First Impressions After Getting to Maps

so idunno if anyone will actually care to read this because this game is super dead and lots of people who are still dedicated to it are probably extremely long-term players, and i'm not sure if my rudimentary understanding of the systems this game offers will be of any note to people who understand all of these things like the back of their hand

uuuh, i first really gave PoE a try back during ritual league — i made a necromancer with a very poopy minion build, played through the campaign (took me like, a week or two since i liked to full clear every map i went into and couldn't play nonstop every day), finished it at maybe level 75 or 76 or so. got to mapping, found it terribly confusing, dropped the game because of it

recently, i decided that i wanted to give the game another try since i've got a lot of free time, so i spent hours each day researching PoE endgame and mapping and trying to teach it to myself on a conceptual level. not a practical one, because practicality is the death of joy, but i at least wanted to understand what i was getting into with mapping first and foremost (because at the time i didn't realize how crucial to upgrading your character crafting is in this game, i kind of largely neglected it)

i spend what little chaos orbs i have on buying unique gear for funsies, stuff to help out my minion build, and then i run a few maps. and within completing a handful, most of them the same name (i only got three atlas passive points or so?) kirac's missions are already bumping me upto t5 maps, rare grade, and i'm thinking: uuuuh that's kinda fast for someone who has no idea what they're doing

but i give it a try anyways and that's when i realize: my build is awful for clear speeds. i'm not gonna get into it because i don't want it being torn apart because i did what was fun, not what was efficient, and i don't want to compromise on fun. i know now that in this game most builds rely on running one singular skill as your most damaging skill, and that this applies to even minion builds, and suffice it to say this.... is not fun. at all, i think. not the idea of building for it (which i hardly understand, the crafting systems involved in this game are very very nuanced, there are multiple league mechanics now in the core game associated with crafting in some way, and there is no source that really explains it like the viewer is 5 which is not just a content creator spewing words faster than actually necessary, and all of this is very bad for any sort of new player) nor leveling for it.

anyway, at this point i'm thinking "cool, cool, this is fine. i can just use this character to farm stuff while i get ready to make another character that is more fun with a better build" because my own build was very bad and i thought it'd be better to restart from scratch (this was wrong, i got a few orbs of regret and made it a lot better very easily, still sucked with clearing though) — but to make myself motivated, i thought "okay, let me form a concept, an idea, something to keep me excited while i'm farming", since surely this game is all about theorycrafting, right? if you can imagine it, with how extensive PoE builds can be, surely there's some way for you to pull off whatever it is, no matter what?

so that's when i go "i want total minion power fantasy, i want to not have to do anything while my minions just run around super beefed up and carry me through everything" and while necromancer is capable of this, her reliance on corpses actually takes me out of it a little bit. just the tiniest bit. so i set my eyes on guardian, because i have vague memories of his ascendancy passives having teamwide bonuses that sounded really, really good! or, if not good, they sounded fun!! and i found out about aura builds? i go "okay, okay, bet! i'll just run minions and auras and be cracked out of my mind!" and this is when there has to be the obligatory victario's mention, because every resource ever for anything like this is saying to use it, but that's no fun because then all my shiny auras don't affect me myself!

all of my shiny auras that i didn't get to equip because stacking reservation efficiency is actually not easy off the cuff for a brand new player! i'm seeing aura builds where they're running like, 5 to 7 auras??? but there's no way those builds allow for enough minion node allocation for said minions to be notable, right? and not only that, but the passive nodes i remember guardian having, have since been changed, to summon sentinel of radiance (it's okay, cool, terribly slow, but you *can* stack enough minion movement speed or AoE to kinda get around this, surprisingly. but the minion should be permanent if it has no cooldown anyway?), and summon elemental relic, which... i'm sure is fine, it seems like it adds a lot of damage, but it's so boring. and the link nodes? with this game's population, aren't the very idea of link skills or builds a little, uh... like, dead in the water?

