From Zero to Hero - How?

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ciaobubi wrote:

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

Biggest bullshit I've read today.
It's all about gear, trading and never taking risks.
In Diablo decent gear gets you through the game, good gear makes you faceroll.
In Path of Exile you need good gear if you wanna survive merciless and endgame maps, facerolling isn't really possible unless you truly have the best possible gear, and even then you still need to watch out because a combination of bad affixes on a champion monster, curses and other stuff can kill you easily.

So here's how you do it:

1) Select a strong cookie cutter build from the forums which has a lot of life nodes.
2) Outlevel each zone by 5 levels before going in.
3) Farm until you die.
4) Hopefully hoard some currencies this way and find some good items that you can use for your alts.

And that's pretty much it.

Um, you can totally play with your own builds.....heck, that is a huge part of the fun for me...and for many others. Just following someone elses build.....well that is like being forced to level a certain way. I HATE that in games, and would never voluntarily do that to myself.

Experiment and learn by playing the game, and don't worry if you die etc, you'll learn from the experience...and have fun along the way.

Now...if you are having trouble on normal difficulty...it's a good idea to ask for advice. I have had no trouble running through normal with half the life you said your char had (around 600-700)....but I did have resists etc...which you may be missing..and I also have all rare gear (even for low level since I make so many chars I felt it was worth it).

As far as defenses, Evasion isn't going to make a huge difference because of the way it works, especially early on. ES unless your specializing in it...is good for the first hit (reduces chance to stun etc)..and thats it....so as long as you have ANY es....you'll get the same benefeit in most cases (again unless your building around it). Armor though, especially through normal, can make a huge diff......as can elemental resists.

Decent armor + high resists + as much life as you can get (take the +40 life quest reward for normal diff + as many +life (not just +% life..but actaul +life) nodes as you can.

HP are NOT the only way to build a character, but unless your going for a specialized ES build etc....it's very important. The thing is...there are good +%hp and +hp nodes everywhere...so you can pretty much fit +hp nodes into any build.

If you enjoy following other peoples builds....go for it. Everyone enjoys games in different ways...but don't feel like you have to do that to get ahead. You can TOTALLY make up your own workable builds....you may try a few and find out...ooops I didn't do things right for the higher difficulty levels...but just asking questions on here...can help prevent that..without forcing you into playing a mold.

PoE is already way better then many other similar games...and one of the big reasons I feel that way is because we have so many options in how we play. Each character can be different, not only from what other players have made, but what you have made as well. HC is fun.....but if you are frustrated by the difficulty at first, play soft core instead..till you get used to the monsters/bosses and tactics needed. As I mentioned...in many cases it's easier to play a ranged build the first time through...many of the harder challenges are mitigated by range attacks, then by the time you hit them again as melee, you'll have better eq, and a good idea of what to expect etc.

Also, grab a nice 30% resist ring of each type. You should have 2 nice rare rings you use regularly (rings are great to roll etc since they are usable by all characters types...so it's worth rolling nice low level ones). When fighting an enemy with specific elemental damage, you can quickly switch out one of your rare rings for your elemental ring of the correct flavor. If you get resist all or resist nodes along the way, you can often max out your resistance with just 1 ring. Without taking the resist quest reward, I'm usually running at 40-50% resist all on my characters by the end of act 2. 1 resist ring swap and poof...maxed out elemental resist. Makes a huge difference for quite a few boss fights.

Damage also makes a very big difference in difficulty. High enough damage (and just maxing the quality on a weapon then adding magic properties to it...can make a huge diff in damage)...and things die so fast they don't get much of a chance to touch you at all on normal difficulty. Some abilities like rain of arrows can seem almost broken because of that.

Anyway best of luck to you. Don't get discouraged as especially the first two difficulties start becoming much (MUCH) easier as you accumulate more knowledge and better equipment.

