Beating Nemesis without rares or uniques

In this log I finish cleaning up most of act 2 merciless and stop just before Vaal.

I jump into the halls of sin. Its the same old clean up routine. Nothing survives my spells for very long, enemies fall down faster than my mana can recover and I'm starting to depend more on devouring totem for a quick recover after battle.

I check blind corners with decoy totem incase there is a rare mob from hell. No issues came about that I couldnt well though. The necromancers have potential to be trouble conductivity curse>summon sparker mobs>multishock stacked>death. They can do a lot of damage really fast but a curse immunity flask stops their combo.

I originally planned to take down fedalis with a skeleton totem but he just refuses to attack the guys and went straight for me. I tried to lead him down empty hallways laying down storm marks in his path to chip away at his health but it was tedious. He's a persistent chaser and I'm impatient. Fine? I'll if he wants I'll stop running. I toss an enfeeble curse on him, keep molten shell refreshed and face tank everything he has. Easy stuff.

Now all thats left is the weaver nest, probably the hardest part of the act other than Vaal himself.

I still remember the rare mob from hell Devourer that appeared in the forest so I cautiously proceed with decoy totems being planted in front of me to scout. Nothing dangerous this time.

I'm doing great in the spider nest so far. I manage to nuke down the spiders before they can apply very many viper strikes. Light radius is dim so I check the dark rooms with a decoy totem.

I get another one of those deadly lag spikes where everything stops moving and I can't even exit the client. I am about to reach for the power cord again when the client suddenly exits properly.

I log on to check if I'm still alive. I'm listening to the Ninja Gaiden OST while I do and its playing the game over theme....what irony that would be.

Good I'm still alive.

This is the first third time I've had such heavy desync. Come on GGG step it up and buy more servers!

Time to take a break.

Descent race starts soon. Perfect I'm sure the server will behave better once everyone leaves to join it.

I go back in and return to the spider cave. I swap out my old belt for my chaos resist belt.

A point about gear swapping to remember is even though the only inherit damage types in the spider cave are physical and chaos they can still roll mods that let them do other types of damage. I keep my elemental resists still capped.

I navigate through the maze killing spiders and watching them flip up on their side, no issues at all. I find myself using devouring totem more often, placing it just as the fight starts to ensure a good mana flow.

Its a much stronger totem than I thought and I regret not leveling it earlier. Its still not a perfect substitute for a good natural mana flow, it doesnt work well on some bosses, can be attacked, and denies my use of other utility totems.

I reach weaver. I wasn't sure how I would do this fight. I start with a skeleton totem and conductivity curse. I seem to be doing fine so far, weaver is distracted by skeletons and any stray spawn I can easily outheal with my leeching storm hitting so many targets.

When weaver leaves I switch to devouring totem to preserve flask charges. I also went backwards in the cave, right to the entrance.

Looking back this was a terrible idea. Weaver likes to spawn in the back of the cave and by doing this I just prolong the fight and let him recharge his ES better. I spent a long time just killing endlessly spawning spiders while the brood mother sits in the back laughing at me. So thick in arachnoids I couldnt even move! The back of the cave also has less room to maneuver and I lost the option of kiting and was forced to face tank it all. With an enfeeble curse and the power of life leech this is easily done. I portal out a few times to recharge my mana flasks and after about a billion little spiders fall so does the big mommy.

The weaver battle is one of the most visually impressive and hectic with an endless flow of spiders crawling towards you while you hastily scramble to find the mother before her she retreats or her ES recharges. While I wish I had done the fight with a more kiting method, running around the big open field in the back, constantly changing my position to not be flanked by her hord I guess the facetank method works too. Good job to whoever designed the boss in GGG, its easily the best non-act-end boss in the game.

Silk says children will make a song about me, maybe he and Bestal should start a band.

Onward to the black pyramid

Even areas several levels below you can be dangerous so you shouldnt let your guard down in them. First step into the riverways and a smokemining cobra with a physical damage aura jumps on me, several other cobras follow after him and I am quickly forced to inject some seething flask and swallow a granite.

