Path of Exile 2

Deathwing said:

I went through act 1 again last night. While I mostly agree with complaints about tediousness and replayability, I will do something as long as I convince myself there is something to achieve(shocker!). So, with some of the knowledge picked up from previous playthroughs, I wanted to confirm if some non-PoE1 regulars tips were worthwhile. Because playing as a PoE1 regular, I just wasn't having a good time.

Behaviors I adjusted:
- Picked up ALL non-white items.
- Picked up white base if I was looking for an upgrade from said base.
- If a base represents a significant upgrade, use transmutes if white, aug if blue and existing affix is good, regal if existing affixes are good. Save exalts for weapons or buy off trade.
- This meant going to town more often than the story would require you to. Every trip to town, buy out socketed items and salvage them(this is where all my gold went). Also check vendors for weapon that match the crafting cycle of the previous point. Vendors refresh inventory upon killing a unique, so there was always a fresh inventory.
- Use artificer's orbs! It's a ton of damage to leave on the table. Unfortunately, this likely means going back to A1 town even in later acts just so you can ensure each weapon upgrade has 1-2 sockets.

My build was lightning arrow deadeye and the damage was solid throughout. It's quite an adjustment from PoE1 as filters and leveling are built around ground loot. PoE2 is slower in this regard, but I didn't mind last night. Maybe will be more annoying on repeat. I think a filter similar to PoE1 will help somewhat, but I don't know how the game itself gets players to check vendors for salvage fodder.

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Palum said:

I've just about finished act 1 in cruel diff. I'm relatively unhappy with my build direction, which ended up being poison arrow deadeye. I ended up here because it's simply too much more dps than my alternatives. I went to a bunch of nodes looking for attack speed synergy and that carried me through act 1 and 2. Anyway, I only have about 120k gold which isn't really enough to completely redo my tree multiple times. Plus there's a lot of sunk cost in gear chasing and certain gems and orb use. I originally wanted to go frost, but upon getting ice arrow it turns it the damage is not competitive.

So now I'm in a place where I have doubled down on the specific play style that I had access to that was successful, and no meaningful way to correct that. On top of that, rerolling seems just as foolish due to the exact same issues with my ranger. The support gems I mostly have ignored because there's only 5-6 good ones and the rest don't matter. Since I really only use attack and 2 other skills, there's but much I can do anyway.

I look at uniques and see them as kind of a trap, because getting a leveling version and a high level one if your build requires it is going to be all but impossible unless you're really into trading. The orange nodes in passive tree are rare and mostly pointless for anything related to builds in the dex area of the tree. I have 4 gem slots unlocked on the tree but have found only 2 gems, neither of which had any stats that affect me.

All of this to point out that realistically, I am building based on what the game is giving me as table scraps, not what I want to do. This is the opposite of what PoE1 was like. While build scaling was a concern, I never felt like I couldn't make "class X using weapon Y with skill Z" work at a basic level.

I'm not sure how this gets fixed, but while I much more enjoy the actual game feel and combat in 2, for a number of reasons I basically don't care at all about the thing I liked the most about 1 which was builds. The difficulty is such that you can't easily carry yourself through to end game until you get critical loot to go vertical. So I make choices to get to the next area that I regret having to make just to temporarily eek out a bit of dps.

Just how I'm thinking about the game overall by this point. Also fuck the chaos trial, just not even worth bothering right now.

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Daidraco said:

I've redone my build twice now, switching from a freeze/explode build, to a bleed build, and finally giving into the meta with the grenadier build. Thankfully, Gemling was the ascension tree for all three. Late game its a hell of a lot more awful to switch builds, but early - I feel like its pretty good.

In other news, my best of the dice yet for a grenadier build on merc: (I'm too chicken shit to Corrupt it atm)
View attachment 563713

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Palum said:

I've just about finished act 1 in cruel diff. I'm relatively unhappy with my build direction, which ended up being poison arrow deadeye. I ended up here because it's simply too much more dps than my alternatives. I went to a bunch of nodes looking for attack speed synergy and that carried me through act 1 and 2. Anyway, I only have about 120k gold which isn't really enough to completely redo my tree multiple times. Plus there's a lot of sunk cost in gear chasing and certain gems and orb use. I originally wanted to go frost, but upon getting ice arrow it turns it the damage is not competitive.

So now I'm in a place where I have doubled down on the specific play style that I had access to that was successful, and no meaningful way to correct that. On top of that, rerolling seems just as foolish due to the exact same issues with my ranger. The support gems I mostly have ignored because there's only 5-6 good ones and the rest don't matter. Since I really only use attack and 2 other skills, there's but much I can do anyway.

I look at uniques and see them as kind of a trap, because getting a leveling version and a high level one if your build requires it is going to be all but impossible unless you're really into trading. The orange nodes in passive tree are rare and mostly pointless for anything related to builds in the dex area of the tree. I have 4 gem slots unlocked on the tree but have found only 2 gems, neither of which had any stats that affect me.

All of this to point out that realistically, I am building based on what the game is giving me as table scraps, not what I want to do. This is the opposite of what PoE1 was like. While build scaling was a concern, I never felt like I couldn't make "class X using weapon Y with skill Z" work at a basic level.

I'm not sure how this gets fixed, but while I much more enjoy the actual game feel and combat in 2, for a number of reasons I basically don't care at all about the thing I liked the most about 1 which was builds. The difficulty is such that you can't easily carry yourself through to end game until you get critical loot to go vertical. So I make choices to get to the next area that I regret having to make just to temporarily eek out a bit of dps.

Just how I'm thinking about the game overall by this point. Also fuck the chaos trial, just not even worth bothering right now.

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OU Ariakas said:

I think Transmute + Aug is good now because the mod pool is small; they are gling to have to add Alts into the game some years in just because bases and mod pools are going to get out of control.

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Gravel said:

I didn't play much PoE, but wasn't it more a case that you didn't really get your build going until way later? Like, 7-8+ maps? Or realistically, you do your first char to get a foot in the door, and an entirely new one to get the build you want. Which then required a shit ton of trading?

I could be mistaken, but most people weren't flying with their builds 5 days into a league.

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Gravel said:

I didn't play much PoE, but wasn't it more a case that you didn't really get your build going until way later? Like, 7-8+ maps? Or realistically, you do your first char to get a foot in the door, and an entirely new one to get the build you want. Which then required a shit ton of trading?

I could be mistaken, but most people weren't flying with their builds 5 days into a league.

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Burnem Wizfyre said:

Can someone walk me through this like I’m a retard because I am. I purchased on Xbox, I linked my steam account and Xbox. I can’t find where to download on steam without paying for the game again, it’s not even the money that bothers me, I don’t want two accounts, I just want to play on my ROG Ally when I’m forced to do jobs at work and Xbox while im home.

Can anyone help with that please?

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Utnayan said:

You can't. The EA key is not for use with any other platforms then what you bought it on. (Xbox for me as well - I did research on this) You would have to buy the PC EA key to access PoE2 on PC. (You will get cross progression and more points to spend however when you purchase)

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