Compilation of melee / east side of the tree issues

The prominent side of the skill tree that everyone seems to be succesful with is, as always, the maurauder side.
I believe this is due to a lack of both health nodes and defense nodes on the shadow side, as well as the enormous nerf to all mechanics used in that side of the tree.

Here's a list of the amount of life nodes each character has on its side of the tree:
The marauder has a total of 162% increased maximum life (without the nodes behind blood magic).
The templar has a total of 148% increased maximum life.
The duelist has a total of 133% increased maximum life (111% without the 4 nodes on the right).
The shadow has a total of 113% increased maximum life.
The ranger has a total of 99% increased maximum life.
The witch has a total of 68% increased maximum life.


1) Life: The shadow and the ranger have a dangerously low amount of life if you want to be able to do melee.
As any experienced player will tell you, the minimum life a melee build is around 130%, anything below is dangerous.
However, it doesn't stop there, since templars and maurauders health nodes are scattered evenly, it's easy for those two sides to travel to eachother.
With the shadow and the ranger, you have to spend a massive amounts of points in order to travel to eachother, and it's not worth the points.

This is one of the factors, altough certainly not the biggest, that sets up melee agi for failure.

2) Evasion: even with those life nodes, you need some mitigation. I've browsed through the feedback subforum quite alot, and it seems pretty well agreed upon that "path of armor" is back, evasion is not a possibility with how hard the mobs hit. Even white mobs can hit you for half of your health, making a melee build impossible.

3) Energy Shield: while it is true that the shadow has less life in his tree side, he has energy shield nodes.
There is an example of someone with 6.1k life with 15k armor below almost getting one shot by rhoas, altough many mobs hit as hard as charging rhoas.
You would need to have an extremely huge energy shield investment to be able to not get one-shot. Obviously you would still need mitigation, and with an unlucky first roll of evasion entropy, getting hit twice by mobs could lead to dying instantly.
(Not to mention investing that hard on both evasion and energy shield is very expensive, and only available to extremely rich players)

4) Life leech: I haven't tested the leech rate mechanic myself as I use vaal pact myself, but everyone seemed to agree that it was nerfed heavily, and completely useless unless you have extreme amounts of damage coupled with extreme amounts of leech rate, which wasn't worth the trouble investing in, according to several players.
As for vaal pact, it remains unchanged, since all values have been reduced by 40% and vaal pact had that reduced leech value removed. However, the life leech gem has been nerfed very heavily for vaal pact, which is in the agility section of the tree.
This directly nerfs all melee/leech/ghost reavers builds out of the gate, even tho they were quite weak already.

5) Auras: heavily-aura focused builds have been nerfed to the ground, and you can see this for yourself in this very useful aura calculator.
Having a 25% herald coupled with a 50% aura is... free.
Players with an Enlighten level 3 will be able to have 92% mana reserved with 100% raw reserved (2 heralds + 1 50% aura).
Player with a level 4 enlighten will have 88% reserved with 100% raw reserved.
However, if you want to invest very heavily into auras, the most you can get out of it in the agility side of the tree is 20% reduced mana.
With this amount and alpha's howl, I am unable to run HoI, HoT, Grace and Hatred.
With enlighten level 4, it becomes "possible", as it reserves 96% of my mana. This is obviously not enough to use a skill with, not to mention Enlighten level 4 is very expensive.

Traveling to the top left side of the tree to get 14% additional reduced mana reserved from the templar side takes at least 19 skill points, for only that 14%.
Taking all the aura nodes in the shadow part of the tree takes at least 28 points, for 20% reduced mana reserved.

The reduced mana gem being removed is still a good change, however giving the same use to enlighten seems quite pointless, it just makes aura builds more expensive to make.
But either way, with or without enlighten, I am unable to run 4 auras even tho I've spent a high amount of skill points on that. Before this, I was able to run 5.

Edit: I know about the ichimonji unique weapon, but its very low 5% crit chance coupled with the fact that sword nodes aren't good for crit builds makes it not viable for my build.


CI + ghost reaver not being viable

Leech nerf affecting melee

Extremely hard-hitting mobs (charges and leaps)

My own thread about Evasion/ES/Melee/Aura


This really crippled the "variety of builds" that GGG seemed to be trying to do, and hopefully some way of investing in auras/leech in that side of the tree is implemented.
I don't care if I have to travel more in my side of the tree, but I can't afford to travel to both the top left for aura nodes and the bottom for Iron Reflexes, on top of the previous 28 points on the top right for all the aura nodes.
It barely leaves me with any points for offense, and I can't even use them on that, since I must take some hp.


