New to PoE, and I love it!

PoE is by far the greatest ARPG of all time. Enjoy the journey, it never ends...
"I've played a lot of videogames. It's my primary recreational activity. Best games ever: Elden Ring and Diablo 4."
~Elon Musk, 2023
Welcome! Congratulations, you are now playing the best ARPG on the market.

Many of us have been here for years. In the background you may be able to hear Hotel California by the Eagles playing.
Welcome!

This is certainly one of the all time greats from my perspective -- it will be hard to topple my number 1 as that game is from an online genre that went the way of the dinosaurs (and nostalgia is a bitch to overcome). Certainly my #2 or #3 though and that's after playing for 4+ years.

One thing to note is that wording is very important on items, skills and passives. As an example: A simple rule of thumb is that "increased" is additive and "more" is multiplicative (there are exceptions to this that you'll learn over time).

I'll give you the one word of advice that I wish someone had given to me when I started. Don't come back to General Discussion. Other sections are fine (mostly) but GD is just plain toxic, filled with people that you'll constantly wonder why they still play this game given how much hate they spew about it.

Run away and don't look back (with regards to GD).
Last edited by Nubatron on Mar 22, 2018, 11:47:00 AM
Understand about toxins, lol. I'm new to PoE, but not to game forums. It bothers me sometimes, but definitely does not change my perception of the game.

Speaking of "increased" vs "more"...

One thing I am having a little trouble with is being able to tell whether a particular item is an upgrade to an item I already have equipped.

With the build I currently have I try to look for anything that boosts my elemental damage, so that's easy to spot when an item explicitly lists that as an attribute. What I don't see is a way to compare items and have a dialog box show me what effect replacing an item will have on my damage output or armor.

Is there such a thing?

P.S. Still unclear on effect vs. affect usage, lol.
Last edited by babedenny on Mar 22, 2018, 12:56:30 PM
essentially just put the item on and check your armour or dps to see.


Theres a difference between modifiers that apply on locally to an items on board values and modifiers that apply globally to your entire characters total values. There is a difference between increased and more, the short of which is that all "increased/reduced" are additive with each other and then applied once and all "more/less" modifiers are their own multipliers each calculated individually after the increases/reduces have all had their effect.

When you learn the rules of the language used in the game ull be able to understand how 99% of things work just by looking at them, but ultimately looking for damage upgrades etc is largely coming down to just putting it on and looking at your numbers. Sometimes there are invisible damage modifiers in the game like resistance penetration, curses you can apply to monsters etc. For a more exact run down of your damage and defences a program called "path of building" exists, you can google it, download it, import your characters/items and punch in all the factors effecting them. It will give you tooltip decence/dps figures, but more importantly 'effective' figures against monsters, against bosses etc if you really want to drill down and see exactly what everything is doing for you.

Hiya,

There's no tooltip comparisons, no.

In terms of what gear is good for you, defensively the most urgent things are usually Life and Resistances. Elemental (Fire, Cold, Lightning) Resistances are, by default, capped at 75% and high level content will be balanced around the assumption that these are at the cap. Chaos Resistance is a bit of a special case - it being closer to 0% is typically fine.

Skill gems have what is known as Tags. You can use these to determine what will improve them. So, for example, if you look at Infernal Blow it deals some Physical Damage, some Fire Damage, and has the tags Attack, AoE, Melee. Anything which improves Physical or Fire Damage will improve the damage you deal with IB. Increases to Attack Damage and Melee Damage will also affect it. If your gear or your passive skill tree increases your Area of Effect then IB's explosion will be larger, and if you get increased Area Damage then IB's explosion will be more powerful.


Effective grammar
"
babedenny wrote:
P.S. Still unclear on effect vs. affect usage, lol.

If you affect something negatively, the effect will be negative.

The word 'affect' is a verb, and the word 'effect' is a noun. Unfortunately it can get confusing, because 'effect' can also be a verb as in "you effect change" which means that cause change to happen. If you ignore effect's other meaning, you can just think of my sentence above and remember that the words are in alphabetical order. :)
“Please understand that imposing strong negative views regarding our team on to other players when you are representing our most helpful forum posters is not appropriate.” — GGG 2022

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I'm not 'Sarno' on Discord. I don't know who that is.
Last edited by Sarno on Mar 22, 2018, 12:39:03 PM
Thanks! These replies are very helpful.

Last edited by babedenny on Mar 22, 2018, 12:39:36 PM

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