Path of Exile

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Khane

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Are armor and evasion really that bad? Why do all the "pro" streamers concentrate so much on armor if that's the case? Molten Shell + high armor mods on gear. Chest pieces with super high evasion and armor are worth a lot more than their mediocre counterparts. Why if the stat is so underpowered?

I don't think the amount of health you can get is that overpowered. I think people are going to bypass those nodes almost completely 3 months from now. It's nice to be able to stack them in the early stages of the game so you can progress. There is a serious lack of +resist nodes though. It would be nice to be able to buff your resists a bit more via passives if you chose to do so.

Is there a breakpoint spreadsheet or theorycraft anywhere for Armor and Evasion? I know nothing about how those mechanics really work under the covers in POE.
 
Caliane

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
15,565
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No one is saying, dont get armor/ev. They compliment health. But not replace it.
 
Sinzar

Sinzar

Trakanon Raider
3,149
269
I feel like evasion is lacking, because its too random. You can dodge a string of hits in a row, or take a bunch in a row, too unreliable. Armor on the other hand is nice, especially against archers due to how the formula makes it stronger vs a bunch of small hits. Armor is still mostly worthless against single big hits though like Vaal or Kolle.

I feel like Iron Reflexes (along with the very cheap Grace aura) is almost mandatory for any character who goes into melee range. It's such a game changer when my alts unlock that keystone, usually taking my estimated reduction from something like 9% to 45%.
 
Venijk

Venijk

Bronze Knight of the Realm
132
7
Ryanz_sl said:
GGG just announced season one for races + item rewards. Full post on the subject:

One of Path of Exile?s most interesting features is the short term race event system. Today we are announcing the first season of race events (which runs from February 23-April 7, NZ time). There?s a summary page with your progress towards the new season?s exclusive rewards here. This news post contains a much more thorough explanation of how this system was designed and how it works.

Path of Exile?s race events were really popular during the Closed Beta. We had half of the active server population turn up to play in certain events. Our first month of Open Beta was spent fixing immediate problems while we let the economies of the permanent leagues develop. We are now ready to start a full schedule of races.

A race event is a fresh league that lasts for anywhere from an hour to a week. They all take place in their own separate economies with new characters. Your existing in-game wealth doesn?t help in these races - they test your playskill and luck. The leagues generally reward players who can level up quickly and place in the top ranks of their character class. There are also rewards for objectives like finishing side quests or full-clearing areas first.

Rather than running self-contained individual races, we?ve now structured the events into seasons. Season One starts this weekend (February 23, NZ time) and runs for just over six weeks (until April 7, NZ time). There are prizes for top-placing people in each race, prizes for people who achieve good results for a set of events in a season and prizes for people who finish at the top of the realm overall in a given season. Seasons of races help encourage players to play in multiple events and allow us to provide prizes that transcend individual events - giving players something meaningful and special to work towards over several days or weeks.

In past events we gave out orbs and other currency items as prizes. Because these items had a known value, this had an adverse effect on both the economy and the incentives to play races. If the prizes were low, races seemed unappealing. If the prizes were high, it became mandatory to participate in races to keep up with the inflation the orbs caused. We have avoided this in Open Beta by designing new custom prizes for race events. We still want them to be tradeable, but we want to let the market decide their value.

The prizes are a variety of existing unique items and a very upgradable base item type (Coral Ring) that all have alternate art in-game. These particular pieces of special artwork are only available from this season of race events - other seasons will have different items. While the power level of the uniques (and upgradable base ring) is relatively low, they have high trade value because of the exclusive icons. For example, most high level players have access to a Goldrim (unique Battered Cap) when they need to twink resistances on a new character, but few people will have the version with special collectable artwork. The items are itemlevel 100, which means that there are no restrictions on how they can be rerolled. Note that these items are not better in any way than the regular versions you?d find in game, other than the fact they have special artwork. The list of items that are prizes for the first season are shown on this summary page. The sockets and values of the mods on the items are random within the regular ranges. The specific values on that page are only for illustration.

Shortly after a race is over, you are awarded reward points based on your performance in the race. Please note that these reward points (please use the initialism RP if you want to abbreviate them) are not the same type of points that are purchased and spent on microtransaction items. These are two completely unrelated systems.
The season?s prizes exist at various RP thresholds. You are awarded the prize as soon as you cross that threshold. For example, our first prize is awarded when you hit 15 RP, which will take a few events for a decent player (or one event if you?re very skilled/lucky).

Season RP values do not carry across to the next season. Each season has a new set of prizes and is an opportunity for a fresh start. Your total reward points are still tracked as lifetime points which are eligible for other prizes as you participate in multiple seasons.

During the Closed Beta, we gave out Demigod?s Presence unique amulets to the top players of each character class in an event. In the Open Beta, we?re keeping this concept, but with a new item. For most short races, the top player of each class will receive a Demigod?s Triumph unique wreath. Like all other race reward items, this helmet can be traded with other players.

We will also be adding a ladder of reward points for the current season. This ladder will show which accounts have the most points so far and will help us track who is due to win the overall season prizes. At this stage we?re expecting to give alternate art Demigod?s Triumphs to the top 20 people in the overall ladder of reward points for this season. Details of this will be announced when we have the ladder of reward points implemented soon.

There are prizes for reaching lifetime reward points thresholds as well. Lifetime reward points are not reset between seasons, so if you play in many seasons over the life of the game you?ll be able to win some awesome rewards. We haven?t yet announced the schedule of prizes for lifetime reward points, but it?s coming soon!