Leave your own feedback on all of this if you agree or disagree with something, especially if you've tried to make agi builds.
Last edited by ZeroZ30o on Jul 28, 2015, 10:23:34 AM
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1)
for life 130 is even low for a ranged char
melee would want 200%+ hp nodes

i do agree there is a lack of life nodes on the tree
but some of that is mitigated by jewels don't forget you can get 7% life on them

still the fact is that on the North and east side of the tree you just folow the life and get whatever that is nearby.

there should indeed be more life scattered about giving more options on wich path to take.

Also the Scion life wheel is pretty damn OP

3)
can't comment on this as i dislike ES build and so rarely do them

2)
Evasion main problem is that it's hard getting the required life pool to not get 1shot because, thats the only part of the tree where you cannot use your attributes to increase your lifepool.
eventough evasion needs a higher life pool then armour based builds.

4)
the Leech changes were very much needed.
that being said, there should still be a diffrence between melee leech and ranged leech
bow's/wanders should leech less then a melee does
and there's a lack of leech nodes for the shadow

5)
Aura's needed the nerf tbh
don't know about aurabots , but the normal use of aura's was way to strong




marauder along with duelist was the class to skip in 1.3. check the 1.3 ladders: spellcasters, dagger/crit, tornado shot + some minor builds (one or two by marauder, true)

life nodes discrepancy is there but it isnt as huge as you make it to be - each class has one 'starting', one 'nearby' and 2 'side' life clusters (~20% hp each). some classes like duelist and marauder have some life added to their starting nodes and while it makes 'red' side of the tree a bit 'life heavy' other classes have other starting nodes that also help them play (mana, mana regen, es etc). marauders have to pick mana nodes unlike templars and witches that take them 'by the way'. this adds up

life leech was cut to remove 'sponge' builds from the game: uber damage, no defenses, huge pool that is instantly re-leech'ed. these builds were hit hardest with leech nerf and i say 'good riddance' to them. ggg disclosed that that was the very purpose of leech changes

evasion is ok, same with es (havent yet tried CI so no opinion). one just has to INVEST into it. days of investing 40/60 life/damage are gone, now something has to give (i suggest damage..) and these evasion, shield defences, block, mana etc nodes are there to be taken

each time you use 'it is not worth it' id like to remind you that 'passive economy' in 2.0 is A LOT different in 1.3. time to adapt

wouldnt call 2.0 a 'path of armor'. some streamers and 'copy-paste' build-makers without even rudimentary understanding of game mechanics created this meme and it stuck. it will settle with time. people were so used to the fact that spellcaster was as tanky (if not more) than melee guy that some are still in state of shock

what killed most streamers? chat channel. reading chat messages in 100%+ high maps is suicidal.

btw - checked your lvl 76 scion build. khem.. khem.. your char is a 100% pure glass cannon. it wont work in 2.0. it will kill stuff, sure, but it will die to anything looking at you funny
"
SjakaWaka wrote:
5)
Aura's needed the nerf tbh
don't know about aurabots , but the normal use of aura's was way to strong


Auras did need a nerf, yes, they needed a nerf for people who casually put 3 of them on.
But this hasn't changed the slightest bit, if you have enlighten, you can reserve 100% of your mana and have ~90% reserved mana by putting enlighten in.

The dev post stated that the nerf to auras was destined to nerf everyone who weren't investing in them at all and could still use 3 or 4.

Instead, what this change has done is it has decimated all aura builds, you can check it out for yourself: https://poe.mikelat.com/.

Aura bots shouldn't be ggg's concern in terms of balancing aura builds, instead they should just try to detect which players are bots and prevent that (which isn't easy).

Keep in mind that by spending 45 points on getting all the reduced mana and aura nodes I can get, and by equipping alpha's howl, I still cannot get an additional aura.

Auras should be expensive at the beggining and have extreme reductions in the tree, instead of being very cheap and having shitty reductions in the tree. That way, people who aren't invested in them won't be able to use them as much.

tl;dr: Auras have only been nerfed for people invested heavily in them, which is the opposite of what was intended by the devs.

"
SjakaWaka wrote:

4)
the Leech changes were very much needed.
that being said, there should still be a diffrence between melee leech and ranged leech
bow's/wanders should leech less then a melee does
and there's a lack of leech nodes for the shadow


I agree a 100% with this. Melee leech didn't need a nerf. I can't speak for ranged leech, but it's probably much less needed.


