Help me get better

I wanted to know how to set myself up for the next 4 month league.

I've burned myself out of the 1 month league after needing another toon to help level gems after I quality, or spend exalts on gems, or make another toon to have fun again.

Therefore, should you start with a solid life leeching build like Buzzsaw and play out long enough to get the items you need to move onto Atrizi, OR should you first play a MF build you like and farm for currency to spend on your next toon?

I want to have fun, but it makes it less enjoyable seeing people trading large numbers of exalts in the first 3 weeks of a new league for endgame items, while I have never seen an exalt nor reached the beginning of the endgame in maps.

I will play softcore as long as desync is a game mechanic, therefore I'm not restricted to certain play style.

My last two successfuly toons.
First toon has probably 7 exalts of newleague gear, while 2nd has self found IIR/IIQ items.


I feel that I must have a farming toon first in order to purchase items from players who have better time management and a plan which lands them better items. Then as more items are available and I could make an endgame mapper with items found by others.

I myself play an arc witch, enjoy it and follow one guide, Foxtactics guide is insane, http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/879637, so thats my advice to you, find a good build that lots of people follow and is made by a player with creditability, e.g havoc, ziggyd, oro e.c.t

Hope this helps!

I'm looking for a plan of action in terms of managing my currency and time so that I can have at least one really good toon. If that means starting with that best toon, or with a farming alt first, then let me know.

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I myself play an arc witch, enjoy it and follow one guide, Foxtactics guide is insane, http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/879637, so thats my advice to you, find a good build that lots of people follow and is made by a player with creditability, e.g havoc, ziggyd, oro e.c.t

I have a good ARCker with not the best gear, and need to only reach 20%/20lvl + Vaal in order to push my DPS to the next level. Then I would have to switch to RF+Arc. This whole process requires tons of currency and time to level gems. Is it more efficient to have a farming toon to cover the overhead?

The best course of action depends a little on how much you plan on playing in the early parts of the league.

For instance, if you can reach 76 maps very early (within the first week or two) there is a lot of money to be made from selling crafting materials and lower level maps, not to mention the solid rares you'll find. But doing so requires both a strong build and a ton of play time.

If you are a bit more casual, then creating a good MF character and farming Dominus is a tried and true way to make currency. You can optimize for that goal to make currency quickly, then level a different character afterwards. Just keep your next character's end-game gems in your weapons swap slots and level get them leveled that way. The benefit of this approach is that you don't have to race against other players to get to end-game content and sell the drops to the same degree.

Thank you very much for the response. I had the same idea and reaching 75+ maps within 2 weeks would require lots of playtime like I did for this arc witch, but I spent my time farming instead of mapping.

Now I'm stuck with trying to optimize a dual flame totem build for MFing which I did like because my gear/resist aren't really required as long as my totems are alive.

As for main buid I would probably doe a ST scion as I've done b4 with life leeching or probably a new class/build I have not done in awhile depending on the currency I managed to farm.

I think really the key to succeeding in a new league is always going to be understanding the metagame. The passive tree and probably a number of the most/least popular skills will be changed. If you can look at the patch notes and figure out what the strongest builds will be BEFORE all the new/updated build guides get posted, you will have a huge advantage. If you can find a strong build that ISN'T going to be the next flavor of the month that everyone else is using and driving the prices of gear up for, so much the better.

Thank you for responses and feedback.

I think my disadvantage is my lack of mapping experience. Maybe by mapping into the late 80's would grant me the chance at better drops or currency to obtain better gear.

Maybe I'm playing the game wrong and Soloing is not the best thing to do.

Should I be playing with a MFing culler at a certain point (70+maps) in order to pay the bills, or does it work out in the end?

It will very much depend on how Strongboxes are put back into the game. In Ambush, I never had trouble either maintaining a map pool or having currency to roll the maps because Cartographer's Strongboxes were so powerful. I could pretty much sustain up to 74s without chisels or chaos so rolling was pretty cheap and playing solo with very little MF was a net positive for my bottom line until the mid 80s.

I can't really comment on past that since I've focused mostly on Atziri once I got past that point and I didn't really keep track of where my currency was coming from between mapping, running Apex, running CoS for Midnights, and other sources.

it all depends on your personal preferences: you like to play in parties? join a guild.

if you find a good and active one it's the best guarantee to succeed with people sharing gear and maps and experience.
in the best case you can find a group in your guild where everybody plans and plays different part of a effective team (mf-culler, aura-curse-guy, dps guy, ranged-guy), this will guarantuee you item drops as everybody is interested in the group being stronger because they will profit from it themselves.
additionally it will carry you to endgame in no-time in new leagues. guildies also answer newbie questions rather than making fun about them.

if you choose the path of the solo player you choose a difficult one with trading being necessary to get better gear, slower progression, needing to rely on public parties being available to advance faster and so on.

if you play solo and self found you have chosen to play a different game than everybody else but it can be fun if you're up to it.

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I think my disadvantage is my lack of mapping experience.

definitely, the current game is built around getting access to maps and items which are worth modifying because they can roll the highest versions of possible mods. join public map parties to get them but don't forget to run public parties on your own to build up your own map pool. the game is made in a way that you always struggle to perfect your gear in areas you can hardly survive. if you upgrade your gear to beat harder context, try upgrading your weapon first.

get procurement to index your items you want to sell and open a shop in the according forum of your league, your offers are automatically shown on poe.xyz.is to potential buyers.

of course that's all applicable to the current game, the new patch changes the meta game, how much is about to be revealed.