Old player back HC & build questions

Greetings,

I used to play before maps got introduced I dont think the game was released at the time. Anyway I used to play HC only and I am back now to play in the new league 4th march.

I have a few questions, when I used to play Unique items were not a big key in the builds, most likely every build was full rare gear.

I used to play Witch CI high ES. Skeleton totems + Freezing pulse as main dmg.

Can this old build still be viable?

I am lost and confused at the moment when I check the builds in the class forums, it feels like people rather do showoff to show how great they are instead of actually presenting a build. Its like highend gear or mirrored gear. So it feels pointless to follow a build that is based endgame gear especially if I am a hardcore player... Mirrored gear did not even exist at my time.. and core items for builds is new for me aswell..

Should I just go with a build that I create myself with progression of playing the character or shall I find a build?

Any kind of help or tips is highly appreciated.
I am very confused with all these builds in the forums and its very hard to recap all the new changes.

At one point when I used to play POE back in 2012-2013 I knew everything I even won two long HC races with my witch build.


Beside builds, I have question regarding HC..

Is there perhaps a thread or tutorial regarding how to defend yourself vs bosses or strange creatures etc?

I remember Act 1 boss you had to stack cold resistance(rings) <-- This kind of information.

Anything that can recap important things for HC?

Not much changed on the unique item front, most of them are leveling/flavor uniques that are useless in endgame, some build-enabling ones here and there, and a few outliers of significant power that can support a variety of top builds.

The game has become much faster paced, crawling forward with skeleton totems is a bit outdated. You mostly want to kill fast, and have just enough defenses for your flasks/life leech to be able to keep you going, but you would probably do slightly lower difficulty content with this method on HC (and log out whenever in over your head).

Normal difficulty has become much easier, you don't need to cap your resistances and invest everything into survivability in order to progress, which will let you get the hang of the game again. Obviously knowing what resistances are useful in different zones will make your life easier.

On the topic of newer bosses I guess you could search youtube for videos to get familiar with their mechanics.

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Zed_ wrote:

Not much changed on the unique item front, most of them are leveling/flavor uniques that are useless in endgame, some build-enabling ones here and there, and a few outliers of significant power that can support a variety of top builds.

The game has become much faster paced, crawling forward with skeleton totems is a bit outdated. You mostly want to kill fast, and have just enough defenses for your flasks/life leech to be able to keep you going, but you would probably do slightly lower difficulty content with this method on HC (and log out whenever in over your head).

Normal difficulty has become much easier, you don't need to cap your resistances and invest everything into survivability in order to progress, which will let you get the hang of the game again. Obviously knowing what resistances are useful in different zones will make your life easier.

On the topic of newer bosses I guess you could search youtube for videos to get familiar with their mechanics.

Thank you I appreciate all the information that you shared :)

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obsivus wrote:

Skeleton totems

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Jideament wrote:

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obsivus wrote:

Skeleton totems

Looks awesome! Where can you find that?

"

obsivus wrote:

Looks awesome! Where can you find that?

Its a standart drop. We're able to loot it in every map and so cheap for trade. You can buy one of them for 1xAlchemy.

And this one came out with same patch:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Femurs_of_the_Saints

Beware the bosses. Dont know if you played lastly at the time when (a3)Piety was the final boss..

The following ones are pretty nasty, often require players to learn fight mechanics