"
SjakaWaka wrote:

2)
Evasion main problem is that it's hard getting the required life pool to not get 1shot because, thats the only part of the tree where you cannot use your attributes to increase your lifepool.
eventough evasion needs a higher life pool then armour based builds.


Exactly, and having a huge life pool is a problem in the agility side.
Energy shield could solve that problem, but regenerating it is an issue for melee characters and the life leech + ghost reaver combo got nerfed to the ground.

(on top of that, if you use vaal pact + static strike, the life leech gem got nerfed)


"
SjakaWaka wrote:

1)
for life 130 is even low for a ranged char
melee would want 200%+ hp nodes

i do agree there is a lack of life nodes on the tree
but some of that is mitigated by jewels don't forget you can get 7% life on them

still the fact is that on the North and east side of the tree you just folow the life and get whatever that is nearby.

there should indeed be more life scattered about giving more options on wich path to take.

Also the Scion life wheel is pretty damn OP


Getting 10 jewel slots for 70% additional max life is insanely hard, even as scion.
It's very costly to get life in that part of the tree for sure, compared to any other builds, and it really cripples the skill points you have left, which don't let people make original builds.
On top of this, maurauder has a lot of elemental resistance nodes on its side of the tree, and there are none in the agi side that affect both life and resist.
"
sidtherat wrote:
marauder along with duelist was the class to skip in 1.3. check the 1.3 ladders: spellcasters, dagger/crit, tornado shot + some minor builds (one or two by marauder, true)

life nodes discrepancy is there but it isnt as huge as you make it to be - each class has one 'starting', one 'nearby' and 2 'side' life clusters (~20% hp each). some classes like duelist and marauder have some life added to their starting nodes and while it makes 'red' side of the tree a bit 'life heavy' other classes have other starting nodes that also help them play (mana, mana regen, es etc). marauders have to pick mana nodes unlike templars and witches that take them 'by the way'. this adds up

life leech was cut to remove 'sponge' builds from the game: uber damage, no defenses, huge pool that is instantly re-leech'ed. these builds were hit hardest with leech nerf and i say 'good riddance' to them. ggg disclosed that that was the very purpose of leech changes

evasion is ok, same with es (havent yet tried CI so no opinion). one just has to INVEST into it. days of investing 40/60 life/damage are gone, now something has to give (i suggest damage..) and these evasion, shield defences, block, mana etc nodes are there to be taken

each time you use 'it is not worth it' id like to remind you that 'passive economy' in 2.0 is A LOT different in 1.3. time to adapt

wouldnt call 2.0 a 'path of armor'. some streamers and 'copy-paste' build-makers without even rudimentary understanding of game mechanics created this meme and it stuck. it will settle with time. people were so used to the fact that spellcaster was as tanky (if not more) than melee guy that some are still in state of shock

what killed most streamers? chat channel. reading chat messages in 100%+ high maps is suicidal.

btw - checked your lvl 76 scion build. khem.. khem.. your char is a 100% pure glass cannon. it wont work in 2.0. it will kill stuff, sure, but it will die to anything looking at you funny


That level 76 char is poorly leveled, as the first thing I did when I logged on is remake the passive tree of it. It is not a good example to take from this build and I've learned alot from it.
If you want to see the actual version of the tree that I would have to use (which is very bad), you can try this one instead.
It is still very bad, but that is because I have to spend 20 points to get the top left aura nodes and 20 others to get Iron Reflexes.
I've also had to switch from daggers to swords because if I would want to make the build viable, I would have to use two ichimonjis.

Leech didn't protect people who were "glass cannons" before the awakening.
My build before the awakening was not perfect, but I got to medium maps with it. It was pretty good.
It wasn't a pure glass cannon, but yes, it was heavily focused on critting hard. This is because the build was focused on freezing enemies. I would not one shot them, instead, I would be able to consistently freeze them.


As for your opinion and ES and Evasion- you can invest in very low armor and you'll easily see your investment pay off.
With evasion, the investment must first be extremely huge to see the slighest bit of difference, and it must be coupled with a huge investment on HP as well, which isn't such an issue with armor.
With ES, melee classes can't regen it properly due to poor life leeching.


Life leech didn't protect glass canons from getting one shot. Believe me, the game has some one shot mechanics that wall you off from progressing. Before the awakening, my build was too squishy, and I realized that. I was blocked from being able to kill some bosses, which is excellent, I don't find it the slighest bit unfair.
But now it's hardly even viable, especially considering how hard mobs hit.


