There are no builds in PoE. Everything is just exploiting, abusing, and gimmicks

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Khallis wrote:

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raics wrote:

Well, we're lucky that PoE isn't an esports game, if you look at what a good player is doing and do the same thing you should be able to get at least 50% of his performance. If you tried to copy Michael Jordan, 1% would probably be the most you can hope for.

And don't worry, people are usually complaining there's zero skill in PoE, it's supposedly a 100% knowledge check. So, I was being very generous with 50%, hell, you might manage exactly the same thing if you tried.

Guys Elden ring and Dark souls games can be beat by level 1 characters naked using the first weapon i've seen it on youtube by some people.

that's how easy the game is you should be able to do it as well.

"using the first weapon"?
Scrubs... there is this guy who managed to complete dark souls 1, often pointed as the hardest one, without attacking or casting any spells. You see, if you roll close enough to something, youll do scratch damage, so this guy showed its possible to clear the game(deathless) with not even having an "attack" or "block" button assigned
If THAT dont shows how trivial the game is, idk what does

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TemjinGold wrote:

Let me spell out the basics:

1) Cap all your resistances.

2) Get ~4-5k life

3) Get a couple of defensive layers.

4) If you want to clear high red maps easily, get ~1MM dps.

5) If you want to go after pinnacle bosses easily, aim for anywhere from 2MM to 10MM depending on how bad you are at boss mechanics.

If you can follow these basics you can literally play ANY skills you like and you can clear pretty much anything other than Ubers in this game.

The number of people who complete high level content suggest either you are wrong or you don't understand the difficulty of your requirements compared to the average player.

https://steamcommunity.com/stats/PathofExile/achievements/

While a large number of people quit early, we can still see that of people who complete the first half of the Acts (so didnt quit 1 or 2 hours in), only 11.5 of those people actually end up beating Sirus.

So even if you keep going for (how many hours to beat first half of acts your FIRST time? Maybe 12?) you only have a 1 in 10 shot of beating mild endgame content. And this includes people doing Sirus back when he could be fought around map Tier 8.

Numbers are numbers, facts are facts.

And then consider how many of those people who succeed, 2.3% of those who try PoE, are playing META builds.

But sure, you can play anything...


(Haha, we got banished to feedback and suggestions.)

"

trixxar wrote:

The number of people who complete high level content suggest either you are wrong or you don't understand the difficulty of your requirements compared to the average player.

https://steamcommunity.com/stats/PathofExile/achievements/

While a large number of people quit early, we can still see that of people who complete the first half of the Acts (so didnt quit 1 or 2 hours in), only 11.5 of those people actually end up beating Sirus.

That's actually pretty high, I expected it will be lower. After all, he isn't A10 Kitava, he was a pinnacle boss for a time, hidden behind the map system so it took a bit of work to even get your shot at beating him. Also, this is a f2p game and hitting maps is where you start asking yourself the big question of 'do I put money in this game or not', because that stash is getting a bit cramped.

You'd be surprised at how many people try to run around with uncapped resists in maps despite how obviously lethal it is, and that's failing the list of basics at step 1. Then when they realize that they should start looking for ways to cap them, they just don't bother and scoot off. That's pretty common, some people will play this for as long as they don't have to interact with the game systems much, and the game is chugging along, once they have to go beyond scratching the surface it's over.

Mind you, I'm not saying that's wrong, that they should try harder, or that capping resists is, god forbid, too demanding, for anyone that's invested in this game to any notable extent it's as trivial as it gets. It just means that this isn't the right game for them because it offers a different kind of satisfaction, tailored for those that do enjoy stuff like that. Enjoying that, and the game like this existing in the first place isn't wrong either, there should be fast games, slow games, simple ones or very complicated, skill-based or knowledge-based, or any mix of it all.

It's like, dunno, learning to fly a plane, it's time-consuming, expensive and certainly riskier than collecting stickers, but what you get for your effort is something you can't really get anywhere else. So, as with any hobby, you should see if the satisfaction from playing PoE is worth the effort required effort, if the satisfaction isn't there or the effort is too high you just play something else, after all, we aren't exactly hurting for choice these days.

