New to ARPGs and boy is it daunting...

So recently I just happened to stumble across this game and, having never played an ARPG before, fell in love with the concept and the gameplay almost instantly. My sister and I love to play games together all the time and this is right up our alley. But if there's one thing we really dislike when selecting new games to play, it's "complicated skill systems." If organizing skills is very complicated to do, expensive to undo, or super tedious to start over, we tend to shy away from it at it has soiled our experiences with other games in the pass. Taking a look at the passives tree and several example "builds" from the forums and YouTube has us very confused on what is actually going on, as the system is very different from anything I've seen before.

At the end of the day, we're both looking for some efficient passive sets to run so that we don't regret making early newbie mistakes that are hard to reverse later down the road. I'm very interested in the Duelist and my sister the Ranger. We've both taken looks at the passive tree and tried to piece something together but it all just ends up being a jumbled mess in the end. It's hard to really understand something when you don't grasp all the fundamentals you know? Fortify and the champion branch of Duelist caught my eye just from my past experiences usually being a tank in other games, and anything in Ranger looks pretty suitable, but we have no direction from there. Is any of that really viable? What even is "viable" in this game? It's just hard to put together.

If you have any advice you could offer to us that would be greatly appreciated. Unless it's one of those "you have to make the mistakes and learn yourself" kind of deals.
Last bumped on Apr 25, 2018, 4:03:34 PM
If you're new, i'd recommend beginner/league starter build guides for your respective classes. it serves as a way to somewhat hold your hand and some guides are packed with a lot of information useful for beginners.

the game is extremely daunting for newer players but I believe beginner guides really do serve as an excellent way to get introduced to the game, then when you start to learn and become familiar with the mechanics, perhaps you can branch out and start your own builds to experiment with. there's also nothing wrong with experimenting, most new players find that once they hit content and can't progress further, it has largely to due with their builds as well as gear and they re-roll and there's nothing wrong with that, in fact I died a lot when i first started and had to re-roll because i screwed up my passive tree, but its frustrating which is why i preferred beginner guides.

The definition of viable in this game is mostly up to each individual player.

Some people think a build isnt viable if it cannot kill end game bosses.
Some people just want a build to work through the main 10 acts.
Some people just want a build to get through white and yellow maps (thats the early endgame)

Viable in this game is whatever you want to make it.

As to rerolling and making mistakes, if you hate time wasted due to that this game might be rough for you. There's a lot to learn and even following a guide wont always save you from making rookie mistakes.
there are quite a few things to consider before playing POE I think:

a: you dont choose a class, you choose an ability most of the time, and then the class that can use it the best, or suits your version of the ability best

poe isnt a restricting game, rangers can be spellcasters, witches can be melee attackers and so on.

b: especially if you dont have any prior ARPG experience, I really recommend starting with a build guide and learning the game through that.

that doesn't of course mean that you should blindly follow a guide without thought, just that if you have a framework to hang the game on it's much easier to learn.

I started with following a guide when I started, but now I make all my builds myself, but I needed that initial start to learn how things worked and why they worked like that.


c: be prepared to mess up, constantly, and be prepared to feel like you suck at the game

there are new things I learn almost every week in POE despite having like 1500 hours played on it. and that's the beauty of the game.

but it's satisfying to feel like you know more and more and get better and better with each new character.
I suggest getting a Solo Self Found build first. Learning how to use poe.trade is 50% of your efficiency in the game. Loots are scarce and leveraging value into gear is probably the hardest part of this game, on you succeed doing that you start getting permanently rich even in seasonnal content.
Last edited by galuf on Apr 8, 2018, 5:33:31 AM
"
Destrezah wrote:
So recently I just happened to stumble across this game and, having never played an ARPG before, fell in love with the concept and the gameplay almost instantly. My sister and I love to play games together all the time and this is right up our alley. But if there's one thing we really dislike when selecting new games to play, it's "complicated skill systems." If organizing skills is very complicated to do, expensive to undo, or super tedious to start over, we tend to shy away from it at it has soiled our experiences with other games in the pass. Taking a look at the passives tree and several example "builds" from the forums and YouTube has us very confused on what is actually going on, as the system is very different from anything I've seen before.

At the end of the day, we're both looking for some efficient passive sets to run so that we don't regret making early newbie mistakes that are hard to reverse later down the road. I'm very interested in the Duelist and my sister the Ranger. We've both taken looks at the passive tree and tried to piece something together but it all just ends up being a jumbled mess in the end. It's hard to really understand something when you don't grasp all the fundamentals you know? Fortify and the champion branch of Duelist caught my eye just from my past experiences usually being a tank in other games, and anything in Ranger looks pretty suitable, but we have no direction from there. Is any of that really viable? What even is "viable" in this game? It's just hard to put together.

If you have any advice you could offer to us that would be greatly appreciated. Unless it's one of those "you have to make the mistakes and learn yourself" kind of deals.


When I started playing PoE, I too fell in love with the game. Coming from Diablo 2, in to Diablo 3, and finally in to PoE, I really admire it's strong build diversity.

The thing I had to sort out when playing this game was down to two questions personally:

A) How do I want to play the game? Aggressively, defensively or passively? In the end, I ultimately settled on the first and third options. That ties in to the following,

B) I had to choose a skill I enjoyed and wanted to work with. Something that looked fun to me, and that I liked. I ultimately settled down on the Summon Zombies skill, and I don't regret it at all. The Zombies do all of the work and I, and my Animate Guardian and Raise Spectres, act as buffers for my Zombies. Because of this playstyle, I even think I might enjoy playing a Golem summoner as well.

