The main source of frustation, especially for new players

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Elhazzared wrote:

Had tabula rasa a way to give a decent base bonus then yeah, tabula rasa would be the greatest piece of armor of all times. As it is, it's nothing but a way to test a 6L configuration, not a serious 6L armour.

Sorry, but I've said it directly and I'll say it again. Wrong. Incorrect. Untrue. Not right. Until you actually *get* a tabula and try it out, please refrain from making assertions about it.

Beside that direct feedback, I think you will also be very surprised, later on in your game experience, when you compare that 2k evasion chest you wanted to a 1k evasion chest you happened to have and 5-link and use. And consider how much it actually changed your game experience. I get that you want to min-max, and something or someone has led you to believe min-maxing is a requirement of the game, but it's really not.

People aren't saying 'you can do great things with a 4-link' to blow you off. Honestly.

So there are some weird builds that involve tabula rasa and an extremely likely very squishy build due to the lack of even the most basic of defenses. I do not like tabula rasa for it's lack of stats, it doesn't works for any of the builds I either am trying or have in mind for whever I get enough currency to try... I don't like glass cannon builds n this game because you are bound to die often to the wrong type of enemy or the ocasional desync.

4L again serves a few builds that surrounds a few of the available stones. By no means it gives a good diversity to allow for experimentation or work with most builds.

Yes, I can do great things with 4L, i have made a melee character and I'm mid normal with over 2.5K damage and enough armor/life to survive anything the game throws at me. Thus far end act bosses melted against me, didn't even stood a chance in hell and for that matter, so didn't anything I've faced... Though it kinda helps I have a few great weapons with really high phy damage increased saved from lucky drops.

Does this means that this character represents a huge variety of builds? No, it's one of the good 4L ones, one of the few, one of the uninspired.

If 4L is supposed to be the thing that GGG want, why not make 4L be the max any piece can have? Then look at all the people just stop playing because you are limited to a handful of attack gems.

You're right, the game doesn't stop at a 4L, but I feel your proposed changes don't help either; if a 6L is that easily achieved, that readily gotten by level 60, then a 4 even 5L would be all but redundant.

I said previously I'm not questioning your frustration, as you (rightly) said, people, especially newbies, have quit over this, but I think you're overstating the difficulty in getting a 5l with your desired colors (4R1G if I'm not mistaken). Since your highest character is already at 59 and is in prime position to farm some spots in Merciless for that extra currency needed.

A quick search on poe.trade for currently online sellers yielded http://poe.trade/search/itokeretakuwam, where a 5L/6S AR/EV chest goes for as little as 7 chaos (and it has exactly the colors you need, 4 red, 1 green).

Let's say you find a body armor with the perfect stats and you wish to 5-link and socket it. The poe.trade option would be the alternative while you gather the orbs for Vorici. 60 jeweller's and 150 fusings are a little daunting at first, but hardly prohibitive once you get going. A couple of days, maybe 1-2 weeks' casual playtime? You could always spend more 6 socketing it, and set aside a few more fusings for a lucky roll of the dice. Who knows, you could hit the jackpot and score a 6L.

Actually you can get 6L at level 50 given that the minimum level for 6 sockets is 50. That aside and would 4L and 5L be reduntant? No, they would be steping stones. You usually start at 2 or 3 L when you start to actually have enough level to have support gems installed. You then move on to 4L as soon as you can, then you move to 5L and then to 6L. Steping stones, not redundant. They serve their purpose on their appropriate levels and then give way to better gear as any good gear progression system should be... You get better until you reach the desired postion and from there it's a matter of choice. Which affixes should you be looking for, not a let's hope that I get enough links to actually make my build work.

The 5L I was talking about before for my weird build was actually evasion based 3 blue and 2 red... Nearly impossible I know. Then there is 6L which is desired point for that build and really it's designed to work with no less than 6L which is 4 blue 2 red. Again, it's a weird build so I'll never get it done.

Right now I have a character that doesn't really needs a 5L, a 4L is all it requires but I decided to go and search myself for a 5L. Bear in mind I spend 4 hours, most of them in the market channel and some on the poe.xyz looking for a 5L, that was armor only and somewhere between level 35 and 40. I don't care about quality, i don't care about rarity so it should make it easier to find.

The results. Out of the time in the market I got one answer for a mixed defense type armor and for 2 exalts. Out of the people (online only) on poe.xyz, only 2 were online in the game. One didn't even answered despite actually being playing and the other one wouldn't sell for any less than an exalt.

Now let's take into consideration a possible 7 chaos that you said you found (even though it would still be completly inadequate for this). That's completly overkill on the price still. This is a low level armor, it's not supposed to last any longer than 10 to 15 levels before it's armor rating is too obsulete to still be in use. I'd have to find another one after it and 7 chaos for an armor that lasts only that long is way too much. An armour of 5L low level should be worth 1c, maybe 2 if it has really good stats.

