As part of our ongoing Streamer Interview news series, we spoke with Uberelite about his experiences with Path of Exile. He's been playing since 2012 and is a long time member of the racing community.

Hi Uber, thank you for taking part in the interview! Please introduce yourself.

Thanks for having me! I’m theuberelite, also known as Uber. I'm 27 and have been a PC gamer for more than half my life at this point. Most people know me as someone that plays a lot of minion builds, though I'll play other things from time to time if they are interesting enough to me!

When did you first get into Path of Exile?

Back in Closed Beta... around 0.9.12 or so I believe. So around the time of Kripp playing Path of Exile for the first time. I had heard about the game before that from another friend but didn't try it as it was shortly after Diablo 3 came out and I was clinging to the hope that Diablo 3 would be good.

What one thing caught your attention in the beginning and what one thing kept you coming back?

The customization available with the tree, gems, and builds... the racing was also something interesting back then for me as well. I distinctly remember seeing spreadsheets for racing from a person named NotThat, also known as PandaMajere, and it was something that after I had played a few builds decided to pursue.

What are the biggest differences you notice between now and when you started in terms of both the game and the community?

Well, the game is much faster, that's for sure. The community difference that I notice is that there's a lot more people that speak from the softcore perspective, which is a good thing -- beats the hardcore elitism that plagued the forums and such for a long time. Though it bothers me a bit when I see people say things like “Pantheons are useless!” when they honestly aren’t.

The other thing with the game is the tools outside of the game have made it much easier to optimize builds and come up with new things -- in particular, Path of Building. Not necessarily a terrible thing either, as Path of Building is still not necessarily easy to use, and you find people that have too many things checked off that aren't reliable. Path of Building has also made the game much more accessible and without it, I doubt we would be as fast as we are at discovering builds.

What is your perspective on racing in Path of Exile back in the day compared to now?

Back in the day races happened at a lot of different times, and you'd have a lot of random people who worked for different goals, full clearing sidezones for rewards and such. It was interesting since it almost gave racers different "categories" in the same way as speedrunning does. It's kind of a shame that that's not really around much anymore.

If there's one thing from those days that I'd love to return, it's the races where you really couldn't practice for, nor can you play at all normally -- which made the experience fresh in a way. Things like Endless Ledge, and even more so, Descent. I really miss those races, but given how much the game has changed since they were last run, I'm sure it would take a lot of work to bring back something like Descent to even work properly. I'm having flashbacks to the time where Endless Ledge had no mobs and only bosses in the zones...

That said, I definitely like the races that are being held now, and the recent race held by Kammell was interesting to talk about with the other racers. The general consensus is that the results didn't show any clear "best build" which is a very good sign -- and there was a ton of skill variety in that race, which made it very fun to both participate in and watch.

When did you first start streaming? How did you get into it?

I streamed from time to time in a few different gaming communities but never too much. Even back before twitch was a thing, in the own3d tv days. Even on Path of Exile, I streamed from time to time (especially during races when my internet wasn't being bad), but I didn't really start taking it seriously until during the Path of Exile 2.0 beta. Various real life things made me stop trying for a while -- until Essence league about 3 years ago, and I've been going strong ever since. As for how I got into it, I honestly can’t even remember other than doing a few things on Youtube leading to it.

What can people expect from your stream and schedule?

Recently I've been streaming a LOT of summoner gameplay, though I'll also play more than just summoner when I find or come up with a build that interests me enough. Lately I've been trying to do a lot of different experimental minion builds to try some new things, such as champion dancing duo, though I've been a big fan of Zombies in the current patch. I try to stream starting from about noon EST every day, though it varies based off if I wake up early or late.

What were you doing before you started streaming?

Finishing my CS degree, and for a short time I was actually working on trying to go pro in the FPS genre (before Path of Exile, even). I worked a couple online jobs here and there as well, though nothing that ever really stuck for more than a year.

Are there any highlights from your time playing Path of Exile that stand out in your memory?

In particular I really liked my runs of Summon Raging Spirits in the first Turmoil/Mayhem race, even though I finished second in both. That was a time where CI was considered the meta, and there I was somehow having 9k life with a rare astral plate. It's worth noting that I wasn't even initially planning on Baron in the Mayhem race, nor did I have a plan for it if it did drop. I made that build on the fly, so to get second in that race to 100 honestly felt great. Even if it started my string of 6 rank 2 overall finishes in a row.

Another one was the old Searing Bond build, TankyTotems, played in the 1 week Domination/Nemesis league. I think a lot of people don't know that was actually me as well. I remember by the time I logged out to get sleep, even though I had been playing solo almost the whole time (with the exception of carrying Helmannn for a bit through act 2 and 3 in merciless after I passed him), I was literally double the XP of rank 2. Although I didn't even finish top 20 in the end for a lot of reasons, the results showed in Invasion league with almost everyone leveling with Searing Bond.

You're somewhat known for making unique character builds. Do you have a method you follow when experimenting with a new build?

Most of the time it comes from one idea, or a combination of ideas used to utilize a new mechanic. I have a thing with memorizing weird mechanics which generally aren’t useful at the time, but later on end up being useful. I usually get a sort of baseline for the build, and it takes me a few iterations before I really get something good. And not all of my builds are successful in the end, but it's nice to try them -- experience is important because what might be bad one league might be decent the next one due to changes, new items, and even just the way the league works.

