Path of Exile

Ice trap sab was no more or less clunky than before 3.15, it's just that traps are always a bit clunky due to throwing/arming time. So if you are fine with that it would be an option.

I've actually never played mines. The whole idea of another button to trigger my "trap" or the more recent chain explosion mechanics always put me off.

Having hard time even finishing the campaign only because this is one of the most boring and uninspired league mechanics in the past 8 or so leagues Ive been playing.

Apostolos said:

Having hard time even finishing the campaign only because this is one of the most boring and uninspired league mechanics in the past 8 or so leagues Ive been playing.

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I am at something like 20 hours in game just about to start Act 10. That is twice my normal 9-10 hour pace. Some of that was AFK due to just going off and doing something IRL because I was bored in town.

But, yeah, initial engagement this league is sketchy.

We've become spoiled with the fire and forget skills when having to actually aim is hard work. I say this with love, because I kinda feel the same. It is not TOO bad, but sometimes the aiming is janky as fuck and seems to go places you didn't even aim - I assume that is packet loss/high ping. Anyway, I am not minding SST so far, see how it goes in maps. I didn't want to start my normal Cyclone build because of the support gem nerfs but if they are scaling back may revisit.

Forbidden rite totems starting to come in to their own finally. Spent ~15c so far on a soul mantle and a wand and couple kikazaru rings, but otherwise just SSF. Only on a 5L but the damage looks like it's there for sure. Took me a bit to realize how extra projectiles interact with it as I initially thought like why would I need GMP or something, it already fires so many extra! But the extra projectiles get added to the one existing base projectile, meaning that with greater volley it fires all 5 at the primary target, that can all then overlap/shotgun, so the damage just goes through the roof, while the 7 extra just blast all over for general clear.

Still not entirely sure what the rest of the links should be though. I'm just using crit strikes/crit damage currently as I'm not willing to pay 75+ chaos just for a chaos or totem cluster base. Crit tree fits nicely on the base tree, but I'm not sure it's the way to go for endgame? There's a lot of nutty notables on the clusters for this, namely the 30% totem life 40% chaos res on a totem cluster, onslaught on totem cast, totems taunt on attack, etc, so eventually I imagine it'll be a large chaos cluster with a totem medium and projectile medium? Also need to get a rain of splinters I think but those are also like 75 chaos for some stupid reason. Guess totems are the meta right now?

Otherwise heirophant feels pretty bad heh. The arcane surge path is a complete trap after the nerfs, so aside from the obvious totem nodes I'm probably gonna end up with the power/endurance charges and the first node of the mana path? MOM is gonna be basically my only defense so I'm unlikely to even run an aura (not like zealotry is even that good), but I'm not quite sure if I have the mana regen to take agnostic as well.

Totems themselves kind of put a governor on your map speed though. You can't overrun your totems getting placed in front of you or you'll just explode, but it's not so bad after getting a bit of cast speed and proj speed, seems to help a ton with the initial volley coming out of totems as you place them.

You know a league's fucked up when a totem builds the meta lol

Deathwing said:

lolwut? How the fuck did the skill get released in that state? This makes me suspicious that Sniper's Mark will split one of the projectiles for 4 extra hits, like Blazing Salvo.

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Yea I never imagined it would work that way but it does heh. You can see it easily if you self cast it, and the shutgun overlap is *nuts* (depending on the size of your target). I can still get 3 more projectiles with a rain of splinters and a helm enchant for fucking 8 primary proj which should do uh, some damage. Makes me want to maybe go the full mana node route for heirophant just to get the big AE bonus to get more overlapping hits.

Deathwing said:

ronne To answer your other questions on cluster, I think you have to go to totem mediums. No other way to cap your totem's chaos res.

I still think Necro is the only way to play this skill with any sort of appreciable speed. Cast speed got gutted way harder than attack speed.

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I don't think you particularly even need any chaos res on them. The base totem stats and reduced damage they take is doing just fine currently with no additional chaos res.

You re-cast them so often during general mapping that I don't think I've ever had one die from it's self damage before I was already replacing it another screen away. The biggest draw from that totem node is the 30% life honestly.

Fuck you guys. I love a good totem build.

I assume everyone is scaling totem life and cast speed?

Deathwing said:

Load up PoB, try to scale cast speed...

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Sigh. Guess it’s time to read the patch notes closer. Guess it got gutted

Deathwing said:

The irony of totem cast speed is so slow that they can't kill themselves before being replaced. Totems take reduced damage?

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Hrm I thought for years they had a flat 20% reduced taken, but now that I dig around I can't find any mention of that anywhere. Wishful thinking maybe?

But yea I don't think my totems ever die due to the self-damage. I treat them way more like mines than totems if that makes sense? You run around dropping a multi-totem at each pack, and even against conquerors and stuff I'm recasting them constantly to keep ritual of awakening bonuses up.