Path of Exile

Yeah there's a few skills you can't evade and that makes evasion a stat you have to stack health with. In that regard though, it's the same as armor. The only mechanic that can kinda let you bypass that is ES, but chaos can take care of it if you're not massively stacking the stat, chugging chaos flasks or taking CI which is pure suicide before 70+. Overall, Health is a lot too valuable in this game, there's more or less no way to do a build that doesn't rely on a heavy dose of health, especially on hardcore, but even on softcore in merciless deaths are very penalizing so you don't want to die too often.

Stack health with evasion though and it's pretty good besides those specific abilities, but armor also doesn't protect against a lot of shit like elemental attacks or chaos attacks(at least it only protects against a part of it). And charges are avoidable for the most part, besides stupid haste aura rhoas, those are fucking brutal. My melee witch is evasion based and it's really nice against bosses and shit since I barely get hit, but some areas it also sucks a lot, have to be on my toes to whirling blades the fuck out of the way. Using decoy totem or skeleton totem also helps to distract these mobs.

Don't necessarily agree, IR/US is good but evasion IF you stack health is very very strong too. Armor alone is shit, armor+health is ok but still not great against the real threat in this game, heavy hitters. You need armor with several armor% nodes and granites with +99%armor to even tank the hits correctly, and you probably want enfeeble or endurance charges to make sure you live. Armor is deceptive because it's insanely strong against smaller mobs and the % dmg reduction shown in the char stats make you think that's a flat dmg reduction, but it in fact scales with the damage taken. The larger the hit, the less armor reduces it in %. And large hits are what kill you, not smaller hits, so you need several mechanics to either reduce the hit where your armor is efficient enough, or increase your armor where it's good enough.

On the other hand, Evasion works the same for everything, which means it's very efficient against heavy hitters. You still need other mechanics though, obviously health, but Enfeeble again is great since it both reduces accuracy(higher chance to evade) and reduce dmg so you don't get one shot. Another is Blind, which is a massive loss armor builds have, Blind is a 75% reduction to mobs accuracy. It doesn't have the highest proc rate but with a decently quick weapon(or double strike) and with lvl 10+ in the gem, it'll proc quickly and stay up basically 100% of the time. When Blind and Enfeeble are up on a mob, it almost never hits you, even if it has accuracy mods. Now obviously, this is more for a 1vs1 type of fight but big hitters tend to be rares so you generally fight them 1vs1.

Also evasion has a second unsung hero, Arrow Dodging. With the open beta fix to archer mobs, archers do a fuckton of damage now cause they don't miss non stop like a bunch of retards. As a melee for me archers were one of the deadliest basic type of mobs, a large amount of archers+aura rare was extremely hard to deal with because while you can sidestep stutter nuke them as a ranged, as a melee the range is much lower so you generally get hit regardless due to fast projectiles on arrows. Queue in arrow dodging, and you basically don't give a fuck anymore about archer mobs. There's still unavoidable spell type projectiles(like vaal constructs or skeleton mages) but those tend to have much predictable and visible projectiles you can avoid more easily.

Now Acrobat is another story, that's a very particular passive and you really need to know what you're doing when you take it. It's a bit like CI, but not necessarily as late game. But without acrobat, you can supplement your evasion with granites and ES and get pretty good results, granite for large packs of mobs and ES to add a "health" buffer that synergizes well with evasion tendency to not get hit for prolonged periods of time so ES can regen inbetween hits.

Just saying, a lot of people say armor > evasion but a lot of it is based on previous false assumptions or general non game specific point of view on these things and taking extreme cases to further the argument("if you use evasion and don't evade, you die in one shot"). Mathematically and practically, evasion is a perfectly viable defensive stat, assuming you build around its weaknesses like you would if you were building armor.

bytes_sl said:

It seems like you have figured it out, now hand over your melee witch build (or a dual-wield axe ranger, ohgod i can't deal with this skilltree).

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http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s...9RRzB8fyvWig==

Oh it's far from a perfect build or a build I'd recommend, I wanted to try the concept and it works out fine but it's unnecessarily hard, especially the witch part I think, shadow would be better. I also respeced a large amount of points(burned 8regrets and all my respec points up to merci, fuck doing act1 quest in merciless though skeleton rhoas everywhere, and act2 quest is full of lightning resist mobs so equally full of suck), I initially went to the middle of the tree to get health regen there, then planned to go toward ranger from there, but figured it health regen was actually pointless at 1.2% and I'd be better served going to the side, get the same health but get arrow dodging on top, and similar access to ranger area for the endgame part of the build(grab the health node and flask nodes, the 30str, the 18% 1H dmg then down to diamond skin and potentially golem's blood in duellist area).

