Hints & Tips For New Players

Version History

Update 03/04/2013 - I've made some substantial updates and formatting changes. I realize that it seems a bit unfocused and disorganized, but I'm working on that. Hopefully people are finding this useful. Please leave suggestions! Thanks!

Hello everyone. There's been a lot of threads from people asking about builds and trying to understand how things work. So I've been thinking about making this thread, but found one already done in the Templar forum written by Phatman entitled Hints & Tips for new players.

I urge you to go and read that post because it is mostly generic and applies to all the classes. Really, go read it, then come back and check out some of the resources below.

My goal is to update and revise this as more information becomes available and as I have time. If you have suggestions, please leave a comment. Thanks!

General Resources
- Hints & Tips for new players (Templar Forum) - Lots of useful tips for beginning players.

- F.A.Q. -- READ THIS BEFORE ASKING A QUESTION, IT MIGHT BE ANSWERED HERE.
- Tips / FAQ for new players
- Mechanics Thread - Very important read to understand how the game works. Here's a clue, read things carefully and understand what the terms mean, don't assume anything. :)
- Path of Exile Wiki
- The Exiled Sale Recipe Book (spoilers) - Good place to go to understand how to get Chaos orbs, Alchemy orbs, etc. for crafting and improving your gear.
- Your Crafting Resource Guide -Learn more about crafting.
- Unique Items List - 109 of 109 - A listing of unique items and their properties. Useful to know what's out there when planning one's build.
- Passive Tree - useful for planning out your build. Don't use all the points, currently 120 as 0.10, but use about 85.
- Quest Reward List - useful for knowing what rewards you get for what quests. There's also a Quest Rewards list available on the PoE wiki


Witch Related Resources
- Witch Builds List - A listing of Witch builds, usually with guides.
- Elemental Equilibrium -Understanding how this passive works.

+ Understanding Energy Shield Mechanics
-- Mechanics Thread - Seriously, read this.
-- Why bother with pure ES?
-- how does ES delay work?

Tanking the Witch
I'm using tanking to mean how to survive combat situations. This doesn't necessarily mean you are the tank and are designed to absorb damage. It may mean you need to avoid damage and kill mobs by kiting. It really depends on how you build your witch.

I'll try to outline some basics, but would love comments and feedback. The builds presented below are incomplete and only presented to show where the related passives are on the tree.

The witch's primary defense is Energy Shield, unless you've taken Eldritch Battery, which converts Energy Shield into mana. Energy Shield absorbs damage, except chaos, and provides a 50% chance to prevent stun as long as you have one point left in your shield. The nice thing about Energy Shield is that it regenerates over time once you've stopped taking damage. Please check out the Mechanics Thread for specifics as Malice has done a wonderful job of explaining the specifics.

Here's my basic Energy Shield witch.

The Energy Shield builds can be anything really, but typically revolve around Chaos Inoculation (CI), Armor, Life, and/or Evasion. Try to select as few of these options as possible because more makes it difficult to make a solid build. You can't go wrong with Life and/or more Energy Shield.

Life
The goal is to use Energy Shield as your primary defense and Life as a secondary defense.
Life reduces the chances you will get stunned; or suffer from an elemental status ailment, i.e. freezing, shock, burn. Be sure to take some chaos resistance nodes, or get items that have chaos resistance.

Evasion
Avoiding damage and use Energy Shield to absorb what you don't avoid. This type of build takes you into the Shadow tree to grab the Nullifcation passives. This incomplete build indicates where these passives are located.

Chaos Inoculation
Whether to use CI or not, is a big issue because of the changes to it in the 0.10.0 patch (see the Passive Skill Balance section in the patch notes). Basically, the passive was changed so that you were immune to chaos damage, but had your life reduced to 1. This was discussed in the Chaos Inoculation section of the Open Beta - design changes thread

"

Qarl wrote:

Chaos Inoculation

While part of the above discussion, this Keystone has become such an iconic part of the game, I have given it its own topic.

Chaos Inoculation has undergone many changes during its lifetime, and many changes during the preparation of Open Beta.

This has been another case where we have gone back to the original intent. Chaos Inoculation has returned to being about immunity to Chaos damage. We have removed its association with Energy Shield that has developed over time.

We do not want Chaos Inoculation to be considered a must have, but an interesting choice for specialised builds.

Therefore, the 50% increase to energy shield was removed, and discussions were had on how other keystones and skills can be used in interesting ways to make CI effective, e.g. Ghost Reaver and Life Leech, and Zealot's Oath and Vitality or Life Regeneration passives, discussed later.

Other CI Items of Note
- Characters that use CI have an easier time of being stunned and frozen because stun and elemental status effects are based on the total life pool before CI. Usually, if you take CI you ignore life nodes, so you have a low life pool.
- The Pain Attunement passive doesn't work with CI because you are at 1 life and low life is defined as 35% of your total life, which is 1 after CI.

Ghost Reaver and Life Leech
One way to regenerate your Energy Shield is by selecting the Ghost Reaver keystone and using the Life Leech support gem, or an item that has Life Leech. As you dole out the damage, your Energy Shield is replenished.

This incomplete build shows the location of these passives.

Zealot's Oath and Life Regeneration
Another option, is to use the Zealot's Oath keystone and some sort of Life Regeneration. Possible Life Regeneration includes the Vitality aura, Life Regeneration passives, and equipment that provides Life Regeneration. Zealot's Oath will convert Life Regeneration into Energy Shield regeneration. The regeneration rate will be based on your Energy Shield total not Life.

This incomplete build shows the location of these passives.

Eldritch Batter
Coming soon.

References
-- Mechanics Thread - Seriously, read this.

CI References
-- Chaos Inoculation
-- Salvaging CI - Suggestions open to discussion
-- Chaos Inoculation Problems
-- CI needs an overhaul (But it does not need energy shield percent)
-- Critical CI Change Suggestion (Use ES To Calculate Stuns)Please +1(Devs please read)

Energy Shield References
-- Why bother with pure ES?
-- how does ES delay work?

Zealot's Oath References
-- Zealot's Oath
-- Zealot's Oath

Friendly bump :)

"

Phatman wrote:

Friendly bump :)

heh, thanks Phatman!

I updated the Chaos Innoculation section. I plan to tighten this up at a later time, but felt it was a good start to have out there for people.

If people are interested in this, please let me know. Thanks!

Bump <-- Added some more info, cleaned up presentation.

bump

great CI collection. Liked the whole post. thank you.

I've made some substantial updates and formatting changes. I realize that it seems a bit unfocused and disorganized, but I'm working on that. Please leave any comments or suggestions.

"

Kiedel wrote:

great CI collection. Liked the whole post. thank you.

Glad you liked it! Thanks for the feedback.