So to this, I ask you:

In Path of Exile, for you and your sister, are there any skills in the game that you like? If so, look up a build for them. Preferably one that is very well-detailed, so you and your sister can read through them and perhaps pick some things up. Once you find a skill you like perhaps let us know here and we can try to help you out with any questions you have.
"
鬼殺し wrote:
I think you're doing yourselves a slight disservice not playing other, less...daunting ARPGs first. Something like Grim Dawn or even Diablo 3 will more easily give you a feel for the basics of the ARPG genre and then when you're ready for something a bit meatier and not-so-sweet-ier, come back to PoE and prepare to really get your feet, knees and head wet.

That said, if you find those too lightweight, you can always come back to PoE, being as it's free and all.

And I say that as someone who's been playing ARPGs for 22 years.



In principle agree with your recommendation, but Grim Dawn in fact is very deep. If you don't understand OA/DA, resreduction, cooldownmodifiers, armourformula and a few other things you'r just as lost in endgame as in POE, if you don't know the difference between more and increased. GD looks simpler, due to the traditional skillsystem, but in fact it has high depth and complexity.

Good examples of really simple ARPGs would be torchlight2 or Wolcen (atm at least).
dedadadadedoodoodoo is all i want to say to you
Last edited by tweedledee111 on Apr 8, 2018, 11:19:33 AM
The Passive Tree and Itemization are probably what throw the most folks off when new and not sure what to focus on, because you don't know fully what is out there, its hard to make goals around what to gain and what that gives to your character. Checking out builds gives you a better idea so that's a great place to start out, but it can definitely be daunting.

Here are a couple of basic concepts that you will find to be behind most / all builds.

1) Your starting character class is where you begin on the Passive Tree, and also what Ascendancies you will have access to. Try not to think in terms of "I am a Witch, so I will use spells" or "I am a Ranger, so bows", you don't have to force yourself into a classical RPG concept.

The Ascendancy choices later in the game are much more powerful and if you aren't sure what they give you, check them out online, very often those builds you are checking out rely on things they are getting from their Ascendancy choices. This leads me into my second point...

2) Keywords / wording of abilities is super important! For Damage source you will want to understand what sorts of buffs you can use to improve on it. Know the difference between an "Attack" gem and a "Spell" gem is the biggest divide there (or, what uses your weapon stats and what doesnt).

3) Focus on being great at your "main" damage source, just because you can throw both fireballs and lightning bolts, doesn't mean that would be useful, they take different passives and gear to be good! You will probably have only 1 6-link slot at end game (armor slot) and that will almost assuredly be for your main damage skill.

Beyond that main damage source, you will often see builds with a "cast on damage" setup (basically, making your character cast the linked spells automatically as they take damage). Keeping the "cast on damage" gem low level will make it trigger faster, which can be useful for things like "immortal call" which can give you a short invulnerability to physical damage.

Also, some skills are great at clearing out large groups of foes, while others are great for the big baddies / focus fire... which makes some folks like to specialize on clearing maps efficiently or on boss killing, have an idea of what you are looking to do with your character, you can always make more for different strengths!

4) Staying alive / the concept of sustaining your character resources (life pool / mana pool) is integral to a character. The basic concept is a life pool, but this can be bolstered or outright changed with some of the more exotic builds.

Assuming you are sticking with life, get alot of life nodes on the Passive Tree. This will give you a substantial % based bonus to life, which in turn needs to be supported by picking up gear with life values, if you have 100% increase to life and get a piece of gear with 100 life on it, its double as good for you! Higher life not only helps you suck up more raw damage, but makes you more resistant to stuns and ailments as well. Keeping your life up while you are taking damage requires some thought. Pay attention to things that allow you to leech life and/or give life on hit (though, watch wording, if you don't do physical damage, life leech based off physical damage isn't going to help any!).

There are a bunch of different defense concepts to minimize that incoming damage, but here are the more universal basics. Elemental Resistances should be kept at max as much as possible (or even, higher than max). Chaos Resistance is not as important although there are some key Bosses it helps a ton against. The 3 main core defenses (Armor/Evade/Energy Shield) are usually better early in the game and fail to keep up unless you take them to an extreme level and/or mix them with other defense options. Shields / blocking is a great additional way to reduce incoming damage, as is the "Fortify" effect.

5) The VERY BEST defense in the game is mobility. Pay attention to things that give you move speed (mostly on boots), and on "Move skill" gems like shield charge. Most of the bosses use attack patterns that let you know if you are about to get pounded with a super blast... get out of the way!
"
鬼殺し wrote:
I think you're doing yourselves a slight disservice not playing other, less...daunting ARPGs first. Something like Grim Dawn or even Diablo 3 will more easily give you a feel for the basics of the ARPG genre and then when you're ready for something a bit meatier and not-so-sweet-ier, come back to PoE and prepare to really get your feet, knees and head wet.

That said, if you find those too lightweight, you can always come back to PoE, being as it's free and all.

And I say that as someone who's been playing ARPGs for 22 years.



I'll second this, but recommend Titan Quest: Immortal Throne over the two mentioned. TQ is more "basic" ARPG than D3 is... or was last time I played it (long time ago).

One thing a new player can do to help the problem is to NOT WORRY ABOUT IT. Play the game for fun. Pick up a club and bash something with it. Pick up a wand and see what they do. Quit worrying about the numbers. Quit worrying about the end game. Just play for a week or so. Get a basis for understanding the numbers and advice you're given here.
Last edited by Shagsbeard on Apr 8, 2018, 11:53:41 AM
or play Median XL a very good D2 mod
“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
― Christopher Hitchens
My QoL List: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3279646

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