No other serious threats along the way. I realized that I hardly ever use all 3 flask charges of my hasted healing flask so I'll switch over to a sanctified one once I find/craft a good one.

In the vaal ruins I let the fallen vaal while on me with their weapons to test how my armor holds up. A pair of 2 them with the 'faster attack' mod can quickly deplete my health so I need to be cautious. They are slow and easily kited so there won't be any issues however this warns me that black guards and other not-so-easily-kited heavy hitters will be trouble.

The pools and streams area where oak is so far has been the most difficult zone, hard hitting and accurate chaos damage from the vipers makes me relay on seething flask often however its trivial.

Oak himself was not much of a challenge. I skeleton totem him, conductivity, and throw up bolts. If he gets on me or I go out of mana I go hide behind his tent while it recovers. Oak goes down easy and after gathering his element of harmony I get 1% more hp regen.

The node helps noticeably against viper strikers in the cave leading up to the pyramid no real issues in there. There was a rare mob from hell bear (physical damage aura, added fire damage, corrupting blood) but he was easily kited.

I reach the entrance to the Vaal pyramid and decide to call it a night. Vaal is one of my favorite parts and he deserves his own log. Lets see if he can put up a fight?

Heres my build and gear. I'm nearly at 4k health. I'm hoping I can reach 5k by the end of my journey but that would require some lucky rolls: high life mods and several strength rolls as well as a switch to coral rings. I feel like the templar mana nodes will finally stablize my flows and let me discard my mana flask.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEC4wSzB2MHpQj0FVAWbxmFGjgdFB8CJKoo-iycLR8xiDGeMok1kjbFNuk64T1fQYdEq0WdSbJN4099UlNVrlXGVytX4maeZ71wfXNTdhF5A3qqfq-AVoIQgseI8Y0Zj0aPppBVmuCboaZXpwinhKxZtz64k8AawFTBtM9l0NDYJN2M37DgEuNq5OznY-vu7DjyRfno-tL-Cv6P





Scepter still sucks. I blame the bloated mod pool for wands and scepters. The perfect one would have a high spell power prefix and a resist suffix or strenght suffix.



Here is my switch gear.



Here is my wealth. Plenty of it left. I still have gems and uniques with a sell value but it takes forever to sell things.



Only Vaal guards my way into the final act now. Things are going much smoother than I anticipated.

I'm shoving more of those logs out than usual. Many them were written or convinced much earlier. I figure the further I get into the game the more legitimate my points are.

Ignore them if they bore you, discuss them if they don't.

The subject of this wall of text is balance and why it doesn't matter.

A balanced game is a good one. Balance is good, imbalance is bad. However no one can agree on what needs to be nerfed and what doesnt and I don't think I have ever played a in my life where all your options were equally good (at least not a game where your options were very plentiful or varied).

I don't think balance is a very important issue. If the main emphasis on PVP than maybe it would or if PoE were an incredibly difficult game where using anything but the absolute best strategy would be suicide.

Balance is one of the biggest things people complain about on the forum and it almost always takes the forum of someone complaining about ANOTHER PLAYER. You rarely hear someone say "I am using this build and I want it nerfed" or plead to buff crap skills like arctic breath or shock nova. If any effort went into balancing the game than buffing crap skills would probably be the easiest for GGG to pull off while providing more methods of play (in contrast nerfing things would lower methods of play). No its almost always this tone where someone is jealous that another player has a better toy than them.

You don't often hear this type of complaint in a single player game. When discussing single player games the approach I hear most often is "yeah this class isn't very good but you can use it if you want" or "yeah this class is OP but you can beat the game without it" theres only an outcry if the class in question is so weak that it's incapable of actually performing.

Once you introduce other players into the game people get very, very jealous if someone else has a better build than them. You don't really compete with each other in poe (except for ladder rankings which only about 200 players actually have a chance of winning at anywy) you go to your own separate instances, kill your own separate monsters, get your own seperate loot, and only party or trade if you want to. Theres enough loot in the economy for everyone to get a nice set of rares/uniques as a matter of fact high level players have PILES of excess loot they are trying to peddle.