Just to let you know, I solo'd up to Merciless in the 1 week league using Fire Trap, Bear Trap, and Lightning Tendrils with 0 links each. Even up to A3 cruel, Fire Trap still cleared most packs with 2 traps; the other skills were just for ele resist mobs and bosses. I didn't come up with a genius build, I just used 3 skills I got in A1 normal. When you argue that creative 5L setups are mandatory I have to wonder what you're doing in this game that's different from what I'm doing.

WEll congratulations. If you managed to use 3 skills with no supports whatsoever to clear mercyless then you are an incredibly high skilled player. Please come down to earth and feel pitty for the rest of us mere mortals who couldn't do that no matter how hard they tried.

On a side note I hate trapper builds. Just not my thing, not a question of whether they are good or bad.

Just allow up to 8 sockets/links and rebalance the rarity of getting 5 and 6 sockets/links.

Amirite? :D

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Elhazzared wrote:

I think a few things are not explained so I'll explain further.
1 - There is no chosing the wrong build.<snip>

Lol seriously? Alright dream on and create your own builds as a newbie and then whine on the forums that you need a 6l.

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Elhazzared wrote:

2 - 5L in standard is NOT afordable. <snip>

If you have played 200+ hours and don't have 4 chaos in currency, then I feel sorry for you.

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Elhazzared wrote:

4 - For someone who said that you don't need more than a 4L for mercyless + maps you are saying that someone else has absolutly no chance of doing without at least a 5L and some good amount of currency. Contradicting yourself?

I'm sorry what? Yes in NEW LEAGUES like the 1-week-hardcore-race 5L6S cost a few more chaos (like 10 or so). They may be relatively expensive during the first 1-2 weeks of the league. After that they drop in price and become almost giveaways to the point that people don't even pick them up anymore (unless it's a 6s for vendoring).
But pretty much everyone uses 4L in new leagues at first. And it does just fine in Merciless and maps. I'm not contradicting anything. Hell, even a 3l is for some builds enough to reach level 70-80.

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Elhazzared wrote:

So it's not that people expect that after 200 hours they have everything. But they'd expect to have some freedom of choice at that point, heck probably before that. I don't see a problem with that.

Well welcome to PoE! I spent over 1500 hours and still only found one 6l and 0 Shavs and 0 kaom armors (excluding crafting some). In this game you don't get rich by mindlessly running maps without knowing anything about the game. You mainly need to know what builds are popular and what items people need and what value an item has or will be. Example: picking up yellow armors = waste of time because less than 5% of all builds use rare-armors, and the ones they do use are only ggg ones. Also learning the recipes gives you a LOT more currency if you are poor (chisels, chromes, jewels, etc).


I'm not even quoting the rest. Because I get this feeling that you don't understand the game at all. Claiming that you NEED a 6L and claiming that 5L's on standard are expensive says enough. Even a gray item with some alts and a regal can yield a usable item for standard for almost no currency at all.
And I found gear worth over ~30 ex in total in the last 2 weeks on standard (mainly rares). So you must do something wrong. 30 ex is lucky but you can make about 1-3ex a day without any luck.

Here is a tip: Learn the game. Like I said, you don't learn it in under 500 hours. You need to know a lot of mechanics, recipes, values, etc etc etc. and only then can you start building the more expensive builds. It's not a newbie-friendly game at all. That's the way it is. And you can always just start out in a new 3-month league or something where everyone is equally rich. You can fairly easily obtain decent items for decent prices in the first 2 weeks.

I'm not talking about creating your own build as a newbie, that is obviously not going to work. But if you go to the foruns and take into account not selecting any build that is very expensive. any build should be viable and not only those that are specificly made to work on 4L which are an incredibly low amount.

5L isn't afordable. You may say that it's 4 chaos but lets put it like this. An armour piece between level 35 and level 40 at 5L rarely is sold for less than an exalt. Yes you may be incredibly lucky to find one that cheap, in fact I was just yestarday, but the day before I couldn't find anything for less than 1 exalt. Let's also take into account 2 MAJOR factors here. It's a low level armor, in 10 to 15 levels at best it's going to be obsulete. You'll need a better one around level 50 or so, whether it is 6L or not doesn't matter, the point is that it's an extremely expensive armour meant to last only for a short while... Second and on the same level of importance. You don't want to use bad armor types. By bad I don't mean bad roll on the bonus, that is easily overcome with scour/alch. You don't want an armor type that divides the defense into 2 types and thus gives you a low defense value. Sure, you can use one of those as a stopgap measure while you are looking for something better, but you are hurting for doing so... All of this considered 5L is way too expensive, even a 4c for something that lasts a few hours of gameplay is not worth and it's not going to pay for itself (you are not going to make those 4c back in the same time that you are using the armor before you need to get a better one). Such armour should be worth 1c under normal circusntaces, 2c if they have really good bonus like tri res, extra defense and life. Remember, I'm talking from the point of view of a newbie. a newbie doesn't has 200, he has only a few which was how much it took him to get to say, act 3 normal? It's not so much about me and while I feel affected by it, just imagine a newbie who has nearly no money whatsoever.

