How do you survive to actually do anything?

Immortal Call
Literally evade things
Evasion
NOT play melee
block

sure there's plenty more.

Play the new Softcore leagues, its worth a crack.

I'll never play HC, because I suck, but SC allows me to enjoy the content and still keep all the cool things I find :)

come to the dark side.... play SC... play it... PLAY IT

(Play it)

Git gud?

One shot = HP, HP, HP...or ES, ES, ES. Armor and resists, too.

Even with a 1% chance of getting hit after all defenses, if you have 500 hp and something hits you for 1000, then you're dead and that's it.

Also, you avoid it through your own personal actions. I added Maze 74 map boss (Vaal Oversoul) to my list after getting unlucky and getting shocked then getting hit with a falling rock immediately after getting zapped. To me, 20 yellows is not worth the ~2-4 hours of XP grinding in SC. This is also why I don't play HC.

"

SFSC wrote:

I've been playing since beta.

I don't understand how anyone gets anything done in this game? This is a completely serious question.

I've always played hardcore, because getting anywhere on standard is near impossible unless you were lucky enough to have some legacy items; none of your items are worth anything and I have literally never found anything worth any considerable amount of currency. I've never found a 5L or 6L item, so that makes creating decent builds pretty difficult.

I find that every single character I make tramples over 99 out of 100 encounters without any difficulty whatsoever, taking little to no damage, and then you run into something that just one shots you out of nowhere.

I don't understand what I'm supposed to do anymore. My latest character had maxed resists, the highest block I could possibly get, every single life/survival node within reach, and I still died instantly to some bullshit mob in Scepter of God in cruel (the lightning trap spammer). Fun nodes, like damage increases, are completely out of the picture.

What am I supposed to do if I don't have amazing build-enabling items and I can't make characters that can survive long enough to even access them?

When it comes to drops, all I ever get are Bramblejacks, Limbsplitters, and those stupid Guantlets (I have 6 of them); bullshit low level uniques that do me next to nothing besides letting me level faster after I die. Even then they're pretty terrible after 15 minutes of playing.

I really like the freedom of this game, but it's really starting to just become a chore of faith; hoping that all this pointless grinding will pay off through some kind of decent drop that never comes.

Try to figure out exactly what happened every time you die, and make sure it doesn't happen again. Something else will kill you, sure, but every death makes you stronger... Caliga is one of the nastiest bosses in the game. I remember dying to her traps as well, and after that I am careful to avoid her most of the time. If you do fight her, it is important to stay clear of her traps and hit and run a lot.
Perpetus killed two of my chars in a row, and few people gets slammed by Cole and live to tell the tale... Game knowledge is the only thing that helps, and it is important to know which fights to pick and which to avoid. Caliga may or may not be "a bullshit mob", but she has got mechanics which can be understood and if necessary avoided.

Path of Exile is not an easy game to survive and death is part of the hardcore experience. Here are some things that my experiences have taught me to bear in mind when trying to survive and achieve in this game.

1. Uniques and Rares are different sorts of item. In games like Diablo 2, uniques are the end goal items that possess the power. That's not the way things work in Path of Exile. In PoE, it's the rare items that provide the raw power while uniques sacrifice power in exchange for letting you do something differently or otherwise possessing some special property. The ultimate goal (with some possible exceptions) is not to be wearing a set of full uniques, it's to be wearing a couple of uniques that interact with your specific build in specific and interesting ways while deriving raw performance from a majority of rare items.

2. Keeping your gear up to date is extremely important. Having level-appropriate defensive values and affixes makes a huge difference. Gear that's 5-10 levels out of date will start to show its age. I recommend using the site poemods.com to help you understand what affixes are available in which ranges for which pieces of gear. This comes back to the first point: having rares with level-appropriate +life values will increase your durability substantially while wearing old and outdated gear or a bunch of uniques that lack basic properties like life will lower your survivability.

3. 4-Link should be your standard expectation. 4-Link is easily achievable and can be maintained while levelling up and regularly replacing gear. If your build doesn't work well on a bunch of four-links then it's either a deliberately expensive build that you should only run when you know you can afford it, or something else is wrong. 5-links and 6-links are high end upgrades rather than basic expectations and are not necessary to reach and start playing endgame.

4. Have a good feel for the skill tree. This is a difficult proposition for new players and something I still struggle with myself, but try to cultivate an understanding of how far you can get with the amount of points you'll have by the time you reach about level 65 and things start to slow down. Having a good understanding of how much life you'll need for a life based character (about +150% is a good baseline minimum for life-based characters) will let you plan where you can get that life and how efficiently you can spend your remaining points. You will have some budget for offensive spending and utility. Try to balance travelling distance on the tree against efficient spending in nearby clusters.

5. Differentiate between sustained survivability and effective maximum health. Block is a really powerful defence, for example, but it doesn't do anything against single big hits because sooner or later they'll get passed your shield. The last thing you want to do is overspend in block and end up with a health pool that's simply too small. On the other hand, if you're surviving big hits but dropping too fast from the dangers of fights then you may not be able to fix that with more max health and you should be looking at ways to keep your health pool high and reduce the incoming intensity of the damage, such as block, regeneration, and leech.

6. Think comprehensively! The passive skill tree, your choices of gear, your basic equipment set up (shield vs. two handed) and your gem selections form a cohesive whole. Auras and reactive skills can be very powerful defences and so can stun-locking, freezing, or simply killing the enemy quickly, from a long range, or via indirect means such as traps and totems. It all adds up, and this means that nodes like damage, mana regeneration, aura effect, and so on also factor into your ability to survive and get stuff done. You can make up for more offensive passive choices with more defensive gem usage or vice versa.

7. Learn to anticipate threats. Game knowledge is very important in Path of Exile and you should definitely try to understand what killed you after you die to try to see where the problem lies. It may not be as simple as just needing more stats. For example, enemy auras are very powerful so situations where multiple bosses are together combining their effects may generate a multiplicatively greater hazard. How can you split them up? Some enemies are more dangerous if you keep moving or if you stay still. Did you run away while bleeding or let enemies stack debuffs on you too many times? Did you get frozen? Is there a flask that can relieve that ailment?

8. Remember - the game is trying to kill your character and it wouldn't be very much fun if it didn't succeed every now and then, so have fun. The RIP is part of the hardcore experience. If you dislike that and don't want to deal with the economy of standard then play in challenge leagues!

Just my personal thoughts and feelings, I hope you find some of that helpful.

Play broken ass shit builds like CoC

Even though CoC AND evasion were nerfed, its still broken as hell!

look at my shitty gear this league;


Even with such shit gear, im still bulldozing through 71+ maps

farm so far;

"

sodium777 wrote:

Play broken ass shit builds like CoC

Even though CoC AND evasion were nerfed, its still broken as hell!

look at my shitty gear this league;

Even with such shit gear, im still bulldozing through 71+ maps

farm so far;

All fine and well in Torment. Not so much in Bloodlines.