Would changing the classes to be more 'equal' really alter your experience much? The reason you would play a lightning strike marauder over a glacial hammer marauder isn't because lightning strike is better but because it plays so much different. Even if glacial hammer isn't as strong as lightning strike it plays so different its fun by itself.

Some people will choose to only play the absolute best, there will always be a 'best' its just the nature of strategy, these picky players will always have their options limited. The people complaining about having few viable options are not good players. I've seen plenty of top players take mediocre builds and turn them into map-rolling machines. The people complaining tend to be crappy players who are either incapable of winning with anything BUT top tier builds or misinformed players that genuinely think mediocre builds are unplayable.

For everyone else I think the options are wide open. Theres only a handful of gems that are truly terrible theres a few top tier one and a whole lot of 'ok' ones. If you can find an 'ok' one that is fun to use than thats all you really need. Who cares if you are going to clear slower than someone using a top tier build? Speed running is for only a handful of maniacs.

As for those top-tier builds? I don't beleive they are game breaking, even perma-freeze. PoE is already a game where if you choose to take the safest path you are probably never going to die: overlevel zones, pimp yourself out with powerful leveling uniques, run some safe cheesy build like duel totem, do all the hard stuff in groups and play chicken hanging out in the back row, only do high level maps in groups, don't take risks.

Thats already a method of playing that allows you to almost never lose. Its not just perma-freeze that turns the game into EZ mode. PoE is only hard if you choose to play certain ways. Although the dangerous ways of doing risky builds, not overgrinding, and not piggybacking off the parties efforts are a lot more fun!

Theres a lot of ways you can absolutely ruin your experience in PoE all done in the name of 'winning'. Congrats man! You piggy-backed off all the other party members efforts and team up with every freeze-spammer you could find! You beat the game and never got to have any fun!

I'm in favor of nerfing things that are universally used across all builds, like how old cast on damage taken let you drop a level 20 decoy totem and cast a level 20 molten shell every time a skeleton punched you. That made all builds generic.

Another argument I have against trying to 'balance' anything is that different skill levels of players expect different things. What may be OP for a skilled, knowledgeable player isn't even relevant to a noob. I don't really see any point in trying to balance around bad or even mediocre players because it is expected that players will improve and learn their lessons. You don't see chess clubs banning the '3 move win' just because extremely bad players fall for it.

There's a good argument for balancing content around extremely skilled players since they understand it best mechanically. Bad players don't even use all teh tools at their disposal. However I do not feel that this applies to PoE. In a pvp game yes absoletly, balance the gun/character/unit choices around good players.

In a super-difficult single player game (say one of those bullet hell games, RTS games designed for maniacs, or the upcoming contra game) yes balance the weapon selection around good players. The players want a challenge and if they can easily squash the opposition it means the challenge is no good.

PoE is not a PVP focused game and its not trying to be a maniac game. With the issue of desync GGG probably couldn't make PoE into a maniac hard game even if they wanted to. Theres a certain level of challenge but it doesn't bare unskilled players from being able to play, especially with how much partying simplifies the game.

Apart from that its the nature that different things are not equal to each other. Some builds will just be more versatile or overall easy to pull off. I have never played a game where everyone agreed all the options were equal, (except for games that had simple choices like only 3 characters or 6 weapons).

Overall balance is a very irrelevant issue in PoE and is discussed far, far too much. The game can be beaten with many mediocre or even bad builds. Theres superior builds but theres nothing that forces you to use them. If you are a bad player and cannot win with anything but the best builds you should probably spend your energy trying to improve rather than wishing for 'balance'

In this log Vaal dies and I end up in Sarn

Vaal pyramid was annoying lots of elemental/lightning resistant enemies so my bad mana flows couldnt keep up. The pyramid is pretty dangerous for melee characters, at least melee characters that dont use spectral throw.

