Path of Exile

Most of the answers and links to the relevant places can be found in the post I made for launch many pages back:

http://www.rerolled.org/showthread.p...ll=1#post76233

Aamry_sl said:

How much are those Quill Rain worth? I'm trying to get one in HC as Pyros suggested, but someone wanted 3 GCPs. I don't even have 1 GCP, I'm kinda orb poor, I need to start farming them.

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3GCP is way overpriced, but maybe it was ilvl 50+ or already 4linked. I'd say a basic Quill Rain is worth 2 to 3 chaos, 3chaos being 1GCP. I wouldn't pay more than a GCP for one, in fact that's what I paid for my current one iirc, and I only paid a GCP because it had 19dex(out of 20) and was ilvl 35+ so 5socketable since I wanted to 4 link it.

Been relvling the explo arrow witch, but with a stronger build this time, and also with better items from the various chars I've made inbetween. Cruising through act1 merci atm, granted that's still very easy if your build is solid, but killing Brutus in 2 salvos was pretty funny.

Overall the build is a bit expensive for a first char, I wouldn't really recommend it as a starting build. It's not super expensive but you need a Quill Rain, you need a bunch of gems you don't get as rewards or get too late, like Concentrated Effect, Elemental Proliferation and obviously Explosive Arrow. First 2 are worth about 2chaos each, they're drop only, Explosive Arrow is worth like an alch but ultimately you'd want a quality one asap so it's leveled up, so investing a GCP or 2 to get a 15+% quality is also very helpful(it's cheap relatively because not in demand though, I bought my first 14% one for 1GCP and my current one is a 16% I got for a GCP+chaos). You'll want a Reduced Mana for your auras too obviously, but if you made a templar or marauder, both which work fine with EA builds, you get those as rewards. Purity Discipline Clarity you get as rewards if a witch, Fire Trap/Poison Arrow/Decoy Totem are low level rewards you just make a marauder and a shadow and do glyph wall quest takes like 5mins total.

I'll be making an explosive arrow guide soonish, I've got a few new improvement and the build is a lot more adapted to hardcore progression atm, it's overall very similar at the end(lvl 85 or so) but I'm focusing on health before damage/aoe stuff first because explosive arrow scales great anyway. Currently at 2800hp at lvl 53, and I "one shot" mobs with 2charges anyway.

Just so you know, flat cold damage doesn't affect spells so it's a meaningless stat for casters. That still sounds like a pretty decent wand, but not that amazing, very high spell power sure but no crit, no crit dmg, no cast speed. Cast speed especially can be found in large numbers on wands and scepters, and a 19% cast speed mod really makes a huge difference.

I got a blue 20% implicit scepter with +2cold gems and +19%castspeed, I've been pondering if I should regal it, if I roll a decent spell dmg% on it it'd probably be worth quite a bit, but if I roll say life on kill, then it'll be worth jackshit ^^.

Chain is imo overpriced, but it is pretty good for lightning arrow build still, and it's rare. High spell% caster weapons aren't that rare, hell you can probably roll a decent one with alterations only.

Khane_sl said:

I spent 120 alterations on an ilvl 68 imbued wand. Best roll I got was 37% (I was hoping to get a decent enough roll and then regal). I'm not saying the wand I lost out on was amazing. But comparitively, *decent* items are incredibly cheap compared to skill gems and even certain socketed items.

Maybe I just don't know shit about the mechanics of this game but for instance... I had a 30% to elemental damage, 7-70 lightning damage, 45 life, 12 all res, 32 lightning res, 7% fire damage level 24 ring that I was trying to sell forever... I ended up selling it for something stupid like 1 alch because NOBODY wanted it... and that seems like an incredible ring especially for that level. Or maybe I was just in terrible trade channels (why do they have so many separate trade channels? Is there a way to see and cycle through them?)

And I know that the flat cold damage doesn't effect spells, was just listing all the mods on the wand that I rememberd.

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Yeah well alts can be finnicky bitches for sure. I used 60 alts to roll ONE seething flask the other day. Just a normal seething hallowed life flask, I didn't even care about the 2nd mod, and yet I never rolled it forever. Also about 15 augments. Was just saying that in general, you'll be able to get a good spell dmg % roll.

Now on the price of various items and their relative value, you have to understand that for example wands are only useful to casters. Chain is useful to more classes out there, some casters, some archers, some melees(lightning strike, but not really anymore). Gems also enable you certain mechanics, items other than uniques simply improve your existing stat. Now as I said, Chain is way overpriced imo, it should be worth a GCP, maybe 2 but not 4 like it is currently. And for 4GCP, you can certainly find a ton more upgrades that will make your char stronger than just adding chain, no question. Just buy a fork for an alch and bam it's almost as good already(it's actually better on tight packs). I don't even think Chain is that good on THE chain build, LA archer builds, until lategame where your damage is high enough that the penalty doesn't affect your chance to shock on non crits(static blows). Using a chain at lvl 31 unless you have a godly bow is probably actually worse than using fork.

Items do have what I'd call the D3 syndrom, to an extent. That is, items with all the good shit are worth an exalted+(like for a wand, high spell power, crit, cast speed, maybe projectile speed too, health, resist if possible) but items that only have a few of the stats are worth an alch/chaos. I'd say the ring you listed sounds pretty awesome though, I think it would have sold for a GCP or so to the right person. But the problem is finding that person. I often have shit in my "sell tab" for 3-4days before it finally sells, and it's not even expensive shit, mostly it's 1alch or 1chaos shit. I do wish you could switch trade chats, you can kinda by relogging, but sometimes you end up in the same and it's hard to tell right away.

