newbie tip when planning your tree

some things that I've noticed that people didnt seem to see, nor did I when I first started making plans. so I thought i'd share my finding and help others with planning their trees.

these are things that you have to keep in mind before creating your passive tree build otherwise you'll find yourself putting points into nodes that wont even help you at all.

also to note, you do not get any primary stats when leveling up. the only way to obtain them is either through your passive tree build, or through item's modification. you'll want your passive tree to get at least the bare minimum stat requirements instead of relying on your item's modifications. the reason being is that if you do rely on your item's you'll find yourself having a difficult time upgrading those items because you wont be able to use a skill or a piece of armor if your new gear doesnt have the stats required for the rest.

1. pick your skills, you can have a maximum of 8 skills (though normally 1 will be your auto attack) this will set the tone of what stats you'll need.

2. pick your gear type, either it be armor, evasion, energy shield, or a combination of 2. each item will have a different stat requirement, such as if you went for armor, you'd need strength, if you went for evasion, you'll need dex. so if your a witch and you went for the skills that increase armor and energy shield, but you didnt get any strength, then you just wasted points increasing armor and you probably could have found an easier path to get increased energy shield else where.

3. try to plan a tree thats at maximum 70-80 points, currently end game is only level 70, and even though the level cap is 100, you wont see mobs that high, and thus grinding will become very slow beyond that point. so finding those last 10 or 20 points will most likely not matter too much since you'll probably wont see those at all.

4. Remember that these passives are all completely optional and to only enhance your stats or modify. some of these effects can be found on gear and support gems, so dont think that you must get the nodes here just because. start off with looking for unique nodes that can only be found here, or are very limited in other sources. picking out your keystones first is always a good choice and it'll also help find a path to take.

5. not every direct path is always the best choice, for example the minion instability direct path may not be good for a summoner's build. so dont let that be a be all to end all. it will how ever help filter out possible directions and further help understand what builds are possible to your play style as well.

6. remember that majority of the defense nodes are global effects meaning they will effect all gear because it does the calculation off the combined base stat instead. defensive stats on gears tend to be local and rarely will ever affect your final amount. while offensive nodes tend to be global on gear as well as in the passives, so most of the times, you'll get more bang for your buck with defensive nodes than you would with offensives.

7. remember that you must have a balanced of offensive and defensive, cuz a glass cannon's dps is only as good as well as he can survive, since a corpse always does 0 dps. if you go heavy in offensive in your passive tree, you'll have to make up for the lack of defense in your gear, which can be more difficult.

8. try to eliminate as many stats as possible out of your gear choice. for example if you get blood magic, you effectivly removed mana and mana regen as a stat that you have to find on gear. if you went for chaos inoculate, you wont need to worry about building health anymore. if you got resolute technique, you wont need to worry about getting accuracy and crit chance anymore. the more stats you end up negating, you'll end up with more room to get the stats you really need on your gear.

hope these small tips helped players make more efficent builds in the future
01/29/2013 edit: added tip 4 - 7
02/02/2013 edit: added tip 8

/bump just because I feel this is such an important topic and I still see people fall in to this trap

Someone sticky it somewhere in guides please.

/bump added a few more newbie tips, if you have any of your own post them here and i'll add it with credit as well. the passive tree can be very difficult to think about for a new player and any help will be grateful im sure

Thanks for the tips man. Ima huge gamer but a noob when it comes to tactics and managing skill trees. I tend to be good at games but need help with builds.

Can you please check out this build for my 2hand sword duelist?

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAdwB5wH_AwADJwUtBu4IsQmWC6oOPA6tEuEUUhRxGNsbqhvIG_ohYCXfJyAn1Si1KaUshTIJNDg26DpSO4w_ej_8QKBDnESeR35KfVO7ValWBFoaW69dAF4TYEtgiGEhYVJjF2VNZ6Bqk21KcsN07XTxeu9-moE6hNmE74ZghymHaod2iI-I7Y70kGyXcJe0mSucJ565n6Ofy6CdoRui6qQZp5-plKsLq8Wsuq3ksHO2Qb6nv9XAD8RYzAbSTdRS1e3dDeLq5cXoZusJ7LbuFO9O8fT1Rvv8_In8xf2T

Its focused on 2hand sword damage obviously but I think it will work well defense wise. I have a bunch of armour,dex,and evasion nodes on top of unwavering stance+ iron reflexes that I think will give me a ton of armour and stun invulnerability which helps a ton with 2 handed weapons.
Thanks!

Just sticky this, great writing.

