Author Topic: Path of Exile  (Read 4661 times)

Laggy

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Path of Exile
« on: January 24, 2013, 12:12:30 AM »
http://www.pathofexile.com/

It's an indie free-to-download/play D2 clone that (finally) came out into open beta recently with three Acts, six classes.

The game's most notable feature is likely its enormous passive skill tree, resembling something like FFX's Sphere Grid. One level equates to one point on the skill tree. You can view it here. In fact, aside from sprites and starting location on the skill tree, classes are otherwise all identical, which makes it a pretty flexible system open to a wealth of builds.

Skills are not learned innately to the character, but activated through skill gems which are slotted into equipment. Gems can be freely removed/added and support gems in linked slots can enhance them (think the Materia system from FF7). Skill gems also level up, again much like Materia.

Otherwise it's a D2 clone with everything you'd expect: emphasis on loot, lots of clicking, randomized attributes on monsters, and so forth. Areas are fully instanced.

Anyway, a few of us (at least Tallychu and I, possibly others) were likely going to waltz around a bit on this game, so throwing this out here in case anyone else's interested.

CURRENT LIST OF PLAYERS:
(note for the below character name list, you only need to invite one char to friend the entire account)

Cynthias (Laggy)
Sanaki (Talaysen)
MoonTiaraAction (Nitori)
Zillywigh (Zenny)
Tiltyuu (Trance)
NotKallen (Carthrat)
YiuNegato (Tide)
Captain_K (CapnK)
ScarletPimp (OK)
Marguerrite (Neph)
« Last Edit: February 10, 2013, 10:46:04 AM by Laggy »
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

Laggy

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2013, 12:16:06 AM »
For my own reference, my builds. (Char names are Cynthias, NamesAreEffort, and Asrana).

(Dual Wield Physical Wand Ranger)

Skill gems setups:
- Frenzy + Faster Attacks + Mana Leech + Increased Critical Damage [+ Increased Critical Strikes]
- Frenzy + Lesser Multiple Projectiles + Pierce + Mana Leech
- Power Siphon + Fork + Lesser Multiple Projectiles + Mana Leech
- Grace + Hatred + Haste + Reduced Mana
- Standalone: Projectile Weakness, Critical Weakness

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Blood Magic Elemental Bow Duelist)

Skill gem setups:
- Elemental Hit + Life Leech + Weapon Elemental Damage + Faster Attacks
- Lightning Arrow + Life Gain On Hit + Chain + Lesser Multiple Projectiles [+ Elemental Proliferation]
- Grace + Anger + Wrath + Reduced Mana
- Standalone: Decoy Totem, Elemental Weakness

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Minion Fire Storm/Trap Witch)

Skill gem setups:
- Firestorm + Concentrated Effect + Fire Penetration + Life Gain on Hit
- Spell Totem + Summon Skeletons + Minion Life + Minion Damage
- Fire Trap + Fire Trap + Fire Penetration + Increased Duration
- Raise Zombie + Raise Spectre + Minion Life + Minion Damage
- Clarity + Wrath + Anger + Reduced Mana
- Standalone: Flammability
« Last Edit: March 09, 2013, 09:29:25 PM by Laggy »
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

Talaysen

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2013, 12:25:25 AM »
i play here is my char(s): Sanaki

everyone do chaos innoculation builds they are the best

post approved by eleven out of ten laggies

Laggy

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2013, 10:43:58 AM »
copy pastaing a more detailed game overview because zenny isn't special

(disclaimer: Honestly the main site does a good job of hitting the game's high points in design and I recommend just looking at it, if you are a diehard ex-D2 junkie it will intuitively make sense almost immediately)

-

OK so basically this game is Diablo 2 at its core, action RPG, more clicking than Zenny's jerkoff sessions, randomized magic item loot is the giant appeal along with character progress and min-maxing your preferred build with a handful of skills that you center your char on. On the flipside the skill diversity and overall complexity is several magnitudes more indepth and a lot more detailed. BUT it is still D2. If you didn't waste hours of your life playing D2 you're not gonna like it. Period.

There are 3 stats and 6 classes. The classes ONLY differentiate on three ways: starting stats (and which stats they are supposed to emphasize), starting location on passive skill tree (sphere grid), char sprites. They are Marauder (Str), Ranger (Dex), Witch (Int), Duelist (Str/Dex), Templar (Str/Int), and Shadow (Dex/Int).