Anyway, that non perfect items with still very good stats aren't expensive is a great thing for gearing up early on. You can grab a full set of very good gear for an alch to a chaos per piece, instead of having to grind forever to be able to afford an upgrade that lets you progress.

Quill Rain is an explosive arrow bow, and that's pretty much it. It shouldn't be used for anything but specific builds which disregard damage. It's also good for EK or Flame Totem shenanigans due to the insane projectile speed. You certainly shouldn't be using Quill Rain as lightning arrow, ever.

On your build, there's a quite a few things I'd change.

First, are you sure you want to run mana based instead of Blood Magic? Seems to me it'd be a lot easier with Blood Magic.

Second aspect, nitpicking and priority choices. The 10% armor nodes near the center are terrible, drop all of these. If you want armor, you can grab 50% for only 3points at the bottom near Unwavering Stance. Same for the health in the middle, drop the further one, grab the health in the duellist area, it's the same 4points but you get 1.5% health regen instead of 10str. Grab the health regen in the templar tree. Probably try to grab the Marauder start stuff, but might be tough. I'd drop all the area where you grab 20dex 10% accuracy, 30dex and 30int and go from the sides, saves you a lot of point, compensate by using a Light Quiver instead of a Conductive Quiver, replace later when better gear. Drop Shock Duration node in static blows area. Drop the 6points body and soul. There's a 7% mana cost reduction for 1point in the templar starting area, why not grab this one but grab the 3x5% lower? If you do the armor change you also get 10% for 1point, so 17% for 2points instead of 15% for 3points. Grab Diamond skin at the bottom of the tree. Finally GRAB CATALYSE ARE YOU CRAZY? Catalyse is basically the only point of making a templar LA.

Revised build:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-s...JuqjJ-TeOsWf6P

I still left Blood Magic out, but I'd take it. If you don't want to take it, I'd recommend grabbing the 20%mana regen in the templar starting area, you will need it.

If you feel you need dex, grab the 30dex node under Static Blows for 2points, or the 20Dex/Accuracy in the templar starting area for 2points(wasted requirement though). If you want Int, grab the 30int in the templar starting area, 3% cost reduction on the way doesn't hurt, and you have access to 2more +30 nodes for 2points investments.

I haven't counted the health but it should be close enough.

Aamry_sl said:

I died at level 30 in the City of Sarn. That's the farthest any of my characters have gotten in Hardcore. goddamnit I hate this game sometimes.

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Did you rip to the bear trap boss? Cause I've literally never fought this guy on hardcore, ever. Hug the "south" wall until you reach the town entrance, he's usually in the ruins so you won't see him. He's absolutely retarded balance wise and if you don't have high armor he will rape you.

It seems pretty hard to rip with a LA build though, if you want to play that, you should start Marauder instead(assuming you don't mind). With the early big hp nodes and resist nodes, then making your way through templar, you end up tankier I think. With LA+Fork+Life Gain on Hit, nothing until Cruel act3 should really put a dent in you. Don't know haven't played an archer but it seems it'd be easier than most melees I've played with the large multihit aoe on lightning arrow couple with life gain on hit.

kitsune_sl said:

Third time's the charm! I finally beat Vaal on merciless, after dying two templars (One wander, one freezing pulse) my summoner built specifically to tank stuff beat him with ease. Double curses of enfeeble + temporal chains and some actual movement speed made the boss a total breeze. Finally I can run maps, my face is beaming

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Yeah I remember during closed beta I had the dual curses and Temporal makes him quite a joke then enfeeble to make sure the rocks don't do too much damage and it's easy peasy, plus unlike other fights, vaal constantly spawn shit mobs to raise zombies from, and if he doesn't smash the zombies right away, he takes stupid high amounts of damage since zombie DPS is like 10k each or whatever stupid number. I bet if you could see the zombie damage numbers in the tooltip, people would be crying nerfs all over, when you pay attention to them and they take a swing at a normal mob you can see they lose like 80% of their health even in merciless, and that's one zombie and one swing(and on my build I didn't even have any of the dmg% nodes other than Lord of the Dead). The problem of temp chains is without the perma curse, it's really pretty shitty since base duration is like 4.5secs and increases only to like 7secs, even with increased duration on it(which boosts the mana cost to fairly obscene amounts too) it only lasts as long as a normal curse at lvl 1, so you have to recast it over and over.

I'm gearing up for him with my explo arrow, I need to grind to 66 I think it is to grab all the health nodes I can reach easily. I'm already at 3k health and I still have 8x8% to take, so it should be easy. I'm also using a new idea specifically for him, I'm using a Cloak of Flames as my chest. Doesn't have any health, but it converts 20% of the physical dmg I take into fire, and since I run Purity and Elemental Adaptation, I have 85%(well currently 83%, need to lvl purity a bit more) fire so it reduces physical damage by a pretty good amount, more so than any armor I could get. Added benefit is I get 10% chance to ignite, which synergizes well with my build, I have 78% chance to proc ignites on Explosive arrow now, and it also lasts 45% longer from the cloak. Oh and obviously this time no fucking around, I have Enfeeble leveled and prepared and I'll be graniting the shit out of him, I'll replace my ruby with another granite so I have 2 and don't have to run out as often, and I'll do him solo so I can actually kill him fast and not risk too many shit. Just need to figure out if I want to use zombies or molten shell, shell is about 1.5k armor which isn't a big deal, zombie will take aggro from random shit mobs and tank lasers but need to be constantly raised since I will have only 3.

I'm fairly confident I'll crush Vaal this time around. Just need to grind out more levels in felshrine, at least with explo arrow it goes pretty fast.