I'm Unhappy I Put As Much Money As I Did In This Game

You can check my skill tree if you want, I don't have a ton of ES nodes, I have 7k ES though.

A minimum is needed of course, but that is far from being the only thing that a good skilltree needs.

You can check the thread that I made about my witch, it's a weird but very fun build, and I'm intending in pushing it further.
It has weaknesses, but it still works out quite well, even better than I imagined tbh.
What costs much in this tree is the travel to key keystones, being a witch ( which obviously makes it less efficient ).

There is one thing that I find too powerful in the tree even considering travel costs : the aura clusters. The benefits of auras are now so high that going for additional auras through clusters is often the way to go. I use to grab the axe nodes on the duelist side of the tree ( the awesome cluster moved further away and the accuracy nodes were lost, but it's easier to deal with reflect now if I can evade it anyway ) but I used the respec from 1.1.0 to be able to run grace, I wish I could have done it without crossing the other half of the tree :/.

So for this, it makes pathing (much) more predictable I agree, even though it's not just stacking ES or life.

And I would not have gone to lvl 86 ( 87 soon, not playing it much those days ) without maps, I would most likely have gotten bored, it would have taken much more time ...

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Fruz wrote:

You can check my skill tree if you want

I'm not even sure if you are trolling or being serious anymore.

The fact that you would post this and:

1) Not be embarrassed

but also

2) Use this as an example of a survivable, good build?

??? Mind boggling.

Maybe I should not have questioned your ability to make good skill trees but more your ability to play well then :>.

this thread used to be fun, meaningful, civilized discussion.

Hi Fruz!

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johnKeys wrote:

this thread used to be fun, meaningful, civilized discussion.

Hi Fruz!

He does it on purpose to derail the thread. Didn't you know that.

You can bash your way through PoE with suboptimal builds, that is true. You can also cut down a tree with a steak knife (ok lots of steak knives). The point people are making is that to be *good* at the game (tree cutting) you need to use an *axe* (optimal build) and their are very few axes to choose from in our fantasy lumberjack simulator.

[deleted]

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Rhys wrote:

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jaxxxson wrote:

No workaround trading, for a lot of people, trading isn't fun.

I'm not entirely clear on your exact point, but I'm guessing something like you feel pressured to trade, which you don't like? Well, you certainly can play and enjoy the game without trading, or with minimal trading, if you so choose. You'll need to temper your expectations accordingly, of course.

While I disagree with OP and DO belive that all money donated to GGG is well spent...

This right here I'd say is my #1 gripe with the game and GGG. You can clearly see the developers view trading requirements as a dogma. Yes, I do play self found as much as possible. Yes, I DO expect to be able to play all types of builds. Why is that unreasonable? POE is an Action Role Playing Game. It is not "Stock Market Simulator 2014."

The rest of the game, I absolutely love it, especially the skills and skill tree and the combat feel. But it just really sucks that I'm limited to the cheap builds, of which there are only a few selections.

I'm going to keep playing and enjoying as much as I can, but when I think about this stuff it's a little bit of a bad feeling.

Again, I love POE, and I will always defend it with my online voice versus d3 and other competitors on the strength of the skill tree and skills alone, but the trading stuff has always annoyed me.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

You can bash your way through PoE with suboptimal builds, that is true. You can also cut down a tree with a steak knife (ok lots of steak knives). The point people are making is that to be *good* at the game (tree cutting) you need to use an *axe* (optimal build) and their are very few axes to choose from in our fantasy lumberjack simulator.

There is a need for survivability obviously, but it's far from being as bad as people pretend in this thread :).
And my build is actually not suboptimal, as long as I can go to lvl ~75 maps with enough ease without dying, that's already optimal to me ( I would not try double residence -max res Dominus obviously ... that's a challenge for people stacking crazy amount of defense, some bosses are just designed this way tbh, it does not make 99% of the content require it ).

Fuck the money, don't spend on satisfaction what you are not willing to let go.