Stats govern your build. All base equipment and skill gems have a prerequisite of either one or two stats, in the aforementioned possible combinations. There are basically Str, Int, and Dex gems, though a handful of them are hybrid (require a secondary stat). Same goes for equipment types (Str armor is Armour-boosting, Dex is evasion boosting, Str/Dex boosts both, etc...) The passive skill tree is the only thing that raises those stats, aside from finding equipment that raises them as well.

The consequence of this is that you can do some really fucking elaborate off the wall shit due to how easily you can traverse across the passive skill tree and pick up shit that you wouldn't intuitively link to the class. You just need to map out a path that hits the nodes that allow you to pull off your build.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree is the skill tree in question. It is fun to just browse and of course you can theorycraft to your heart's content on it. In-game features an equally fully functional version, of course.

Skill gems are the other interesting part of the game. Aside from being the method in which you actually use active skills, you can find support gems which is where the system really shines. Take a spell for example, Spark, which shoots out a scattershot of random electrical bouncing orbs. Spark is classified as Lightning, Projectile, Spell, and Duration. This means that any passive effects (whether from the passive skill tree or from the equipment) which refers to these types (i.e. +50% lightning damage, +30% faster projectile speed, +10% spell duration, etc.) applies to Spark. This also means a support gem like Greater Multiple Projectiles (which halves damage but turns 1 projectile into 5) or Fork (which causes a struck target to produce two new forked projectiles upon being hit), or Lightning Penetration (which ignores a certain percent of a target's lightning resistance) can all be combined with the ability, provided you have the gems and equipment that have linked slots to allow such a combo.

There are some unintuitive combos that have some pretty interesting effects. Added Cold Damage, for example, looks like a simple skill that just adds the ice element to the skill's damage. But when you combo it with something like Raise Zombie, this actually causes your summoned undead horde to all inflict cold damage on their attacks, a useful trait given it yanks the chill status effect from cold damage right from D2.

Aside from that, the game currently features 3 Acts (the last of which is as long as the first two combined), three current difficulty modes, and an endgame feature called "Maps", wherein you can create instances of randomly generated dungeons with high-end bosses and loot from droppable Map items.
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

Cotigo

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2013, 04:00:04 PM »
Character name: Zillyhoo.

I am a shadow.  And I have no idea how I'll build my character so it'll probably suck.  YEAAAAAAAAA

OblivionKnight

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #5 on: January 26, 2013, 04:47:21 PM »
Would love to play, now my free time quantity is a bit better than it was...still not great, but if you guys have times you'll generally be on, I can try to make as many as I can (I'm still playing D3 and Torchlight 2, so...).

Will take a Witch, likely.
[11:53] <+Meeple_Gorath> me reading, that's a good one

[19:26] * +Terra_Condor looks up. Star Wars Football, what?
[19:27] <+Terra_Condor> Han Kicks First?
[19:27] <%Grefter-game> Vader intercepts.
[19:27] <%Grefter-game> Touchdown and Alderaan explodes in the victory

superaielman

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #6 on: January 26, 2013, 05:18:34 PM »
this looks interesting, yeah. Will give it a spin.
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself"- Count Aral Vorkosigan, A Civil Campaign
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<Meeple> knownig Square-enix, they'll just give us a 2nd Kain
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Captain K.

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2013, 01:35:25 AM »
*types in name "UglyOldMan"*

"A character with this name already exists"

:(

Fenrir

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2013, 02:43:52 AM »
Level 7 witch. Ice / Curse / Instable minions build, I guess? We'll see.

Fenrir

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« Last Edit: February 02, 2013, 02:54:38 PM by Fenrir »

Laggy

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2013, 12:04:00 PM »
I was going to mention making a build before playing the game sounds like making the game boring?

You are wrong

I will read the build later but for now what's your (and CapnK's) in-game names

Here is who is playing so far (char name / person):
Cynthias (Laggy)
Sanaki (Talaysen)
NotKallen (Carthrat)
Tiltyuu (Trance)
Zillyhoo (Zenny)
MoonTiaraAction (Nitori)
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

Fenrir

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2013, 03:02:51 PM »
Nah I'm playing on my girlfriend's account.

Level 22 in Act 2 now. I completely dropped minions because...
Well, in ARPGs I always complain about incompetent party members and go solo. And in Diablolikes I want to play with summons? What the hell.


