How many shaper set have you wasted?

Ok, in advance i'm very much triggered right now, i'm sorry if this turn into a rant, i'll do my best not to.

So the main goal of the post is to ask to anyone that farm shaper on daily basis, how much set did you wasted when you started, if you even have wasted any?

If you don't want to read a rant/ personal story just don't read further and move along.

So I play this game since closed/open beta years ago, i love the game, can't say it otherwise. Naturally i hate few aspects of it mainly extreme rng, as a late 70 Dnd player i like rng, but i just always hated extreme rng present in 2k+ grindy rpg designs 'and no, i'm sorry Diablo or any graphical muds don't share this with poe, this is EverQuest/Lineage designs). And second i hate gated content which this game is filled with and i don't know why.
In any case i was never able to make any of the gated content in the game since this league.

I have to say that this league was the best to me personally, for ex. everyone trash talk this league and praise breach, i hated breach, 2 of my first builds turned to be complete trash because of nerfs i wasn't aware of, so i swiftly ended the league because i wasted all my currency basically. This league was amazing to me.

So this league, i was really involved and beta tested it, that might have helped, these couple last few year it's more a come and go, and i'm not always involved/informed.

My plan was to do shaper content or that basically was it for me with poe, here i said it. That game shouldn't be that hard right? as i said i started rpg with the very first book of dnd, seen all the rpg development from paper to computer, was a huge fan or Garriot with Ultima, played the very first diablo box at launch ... i basically know most about rpg. I probably have the age of Chris, I probably have influenced more rpg developers than people can imagine (a couple example would be exile kind of design from Ultima online emulated worlds and spawn coming from doors kind of origin rather than coming from thin air once more from stupid 2k+ game design), but this is an other story, and i hope continuing doing so hence this post.

Anyway, my first char this league is a LL contagion/ed, this build was basically made sure to be still at full strength in the 3.0 update, so that was a great pick. Well this was amazing up until i was in front of the minotaur, both because of the boss design and the heavy ES nerf, this boss completely destroyed me and it was clear i had to make a specific build for this boss alone... What a bummer.

The league just started and i had amazing rng (strangely) this time, i have all the currency i need so i decide to make a melee specifically for minotaur. After a few attempts of failed builds, i end with a Slayer with a shaper sword, 6L Belly an absolute dream of a build using cyclone and heavy strike for single/aoe. The best build i ever made with amazing QoL, can do all maps except phys reflect. To note i never copy builds, i might pick aspects from FOTM builds, but they are always my own, as this is the main reason i love this game, it just reminds me the good old days.

So now i have 4 shaper set, and since the Slayer is really amazing i end up doing shaper with it. In retrospect this is my "error", if this kind of choice should even be an error, which is exactly why i make this rant, this aspect is the worst part of Poe, no matter what cause this. Being able to do your own build is the best aspect of the game, and sadly it is tied to the fact that only very few builds end up being efficient in doing specific "gated" content. The first aspect is the best, the second is the worst aspect of the game, why? It wasn't like that in the old days guys. Anyway, the shaper literally destroy me, and i loose 4 sets without even a kill because i'm a stupid stubborn guy, from the start i knew that build wasn't going to make it, but as i said it was even better than the LL/ed one in general. But fact is if i try tomorrow with my ed i'm confident i make a deathless shaper simply because of boss design, i might die once or 2 but never loose all portal simply because boss design destroy melee builds.. Still have more sets, but i simply rage quitted, uninstalled the game.

And last from anyone wandering, i did played HC the first few years.

So to conclude GGG, the way you handle your balance is terrible, you are just pissing people off. If a player decide for a build, unless it's complete nonsense trash, that build should be able to do all content if it have the items for it. Locking contents behind very specific build (aka ranged, 15k es, weird op item interaction that are borderline game breaking, or whatever) is just terrible. Any well "built" character should be able to do it all. But i (and many players) always had the feeling you had to abuse design loopholes in the game to make it, so is this a game to play a character or is this a game to play with coding mechanisms? If the later is interesting for a lot of people it should not be your main priority is it?

Regards.

Everyone laughed at me for going CI/ED this league considering its my first actual league in PoE, but I managed 37/40 challenges including shaper on the single character. Didn't really invest much in the gear until around the guardian fights and maps were alc and go. I think about the only thing that ever really made me stop for a moment was indeed the minotaur, which coerced me into carrying a 4L lightning warp on swap. I still don't like ED vs Minotaur, mind you, but it is at least doable!

As for shaper sets? Never really fought him before this league. I think I trashed 3 sets until I learned the mechanics and then it was smooth (though slow) sailing on ED.

It may not be the boss killer, nor the .1% fastest clearspeed meta bombshell build, but ED can comfortably do 99% of the content in the game right now.