Edit: Also, I'm not sure what you're talking about, since recently all I've heard about (before the awakening) was flameblast/flame totem marauder/templar builds.
Last edited by ZeroZ30o on Jul 28, 2015, 11:51:19 AM
i have 15+ 85+ characters, i know what kills and how this game works. one cannot get to 89 with 'luck' alone, even in standard

your tree, even the new one looks instantly to me like 'failed build'. like a top-heavy ship. slight swell and it all goes down

one line sums it nicely:
"
83% increased maximum Life


this WILL NOT WORK. NO CHANCE. pretty much everything with it is wrong.. on so many levels at the same time.

you are so damage-focused and aura-focused that you forget that 'dead men dont do damage'. yet even then you take pretty much zero damage. ele builds (spectral throw probably) are cool but they thrive on attack speed and WED. where are these? your over obsession with auras gives a you a Grace, that you turn into armor yet you take pretty much ZERO ev/ar passives? wut?

a friendly advise: this build WILL NOT WORK in 2.0.

and it is not because of the tree, but because of the build author. this game has its rules, play along these rules or youll fail. you seem to be playing the game you think poe 'should' be. but it isnt.
"
sidtherat wrote:
i have 15+ 85+ characters, i know what kills and how this game works. one cannot get to 89 with 'luck' alone, even in standard

your tree, even the new one looks instantly to me like 'failed build'. like a top-heavy ship. slight swell and it all goes down

one line sums it nicely:
"
83% increased maximum Life


this WILL NOT WORK. NO CHANCE. pretty much everything with it is wrong.. on so many levels at the same time.

you are so damage-focused and aura-focused that you forget that 'dead men dont do damage'. yet even then you take pretty much zero damage. ele builds (spectral throw probably) are cool but they thrive on attack speed and WED. where are these? your over obsession with auras gives a you a Grace, that you turn into armor yet you take pretty much ZERO ev/ar passives? wut?

a friendly advise: this build WILL NOT WORK in 2.0.

and it is not because of the tree, but because of the build author. this game has its rules, play along these rules or youll fail. you seem to be playing the game you think poe 'should' be. but it isnt.


You're overlooking the fact that it has 10 jewel sockets.
I don't even have damage in that tree, you just see me as a glass cannon builder.
I've never said you don't have experience in this game.
My aura build is needed to crit/freeze mobs with hatred.
Grace gives me a huge amount of armor from the increased aura effect and the increased evasion. As you can guess, they are not additive but multiplicative, so this is a good enough investment, if you were to try it out.

I'm well aware that this build is bad and I wasn't planing to do it.
Yes, this game has its rules, and every player must play along by them.

However, this build used to be somewhat viable, if you were to get more life and es.
Build diversity is a must in this game, it's what this game tries to achieve, and ggg have said so multiple times.

Besides, you're derivating the subject into it being about my build. It's not.
It's about the fact that even when investing extreme amounts in auras yields next to nothing.
It's about the fact that life leech coupled with ES is no longer viable for melee classes.
It's about the fact that evasion is not viable whatsoever if you don't have more hp than a strength class.
"
Besides, you're derivating the subject into it being about my build. It's not.
It's about the fact that even when investing extreme amounts in auras yields next to nothing.
It's about the fact that life leech coupled with ES is no longer viable for melee classes.
It's about the fact that evasion is not viable whatsoever if you don't have more hp than a strength class.


1) it seems that there are still people that can run 5+ auras. it simply requires a) low-life (that was made a lot less effective) and putting some stuff on life c) lvl3+ enlightens

and.. it seems that gutting aura builds was ggg's intention so nothing surprising. i have chars that i turn of Herald and turn on Arctic Armor for tough spots. life is an art of making choices.

2) no opinion here, have no CI chars (yet) in 2.0

3) my EV claw shadow has 3900 life and does pretty damn well while having mostly flask for armor (and acrobatics). my pure EV archer (3700hp) is my 89 char, also does pretty well etc etc.

i think that it might be a bit more productive if you'd tried these theories yourself. as i presume you speak from somebody's else experience and that.. does not work that well
"
sidtherat wrote:
"
Besides, you're derivating the subject into it being about my build. It's not.
It's about the fact that even when investing extreme amounts in auras yields next to nothing.
It's about the fact that life leech coupled with ES is no longer viable for melee classes.
It's about the fact that evasion is not viable whatsoever if you don't have more hp than a strength class.