The pyramid is incredibly easy if you can kill the totems first or lure the enemies away from their range.

The puncturing snakes can be dangerous if they spawn as magic or rare. I don't encounter any and quick use of armor flask before the debuff is applied fixes it. Even if I do make a mistake and pool too many guys I can lose agro on them by turning a corner.

So far nothing in act 2 has given me any issues so I didn't expect vaal to.

Maybe its just because I intentionally gimped my gear in cruel mode and now I have a 5 link but I feel like cruel act 3 was much harder than merc act 1/2. Kind of bored with act 2.


Vaal is one of my favorite bosses. A long trek up a strange pyramid and eventually arriving at the top. Even if you have never done the quest before you know something dangerous is going to come out once you approach the ominous device and the meaning of the puzzle pieces you collected becomes clear (of course most players seem to spam general with 'what do i use the puzzle pieces for' and deprive themself of the mystery). The gears whirl and a dark visage of the figure stands up, the fight doesnt start just yet. You get a moment to gaze on his form and let the effects of the music sink in.

The entire fight can be done with almost no damage taken on your part at all or you can get 1 shot depending on your skill level which is very good design.

Vaal becomes much, much easier the more you fight him since there are almost no random factors in the fight. The only ones are the movment of his spawn (who deal inconsequential damage). If you play correctly you should only use potions during the rock fall part.

I count the lightning bolts 1,dodge, 2, dodge,3, dodge he only tags me with them twice in the fight. When I do get hit I instantly remove the damage with a seething flask. If I had a seething flask of shock removal it would 100% counter his ability.

I get a free pass on the ice shots, vaal lays them out to try to make it more difficult for you to dodge but I outrange him at all times. Even If i didn't than proper positioning or use of quicksilver resolves the issue.

I stay out of range of his melee at all times. If you are not ranged consider using spectral throw. If you cant than only attack him when he is summoning ice or monsters, he wont ever smash during those parts.

The rock parts I assumed would be deadly with my terrible base armor. I was surprised when I took a direct hit, no armor buffs on self, or enfeeble on vaal and I didnt even lose half my health.

I try to keep molten shell or granite flask refreshed during the rock falling parts, keeping an eye on the flask count and buff timer. When I use a portal scroll to restock my pots I use the invulnerability time to 'skip' the rock falling part.

Vaal never stood a chance. To be honest I was disappointed. I expected to write up a dramatic fight where I weave in and out of icy ground while dodging lightning that takes off half my health and the rock falls are like getting hit with a truck but nope its about as hard as the cruel version. His stats may be higher but so are mine. Nothing new, same old face-roll.

I think it would be neat if every new loop through the game the act bosses got a new attack, or if even the basic enemies got new moves but given that the community can barely handle the game as it is its very unlikely GGG will allocate precious budget to making the game even harder.

He dropped a unique! Sin Trek....why does this item exist? PVP. Who does that? Oh well.

I travel towards Sarn Encampemtn Merciless the enemies here feel like they have more physical damage but nothing I can't handle yet.

Theres a forsaken with fracture I can handle him normally but I know his split will be trouble. I prepare for this by dropping a skeleton totem (a decoy would have worked too) right before he dies and begin running away just as the last bolts kill him. Half the enemies are distracted
by the skeletons. At a safe distance I have time to curse, refresh molten shell, and
get a glance at my remaining flasks.

I haven't mentioned this before but I refresh molten shell even when its not popped if I have
time. Not only does it reset the timer but casting it again resets the amount of damage
the shell hs received, meaning it will not burst. I value the armor much more than
the damage.

Molten shell is a very strong early warning skill if you refresh it the way I do.
Whenever it pops I know that I am taking a lot of damage and can react accordingly.

Well I'm here at the final town. Its populated with level 80+ people running maps all day and maybe a few hopful players that just got here for their first time. I devote a new tab to the chaos recipe now that I'm in a 60+ zone.

From this point on I do not expect any major issues until barracks and beyond where there are lots elemental resistant enemies. I may grind a bit to get my mana nodes once I do my build will be more or less flawless.