Wow! I wasn't expecting to have this many replies when I logged off the site last night. And the vast majority of them are helpful, too. :) I'll try and address everything -

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"Follow a few builds / Get a build on the site / Don't make your own build"

Actually, I've done nothing BUT follow builds online. The passive tree is so huge and intimidating, when I first started, my eyes bugged out of their sockets. For reference, some of the guides I've followed:

My first Witch - http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/96297
Leap Slam Aura Duelist - http://www.exilepro.com/builds/duelist/520-duelist-leap-slam-aura-tank/build?page=2
Elemental Cleave Templar - http://www.exilepro.com/builds/templar/517-templar-elemental-cleave-dual-wield-offensive-tank

Last night I even tried a "newbie-friendly" build on the site, though desync ripped my heart out when I leap slammed into a pack of zombies in A2 Fellshrine and when I reconnected, I was dead. All the sad faces. There's something oddly therapeutic about jumping on heads, though.

It's not the fact that I haven't been following builds - I have - but rather, something else. (Maybe some of other things addressed below.)

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MoonYu wrote:

"I understand the OP's problem. PoE doesn't follow all the tried and true formulas of other AARP's. That is not a bad thing. You have to let go some of the preconceived ideas you have on character development. Its not easy, but the devs wanted a game that required thought and effort."

Indeed! Though, that might be what makes it great.

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Dinsdale wrote:

"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."

I don't find summoner builds easy to start out at all. Every major summoner build I've looked at, for the early levels, consists of something like:

"Early levels: Just run a Freezing Pulse build. Really, it's so easy to level through Normal, anyone could do it! lolol!!!!11"

Summoners are awful when first starting out; they don't come into their own until at least Spell Totem range, from what I've seen, and you can get your skelly totems. My roadblock stops at A3 Normal. See the issue? :(

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magicrectangle wrote:

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.

Tips noted! I haven't used any of these except a Decoy Totem, which I dismissed at first because it dies almost instantly after I place it (which is usually against white/orange mob packs, where the distraction is most desired). I'll revisit it in the next few builds.

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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.

+1. I know the feeling all too well D:

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wrathmar wrote:

"If you have Alchemy orbs use them on max resistance rings to increase your survivability. If you use Alchemy on amour/weapons make sure that they have 20% quality so you can use the Alchemy orb recipe to get your orb back if you have a bad roll."

I hadn't made the connection to do this; I knew about the recipes for selling to get Alchemy Orbs, but..I just didn't think of something like this. I'll make sure to keep this in mind!

(Note: Also thanks to Boem and realatomicpanda for your tips, as well - I didn't quote you because this post is already long enough - your lists would critically kill people if I quoted them all!

As for the people who were asking about what gear I had, and why I could have so much life and not die, the vast majority of it has always been magic gear. On my elemental templar, it was any sword or axe I could find with elemental damage, and any magic armor I could roll that had +life. Most of my other characters have done much of the same - transmute a white, alt it until it has +life.

Resistances I've done almost nothing with because, well...I guess I figured with enough life, I could survive until I could get to a point where I could farm and hope for some %resist all rings. (Heck, even in D2, resistances mattered in Normal almost...never? - and that's pretty static with most games.) Apparently that's a glaring hole in my builds; I'll have to keep it in mind going forward.

I'll link some of the gear when the website stops being funky and lets me link to items.

Unless you are playing on fresh character or in a race you should not be using magic level gear. The exception to this rule is weapons. For example a magic weapon with high % physical damage mod. You are gimping your self by not using rare items.

+ Life is useful but is not the only stat you need. Depending on your build you will want + strength, + life, + elemental resistance, + chaos resistance, + movement speed…etc

Item linking is easy. Start a message, click on your portrate on the top left, hold down crtl and click the items you want to link.

having max resistances, 75% by default, 80% with the passive node, and 84% with the passive node and purity aura makes a HUGE difference.

also a shield is pretty much awesome, blocking an attack will reduce its damage to 0


with 45% chance to block, 85% resistances, life leech, and granite flasks I'm able to tank every single boss and pack of mobs with almost no difficulty whatsoever... and my HP isn't even that high for my level.

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DarkKaine wrote:

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ciaobubi wrote:

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

Biggest bullshit I've read today.
It's all about gear, trading and never taking risks.
In Diablo decent gear gets you through the game, good gear makes you faceroll.
In Path of Exile you need good gear if you wanna survive merciless and endgame maps

Uh, I've taken 3 characters self-found all the way through into maps. And no, I didn't get absurdly lucky with drops.