I was on my way to the 2nd big dagger node in witch area too, I left it for last cause there's 2 wasted int points to get there and I mostly used defensive nodes early on anyway, I only started taking DPS shit at like 58-60. Also the resist nodes are temporary stuff, I take them to offset gear changes then respec them when I don't need them anymore.

Leveling a new char for now cause I'm bored of grinding, even though the genre is a lot about grinding, I dislike the concept, I do it for a while then get bored. I do like leveling though, and PoE is great for that with all the builds you can make. New char is a firestorm witch, nothing fancy but I wanted to see how it works out in later levels with all the supports. I will probably remake my explosive arrow witch too at some point, I found that pretty fun.

Edit: Oh on your DW axe ranger, I'd do something like that I guess, aiming for late game build(lvl 80ish)http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s..._wWkgSIF6Lz_g=

I'd prioritize getting keystones and defensive stuff first, leaving most of the axe nodes on their own. Focus on DW nodes so you can use swords or whatever while lvling if you don't find 2 good axes. Might drop the DW block stuff but I find they're pretty strong, you get a fairly large amount of block % with all of them even without a shield, which is great since it works even with IR/US. Blood magic would be fairly late game, might have to grab the int/mana flows nodes before that to sustain your stuff and shit and respec out of them later.

Krag_sl said:

Right now if you want to use daggers (or claws) you almost have to use lightning strike - or a lot of fire traps - since there really isn't much choice. GGG have said that some AoE skills usable by daggers and claws are in the pipeline. I've left my claw shadow at 40 until those are in.

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Lightning Strike is really good and yeah that's what I use on my witch melee. Quality Lightning Strike with Pierce(it's at like 90% chance to pierce atm, higher quality would make it 100% but it's expensive), I use pierce instead of fork or chain cause it doesn't reduce the dmg and has a very small mana increase in comparison, and if you reach 100% pierce to be honest it's basically just as good. Other stuff on it is Faster Attacks, Weapon Elemental Damage and Mana Leech. Eventually the plan would be to add LMP to shoot 5 lightning instead as the coverage is a lot better that way, no "holes". Rest is Double Strike with Life Gain on Hit, Item Rarity(used to be faster attacks, might switch it back at some point) and Blind, Skeleton Totem with Faster Casting, Grace/Clarity(lvl1)/Wrath with Reduced mana, but replaced Clarity with Purity recently due to gear changes and stuff, planning to get Anger eventually once capped on resists, Whirling Blades+Faster Attacks. Rest is a bunch of non linked stuff, Enfeeble to make sure I don't get one shot by hard stuff, Raise Spectre for act3, Shield Charge because I had some red sockets and didn't know what else to use and Fire Trap which is a vital part of my aoe damage, very strong skill really.

Looking forward to the new skills though, maybe I'll level a dual dagger char then or a dual fist, I really loved Dual Strike in closed beta, does so much dmg compared to most other stuff and it has a good "feel".


Kyougou for int, it's viable to grab a 30int node somewhere even as a marauder to equip gear. Generally every char is going to use an onyx amulet too, that's 20 all stats. There's one in the ranger area, granted that's pretty far. Could just use an int item instead while you wait, or better find a shield that has int on it, then you can equip it with another int item and remove it, the shield would stay on due to its own int, unless you weapon swap or something. Build seems fine, I'd grab the 8% block in the duellist area though, as well as the 50% armor node near Unwavering Stance(and maybe the 10% cost reduction behind it.

Double post coming up!

Ryanz_sl said:

Critique my cold witch build. Mainly using freezing pulse for groups of mobs, and ice spear for singles. Thinking of sticking ice spear on a totem with LMP or GMP once I get a totem gem. The extra unused points I will either stick on resist nodes that I am lacking at the moment, or the large +30 str nodes.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s...wXVCKBwfOiow==

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Ok quite a few things not so good with this build. First off, why avoid the witch mana regen area? I mean, you're going to be eating through a lot of mana once you have supports and fast cast speed, those nodes are some of the best in the game for a mana heavy char. There's even a 3 health node in there which lets you skip another for the same result. Another mistake is those 6% cold nodes. These are nodes you want to avoid. 6% isn't a good investment unless it leads to a bigger node. Cut most of these. There's a bit of a weird thing where you have some crit nodes, but not many of them, why those and not the others? You almost seem to go out of your way to avoid others yet pick those. There's a ton of crit in the witch/shadow area and you want to grab all of these most likely. Last thing is the lack of cast speed. Now if you plan on using Faster Casting supports, that's fine. Faster Casting dwarfs the passives in terms of power. However it also eats a support obviously, and you can grab more points.