It's also worth noting in this regard that a change that affects one build negatively might affect another positively. My thought process in coming up with Vaal Storm Call was "man it sucks that duration increases the cooldown on my Vaal Haste now... but wait... does it work in reverse? Would the Storm Call enchant work?" and then I remembered Soul Catcher existed because of reliquary keys, Bloodstained Fossils introduced with Delve, and immediately got to work.

Sometimes I'll get some ideas from others and try to improve upon them or build them a little differently, though. Insobyr is one person who I can say also makes a lot of great, interesting builds, and has inspired a few of the weirder ones such as Blink/Mirror Arrow Summoner. He also inspired me to try a Chaos Animate Weapon in Essence league.

Do you have a favourite build that you've created?

Easily Animate Weapon. A lot of different ones, so it's a bit hard to narrow it down to one. The elemental one that I played in Invasion/Beyond was where things really got started and I doubled as both a support build and a single target carry -- since bosses usually took quite some time it was weird to see a build that would kill them in a matter of seconds, and Animate Weapon was one of those builds. The one from Beyond league also got Build of the Week, though it unfortunately died 30% away from 100 in Hardcore -- the same fate that the one I made during Darkshrine league had 30% away from 100 as well. (Build of the Week S03E12)

That build, I could really go on about for ages -- it was very hard to play effectively, but was top tier for the people that could play it well. This is sort of reflected by the popularity of it in the Breach league, where United in Dream was strong enough to the point that you could use spell totem or cast while channeling in order to deal with the clunkiness of self casting the skill which slowed it down.

What are your thoughts about the Legion Expansion?

Legion has honestly been very fun even though I've died a lot this league. We have way more defensive options available to us. Even though the league is fairly rippy, it's quite possible to get the defensives you need to survive some of the crazy things that are thrown at you in the league.

The clear side of things for the monoliths are a good example of why aggressive minion AI isn’t always a good thing, since aggressive minions generally won’t stick to a rare monster that you want to break out. Well, unless you have amazing damage on said minion.

The multiway fights are fun, although it kind of is unfortunate Headhunter dominates it so much. I just run them anyways because it's a great way to put your character to the test -- still working on a high end character for trying some 5 way battles, though. I like to look at it similarly to Delve, but in a much more offensive oriented manner. In Delve, you tend to want more defensives in order to survive the crazy damage scaling, whereas in the Legion multiway fights you tend to want more damage in order to kill bosses faster.

And the jewels... they're actually really interesting. I really enjoy them -- they have a lot of interesting side effects and they're quite hard to build around sometimes, and finding good ones feels great. Even reworking your tree to fit in a jewel and taking clusters you wouldn't normally take is really interesting to me. I spent a few hours a while ago just optimizing my tree for a jewel that I had because it caused me to take nodes in a spot that I normally wouldn’t.

What would you like to see in future leagues?

Support for animate weapon in endgame encounters? :^)

On a serious answer, in terms of league mechanics I think something that's a little more boss killing focused and less clear speed oriented is good. The boss design in the last few leagues has been amazing. Kurgal, in particular, is one that still sticks in my mind to this day as one of my favourite boss fight experiences.

Is there anything you'd like to see more of in the streaming community?

One thing that I wanted to see a little more of is collaborations between streamers to, say, min-max a build. It's an idea that I actually had a while back, as usually it ends up being the works of more than 1 person. It's also interesting to see how different people approach builds and what they would change, and this is even more the case before the league starts, especially in this one where the tree changed so drastically that everyone had different opinions on pathing.

Do you have any advice for people who are looking to make their own career out of streaming?

Social media stuff is good. Youtube content is good. Just make sure you take care of yourself and stay hydrated. But keep doing what you enjoy!

What hobbies or interests do you have outside of streaming?

I watch anime from time to time, though I've been giving myself less time to do that recently because I usually just end up posting memes while I'm offstream, whether it be on reddit or another streamer's chat.

How has your life changed from before you were streaming until now? What role has streaming played in that transition?

The biggest thing that I've noticed is that I have a lot more motivation to do things, and I've been able to give myself a much better schedule -- even if it's not exact every single day, I've stayed fairly close to it. Turns out enjoying what you do is a great thing to have!

What is one thing you think every Path of Exile player should hear?

PLEASE report your bugs in the bug report forums! If the devs don't know that a bug exists, how can they fix it? Providing them with any details, character names, what skills you're using, what’s happening around the time a crash happens, any information can help them. Also using /bug for layout generation stuff is very useful.

Also don't use cast on damage molten shell if you're using vaal molten shell. It's not fun to have an 8,000 absorption shield that lasts 10 seconds only to have it be overwritten by a 2,000 absorption shield, causing you to die… Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything...

Do you have any projects on the horizon you'd like to talk about?

I'm currently working on reviving my Youtube with a bunch of summoner information, part of the reason I'm playing so many different summoners this league. I feel that part of the issue with summoners right now isn't as much that I feel they are underpowered, but that people do not understand how they work, and aren't aware of the various tricks you can utilize to almost abuse their AI in a way.
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Thank you so much for participating in the interview! If you'd like to see more from Uber, check him out on Twitter, YouTube or Twitch.