Certainly in normal difficulty, which is where the OP is at, gear matters very little. You can get twink uniques and faceroll normal, but playing self found through normal is super easy, and should not result in deaths - so long as you apply just a little thought to your build and your play.

@ smallcreation,

If u are interested u can send me a "pm" with ure ingame name, then i wil take the time tonight to walk true act 1/2/3 with u and give u pointers as we play ( i supose it is much easyer to find out by experience then to try and sumerise it all from this page)

One thing to note for u about resistences, unlike other games, PoE works with
"status ailments" im sure u have already noted that when a fire attacks hit u, u start burning, when lightning hits u, u get shocked, when cold hits u, u get chilled/frozen.

The important thing about this is that the status ailments "duration" is based upon the %hp removed from ure character by the attack. So if u have no resistences at all, u wil first of all not mitigate a %of the elemental attack (making it a full damage hit on ure char) this in return wil result in a longer "duration" of the status ailment.

Shock = +40% damage receiver (sidenote : shock can aply 3x for a total of 120% more damage received, lowering its duration and avoiding combat while u are stacked is CRUCIAL)
Chilled = reduced attack/move/cast speed (i dont know the exact % but it is considereble)
Frozen = freezes ure hero into place (can be removed by magic flask's and certain unique items, the duration like i explained before is based upon the %damage inflicted)
Burn = if im not mistaken burn is a DoT(Damage Over Time) that inflict's 160% of the inflicted damage over time (i might be wrong about the 160%, but u get the idee of what it doe's)

As u can see from this small compendium of status ailment effects and debuffs, getting high resis in crucial in
A. avoiding the ailment's all together
B. reducing the debuffs duration (all duration is based upon how much %hp was removed)

So if ure interested in playing with me, send me a pm, i frequently make new low lvl chars for the fun of rushing them AND collecting currency
(i wil explain this to u ingame if u want)

I play 9 hero's atm, all of them are below lvl 55, but its so much easyer because u can swap equipment between them :')

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Boem wrote:

"@ smallcreation,

If u are interested u can send me a "pm" with ure ingame name, then i wil take the time tonight to walk true act 1/2/3 with u and give u pointers as we play ( i supose it is much easyer to find out by experience then to try and sumerise it all from this page)..."

I won't be on at all tonight because of work, but maybe some other time :) Pretty lonely playing online except in public groups!

As for the item linking, I knew from a previous thread that I could link from the picture above; it just didn't have any sort of picture up there earlier for me to look at my items. :) I do now, though, so...this is what I have on my Ele Cleave Templar before I stopped playing him at Lv. 37:







Being in default, I had the liberty to collect a few more items without fear of losing them (the unique amulet, for instance), so this is pretty above-par for me compared to playing in hardcore. But it just seems like with gear like this, I should be at least holding my own in normal...and yet, I still die to a few things quite handily (champ dogs in Docks, the greek Aurioch warrior people in the later levels, etc.), or at least struggle a lot against. Resistances seem like the glaring hole, as I mentioned earlier - maybe with some prismatics, this could stand to be a lot stronger.

Well, for one thing you've chosen exactly the worst weapons for elemental cleave. 1.1 speed? Horrible. Get faster weapons. Just buy them from a vendor or something, even if they don't have as much elemental damage.

If you check the vendors every level you'll also probably find some coral rings with some elemental damage on them (just blue ones). Elemental damage off-weapon is twice as good as elemental damage on-weapon.

You have a 4L hat which is great. Swap out heavy strike (wtf?) for life on hit, and you're good to go. Depending what gems you have available you may want to drop item quantity and chrom one of the sockets to green for faster attacks. You could also leave it red and put blood magic if you grow weary of spamming mana flasks.

Arctic armor (just level 1) will take care of the dogs on docks.

Granite flasks will take care of most other situations where you might feel squishy.

Wrath and anger are unleveled? What's that about? That's where all your damage comes from. I guess wrath maybe you don't have enough int at the moment or something, but what about anger? Seriously while leveling (and really up to end game until you get good gear) auras provide a huge chunk of your damage.

My 82 elemental cleaver has pretty good gear now (for being mostly self found), but half my damage still comes from auras.

Without any twink gear I found my elemental cleave character to be one of the easiest to level. Certainly much easier than my dual totem or my summoner.