Here's what the cookie cutter cold crit build looks like:http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s...oI9IhrtvcRL9rd

It has more points but there's a lot of stuff you can remove, that's just the final build. The point is to grab almost all the crit everywhere, some cast speed. I also added chaos resist cause that's really useful, might have cut some life compared to your build, you could take that back, there's some easy acces health nodes. You can switch stuff around and decide on your priorities, but this is largely what most people go with when doing a crit frost build. There's also a more offensive option that ignores all the templar area and instead goes toward the middle. You grab cast speed%, crit multiplier, health and resists in there. Matter of taste. Also I grabbed one of the dex nodes, but most likely you'll need both. LMP costs a lot of dex to level and you'll want that on your Freezing Pulse.

Troll_sl said:

This is (sort of) the build I'm aiming for, and so far it's been fun. Dagger/shield shadow caster. Use Cold Snap to take out and control packs, and then wade in with the dagger to clean up.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s...bz6vVL-_X_HA==

Will be adjusting it as I level.

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Few things to note, you do the same thing and take a lot of nodes that are kinda meh. Filling up those nodes that don't have notable bonuses is rarely worth it unless filling up your last points. First, grab the 6+18% 1H in the shadow starting area, that's 12% on average per point, that's very high. I'd probably grab the 30dex too you'll need it for gear/skills. Don't fill up the shield node and especially not the block recovery part, it's pretty shitty. Overall I'd say, cut everything on the right side until later levels. The dagger nodes over there are especially weak, the big notable is very strong, but only in very late game when you have really high crit and damage, and it's not worth the point investment before that. The 2nd nullification is also fairly innefficient compared to the first one, only the shield block is good up there.

Grab the major accuracy node next to the small dagger node, it's 1point and it gives dex and accuracy. Accuracy is a concern if you don't wade in dex nodes, and you don't with this build. Grab the big Fitness node on the way to witch, that's 50str and 34%life for 5points, it's actually one of the best area for health in the game. Use all your points you saved up from the right side on the dagger nodes there, those are very good since they both increase your base dmg(physical) as well as your crit dmg. Not sure about the cold aspect of the build, specifically Cold Snap has a cooldown and a cast time and you don't really get much in terms of damage based stuff. Could work with the proper supports and a few different cold snap gems to bypass the cooldown I guess. I'd probably pick Arcing Blows too forgot about that in the shadow area, then use Wrath as a DPS aura. That's 30% more dmg on your aura(and whatever lightning dmg you find on your gear). For 1point, it's a solid DPS investment.

Something like thishttp://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s...vWik2Sqriqf4cZ

After that you could simply go back and grab the stuff I cut on the right side. Don't know how'd the build work out though, spells tend to not mix too good with attacks builds. Cold Snap is pretty decent, but the cooldown makes it annoying, you'll need to run multiple gems to bypass that, unless you plan on getting Voll's Protector for power charges. Could work but you lose a large amount of stats from the chest, including a lot of mana you don't have in this build. Could grab Eldritch Battery though I guess.

Recommend something like Increased AoE, Added Cold Damage, Cold Penetration Cold Snap, then repeat that in 2 pieces of gear or so, maybe 3 or if you get a 5L put 2 cold snap to the same supports. Increased aoe is to make sure it hits everything. You could use concentrated effect instead to increase the damage but it'll reduce the aoe by a lot, which makes it a poor aoe skill at that point(but a lot more likely to freeze shit). Added Cold damage is to increase the duration of chill/freeze, since it's based on dmg and the gem itself adds to the duration.

Cold Pen is for mobs that actually have cold resist, you could use Frostbite instead however, it won't help against double cold resist mobs(like an innate cold resist mob say a zombie, with an all resist aura, it has like 140% cold resist so even if you curse them they still have 75%, cold pen on the other hand reduces the max resist so it'd resist from 75% to like 30%, even if they still have 140% total). Frostbite would on the other hand add even more chance to freeze/chill so that's good. If you don't use cold pen, use like faster casting or something like that.

Triple post ahoy!

Just to say, in all the "corrections" I make, a lot of these are opinions, not the word of God. I try to explain why I make the different choices but you're free to disagree and go with another way to do things. I don't necessarily always make the most efficient builds, as my melee witch was proof of since I had to respec about 18points when I figured there was a better way to do what I wanted and you simply might not want to make the same build I'd make. So take the suggestions with a grain of salt. Also, commenting on builds take quite a lot of time, and words, so sorry for the walls of text and the multipost multiquote stuff. Can't really avoid it. If you prefer you can just send me PMs, I don't guarantee I'll answer right away but usually you'll have an answer within a day. Can also message me ingame if you have quick questions, name's Pyros_Eien(or Pyros_Arashi atm but whatever it should still work anyway).