What's the best class for beginners?

If you like melee playstyle - go for Marauder/Juggernaut or Duelist/Slayer.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

You should really take some time and simply learn how to play the game. Try to discover stuff on your own for a while.

Listen to Shags, he has posted a similar suggestion many times and I heartily agree.

"

DoubleU wrote:

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

You should really take some time and simply learn how to play the game. Try to discover stuff on your own for a while.

Listen to Shags, he has posted a similar suggestion many times and I heartily agree.

I'd have to disagree heavily with an entirely "learn as you go approach" for a new player. It is too easy for a new player to get very frustrated with the wealth of information they have to digest in order to create a build that will survive without being a diefest all the way through to the Atlas. After that? Forget it. The amount of time and energy that it would require a brand new player to learn enough to be at least mildly proficient with PoE's Passive Tree and understanding the wealth of affixes, synergies, etc, is far too intimidating for most gamers.

It's not about what a power-gamer or gamer that had a lot of time to spend would feel, but what an average gamer would feel after their hours of hard learning led to repeated die-festing and what they'd have to put up with in trying to at least have their resists capped while not having gimped whatever buiild they thought they were trying to create.

"Guided Learning" <--- This is what a good "Newbie" build would do. A good build page for a New Player or "All Content" build will be well written, contain all the links and resources needed for the player to understand the mechanics it uses and contain notes on the build's playstyle and special synergies between Skills, Passives, and Gear choices.

The whole point for a game and how it is approached by new players is "Retention." You don't want to just tell a new player to "Git Gud" and rely on them to still have the motivation to crawl around the web for hours trying to learn why their uber-cool-awesome-idea for a character is a pile of broken crap.

What is best for the game is retaining happy new players, which also happens to be best for them, and it's difficult to do that with a game as complex as PoE with anything else other than something that functions as guided learning.

For a new player, dependable phys damage melee builds, necro, witch, etc.

Some have mentioned Scion as a starter. I didn't start playing PoE until February of last year and had to "Unlock" Scion as a playable base class... Is that no longer the case or did some old veterans forget about that?

You make some very good points.
It is setup now to guide a new player through to Lion Eye's Watch and beyond.

Here is a link for the OP:

Agreed on learning on your own. Expect your first character or two to fail until you get a feel for mechanics.

Of course it depends on what you value/find fun. I like tinkering, trying new builds and being creative so it was important to learn mechanics. Then there are meta hoes who do what streamers tell them to do to get the fastest pew pew. I don't get it but people do it.

Terrible advice on doing whatever for the hell of it. Use a good build guide so you know what a good, efficient build is and you'll learn way more and quicker too. Newbs would probably think using 4 main attack skills is great and they'd link some bad supports for it and they wouldn't know what stats to look for. OP, if you want to not spend hundreds of hours on the tutorial (act 1-10) and on not doing much in the game while you learn then follow a build guide and do whatever the guide says. Enki's Arc Guide is probably the best one out there to teach POE virgins. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951/page/1. How can someone learn the game of this magnitude without any direction? That advice of just playing the game on our own to learn without any guides should only apply to games like Fortnite or Call of Duty, not a game like POE where even veterans of 5+ leagues still don't know everything about the game.

Hey,

I would reccomend to read a little about the classes/ascendancies, pick something that sounds interesting for you and start playing.

After some time, you may notice that your build isn't working that well, you run into problems, you probably die alot. It's your first char and the mechanics can be complicated, so this is fine.

Just don't get to frustrated at this point. Take a short look around yourself, maybe you're notice the mistake already yourself. If not, go into the global chat or int he forum and ask for advice.

This way won't be the fastest, it may not even the best, but that's the way I did it, and I was still able to create a build after a while that was able to do all the endgame content, and it feels way better this way than if you "just" copied another person's build, since you've done it yourself.

You can make mistakes in this game, you can even make a whole lot of them, but there is nothing that can't be undone. If you spend enough time collecting currency, you could even undo your whole skill tree. It may be more efficient to make another char instead, but that's another dicsussion. You're able to, that's the important point for the start.

From personal experience I would recommend Juggernaut for the first char. Melee is fairly easy to build, jugg is pretty tanky by nature and won't die as fast and can also be made without much gear requirements since melee builds typically don't need specific gear, just decent damage on the weapon.

Necro is the OPshit of the season but it won't last past this season so it's not a long term thing and I wouldn't call it easy to build either.

I would also choose Marauder or Dualist to start. You want a life build because Energy Shield is harder to get and use. Besides the already suggested Slayer and Juggernaut, Chieftain and Champion have pretty good defenses. One of the frustrating things when learning to play is dying too much, so I’d go with something tanky. Last league I played a couple Champion Impale builds that were pretty good. Attack builds are weapon dependant but with Impale and a decent physical damage weapon you can do pretty well.

"

TheChosenOne_ wrote:

Terrible advice on doing whatever for the hell of it. Use a good build guide so you know what a good, efficient build is and you'll learn way more and quicker too. Newbs would probably think using 4 main attack skills is great and they'd link some bad supports for it and they wouldn't know what stats to look for. OP, if you want to not spend hundreds of hours on the tutorial (act 1-10) and on not doing much in the game while you learn then follow a build guide and do whatever the guide says. Enki's Arc Guide is probably the best one out there to teach POE virgins. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951/page/1. How can someone learn the game of this magnitude without any direction? That advice of just playing the game on our own to learn without any guides should only apply to games like Fortnite or Call of Duty, not a game like POE where even veterans of 5+ leagues still don't know everything about the game.

Actually, you learn what NOT to do when your go in blind for your first character. That's how I did it. And let me tell ya, my first character was BAD! lol. (I'm talkin self cast Arc with desecrate ground bad)
So I agree with not using a guide for your first character, at least up until maps. It's fun to learn on your own and it doesn't hurt anything at all.
Then once you think you have a grasp of how things work, look at a guide. You will then notice the stuff that works better than what you tried.
You could then create a 2nd character and get to maps in a fraction of the time it took you first.