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raics wrote:

...
It's like, dunno, learning to fly a plane, it's time-consuming, expensive and certainly riskier than collecting stickers, but what you get for your effort is something you can't really get anywhere else. So, as with any hobby, you should see if the satisfaction from playing PoE is worth the effort required effort, if the satisfaction isn't there or the effort is too high you just play something else, after all, we aren't exactly hurting for choice these days.

Genuinely curious, what is it that you can't really get anywhere else?

Invent your own viable build without using guides or PoB? If the build is really strong, it will be wiped in next major update, and in a lazy way too, meaning nerf for the sake of 1 OP synergy often breaks a number of non-OP synergies too.

Farm currency to buy yourself best items in the game? Div-ex swap took care of that, and with PoE lead dev publicly saying it is players own fault for not spreading their investments (wish him good luck to try and sell other items quickly enough on demand to treat them as alternative currency).

Craft yourself best items in the game? That also requires large amounts of currency to succeed, which you would have to farm first, and steel nerves to not get upset dumping it all into slot machine.

For me, definitive feeling from poe is that nothing you do matters here, it can always be twisted in next update.

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Echothesis wrote:

For me, definitive feeling from poe is that nothing you do matters here, it can always be twisted in next update.

This right here is THE reason why Im still playing this game, especially leagues.

I want the devs to change as much as possible every single patch, kicking me out of my comfort zone and having to figure out what to play next.
I do enjoy that and the fresh economy for a few weeks or months and then go again.


If this wasnt a thing, I would have stopped playing PoE a looong time ago.
This is PoE´s USP, setting the game apart from all the other aRPG`s out there.

If you happen to prefer a rarely or never changing environment, thats cool, nothing wrong with that - its just not PoE. This is the very core of the game and changing that would kill the game.

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Echothesis wrote:

Genuinely curious, what is it that you can't really get anywhere else?

It would probably be sifting through the haystack of needles to find the exact needle that you want. No other arpg in existence has this amount of pointless and not so pointless crap that you can get lost in, it's a glorious mess, the very exact opposite of streamlined. And that's fine, streamlined is dime a dozen, this, not so much.
If the game can survive like this, and it's been managing so far, it has the right to exist in this form, the way I see it.

Of course, I'm not saying it's perfect, don't even get me started on things they could fix, but I wouldn't want them to change the basic concept.

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feike wrote:

Speed runners can clear games like battletoads deathless, that dont mean the game is not retarded hard or good designed. Unreasonable thing is still unresonable, even if a single digits amounts of gifted guys with time to spare can do it

Poe currently sits on a kind of difficulty that is idiotic because it gives too many choices with clear-cut wrong awnswers. You have vast freedom, but the games corrales heavily in certain directions, like a very rail-roading dungeon master
m

ok, well if you want to have a conversation about the game being too hard or well designed then make a comment like this about those issues, and if i make a comment back about the issues you have raised then were talking about that.

thats not what happened, what was said was that 'you cant' just pick a skill, grab some life, damage and defence then succeed in the game with it. that was th statement made, its not true, anyone who can make basic viable characters can do that.

you dont get to reframe what we were talking about after the discussion.

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trixxar wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i dont even know whats meta, i havent bothered paying attention to what is meta for years and years and years

Ok, of your characters with gear and gems showing we have this.

Forbidden Rite Totems, ED Occultist, Sunder Gladiator, Another ED Occultist,
FB Raider (I played this guy too, Fivers did a great guide on it), Cyclone Jugg.

Those were all meta builds. Your one medium meta build is autobomber HoT, which I doubt you were the originator of the build, no offense.

For the others, you are arriving at the same meta builds on your own if we are to believe you dont get info from anywhere else, which would be weird since you are all over the forums all the time. Kinda sounds silly to say you spend all this time here and dont know what builds are popular... but ok.