Advancing in gear without shopping will be extremely unlikely. I may get a better scepter but thats it. A better wand/scepter may not even drop because the mod pool for them is so large.

Most of my gear already had a life roll close to the max of what enemies can drop outside of high end maps. I could use some better rings (coral ring of life+1 resist roll would be perfect) but thats unlikely to drop.

Large mod pool items like rings and wands are also not fit to craft with. Again I'll
remind you that if you shop for items, you shop for items that are hard to craft (case in point
my amulet I purchased or my 5 link)

I anticipate Merc Dominus to actually give me a challenge and I want to fortify my life, and maybe find a way to run purity of lightning or vitality for when I fight him. He will require every advantage I can get.

Hopfully the path to Dominus will be more interesting than the path to vaal

My gear/tree has not changed since my last update so I wont post it conserve space

I'm going to be writing a lot more of these commentary logs. Some were written well before hand and I put them off because I figured they would have more authority after doing a difficult section of the game. As usual they are not related to the actual game and just my opinions so you may want to skip over them. Personally I think this my 2nd most worth-reading commentary log (the 1st being Why You should never pay for boss kills).


This article discusses winning, something I am very good at and other people are not. I focus on 2 subjects, why winning is not necessary and the type of mindset that helps you win (sounds like 2 contradicting ideas huh?)

When I was a lad one of my favorite video games was Gradius III (the snes version). It took me several months to beat the game on the game on easy mode: a feat I felt very proud of. I still remember the disbelief when the final boss die: I had actually defeated everything the game threw at me and earned the right to see the credits. I proudly put in my initials into the highscore (the highscore was erased as soon as the system was turned off but damn it felt good). I let the game linger before turning it off, reflecting on my achievement. It was a moment of complete victory.

Yeah it was only easy mode but the other difficulties, normel and hard, didn't concern me because I felt like I had taken the first step towards them.

The next day I learned from the internet there was a secret 4th difficult 'arcade' which you could only unlock by going into the options menu and entering secret code. The code was pretty damn hard to enter, you had to jam on the 'a' butten for like a full minute really fast. Why the hell did they make it so hard to unlock? Why not just put it in the menu normally like the other difficulties?

Well I learned why very quickly when I game-overed a dozen times on the first wave of enemies. It was absolutely deadly. The difficulty had to be locked away to save sanity. The enemies were much, much faster and every single one of them could fire extremely accurate projectiles at any place on the screen. I still consider the 'arcade' setting on gradius 3 to be one of the hardest reflex-based challenge ever concived outside of an actual arcade.


It was a complete reversel of emotions: from the taste of victory to knowing I had absolutely no chance of ever winning. I never once believed I would beat the difficulty setting, not the slightest hope. Maybe I can do it now with over a decade of experience but it would still be challenge.

Despite that I think I had more fun with the 'arcade' setting than with my original play through where I actually won. It was so much more intense and faster and every defeat just made me that much more determined and addicted. Ever time I dodged a bullet or shot down an enemy I felt a rush before I was eventually destroyed by another enemy. I never did beat it despite playing it for weeks on end. I never even came close.

Part of the reason it was fun was that Gradius 3 was a very well designed game, another part was just seeing how badly the game could utterly crush me and it turned even the tiniest action of gunning down the easiest enemies into something I felt good about.

Nostalgia aside my point is that you don't need to win to have fun in games. I had the time of my life in face of absolute, unavoidable, defeat.

Victory is not a requirment for fun. If it was we would never play pvp games and developers would get rid of that 'you are dead' screen. Its the process of playing: expirmenting with gear, fast paced action, developing tactics, planning, experiencing the sites and sounds, exploring and learning the story. You have fun doing that. Whether or not you die the moment you turn the next corner isn't going to invalidate that.

As a matter of fact you can be absolutely miserable while winning. Ever played LoL and won a game but you fucking hated every moment of working with your terrible team mates? Or played a PVP against a small child and you so utterly crushed him than that you started to feel guilty? Winning can be a terrible experience.