I think I'm becoming more and more bothered by going into forests and killing all the wildlife in RPGs. I know, fantasy lands and all that. But I feel it reinforces anthropocentrism too much.
This happens in like half of the games in the genre though. I probably shouldn't have started talking about that in this topic.

Cotigo

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« Last Edit: February 02, 2013, 03:27:15 PM by Makkotah »

Fenrir

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2013, 03:20:54 PM »
Yep. I didn't really think about it at character creation and am not restarting now.

Talaysen

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2013, 04:51:05 PM »
I was going to mention making a build before playing the game sounds like making the game boring?
Then I did this build:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA37CCEAelAuNJsiycVkqVBK-bnqFVrkSrj6ZSUz1fVyttGY48F1QigTvh4venK8Hzgh6IQsHF7BhBlgD9FLA6MDlSvDdObVgHrJhOuuTrnwE3geNWi3q71hFQB2N_xhzc99ebodDQj0aBSbI4Zk-nCLiT6-7FzAU6hK-ESDyOAW9XyTQKHRT60vfBZp5xTZrPQ2O3MVj1ncRaa7x5TUG2-i1HUEKMNgL-34TlGbQ4-_XVT953c1OP-tvnRwZfakLDXfJMLRdQfM50VeaB8h0sv8NtcNVwUnOz6-TAVF8q

Sigh
(Is there something terrible in this build?)

Life leech does not affect spells, so unless you plan on using physical stuff Ghost Reaver is useless.

Other than that, you're using a lot of points on int highway nodes which are basically useless just to get around to so many places on the tree.  That seems like a bad idea.

Laggy could comment on it more.

Fenrir

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #15 on: February 02, 2013, 05:21:57 PM »
Okay, I'll forget about Life Leech. The purpose of that build is Ice Nova Ice Nova Ice Nova

I just really want Chaos Inoculation/Doom Cast, Zealot's Oath/Body and Soul, Whispers of Doom, Freeze, plus a lot of Damage/Mana/Energy Shield, and I didn't really see better alternatives.
I'm probably overselling of one of these (Freeze? Zealot's oath? Mana in general?)
« Last Edit: February 02, 2013, 05:30:00 PM by Fenrir »

Laggy

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #16 on: February 02, 2013, 08:13:00 PM »
You're definitely overselling Mana.

Technically Life Leech works on anything on paper but in practice like 99% of the Life Leech mods available in the game come from Physical Damage (like the only exception I can think of is the Life Leech support gem which is a Str-based gem) so yeah. Ghost Reaver is useless.

I would honestly drop all of the mana nodes except the ones you can't avoid anyway and emphasize much more on Energy Shield because any Chaos Innoculation build is going to need a shitton of it (survivability is your top concern @ higher difficulties).

Don't half-ass crit, if you plan to Ice Nova you don't need crits, drop that. Also you're completely 100% reliant on Energy Shield so shit that boosts Armour or Evasion will be of no use to you either (the foray into Body and Soul is a waste of nodes for instance). Instead, go for more raw ice damage, cold/freeze stuff, and Energy Shield boosting. Whispers of Doom is pretty easy to head up as witch and curses are good so that works well as a secondary trait since you sacked minions (Enfeeble + Frostbite likely are the ones you'd want to use.)
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

Fenrir

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #17 on: February 03, 2013, 12:53:08 AM »
I thought that Crit = More chance to freeze = What I need?
I'll think about it, more ice/elemental damage would probably be better yes.
I aimed for Body of Soul because it was close to Zealot's Oath. The armour is useless but the max energy shield (+20% on the last node)/elemental resistance looks nice.

Laggy

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #18 on: February 03, 2013, 11:35:38 AM »
It's a lot of nodes to get to though, count the nodes required then take the total % of Energy Shield you get and divide it by that number to figure out if you really want to go that far for it. A lot of the larger 'macro' nodes are deceptive in that prerequisite node costs make them actually inferior to taking easily accessible vanilla nodes that boost the same relevant stat you want.

Crit = freeze is good yeah, but I'd only do it if you planned to spec primarily in Ice Spear (which is built to be critted around). There are better ways to improve freeze proc that don't rely on getting so many crit nodes.
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

Talaysen

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #19 on: February 03, 2013, 05:34:41 PM »
Ice Nova only has a 5% base critical chance so you kind of have to stack a lot of crit to see a notable improvement.  The Frostbite curse alone gives +10% chance to freeze when hit by any ice attack, so that's comparable to increasing crit rate by 200% for freeze.  I'd only grab crit stuff if they're better than normal nodes and you're right next to them anyway.

