From Zero to Hero - How?

My advice.

Currently the game favors high HP builds, so stack as much life as you can.

Next start playing your first play through as a ranged build because the have a much easier time in cruel and merc.

Then save up melee gear or which ever gear you need for the build you want to play, have a new set of armor fro every 3-7 levels and make sure all the pieces have 2 resist and life on them.
Also keep as many good weapons you can for your build since staying up to date on your weapon can make a world of difference on the speed at which you can progress.

Then IMO always try maps solo at first and if you feel like you can take a few hits and not die and feel safe, group up and progress through the content, goes faster and is safer.

Lastly make sure to build 3/4 defensive in your skytree since you don't need to worry to much about dps till the end of cruel / start of merci

And save as much currency as you can for end game and don't spend it and start gearing up till mid to late 50's. It also does not hurt to be over leveled which helps out alot.

Grind out levels in Ledge, fellshrine, and docks in cruel. To be safe you can go +5-6 levels over the maps zone before you progress.

Hopes this helps.

*ninja edit, plan out your skytree before you make your character and make sure the combos of skill's you want to use will work with the weapons and build you want to do.*

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Charan wrote:

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

This is awesome.

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ciaobubi wrote:

Its more about skill,it seems you are not one of those "above-average gamers".

trawlolol

RNG is the reason why...
to be able to do good you need gears. In most cases gears are more important than build and unfortunately to get that nice dps weapon you need to pay lots of exalt for it and thats only for weapon..

i notice that the better gears i have the better i can do my content

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Charan wrote:

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.

Hey!! Don't worry if you get bored and make a new char. I love making new chars as well:)

The first 30-40 skill points are super fast, and you can try out a ton of builds with just that many points. Max HP/Regen isn't as important now that there is so much regen on eq either (you can get by with just boosting Max health and not getting HP regen at all if you really have too...although there is HP regen everywhere on the map pretty much).

There are tons of ways to play...which to me, is part of the fun of these types of games. Getting through A3 normal.....well that can give you a good idea of how your character build is going to work, usually by that point your just fine tuning it and ramping up whatever your good at for higher difficulty levels.

In the end it's all about having fun. As long as your having fun, nothing else matters much:)

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fortispectus wrote:

RNG is the reason why...
to be able to do good you need gears. In most cases gears are more important than build and unfortunately to get that nice dps weapon you need to pay lots of exalt for it and thats only for weapon..

i notice that the better gears i have the better i can do my content

Perhaps in Merciless, but in Normal, it is perfectly possible to get to Act 3 with only blues. By the time I get to Cruel, I'm usually wearing a couple of rares, but definitely not the best rares.

And I'm not even that good of a player. Those ppl doing races can probably make do with even less.

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smallcreation wrote:

But how the hell are people even getting past that initial hump of being "new"?

You learn. If you have to learn in default league, then learn in default league. The game gives you that option, since HC characters which are killed aren't simply deleted as they would've been in D2.

1) Don't worry about the DPS tooltip. It doesn't matter how much damage the game says you're doing. What matters is whether you can progress.
2) Look for high life rolls and resists on EVERY piece of gear.
3) Take a lot of life nodes in your passive tree. Don't just grab a random collection of damage nodes. Doing +8% physical damage won't help you if you have only 1k effective hp in merciless.
4) If you can't tank well, then have a levelled decoy totem or skeleton totem. Don't carry like 5 attack skills. Carry one or two good ones and use the rest of your sockets on appropriate curses and auras for your build.
5) Just about every character should carry at least one granite flask and one quicksilver flask, regardless of build. Roll them for good mods. The other flasks can vary depending on your needs.
6) Have a means of reliably healing up in the midst of combat. Usually this means either leech or life gain on hit. Don't use flasks for that. Flasks are for when you're in trouble.
7) There are some things you should never be tanking, regardless of your stats and gear. Know what these things are.

If you want more specific help, you'll have to be more specific. What is killing you, your build, your gear, your stats.

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realatomicpanda wrote:

6) Have a means of reliably healing up in the midst of combat. Usually this means either leech or life gain on hit. Don't use flasks for that. Flasks are for when you're in trouble.

Really? I always use flasks while fighting (at least in Normal to Cruel). Is this no longer effective in Merciless?

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VoxelSquid wrote:

Really? I always use flasks while fighting (at least in Normal to Cruel). Is this no longer effective in Merciless?

In merciless, let's say you're going through the campaign and quests with somewhere between 2.5k and 4k hp. Even with that much hp, you're going to feel the hits unless you have insane mitigation, because the mobs hit hard.

Hallowed life flask heals you for a base of 960 life. With quality and mods you can increase this, but it's never going to be enough for you to rely on it.

Leech and LGOH on the other hand scale up significantly in effectiveness with your DPS or AOE coverage, respectively. With decent damage and a high leveled leech gem, you can facetank certain mobs even with very little mitigation just because of how good the restoration is.

To survive in HC you need to know what situations are deadly and how to avoid them. It takes experience. Even if you have the most over powered build ever it's still possible to make a stupid move and get gimped.