Path of Exile

Oh yeah Vaal skel is nice but you can have both, vaal skeletons sometimes get melted against harder bosses and shit and since it's a vaal skill you can't recast it, while the good old skele totem still summons shit. That said last time I played SRS I didn't bother with skeletons either, I think it was more of a thing when I played spectres, cause you don't really have shit to do anyway since most of your damage is entirely passive. SRS you're just spamming SRS, don't have time to spam skeletons or even waste time dropping a totem when you could just be spawning more SRS.

Well it basically averages the ilvl of your talisman so if you don't do them at low level, then you're never gonna use those low level talismans for anything so kinda up to you.

I've spent the couple of hours I played just checking builds and stuff on old chars, I tried splash viper strike, it's alright but there doesn't seem to be a point either, like it seems to kill as fast as Reave but the aoe is way smaller. The dot aspect really only kicks in when fighting tough bosses and shit and even then it's debatable versus just reaving them from a screen away anyway. Hell from what I've checked most of my damage came from killing shit with physical crits rather than the dot, so that felt kinda underwhelming as a result.

Tried Bladefall, didn't like it at all. Though apparently it might be bugged with spell echo. Still the aoe is weird, I thought from the description and what I thought I remembered in the trailer it would be a cone with decent range, kinda like ground slam but in waves, but instead it's more like a wall extending slightly forward, so the aoe feels really clunky. Like you can't center it on yourself and get as good results as circle aoes like firestorm or line up stuff and hit them all like pulse or cascade. Feels like the aoe is basically the worst shape possible for general use somehow and the damage wasn't anything amazing(granted I didn't test with proper supports/gear/gem level).

Blade Vortex looks really solid but kinda weird to play, have to make a tanky ass caster to use appropriately. Iron will caster with a bunch of end charges and shit might be good for it, I don't think it's worth going all phys nodes shit for it though. Best part about the skill is precasting(similar to say SRS where you can spam while the bosses are spawning and shit and they die near instantly once they spawn) and the fact you can run around doing damage with it. Duration seems really good for it, cast speed surprisingly not really super necessary, seems easy to cap at 50stacks.

The chaos spells look pretty good but haven't tested them myself. Looks like damage is alright, does require to press more buttons than the usual build though.

Played alittlein 2013 , just picked this up again.

Reading the last few pages, it looks like a necromancer is being released in the future? That's always my favorite class (or warlock). What can I build in the mean time that's similar? I really liked the warlock's seed of corruption style of DoT spreading in WoW. It looks like I would need to aim for Contagion, correct? What about adding blasphemy to it as well?

Thanks Caliane. I was leveling up the Archer I had in 2013, but he's in standard league (still dont really get leagues, but i'll go read up on those now).

I'm going to restart tonight with a witch. Is there a rerolled guild that still exists? Which league?

Bandwagon_sl said:

Played alittlein 2013 , just picked this up again.

Reading the last few pages, it looks like a necromancer is being released in the future? That's always my favorite class (or warlock). What can I build in the mean time that's similar? I really liked the warlock's seed of corruption style of DoT spreading in WoW. It looks like I would need to aim for Contagion, correct? What about adding blasphemy to it as well?

Click to expand...

Things to understand about the new "classes" coming if you haven't followed is they're really just subclasses, and they add a bunch of passives similar to the skill tree but specialized. Necromancer is a Witch subclass with a focus on pet buffing stuff, but it won't change the current builds all that much, just make them better. If you want to play a summoner you can play one right now and, barring new skills, it'll play more or less exactly like Necromancer would, just less powerful(but obviously the game's balanced with the current power levels in mind, I assume Ascendency will rebalance most shit to take into account the power creep from subclasses).

For example Necromancer adds chaos clouds remaining when minions die, stronger spectres stats, reduced damage taken based on how many zombies you have and make the offering minion buff spells affect you also(which is pretty neat since they're strong buffs). Those are nice but it's not like new minions, new mechanics or an actual new class on the tree, it's just a witch focused on minion stuff.

As for the "future", it's in 3+months at least, so don't expect it soon either. It comes with the next expansion, probably a bunch of other stuff including the new daily labyrinth thing you get your subclass in.


So if you want to play summoner, you can do that. They also added chaos spells in this patch so you can do that, however it's not really like seed in wow. Seed kinda behaves the same as explosive arrow, you put a bunch of arrows on stuff and they explode on everything around, at least that's how I remember corrupting seed. The new chaos spells are really just dots, like a single target dot and an aoe dot that spreads the single target dot at the same time. Mixing stuff is possible but as usual it can be problematic due to straining yourself thin on the tree.

As for leagues, since a new league started, you probably want to play that, Talisman league, Standard and Hardcore are probably super dead at the moment. Unlike previous leagues, this one's the same for both hardcore and softcore(well minor differences in item drops and such), so you pick whatever you prefer, probably more people playing Talisman softcore though.

Don't know about vortex totems, sounds shit cause it takes a while to ramp up so your totems would probably die before getting it high and shit, plus you can't precast spam.

There's apparently a bug with Vortex too atm, you can snap shot increased aoe then swap conc effect instead and as long as you never lose your stack, it seems to apply conc effect damage but with the increased aoe radius.

I'm doing a Chaos Witch in the end, but I'm taking some pet passives on the way cause I don't feel it's worth taking EVERY chaos dmg node possible, and I feel having a bunch of zombies would be helpful since the chaos stuff lacks defenses(can't leech as much as normal builds and no stuns and shit). Don't know how much I'll play though, I'll see.

Thanks Pyros, that helped a lot. I ended up starting a witch and focusing on summons. The totems+flaming skull or totems+contagion is fun.

And seed of corruption could be modified with a talent point that would apply corruption to anyone hit with the blast, and the duration would refresh with each explosion. It doesn't look like the duration on contagion refreshes each time it spreads, so not as good as I thought it would be.

Oh, and not having a colorblind mode is super fucking annoying. I can't tell the difference between the red or green sockets/gems.