.

What's the first thing to do when you enter a game?

I don't know about you but I disable trade chat immediately, the spam there was unbelievable!

That didn't hold me back, but instead it made me wanted to learn more, a strong trade chat means a good economy and a strong game...


I started a duelist, having experience over 5 years in WOW, and 7 years of MUOnline (where I was also a Game Master).

I seen a lot of talks about "builds" and in my head I was like "you stupid ppl, grow a brain, you don't need to look at other ppl, make your own damn build".

I finished first 2 difficulties relatively easy with my almost full-dmg 1H 2xSwords Duelist, choosing offensive talents, because.... the mobs ware barely touching me.

And then..... the Merciless Difficulty started.

I was unable to kill the mob from the FIRST Mission . He 2-shot me. I was like "OK I suck" let's learn from the good player. started looking for a day now at guides and builds. I realize that I must go almost-full defensive, but even after I used my Regrets Orb and Changed my Chaos Orbs for regret orb & used all my talent re-specks, I'm not even close of killing that mob.

I also realize that in the 3-rd act I must choose who to help according to that build, not my own judgement.

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My Conclusion: This game should allow us players to chose our own damn talents without making us useless in the 3-rd difficulty if we don't speck amazing defensibly. Or at least make the mobs grow stronger in each map not having a great leap in difficultly from Cruel to Merciless.

Make this game more user-friendly, let the hard-core gamers play in there own "Hard-Core league" for the rest of us, the gamers who want just to play after a long day's work let us kill some mobs!

Thanks for reading.


Also big thanks to the guy who given me 3 unique items just because I was new. The community is great :).

Builds are players created. It s not you are obligated by the devs to choose who to help, it s the player who created the build who tell you what is the most effective choice for his build.

I read that when you did a build using your own judgment you failed once going in Merciless, obviously your own judgment not the best for now (you will get better).

Also I am curious of how choosing one of the bandit would make your build so much better. Most of what they give you is possible to be taken on tree or gear with little bite more investment if you wanted too.

The game Make you grind a lot once in merciless mean, you need to level and level and find gear...until it work.

If you can t kill a mob maybe you should level your toon playing in lower difficulty/areas.

Grind is what you need to do in this game, Grind in areas that are 5 level lowers than yours sometime, grind Docks or piety few hours for good items.

Always nice to hear feedback from a new player.

First of all i've taken a look at your passive tree and you have some inefficiencies that may be adding to the problem of not being able to progress, each passive point on the tree needs to be carefully thought out and well placed in order to have the best end result. Its not uncommon for new players to make 2-3 characters to level 55 or so before rerolling after discovering they could have done XX or XX better.

Secondly if you are willing to learn the PoE "unoffical" wiki has lots of good information on it regarding vendor recipies and other information like how to craft weapons, for example if you vendor a blue weapon + wetstone + anyrarity phys belt, you get a weapon with the mod "increased physical damage", the % IPD is based off of the rarity of the belt.

Third, trade chat is terrible, people spam because its easier to get noticed. The better way to find items is to go to poe.trade select what you want, sort by buyout and usually select whos online, occasionally people will be afk when you message them, typically you just move on. In order to trade look up some youtube videos on procurment or acquisition, personally I like ZiggyD's youtube channel for stuff like this.

Lastly, capped resistances, getting life on the tree (and gear) are all very important in merciless, there is a discrepancy of difficulty from cruel to merciless, similarly if you played D2 there was from nightmare to hell, although if I must say so in PoE its MUCH easier to go from cruel>merciless then it ever has been in D2 to go from NM to hell.


The game is currently undergoing a beta for The Awakening, slated for a release in early July, I recommend experimenting around a bit, but TONS of changes are coming to the game with that addition including another act.

Hey OP, when I first came to this game some years back I felt somewhat the same. PoE is friendly at first and then once you get into Merciless you come face to face with a big brick wall. Sadly because a lot of the game is played around item builds and your path in the passive skill tree, you can find yourself with few options. Especially if you solo.

The game IS changing in the beta, that we know for sure. There are some more videos up now of streamers showing off the changes to some of the skills and passive tree. With the new passive gem slot system you will be able to make up for some mistakes you may have made in the tree early on.

There will also be overall, more items and skill options available earlier on in the game to help make for a smoother transition between the Acts. However a number of us are still worried about the point you have raised: Having to spec heavily into defence in order to be viable.

From what some beta testers have said, there's a lot more room for "skilled gameplay" now thanks to the new server system that fixes desync. Now you can be that dodge build you always wanted to be and ACTIVELY dodge out of the way.

However given that there will be lots of bosses in Act 4, its unsure of how many builds will be viable end-game and if it will be back to square 1 with high HP and defence winning the day.

Hopefully not. I'd love to be a little more offensive or have more "risk/reward" builds be viable. We'll see.