Also more damage increases how long freeze lasts.

A lot of the generic Energy Shield nodes are only 8% anyway and Chaos Innoculation needs as many as you can get.  I think it's okay to grab the Body and Soul nodes since they give 8% too, and you're skipping some of the ES nodes that are towards the middle of the tree.

Fenrir

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #20 on: February 03, 2013, 08:03:34 PM »
I'm just using Ice Nova now, but hey, I might find something better?


http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA37CCEAelAuNJsiycVkqVBK-bnqFVrkSrj6ZSUz1fbRmOPBdUIoE74eL3pyvB84IeiELBxewYAP0UsDowOVK8N05tWAesmE665OufATeB41aLervWEVB_xhzcpwhmnlprvHktR1BCjDYC_t-E5Rm0OPv11U_ed0LDXfJMLRdQ8h0sv8NtLR-TJzdmLKam6zeD6ropT4KbMJcQaTmK5CIabJ2u2CQ2xR8CcU2az0NjtzFY9Z3E-tL3wew4OthN2Ix2njyBb01Btvr3po5kT79DVB3ZFefwa3OzL50W8yY8

201% ES
50% ES cooldown
7 more skill points = 40% more energy shield, but I don't know what to remove. Maybe some cast speed or freeze duration / curse thing.

I got Forstbite, an awesome curse... that requires Dex. Should i just rely on equipment or dump one point into 30 dex?
I restarted  another Witch just to get Clarity and transfer it, that thing is great.

Captain K.

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #21 on: February 03, 2013, 08:33:51 PM »
Character name is Captain_K

Talaysen

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #22 on: February 03, 2013, 09:42:13 PM »
I'm just using Ice Nova now, but hey, I might find something better?


http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA37CCEAelAuNJsiycVkqVBK-bnqFVrkSrj6ZSUz1fbRmOPBdUIoE74eL3pyvB84IeiELBxewYAP0UsDowOVK8N05tWAesmE665OufATeB41aLervWEVB_xhzcpwhmnlprvHktR1BCjDYC_t-E5Rm0OPv11U_ed0LDXfJMLRdQ8h0sv8NtLR-TJzdmLKam6zeD6ropT4KbMJcQaTmK5CIabJ2u2CQ2xR8CcU2az0NjtzFY9Z3E-tL3wew4OthN2Ix2njyBb01Btvr3po5kT79DVB3ZFefwa3OzL50W8yY8

201% ES
50% ES cooldown
7 more skill points = 40% more energy shield, but I don't know what to remove. Maybe some cast speed or freeze duration / curse thing.

I got Forstbite, an awesome curse... that requires Dex. Should i just rely on equipment or dump one point into 30 dex?
I restarted  another Witch just to get Clarity and transfer it, that thing is great.

Dumping a point into a +30 of an offstat is fine as long as you're right next to it already.  Just don't bother with +10s.  The rest you should get from equips.

Laggy

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #23 on: February 03, 2013, 11:08:51 PM »
Clarity is practically a prerequisite aura for any caster build I think.

Dump cast speed over freeze/curse benefits IMO. Tallychu is spot on about offstats - +30 is worth it if you don't go out of your way, otherwise equips. (+30 primary is not worth it if you aren't being forced to take it as a prerequisite node anyway.)

The game doesn't make it obvious, but the only real reason to care about stats at all is for equipment and skill gem prerequisites. Stats themselves don't boost your relevant substats enough to matter (at least not in +10 and +30 quantities the way the passive tree doles them out), except in specific conditions like +30 Str nodes being (debatably) worthwhile with Iron Grip or something.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2013, 11:14:28 PM by Laggy »
<Eph> When Laggy was there to fuel my desire to open crates, my life was happy.  Now I'm stuck playing a shitty moba and playing Anime RPGs.

OblivionKnight

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Re: Path of Exile
« Reply #24 on: February 03, 2013, 11:18:51 PM »
Haven't started playing yet, but I am ScarletPimp
[11:53] <+Meeple_Gorath> me reading, that's a good one

[19:26] * +Terra_Condor looks up. Star Wars Football, what?
[19:27] <+Terra_Condor> Han Kicks First?
[19:27] <%Grefter-game> Vader intercepts.
[19:27] <%Grefter-game> Touchdown and Alderaan explodes in the victory