Hardcore Info & Help (Understanding Difficulty)

2 things, im kind of new to HC, but is there a master list (by class or otherwise) of hardcore viable builds? i know for each class there is a mega builds index but it is not always clear which are hc viable and which not.

#2 i saw in a Build of the Week thread someone remarked on a non HC build how amused he was at "only" 119% HP

in another thread someone said for any HC build to be truly viable you need at least 200% hp.

is this true? if yes it means the vast majority of my skill points will have to be poured into hp instead of the fun things that make my build awesome like crit, damage, elemental damage, etc.

this would make for surprisingly boring builds in order to truly be HC viable.

ty for all help!

FOUND THE QUOTES:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1458093/page/3

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Dos_Fafner wrote:

119% life at level 80? These SC builds crack me up.

AND

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1458627/page/3

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TheAnuhart wrote:

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jugglereli wrote:

"

AlVash2 wrote:

Am I still forced to use one of 5 skill gems and get 200% life to do any sort of endgame? I love this game but man is build diversity dead

This flashback league I made a CI crit Piscator's Vigil Elemental hit build, and it's working magnificently, so unless elemental hit happened to be one of those "5 viable skill gems", which I highly doubt it is, then I think build diversity isn't quite as dead as you may think.

Anything works really well in low content. 2.0.0 diversity is huge up to a point.

The lack of diversity people talk about is at 75+ mapping where most of the 'viable' builds fall off.
The majority of the rest can be viable at the high cost of rerolling maps to suit them, very few are actually viable in the majority of mod combinations.

What's a viable build?

One that can do pre 75 content?
One that can do post 75 content at great rerolling cost?
One that can alch and go anything?

Depending on your answer build diversity is anything from huge to pitiful in PoE atm. But while progression and content are so heavily gated behind currency cost, there is only one answer and only one conclusion.

Hint, it begins with P and ends in itiful.

are these guys 100% correct? if yes i may reconsider HC altogether. ty for all info/advice, its really appreciated.

one of the things that keeps me in this game is how friendly the community is compared to many other games i have played.

thanks all.

That's a hard question to answer though, since life % depends on gear utilized and on the total combined protection from your defenses.

Let's say you only utilize 4 maybe 5 pieces with a life roll on it, then yes you will need a lot of life% to compensate for this.

If you use only rare items all with top life rolls, well then you might be able to reduce the total % by a bit.

In hardcore the most important thing is your totel health pool, because it is that that will finish of your character. So most builds are oriented around getting a substantial amount of that health pool, while simultaneously dealing the "right" amount of damage to destroy content.

For a beginner the aimed health pool should be between 150 and 200% (usually its 150% for ranged etc, 200% for melee) because in most cases this will allow you the time to back-off in a bad situation.

However, even with such a health-pool there are still a lot of things that can kill you extremely fast.

It works as a rule of thumb, but it is not set in stone for more experienced players that know the content which will eventually kill them and the available forms of defense.

It might be wise for you to first play some soft-core and die a few times so you get a better understanding of the game before jumping on HC, the game get's incredibly punishing in the final end-game for example.(highest map tiers)
edit : this last paragraph is what TheAnuhart reverses to in his post, content post-tier-75 is punishing and does diminish build diversity.(what you consider all of the funky nodes, can't really do that there, the build has to be coherent and streamlined, efficient if you will)


Peace,

-Boem-

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phrostyphace wrote:

are these guys 100% correct? if yes i may reconsider HC altogether. ty for all info/advice, its really appreciated.

This is the reason, why i stopped playing HC. Sure i play some HC temp leagues to experience the content there, but my main focus is in SC temp leagues.

In SC build diversity is huge in any part of content(accept if u wanna farm uber). Cuz u dont need to go over kill on defenses and can try and balance it so, that u die once in a while, but have way more fun build.

And u need to remember, when u read all those numbers and suggestions, that most important thing(for majority of the community) in poe is clear speed. Every build(again accept uber) is measured, buy how fast it can clear maps. And for this u kinda need to play aggressive. To do so, u need also to survive. That is why all the HC builds want so much life and other defenses.

Also the ability to recognize dangerous situation before it happens is very important. If u know, u will prevent most dangerous situations, than u can get few points out of %hp. But this requires a lot of experience and hundreds of deaths.


TL;DR amount of %hp from tree is highly dependent on ur play style and how experienced u r with the game.

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Boem wrote:

That's a hard question to answer though, since life % depends on gear utilized and on the total combined protection from your defenses.

Let's say you only utilize 4 maybe 5 pieces with a life roll on it, then yes you will need a lot of life% to compensate for this.

If you use only rare items all with top life rolls, well then you might be able to reduce the total % by a bit.

In hardcore the most important thing is your totel health pool, because it is that that will finish of your character. So most builds are oriented around getting a substantial amount of that health pool, while simultaneously dealing the "right" amount of damage to destroy content.

For a beginner the aimed health pool should be between 150 and 200% (usually its 150% for ranged etc, 200% for melee) because in most cases this will allow you the time to back-off in a bad situation.

However, even with such a health-pool there are still a lot of things that can kill you extremely fast.

It works as a rule of thumb, but it is not set in stone for more experienced players that know the content which will eventually kill them and the available forms of defense.

It might be wise for you to first play some soft-core and die a few times so you get a better understanding of the game before jumping on HC, the game get's incredibly punishing in the final end-game for example.(highest map tiers)
edit : this last paragraph is what TheAnuhart reverses to in his post, content post-tier-75 is punishing and does diminish build diversity.(what you consider all of the funky nodes, can't really do that there, the build has to be coherent and streamlined, efficient if you will)


Peace,

-Boem-

i already played tons of softcore lol. i want to go to the "big boy" leagues now, but i had no idea i would need to drop so much of what makes builds interesting to just max hp out. i was building a HC claw/one hand reave build when i came across these quotes and i was like "WTF M I DOING ALL MAH SKILL POINTS NEED TO GO TO HP NAOW!" lol

its frustrating because sometimes the most fun content is locked up in HC, like tempest was. so i want to play HC, i just want to make sure i am doing it "right".