As an aside, I realized I was using ES more for the recharge than top-end and ended up sacrificing down to only 9k ES to fit in biscos. I don't see anything more than that really being needed.

At least, this is my personal takeaway as a new player.

"

Frosthaven83 wrote:

Everyone laughed at me for going CI/ED this league considering its my first actual league in PoE, but I managed 37/40 challenges including shaper on the single character. Didn't really invest much in the gear until around the guardian fights and maps were alc and go. I think about the only thing that ever really made me stop for a moment was indeed the minotaur, which coerced me into carrying a 4L lightning warp on swap. I still don't like ED vs Minotaur, mind you, but it is at least doable!

As for shaper sets? Never really fought him before this league. I think I trashed 3 sets until I learned the mechanics and then it was smooth (though slow) sailing on ED.

It may not be the boss killer, nor the .1% fastest clearspeed meta bombshell build, but ED can comfortably do all content in the game right now.

At least, this is my personal takeaway as a new player.

Whats your tooltip damage over time in skill description of ED, just interested?

Last time I played ED i got to 60k, it was 2 leagues ago. Comparison will help me

"

Necromael wrote:

"

Frosthaven83 wrote:

Everyone laughed at me for going CI/ED this league considering its my first actual league in PoE, but I managed 37/40 challenges including shaper on the single character. Didn't really invest much in the gear until around the guardian fights and maps were alc and go. I think about the only thing that ever really made me stop for a moment was indeed the minotaur, which coerced me into carrying a 4L lightning warp on swap. I still don't like ED vs Minotaur, mind you, but it is at least doable!

As for shaper sets? Never really fought him before this league. I think I trashed 3 sets until I learned the mechanics and then it was smooth (though slow) sailing on ED.

It may not be the boss killer, nor the .1% fastest clearspeed meta bombshell build, but ED can comfortably do all content in the game right now.

At least, this is my personal takeaway as a new player.

Whats your tooltip damage over time in skill description of ED, just interested?

Last time I played ED i got to 60k, it was 2 leagues ago. Comparison will help me

I'll have to check when I get home, at work now. Expect an update with some details in ~8 hours if I remember!

To answer OPs question: 10+ sets wasted (or rather "invested" in learning the encounter) with different builds.

More importantly though: see, shaper currently is the final challenge of PoE. Since the encounter is very mechanical you can either have a build that excels at killing shaper. Then your skill/experience is not really important. Or you can be very skilled/experienced and have a build that is not particularly good at handling him. From your post I gather that you came up with your own build, so it is most likely not tailored to shaper. And this was your first go at him. Under these circumstances the design of the encounter would be very, very bad if you had succeeded.

Don't do him drunk.

1 set. Cause I decided to run it at level 75 when I could equip my build's gear. Tbh the only reason that run failed wasn't me being underleveled, but bugs. Invisible yellow ball barrage apparently froze in place near the TP entrance location. As soon as I lost invulnerability I got clipped and if I moved I got clipped again.
Every run after that is solid though.

I trashed 3 sets so far, fun thing is the first attemt was with 100k dps, the second with 200k and the third with 400k and even tho I couldn't kill the adds troug hthe portal during my first try, that was my best attempt so far.

With the other 2 I learned about different things, such as his fucking beam has a huge ball-like invisible hitbox, felt like getting killed on bullshit, well whatever, will try it again once I hit level 96, or either if I chain die during leveling and I'm already under 10%, then there will be very little to lose.

Did about 50 runs this league.

Didn't fail any. Average no deaths, but die once every now and then when I get lazy to avoid his Slam.

Only got 1 flask 1 sword out of all runs btw. Never farming shaper again. Gonna do it once per league from now on.

Shaper is cake walk for BV ^.^

I think Uber Atziri is a little more challenging because it has less margin for error in my opinion.

3 sets then I got lucky and beat him on the 4th, but I will never try it again.

I decided the fight is undoable with my current build i.e. non-crit brutality-sunder gladiator.

I can do everything else, but that. The DPS simply is not enough. You top out at around 200-250k with top-end gear and right now I'm doing ~150k.

Shaper is just a DPS test. You need enough DPS to kill the adds and keep zana alive, you need enough DPS to end the fight within a reasonable time-frame or else you have no room to stand against the novas.

I survived 5 bullet hells in a row with zana dead because I have max block, but that was just luck. I finally killed him due to luck.

Nothing about that fight is mechanical, dodging his attacks is easy, killing the adds is just holding down a button and hoping your DPS kills them fast enough to not hurt zana.

Praying to survive bullet hell is not mechanical skill lol.

I'd say uber atziri requires more mechanical dodging, and some people rank that fight harder than shaper but it was way easier for me.