Anyway, even if true, not sure how that changes the conversation. You can derive the meta builds on your own? That cool.

i have an essence drain occultist, i made it on the day essence drain was added to the game, made my own tree in 10 minutes, grabbed them gem and played through the game with it in the league that was released at the time.

i specced a frostblades ranger the day frostblades was added to the game and have had a frostblades ranger ever since. before that my dagger ranger was playing reave, i played reave the day it was added to the game. before reave was added to the game my dagger ranger was playing double strike splash, that dagger melee ranger has existed since 2013 playing every new dagger melee skill that looks interesting. I played cyclone the day it was added to the game... i played sunder the day it was added to the game... i played forbidden rite totems when it was added to the game...

the day ascendancies were added to the game i sat down with my guild leader at the time, foxtactics, and we studied the elementalist. the only thing you could do with it on release was fire prolif, he was an arc expert, i had played a lot of fire prolif, we started building lightning prolif characters. arc prolif, lightning warp prolif, all these characters had HoT and could prolif off their HoT strikes. over time uniques have been added to benefit HoT prolif, ive seen each one as its added to the game and understood what it did. im aware people make autobombers, ive seen them, most of the ones ive seen use HoI to chain explode mobs, i presume thats a call of the brotherhood thing, ive never looked at those builds trees and item setups so i dunno how they are made.

i do however know how to make a HoT burn prolif character because ive been playing burn prolif since burn prolif was a thing, ive been playing elementalist burn prolif since the day elementalist was added to the game, its obvious how to make it and the items that have been added over time enable it, and what it basically replaced as a speed clearing build was lightning warp prolif which foxtactics and myself built on our own as soon as ascendancies were added to the game.

my hot prolif character is evasion + es CI, do you wanna go show me the evasion es ci hot fire prolif build guide you think ive followed for this character? the character is called warp animal, because it was a lightning warp fire prolif character before self sustaining hot prolif became possible, at which point the lightning warp got taken off the 6 link and put on a 4 link, and the hoT got put in the 6 link.





i have a ton of other characters, i just dont leave them geared, the gear is all in my stash. i have more geared chars than what you suggest, i have a crackling lance aegis ci witch. its actually an arc build i was just messing with crack lance to see how the skill performed last time i played her.

that character, chapterhouse, was created in 2013 when i found an aegis aurora shield. there was a build at the time, the only aegis build i was aware of, a guy called dragon was doing a life based aegis bloc build using a saints huberk and infernal blow. it wasnt meta because it was complex and the shield was super rare, but it was notable because it could facetank the voidbearer boss in a map tht was killing everyone. i liked the idea, but i wanted to used the aegis block feature and do something more my style with it, daggers, and i had never made a ci char before so i made a ci aegis dagger witch using double strike splash because these were the days before reave. i had never seen a single ci aegis char before i made that one, and that char has been ci aegis since 2013 using double strike, then reave, then crit sunder, and now it uses lightning skills because ive merged my long term ci arc witch with it. at no point have any of those builds that character has been followed a build guide, i just made them all up and all of them could do everything i ever tried to do with them.

its not hard, we didnt even have pob back when i made that ci aegis witch, id never made a ci char or a block char, you just plotted a tree on the website and thought ok, hope that works, and then made the character and found out how much es, damage etc you had when you finally geared it up in endgame. and then the tree changes next patch, you rebuild it, work out a better pathing, pob comes, the tree and gems and mechanics of the game change countless times over 10 years and you are forced to remake the character and adapt it every time and you learn how to do things better and better, you build up knowledge. thats the game, my first char struggled to clear maps, that was the last time i made a char that struggled to clear maps, my third car smashed maps, none of those 3 characters followed a build guide, but i did look at what other people were doing to understand how to build characters.



i dont even know where to find out what is meta atm, you seem to think i must know cause im on these forums... i have no idea. im sure if i go to the build forums per class theres endless threads where guides for dozens upon dozens of skills for every class are posted up and all of them can ez mode obliterate endgame. which one of them is meta? theres gonna be 30, 40+ skills and im told apparently only 5 skills work at all, you have to follow those 5 skills or you literally cant progress. which 5 of the dozens of skills im gonna see are the 5 meta ones that i have to play?

i have no clue, people talk about oh i checked this website and X% of players are playin this or that skill... i dont know what that website is, ive never been there, i dont even know what its called. why would i care?