Look at how many people in PoE have a godly character covered in the finest rares, a mountain of orbs, and dozens of uniques to play with yet are fucking BORED and just run maps all day waiting for the new patch to give them a new toy to play with. I'm not saying everyone running end game is bored but a significant amount of people are.

Winning does not in-itself make you happy. Its certainly one of the roads to happiness in video games but its not the only path.

I feel there are large number of players that are not aware of this. People that did everything they could to 'win' at PoE and ended up miserable. Once you beat the game and get a large collection of wealth than you don't open up some magical portal where everything is fun, all the game issues are fixed and twilight sparkle is your girlfriend. That's not how it works.

There are some people that have actually convinced themself this is the case: they research a 'good' build before making their character so they will be sure to win! They do whatever they can to advance through the story mode quickly (join parties for every difficult part, get WP from other players to skip entire zones, buy boss kills, etc) 'power leveling' is what they call it. Than they run the maps and piety in the most efficient way possible, get a currency pile so that anything they want is in easy reach, and than wonder why there is nothing left to the game but playing the 6link lottery!

'power leveling' is fun. I'm not saying that all the players who are at the top of the ladders are drooling morons. If you can find pleasure in chasing your way up to the top of the charts than go for it! Games are meant to be fun! However the people that have 'powereleveled' themself, constantly complain the game is boring, and never once tried to have fun doing the leveling experience properly are idiots who deprived themself of the very fun they seek all so they can 'win'

90% of the budget is placed into the leveling process. Mapping and end game is just reusing all the old graphics and enemies with a cheap new coat of paint. If you are the type of person that sits on their pile of orbs and maps screaming "when does the game get good?" and constantly talks about the need to update 'end game'. Well than, you just 'powerleveled' past the best constructed parts. Thats it! You beat the game in 2 days by grinding docks! Thats it! You won and you are fucking miserable! The noob who just RIP'd to firefurry on cruel probably had more fun than you!

Maybe you are an old fart who has long worn out the joy of the leveling process and now you are stuck sitting on your pile of orbs just trying to find something to do. Well, welcome to the club!

Maybe these miserable players will become like Buddah who was born into wealth but threw it all away and found enlightenment in poverty. Maybe they will settle into the same mind-set that people like Krip have. He seems to have a pretty good time 'power gaming'. I don't understand 'power gaming' but its fun for some people. If its not fun fo you maybe you should stop. You might not 'win' but you don't need to win to have fun?

Winng is itself a way to having fun though. Winning won't let you have fun but it can help guide you to it: Grabbing the game by the neck with your teetth, tearing out its fleshy innards, and listening to the game choke to death on its own blood while you eat up the chunks of blood soaked muscle. That sounds like fun doesnt it?!!!

PoE isn't exactly a maniac-paced twitchy action game. Enemies are often slow and fairly predictable, and most of them have a laughably shitty agro radius. Building characters is complicated but if you can't handle it than theres an endless supply of guides to dumb down character building. I really wouldnt advise doing this but is an option. (drawing your own picture is more fun than doing color by numbers).

I think just about anyone could at least get into mapping even if they are not a very good player. Its not an exclusive club that only shit-sockers and maniacs can join. The road does have some hard parts but I think everyone can reach the end of it.

Invite all your friends to join the adventures of being stranded an island of murderers and monsters! Invite your friend who has never played an rpg other than Skyrim before, invite your 10 year old brother, invite those cute girls from the light music club, and your mom and dad to play it with you! Might want to make sure they don't play solo on the hard stuff though =D

Even if your entire party is wiped out by a single punch from Dominu's Hand of God you will probably have a lot of fun with this game. But it wouldn't hurt if you knew how to survive.

Saying that you can have a great time, without ever winning, is not saying you should not try to win. The pursuit of victory gives structure to a game. If you do stop caring about winning than the entire game becomes a series of unrelated actions with no consequences. If you don't care about winning theres nothing 'good' about a rare item and no 'reason' to develop any strategy.