"

kegross wrote:

Thanks for the tips man. Ima huge gamer but a noob when it comes to tactics and managing skill trees. I tend to be good at games but need help with builds.

Can you please check out this build for my 2hand sword duelist?

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAdwB5wH_AwADJwUtBu4IsQmWC6oOPA6tEuEUUhRxGNsbqhvIG_ohYCXfJyAn1Si1KaUshTIJNDg26DpSO4w_ej_8QKBDnESeR35KfVO7ValWBFoaW69dAF4TYEtgiGEhYVJjF2VNZ6Bqk21KcsN07XTxeu9-moE6hNmE74ZghymHaod2iI-I7Y70kGyXcJe0mSucJ565n6Ofy6CdoRui6qQZp5-plKsLq8Wsuq3ksHO2Qb6nv9XAD8RYzAbSTdRS1e3dDeLq5cXoZusJ7LbuFO9O8fT1Rvv8_In8xf2T

Its focused on 2hand sword damage obviously but I think it will work well defense wise. I have a bunch of armour,dex,and evasion nodes on top of unwavering stance+ iron reflexes that I think will give me a ton of armour and stun invulnerability which helps a ton with 2 handed weapons.
Thanks!

-You have too much damage, you hardly need that much, same as accuracy. Swords by far most accurate weapon in the game.
-Charges come from skills and unless you are going to use said skills they are useless investment.
-Why not to take "unwavering stance" your evasion already 0, so enemies always hit anyway. ---More life.
-Evasion armor and evasion nodes work better with iron reflexes.
-Consider Rejuvination/determination/purity auras you can pick them by situation but you need solve your mana and reservation problems. Hatred aura would give you a lot damage, as well as additional fire damage and melee physical damage.
-Grace aura gives alot of free armor.
-Enfeeble by far most usefull curse in the game and price of 2 nodes for 70 int is nothing compared to damage reduction it gives.

Some math:
50% increased damage =1.5x
increased melee damage support =1.5*1.49=2.2x
,hatred+ increased fire damage support =2.2*(1+0.49+0.25)=3.9x
Just quadruple multiplier for damage from nothing.

Here just your ruined build. Go for life first and it would much easier on you.I unfinished movement speed and attack speed claster because game gives you currently more skill points then skill planer allows to spend. 120 if you kill all bandits.

Hi, thanks for your great effort, we noobs really appreciate it :D

I must admit I haven't completely understand point 6, but I'll give it another try:)

I have a question about my current build, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but I dont know where else to ask it :/

I'm lvl 33 witch on A3 normal currently. I know, I should've been past A3 already but I went back quite a few times to help friends and now I'm kinda stuck here...

Whats bothering me is my DPS. It's just 75 now :S
Now Im not sure how it is calculated, is it 75 physical damage, and my skills DPS is calculate separately (Because I can see dmg I'm dealing with fire, Ice etc..), or its my "global" DPS?

Hope this doesn't sound too complicated and u get what I mean.

I went for minion build, but now I just feel I have low dps, although my survivability is not so bad (as long as I have minions tanking for me)... And I just spam Fire Storm or something on enemies...

Anyway here's my build, now I'm trying to go to the right side to Elder Power via Deep Wisdom, because EP can give me more DPS?

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAuMEBwelCPQfAiycMYg2xT9zQZZI50kbSbJUrlcrZ71p02vbc1N2EXjOeQN-r4IQh2WLepuhnC2nK6-3wFTTG9sC37Dub_IX

If this is wrong place to post my problems, Ill take it to another sub forum :))

Thx a lot

in this game, there are global modification and local modifications, so what point 6 is refering to is how all the passives in the passive tree is always global, they apply to the final base amount or you can look at it as they affect all pieces of gear.

so lets look at weapons cuz this is pretty common here. on a Typical sword (not a rapier) you'll find that it has a "local" accuracy boost. what this means is that this modifier will only apply to this weapon and any attack this weapon does. so if your dual wielding and you had a rapier in 1 hand and a typical sword in the other, only the sword will have the increase accuracy while the rapier wont.

but if you get a passive in the tree, this will apply to both weapons as long as it meets the requirement of weapon type.

another example is on armor pieces you'll find them having an increase defense stats, but then you'll notice that its only for that 1 item, these bonuses do not apply to other pieces of gear, thus this is a local modifier. but the passive nodes will apply to your final base amount or to your total amount.

so since your gear can have offensive modifiers on it, those are always going to be global instead of local (since gear cant attack) thus getting defense nodes in your passive tree usually gives a bigger bang for your buck than getting offensive nodes.

Cool, thx for your explanation :)