From Zero to Hero - How?

Follow a few builds you like on the forums.

Once u understand mechanics then try to build your own.

"

smallcreation wrote:

Summoner Witch? Nope.

Summoner Witch? Yes! If you survive pain in progressing then reward is great.
Summoner is awesome for first character because it is not really gear depended. And you can easily farm solo and you can do most maps solo.

But answer to your question is: you got rich when RNG is good to you.

Well a 3 hour solo race is hardcore and you start with nothing and cannot trade nor transfer anything to the char from any of your stashes or anything.

People get to the docks in a3, or even cruel ledge and have gotten over level 30. Not sure how you are hitting a wall when you are playing at a normal pace, sounds like you think you need this perfect gear for a low level char to get through lesser difficulties and you don't. Get life nodes and wear the best stuff you find on the ground and you should easily be able to get through cruel.

Get life nodes, buy life rings off the vendor, over-level a little if you want to play it safe and don't care about how fast you progress.

Abuse the shit out of granite flasks if you're doing melee (or even if you're not). They become available at level 27, and are overpowered as heck at that level (and really all the way through to merciless and into maps they're awesome).

Use a skelly totem, a decoy totem, a frost wall, or just generally any number of skills that can keep the pressure off you.

Try cursing enfeeble.

I've died in normal difficulty before in races, but when not under a time constraint dying on normal doesn't really happen unless you're just being way too agro, or not picking up any life nodes.

I forgot to mention some things that might help u out,

Obviuesly most of the previeus statements hold trueth, experience is key in Poe, overleveling content also helps u progres safer

From what i read u are mainly focusing on melee characters(it isent easy im doing the same xD)
Some ground rules for PoE

1. max out ure resist as high as posible, this already takes in effect at normal difficulty, resist dont function in PoE like it does in other games, it is highly effective even on low lvls.

2. Early game u can focus on HP and forget about most defensive atributes, they help, but with enuf hp pool u can certainly get to cruelty.

3. desired spots to farm are :
Act 1, The ledge
Act 2, The fellshrine
Act 3, The docks
Whenever posible u should go to these area's and run from exit to exit killing groups of mobs to find upgrades. Also do these runs in a party, the loot qauntity is higher, and players who already have top end gear ready for there char might give u drops they find simply because they have no use for them. Beware loot is FFA, and ninja's inhabit wraeclast.
(to create a new "instance" of the map u press the entrance + ctrl then u click "new", if ure in a party u wil see the names of the people in ure party in a certain instance, wich u can join)

4. Endurance charges, if u do not know how they work, please find a thread about them to educate u, they improve ure survival chances exponentialy.

5. Decoy totem, like someone stated before, highly usefull to take the heat of ure character
a replacement for this is a spell totem linked with sumon skeletons.(the sumoned skeletons wil soak a lot of damage for u)

6. Molten shell, i play a lot of melee and from my experience i can tell u this skill is not to be underestimated. It grants bonus life vs physical damage sources, more armor for reduction, and it gives a nice aoe dps source(excellent for melee)

7. Any escape skill, this is just basic requirements when playing HC, being vigilant and pressing that "shield charge" ore "leap slam" out of danger has often saved me in bad situations.

8. /oos, /oos is the command u can type in chat to force the server to align with ure client.
If u played diablo 3 u know what rubberbanding is, in PoE u have desync, using /oos when u notice something doesn't "feel" right can save ure hero.

Hope this was helpfull to u, feel free to ask questions i wil check this thread in the future to see if u need any more help.

For a very easy first run up the difficulty levels, go with a bow using character who grabs as much resist all and life regen (along with additional life) nodes as possible.

Here is just one possible setup.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBAMwCcQPbBLMFLRUgFx0Y2xkuGYoZtCFgJpUn1SftKk0qWyzpLYMyCTJ-Nns6szrhPC0_J0CgQ9JHfkyxTP9QUFM1VElVS1hjWz1br18_ZU1s9m1sbXtuaW6qcrt08XdieriE2YjxjDaMz41-kAqXBpstm7WeuaIAokCmV6vFrpOvbLVItz63trndvqfDOsQVxFjEosT2xYrGrsbYykrK08tBzZjSGdSP1tHdDd7G51LnY-pi7w7vTvAf8i_yRfT49kj6sf4K


It's almost impossible to die with such a build...even without knowing the areas/monster/bosses etc ahead of time (and without good eq etc).

Rain of Arrows takes care of groups quite nice....and poison arrow works well on bosses etc.


For dual wield characters go with whirling blades. This can be used to avoid damage all together, while still hurting large groups of enemies. You'll still want hp regen and especially max hp, but you can go with more life leach and less hp regen if you want as well.

The main thing to know is the higher your HP, the more naturally resistant you are already to stuns, elemental effects etc. If you add in high elemental resistance that will really make it hard for you to be frozen etc...which drastically increases your survivability. Max hp...in many ways...is one of the most important things any character can have (some more then others....you could get by fairly safely with a bow user without as much hp etc....but.....having it just makes it that much easier/safer to play especially in HC.

Summoning can work quite well btw. Make sure you get good links on your eq for them. The cost to raise a zombie/skelly/wraith etc isn't nearly as important as most spells...so it's great to really pump them up. Undead armies can eat through normal difficulty fairly well.

Grab a Goldrim, these can be had for 1-2 chaos and will help immensely.

Some good responses here.

I wish I could help but I STILL suck at the game for the most part. I enjoy the hell out of it, but I'm not very good at it.

I'm very good at enjoying not being very good at it, I suppose.

I butt my head against the wall a lot. I get a bee in my bonnet (sword shadow! Staff witch! WB Templar!) and have to see it through, but now that I know that health is pretty much the baseline for any build, the variety only really starts to kick in past level 20-30 or so.

And I must confess, I don't always get that far. Not out of struggle but out of boredom.

I'm quietly knocking on a much bigger issue here and shall stop.

Because I really do enjoy the game.