Even if you accept that you can never ever win (like if you are playing gradius 3 on arcade mode or the match making system in quake just paired you against a world champion) you still end up making up your own goals your own 'winning'. Maybe winning to you becomes just beating the 2nd level or managing to do at least 50% of the your opponenent health bar: chunking off 50% of a world champions health bar is worth bragging about even if he killed you 20 times in a row. By all means, strive for victory. Even if you never win you can still experience the euphoria of raising your skill level and reaching new heights. Some of us climb mountains, some of us climb hills but we all want to reach the top.

So how do you win at path of exile?

I'm not going to bore you talking about capping resists, how to generate currency, how to scale damage, etc. Those have been covered by thousands of resources before.

You probably noticed in my logs I actually don't discuss stats very much. I take a very technical approach to the game and find ways to win with garbage gear and a fairly generic stat spread. I feel that a lot of players relay too much on just the numbers and never bothered to develop any tactics or technical skills. Your first line of defense is tactics and technique and your second line of defense is your giant pile of stats.

Experimenting with utility skills, developing a strong relationship with your flasks, learning how to position to not get swarmed, learning how enemies agro and how to not pull too many, proper positioning, pattern learning. All of this is importaint, probably more importaint than just the stats.

I'm not going to do a point point by guide but rather tell you how to learn things yourself.

What matters most in PoE (apart from wealth) is your mindset. You need to constantly be evaluating the results of your action. If you die you need to ask 'why did I die?' Desync is often the answer but maybe there was something else you did wrong, like you played way too reckless or didnt check the mobs mods? If you die to a certain thing and don't learn your lesson you will just repeat it.

The same is true not just for dying but for anything that goes wrong. Pulled too many enemies? Took a huge hit that chunked off 1/3 of your health? Got a debuff on you? You need to be aware every time something bad happens and figure out how you could have countered it.

If you can't think of a good counter you need to learn to be more cautious around certain enemies or mods.

It is very important to evaluate yourself and learn your lesson BEFORE you die. Being at low health is the game's way of telling you, that you are playing incorrectly.

Sometimes the answer IS just that you failed a gear check (walking around with negative fire resist or zero life nodes will get you killed) however the gear checks in poe are easy to pass. I'm doing it with blues! But often if you had good gear and still came close to death you probably positioned badly, let the enemies swarm you, underestimated or didn't read a rares mods, let them stack debuffs on you, or just played reckless. Don't blame your gear!

You should always be on your guard. Even in very easy areas the game could generate a rare mob from hell, that seems it was specifically designed to counter you! You should be paranoid! If you are always expecting danger than when it does you will be ready!

At the same time you should be relaxed: fear, anger, hate, and suffering cloud the mind and lead to death.

You should also have a clear understanding of exactly how much damage you take from mobs so you know what you can and cannot handle.

Create a strong set of flasks (you dont need to necessarily copy mine, do whatever makes you feel monster comfortable) that includes a bleed removel, granite of iron skin, and some form of anticurse. Flasks are incredibly strong in this game, you can drink them while doing any other action, you can easily swap them to counter almost anything, they cost almost nothing to craft or buy. Flasks are game-breakers.


Experimenting with different things is very important. Learning how enemies react to different situations and test out every single gem you can find that might have some utility. If you only relay on 1 method of playing (a very small collection of gems or stats, or how to adapt your pace to fit the situation) eventually the game will generate something that your old-stand-by won't be able to handle.

Do not repeat the same mistake over and over, learn from them or even better catch yourself before you make the mistake! Pay attention and anticipate. Know what will happen before it does, be like water and adapt to every situation. Be like water my friend!

Constantly analyze and reinvent yourself, discard from yourself your worst playing habits, sharpen your best habits.

Become one with the game.

Your character may improve with new rares but you, as the pilot of your character, will only improve if you make an effort to do.

Well I'm back after a break. In this act I go from the start of act 3 merciless to Pietys
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