TemjinGold is right. if you know how to make basic characters you can just grab some damage, life and defence and you have a working build. its not hard, its not some elite skill that only 5 people on the planet could possibly achieve, its pretty easy you just have to want to learn and take the time to learn.

if you know anything about making a char youll know how much life you need to spec on the tree and get on gear to end up with a viable amount of life. anyone whos played a viable life based char should know this because theyve done it.

every other stat is the same. armour, theres an amount of gear and tree and aura that works and you get a feel for it. evasion, crit, increased damage, es, block... once you have played a char that has used these mechanics and works then you should know roughly how to add that lego block to a character and have it function in a viable way. a new axe skill comes out, ok you know how to add a viable amount of life, and armour, and axe damage, and leech, and max res, so you just put them together and you have a character. or you realise while planning you cant fit a viable amount of all of them at once. i know when im planning something if it seems like it wont work because i know what my plan was, what a viable amount of each aspect was and i cant fit it all within the passive points available.

i knew how to add a basic viable amount of life, mana, armour, evasion, energy shield, block, dodge, increased damage and crit to a character in 2013 because when i started playing the game i bothered to learn how to play it.








i think the problem a lot of the time with the game now is that theres so many options and so much potential for gimmicks that people who dont really have a good grip of the basics get lost looking at them. they dont learn how to make a basic bitch with 6k life, 20k defence, another layer, 1.5 million inflated pob damage and how to outplay the map system and the basic form bosses with it by understanding the mechanics of their own char and the monsters.

'no one' is doing it because its not the big hype 25 million pob deeps now with uber uber elder deathless 10 second vid omg supersparkle cake amazeballs that brings all the boys to the yard and gets them foaming at the mouth. but if you dont learn to play the game from the ground up like that its just gonna be a confusing mess when you look at these ultra advanced builds made by 10 year vets who play 50 hours a week and have 200 divine budgets who want to make something that feels glamorous and exciting to them. theyve played the game for over 10k hours, if it doesnt trigger X on Y which spawns Z they cant get it up.

that doesnt mean its impossible to just make a basic character and have it work, its always been possible. should the game do more to enable and teach this basic play?

yes, absolutely.

All these "x can't be done" topics would be so much more accurate if they just said it how it actually is "i can't do it".

I guess we could have a bit of an argument regarding builds that are viable for all uber content because given how harsh that stuff is it might actually be hard doing all of it with one single build unless you are swimming in currency. But this is completely optional content for people who like to challenge themselves.

As far as regular content is concerned, you don't have an argument, like no argument whatsoever. Mathil does it, i do it, thousands and ten thousands of players do it every league. Beating red maps and pinnacle bosses is easily doable no matter what gem you pick as long as you know what you are doing. Problem is, most people don't, they also don't want to learn and rather play stuff other people tell them about, that's how the meta comes to be.

"

Orbaal wrote:

...
I want the devs to change as much as possible every single patch, kicking me out of my comfort zone and having to figure out what to play next.
I do enjoy that and the fresh economy for a few weeks or months and then go again.
...

That would assume that each balance rotation would create new options at the same rate as nerfing old options, which is not the case.

Take necromancer for example. It had 1 over-performing build, skeleton mages, which was strong vs all kinds of content and had autotargeting too. Instead of nerfing key elements specific to this build, like Dead Reckoning and Fleshcrafter, GGG thoroughly wiped whole ascendancy, resulting in other minions (which were barely viable before) becoming useless even with very high investment.

Evolution and changing environment is fine with me, but things GGG does are just "screw you", time and again.

"

Echothesis wrote:

That would assume that each balance rotation would create new options at the same rate as nerfing old options, which is not the case.

Take necromancer for example. It had 1 over-performing build, skeleton mages, which was strong vs all kinds of content and had autotargeting too. Instead of nerfing key elements specific to this build, like Dead Reckoning and Fleshcrafter, GGG thoroughly wiped whole ascendancy, resulting in other minions (which were barely viable before) becoming useless even with very high investment.

Evolution and changing environment is fine with me, but things GGG does are just "screw you", time and again.

Nope thats just not true.

There are still plenty good minion builds out there. Im playing one of those and melts pretty much all content effortlessly.
I could do the exact same thing with skellies or zombies or even phantasms if I wanted to but I do prefer SRS.

Besides: The "barely viable" minions you are talking about had been dominating minion builds for years before those got nerfed. YEARS!
It started back in Blight league (thats 2019 just for the records), when minions got multiple insane buffs and I warned back then, that this wouldnt last forever and come at a cost down the road.
Still, back then you could slap a Spectre gem into your setup the moment you got access to it and steamroll the game for no reason or investment needed. That worked for years - not just a few leagues.

And at some point they took the nerfhammer to the face. That was predictable, not surprising at all. The only surprise was that GGG allowed this to go on for as long as it did.