Yes, everyone uses 4L in new leagues at first, that's not what I was talking about I was talking about you saying to the other guy that you don't need more than 4L for mercyless + maps and then you contradicted yourself by saying that the other guy couldn't possibly be doing maps in any less than a 5L. I know the economy of new leagues as well, pretty bad early on but quickly gets much cheaper than standard.

Many builds use unique armor for a specif bonus that you can only get on that and yet so many do not! As an example, Right now I'm doing a self made build. one for melee and that can use only 4L although i do have a 5L. Right now it's blowing everything away. act 3 normal, playing with a friend and I killed Dominus first form alone in mere seconds. the second form was even quicker with my friend's extra DPS but mine alone was at 4.5K... I'll never need a unique armor for this build, they don't offer me anything of value, a yellow 6L tri resistence with extra defense and extra life is exactly what this build needs if I was to look up for an endgame armor piece... Also yellow are not worthless, early on they sell for alt shards, that helps getting money. Later on you can get chaos just by selling yellows which are worth chaos orbs... But that's later on! I only ignore blues if they don't have quallity, if they do they are saved to be transformed with all quallity equipment, although I'll check if they are worth at least 4 alt shards at that point, if they are I just take the shards instead.

You can claim that you only need a 4L to play the game and you are correct. But I claim that 5L and 6L are required for anything other than the most basic builds and they are expensive! They are not expensive from the point of view of someone who has 1500+ hours. But they are expensive from the point of view of someone who has 50+ hours and that's is the whole point. You do not care about the newbies, I get it! Some people care however!

You find gear worth exalts. Well congratulation to you and your several level 90+ characters. A newbie will be delighted when he has the luck to trip on a chaos! That's a very good day for him! Why do you compare high level farming to a newbie experience and claim things are fair? I am not a newbie myself but that's who I'm defending here! Their experience, not yours, not mine, theirs!

Lastly I belive I already said it but. It's not about me, like I said, I am competent enough to make a build that works. It may not be 100% optimised, but it works pretty damn well. The game not being newbie friendly in terms that they don't know the mechanics, the recipes and probably have no clue as to how to spec in the tree, that is fine! Making them not have any decent gear because A) it doesn't drops and B) using the very few orbs they have are extremely unlikely to weild the desired effects, is just plain wrong and it kills their fun. they stop feeling like they are progressing and feel the game is just a massive waste of time. A point exercice in frustation.

And this is what I want to change... Having 5L and 6L be much more easily accessible as well as socket colouring. This will make the newbies feel like they are progressing through all the game and whenever they start dying time and time again, it was not because of some gear related problem that they would never had any control over. it was because their build was bad and their lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Then then chalk it up to experience and make a new character and it try to make a better build or go copy someone's build until they know enough of the game to make their own.

I'm sorry I thought you had problems with 5L after 200+ hours. My bad about that.

But still it's EXTREMELY cheap:

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You can claim that you only need a 4L to play the game and you are correct. But I claim that 5L and 6L are required for anything other than the most basic builds and they are expensive!

1. Get lvl 55-57 (I get lvl 50 in like one day of hardcore grinding, on existing leagues even faster with double Perandus and boosts). So a newbie could do this in 3-4 days on non-hardcore easily.
2. Buy a random 5l armor for 1 chaos (chose only between armor/eva/ES regarding stats).
3. scour it (if required). Then transmute it.
4. Throw some alts on it (you should have 40-80 alts by the time you reach lvl 55). Also augment it when you get a good alt-roll. Augments are practically free and have almost no value anyway.
5. regal it and stick with the results (no matter what).
6. Put a master mod on it.

Total cost: 1-4 chaos, ~60 alts, 20 augs, 1 regal, 1 transmute, possible scouring. This you can farm easily while leveling. But you got a 5L to dish out some serious damage. It's not optimal but it can carry you to level ~88-89 while still being able to carry quiet some parties.

If all else fails, Buy a 5l gray item, alc it once and stick to that. Use masters to cap resist and start mapping with your 5L. Until level ~88 you can go glass cannon anyway as long as you got the 5L/6L for damage and at least no negative resists other than chaos. Get tabula if you have to.