^Well "doing it right" when it comes to a hardcore environment can be summed up as
"staying alive" outside of that nothing else is of much importance :)

That's why you never see glass canons in HC and roughly 75% skill point investment in the defensive portion of a character.

I used to play it and i enjoyed it for what it is, but eventually i left HC because i get random disconnects from my ISP. But i was always aware that there is a higher build diversity in the softcore portion of the game.

Ironically, softcore allows a player to utilize more skill-based play by going into content without
"top-notch" defensive layers etc and trying to do content that would be skipped in a hardcore environment.

It is an entirely different game in hardcore from my perspective, not necessarily worse or better, just a different approach to the same content in general.

Peace,

-Boem-

i have been doing a lot of reading on the forums and it seems like the majority of the playerbase agrees with these sentiments.

i find this shocking and depressing.

one of the things that makes POE so unique is the relationship the devs have with the community, it is almost without equal in the world of top tier production quality games.

in addition, the game clearly caters to hardcore players, with some of the best content locked behind HC. we can expect the 4 month upcoming league to be HC only, for instance.

this being the case, why is this not being given more serious attention? so much of this game is about fascinating gem interactions, unexpected and creative uses of skills, finding a path through the passives that caters to some bizarre niche that you perfected (see CWDT Extreme Edition BOTW). that is the pride & glory of POE, and the devs are certainly aware of it, and talk about creating more ways to have build choices constantly in the dev manifestos.

why then is content being created by a dedicated team of hardworking individuals, and being released onto a currently broken platform?

given that this game is so dedicated to creative play, should not serious resources be devoted to TRULY BALANCING OUT THE CONTENT to match the limitless creativity that could be available?

i have never asked this before but i would appreciate if someone from GGG staff could weigh in, this seems like an extremely serious issue.

U seam not to play PoE for a long time. They try to balance it all the time. There was even a time, ppl called it path of life nodes. It was even worse, than now. Scion life wheel got several updates(all other life nodes too).

They r well aware of the situation and trying they best. Imo, it had great success for SC. HC how ever not so much. But u just cant do it for HC. In HC #1 thing is to stay alive and the more life u have, the easier it is. It doesnt matter what GGG does, HC players will always get all defenses, they can. It is a nobrainer to decide between being alive or clearing a map faster, but most likely end up dead pretty fast.

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1337fun wrote:

U seam not to play PoE for a long time. They try to balance it all the time. There was even a time, ppl called it path of life nodes. It was even worse, than now. Scion life wheel got several updates(all other life nodes too).

They r well aware of the situation and trying they best. Imo, it had great success for SC. HC how ever not so much. But u just cant do it for HC. In HC #1 thing is to stay alive and the more life u have, the easier it is. It doesn't matter what GGG does, HC players will always get all defenses, they can. It is a no brainer to decide between being alive or clearing a map faster, but most likely end up dead pretty fast.

i added the bolding.

if true, i take offence that any content should only be available for HC.

why shouldn't i get to apply my creative thinking to all the fascinating and innovative content the devs can create? why lock it away in a mode where being out of the box is prohibitively dangerous?

i'm sorry, i cannot just accept this answer at face value. unless GGG will respond "for the present until a solution is found all content will be available to softcore", this should be top priority for the company.

EDIT: i just want to add something. i can understand the philosophy of wanting certain content to only be available under very challenging conditions, and therefore not making them available to SC players since SC inherently entails less risk.

but it surely does not seem beyond reason to think of creative consequences to make even the SC version of certain content more challenging than the base game.

just an example off the top of my head: in SC death is punished by loss of XP. so in SC league that would normally be only HC make it so that dying has an x% chance of destroying an item you have currently equipped, with x scaling up depending on your level/difficulty mode/et cetera.

or if that's too punishing make it so when you die a super strong ultra mini boss spawns on your dead body, preventing you from going back and picking up whatever good loot you stupidly dove in for, and preventing you from getting back the xp you lost (at least not without some real effort)

or make it cost x currency to revive (if you have it available on you or in stash OR EVEN IN A MULE IN THE SAME LEAGUE) where the value of x is dependant on your level/difficulty mode/et cetera.

these extra consequences can serve to take the place of not being in HC, but still allowing you to try and see how your out-of-the-box build can fare against what the devs dish out without making it so easy it makes the devs efforts feel unrewarding.

frankly, add all of these consequences and more if you want. i love a hard challenge. i just want the freedom to play my own way, in a game where that was the design intent.

I dont get what ur problem is. Just play SC. There r SC perm and temp leagues same as HC. With only little difference for temp leagues.

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1337fun wrote:

I dont get what ur problem is. Just play SC. There r SC perm and temp leagues same as HC. With only little difference for temp leagues.

so why is ANY content locked in HC and that's really not the issue anyways. the issue is it's silly to have to spend 75% of your points on hp in a game this diverse.

i disagree with your assertion that even if things were different people would still go 75% hp because, you know, permadeath.

NOT TRUE.

people like taking risks for payoffs, given there is a reasonable chance for payoff. for crying out loud, the playerbase is begging for it!

people want the opportunity to take big thrilling risks in HC (me among them), while still having at least a slightly reasonable chance of survival.

that's when the person who has that one crazy build can show off, hey lookit, me and my build made it to 85 bro!

but if there is a 90+% chance you won't make it, its a damn sight less fun to even try.