1) it seems that there are still people that can run 5+ auras. it simply requires a) low-life (that was made a lot less effective) and putting some stuff on life c) lvl3+ enlightens

and.. it seems that gutting aura builds was ggg's intention so nothing surprising. i have chars that i turn of Herald and turn on Arctic Armor for tough spots. life is an art of making choices.

2) no opinion here, have no CI chars (yet) in 2.0

3) my EV claw shadow has 3900 life and does pretty damn well while having mostly flask for armor (and acrobatics). my pure EV archer (3700hp) is my 89 char, also does pretty well etc etc.

i think that it might be a bit more productive if you'd tried these theories yourself. as i presume you speak from somebody's else experience and that.. does not work that well



I have tried these theories for myself, and they don't work, I've had to delete countless chars because they just hit a brick wall. As I said, it's easy once you have the big investment, which you must do since you're a long-time player and have the gear for it. You don't seem to understand how hard it is for players in a new league to go through the leveling process with evasion.
At level ~40, with as many life nodes as I could gather, I would still get stunlocked and killed easily.

Edit: Oh, and I obviously can run auras on my life, that's easy. But it's clearly not something I want to do considering life is too valuable, and also considering I would need the expensive unique shield to put it on my life efficiently (which is fine, I understand working towards specific items) OR get a 180% mana multiplier by using blood magic.
Either way is a huge investment just to put 1 aura on my life, whereas previously I was able to, by investing in auras, be able to put more. I invested in them, I wasn't just casually putting 5 auras on myself.

Now if you would be so kind, please stop treating me as if I was a noob that hasn't tested any of this. I understand that you've had your fair share of sights of people whining about how they can't manage to do a build with 30% increased maximum life, but I'm not one of those people.


"
We're trying out a change to aura costs, the Reduced Mana support, and the Enlighten gem on Beta. This change involves reducing the base mana reservation on reservation skills, changing the Reduced Mana gem to only apply to costs but with a much greater reduction, and having the Enlighten support gem reduce reservation and cost at lower values than Reduced Mana gave.

These are the intended results of the change:
As they no longer work with Reduced Mana, we can make reservation costs less mana intensive for characters that previously wouldn't have access to Reduced Mana, and reduce socket pressure for players that previously would have needed a Reduced Mana support to reach the same reservation levels.
Enlighten becomes a much more desirable support. It now gives an option for end-game builds that are willing to give up sockets to reduce reservation, without the support being so impactful that every build that uses auras feels that it's absolutely necessary.
Reduced Mana can have much higher values than previously, making it a better choice for reducing skill mana costs.

It's worth noting that a very high level Enlighten gem can reduce aura reservation costs to the point of the old Reduced Mana support and below, and that aura reservation costs are now often lower than otherwise possible until player level 45. We're also planning to increase the power of Mana passives in the tree that will give mana constrained builds more access to larger total mana pools.



That's from GGG. As you can see, the changes aren't aimed at nerfing aura builds.
I've also listened in in the "state of exile" podcasts, featuring official staff, and it seemed like the nerf to auras was aimed at the people who casually used auras, and not pure-aura focused builds.
Last edited by ZeroZ30o on Jul 28, 2015, 12:25:21 PM
fair enough, sorry for downplaying you (not my intention, but English is not my main language so i fail from time to time at subtleties)

as an advise for leveling a scion in mid game (as the early game is 'anything goes' territory) id definitely take 'scion life wheel' (the most efficient life points in the game, at your doorstep - there is NO travel cost for subsequent nodes) to create gear-independent life base to carry you trough the game. you've mentioned resists on the 'right-hand side' - scion has EXCELLENT resist nodes, there are acc/resist and aspd/resist clusters near ranger if you still need resists from the tree (however jewels are excellent resist source with each one giving up to +10% all res

that should be ok while leveling (your build wont 'tick' in mid-game). the act4 cruel fights are difficult because these are boring and tedious, not because of danger (nowadays, pre-patch these were just broken)

i level my builds 'as they are to be played in the endgame' and while some leveling gear helps it mainly applies to weapons as i tend to use gear found during leveling process till ~70s. it applies to EV chars too.

as for the auras (i kinda 'agree' with your Grace multipliers however would still never ever spend 40+ points just to do the Grace/IR trick..) it is easy with Hatred. it scales the phys damage. you does not scale the base, so your Hatred dps boost is minimal (even after +%aura effect) so id probably drop it on the spot.

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