so, aura efficiency bites the hope for this build in the butt (do you want me to anoint a dogwater amulet with charisma or something?), and then i figure "okay, i'm ditching minion builds. i'll keep my necro, but only to farm for whatever i want to make next" and i settle on... hierophant! totems and brands! in case it's not obvious, by this point i'm really looking for something that gives magical power fantasy in early gameplay without relying on a cracked build. for reasons i'm sure are obvious to anyone who has played this game for a long time (so not myself), totems and brands did not pan out, and actually felt even worse than newbie-investment minions. like, a lot worse. so much worse. and why can't spell totems leech for you, at least with a specific ascendancy or something? necromancer minions can, and that's arguably dumber than anything a totem could do with how much damage your minions can dish out. anyway, after a couple hundred hours, my thoughts are as such:

league mechanics are too expansive with not enough explanation. they don't feel new-player friendly, and some of them are completely irrelevant for the leveling experience and then just thrown at your face the second you enter maps. and there are some i've not even dived into yet. delving or syndicate, for instance, i've completely stayed away from. being excited to dive into the game only to feel like i'm in over my head within minutes is deflating. every league mechanic has enough nuance attached to it that a separate ARPG could be made for each, and stars forbid you want to gain even a bare-bones understanding of them from a cursory glance.
as is the case with most ARPGs, Path of Exile's campaign is just an extended tutorial mode that i think doesn't need to be there if you've completed it once before. it's a slog and it's not fun and it's limiting in how you can progress through it which doesn't help stoke motivation for new builds or characters.
lots of endgame viable builds, or the sheer concept of them, require levels of farming, crafting, and time investment that is viscerally demotivating for any sort of new player. you may not even be able to get close to the build you want to play without some specific unique or a certain jewel setup that you have to hope you can buy with the dozen (or two or three, if you're lucky) chaos orbs you get from leveling.
the passive tree gives you the illusion of personal build expression. every single beginner guide i watched stressed time and time again "use a beginner build guide, follow a beginner build, pick one singular skill you like and just follow the guide to know what to do with it", which is great advice, yes, but horribly boring advice. i want to play the game as i want to play and be allowed to see success in that way. it's a (predominantly) single player gaming experience, listening to people with thousands of hours in the game telling me not to even consider doing what i want to do because it won't work until i've spent hundreds of hours of farming to support it is demotivating.
path of exile isn't a hard game, but it's an awfully demanding one.

anyway, overall, if you did read all of this, you're the goat. i give this game a uuuuh, 5/10 right now. close to a 6/10. mapping is insanely intimidating to just be thrown into after crawling through the campaign. i haven't even really dived into crafting or enchanting or prefixes and stuff. and yet even though i'm both pretty dissatisfied and overwhelmed, i'm going to keep messing around with it and hope i can come to understand more about it and make something i genuinely want to stick with and upgrade nonstop simply because the idea of running whatever build i please is more entertaining (even if a deeper look always makes me realize it'd be awful for early or mid mapping) than actually trying to achieve those builds. i think hierophant and guardian ascendancies should get some tweaks, they seem really bad (read: not fun to level or farm with while you don't have even a middling build going), and for any build i wanted to play on them, basically every resource i turned to for any idea said something along the lines of, respectively for each, "elementalist or necro would be better", and whenever i took a look at elementalist builds, most of them had golems. often times just golems. or an ice spell. because of the whole "hyper specific skill setup" thing PoE has going for it. i also tried a shadow at some point, that was... really bad. evasion and spell suppression are not things you should at all try to build while leveling, and lets just say i realized this too late

I think the bigger issue is you're taking in the wrong lessons.

Improving gear is essential, but crafting, not so much.

A lot has been added since I started, and I'm not a fan of at least some of it - but that's also content you're a long ways from seeing.

Fun is important, but seeing dramatic improvements is fun too. A lot of why PoE has become less fun for me over the years is the more I learned the less "freedom" I had as I felt I had more criteria to meet. With the sheer amount of repetition, fun often loses out to efficiency, at least in the long run.

Poe does technially offer a bit of creative freedom at the cost of allowing one to totally create a weak\bad character. You have to be willing to put in the time to learn about a lot of the nuances and mechanic interactions, and be willing to adapt as changes are introduced (namely nerfs).


As a newer player, it can be difficult identifying or understanding whats killing you. Resists matter, including chaos. The Life\Energy Shield pool is essential, can't kill if you're dead, so improving it matters, things like that.

You haven't even got to endgame, just keep on at it. When you find a wall, figure out a way over it. You will eventually fight pinnacles then the game will open up to you. You can block most of the mechanics if you find one you like. Mechanics being expansive isn't a bad thing. Just pick one or 2 and learn them, learn more next league.

I started poe with a group of friends, we all worked together with knowledge and experience. Since i started all i cared about was clearing bosses so i focused on that. Some liked mapping, some liked delving.

I think playing with no friends might be your problem. You can also bounce ideas and information off of each other.

Idk what this game is like without friends as thats not the perspective i have had.