We?ve put together a schedule of 109 events over 44 days, which start and end on a weekend. The events occur in four different timeslots which are chosen to hopefully give equal opportunities to players in America, Europe and NZ/Australia. We?re looking to improve these times for subsequent seasons based on feedback. Most of the events are between 1 and 4 hours in duration. Two of the events last for a week and have other shorter events occurring at the same time. It?s up to you to decide whether it?s more important to go for success in the week long events, the smaller events that occur at the same time, or both. The number of events ramps up gradually over the course of the season so that players have more opportunity to catch up.

We understand that this system greatly favours players who play in more events. That?s true of almost any sport or hobby. We?ve pitched the prizes so that there are still cool things to win even if you can only play in one event per week.

We reserve the right to change the number of reward points awarded for different objectives as we get feedback and data from early races. We may increase or decrease certain thresholds that reward points are granted at depending on what levels players get to. To be clear, I?m not talking about changing the thresholds for receiving the alternate art prizes - those aren?t being modified once the season has started.

We have a lot of interesting league types coming soon. In addition to the regular set of party, solo, and turbo, we?re discussing some other interesting twists. Burning Ground or Blood Magic leagues are the type of options that we?re experimenting with internally to see what is fun in a race setting. We expect that most or all of the events in the first season will be in hardcore mode.

For a calendar of events and for information about the season prizes, please check out the Season One page.

We?re really excited about this race system and the first season! I?m going to try to play in as many events as I can. Good luck!

-Chris, Lead Developer Grinding Gear Games

Calendar for the races + item rewards:

http://www.pathofexile.com/seasons


I'm really stoked for this, even though I probably won't have the time to participate in even half these events. Not to beat a dead horse, but this is the direction D3 should have been taking their game. Grinding Gear Games is being really smart with this approach to their ARPG. Without something like this in place the game will become stale in about a month or so, but with a season, with different races over an extemded period of time with item rewards and stat tracking it will keep interest in this game long past the point which most would have already moved on.
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Not bad, get to level 19 in the 1hr solo races and you get 7 points. At the minimum, if you do races and only ever get the rewards for "make it to x level and don't die" it would only be 10 or so races to get the coral ring with unique art. Facebreakers at 240 points might even be fairly doable at around 35 races. Atziri's Mirror at 480 points is the only thing that you won't be able to sleepwalk through... unless you can make it to 70 of the 109 events they have planned so far.

With 109 events and the top player of each class getting the Demigod's Triumph there will be a healthy amount of those around trading at exorbitant prices I'm sure.
 
D

Dahlrek_sl

shitlord
24
0
Sinzar_sl said:
I feel like evasion is lacking, because its too random. You can dodge a string of hits in a row, or take a bunch in a row, too unreliable. Armor on the other hand is nice, especially against archers due to how the formula makes it stronger vs a bunch of small hits. Armor is still mostly worthless against single big hits though like Vaal or Kolle.

I feel like Iron Reflexes (along with the very cheap Grace aura) is almost mandatory for any character who goes into melee range. It's such a game changer when my alts unlock that keystone, usually taking my estimated reduction from something like 9% to 45%.
Click to expand...
Evasion isn't very random at all. They've implemented it in a way similar to a variety of new games, where it keeps a running number on each target, and each attack adds its hit chance to the target's number, and if the result is over 100, the target is hit, and the number is reduced by 100. So if a single guy has a 50/50 chance to hit you, and he's the only one attacking you, each swing will literally alternate between a hit and a miss.

Where it gets randomness from is the initial seed for the value (set randomly when you've been out of combat a while), and when you have multiple attackers with different hit chances and/or attacks with different damage potential.
 
V

Vilgan_sl

shitlord
259
1
Sinzar_sl said:
I feel like evasion is lacking, because its too random. You can dodge a string of hits in a row, or take a bunch in a row, too unreliable. Armor on the other hand is nice, especially against archers due to how the formula makes it stronger vs a bunch of small hits. Armor is still mostly worthless against single big hits though like Vaal or Kolle.

I feel like Iron Reflexes (along with the very cheap Grace aura) is almost mandatory for any character who goes into melee range. It's such a game changer when my alts unlock that keystone, usually taking my estimated reduction from something like 9% to 45%.
Click to expand...
I think you need to watch Kripp's video. Evasion doesn't work at all like you assume.
 
Ash80

Ash80

228
1
Vorph_sl said:
The strongest build I've played so far, and the one I would absolutely use when they get around to fixing sync issues enough for me to invest time into HC, doesn't have a single hp node taken.
Click to expand...
Real Hardcore Dudes, Go CI and Vaal Pact, this build better include both !! lol
 
Hateyou

Hateyou

Not Great, Not Terrible
<Bronze Donator>
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Vorph_sl said:
The strongest build I've played so far, and the one I would absolutely use when they get around to fixing sync issues enough for me to invest time into HC, doesn't have a single hp node taken.
Click to expand...
Have a link?
 
Dashivax

Dashivax

N00b
114
3
You can dodge a string of hits in a row, or take a bunch in a row
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If you have 75% evasion you will dodge 3 attacks in a row and get hit only on the 4th attack, every single time. There is no randomness.
 
Khane

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Vorph_sl said:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/vie...d/61726/page/1
Click to expand...
It's a clever build.

So you don't do anything except for curse, and then replace %hp nodes with %es nodes.

The first part makes it safe because you don't have to do much or stay in the danger zone for too long
The second part is 6 on one hand, and a half dozen on the other, so saying "I don't need to take a single hp node" is kind of misleading. You make it seem like you are going to go mostly offensive but in reality are still going very defensive. Any CI build will not take a single hp node, it's counter-intuitive otherwise.
 
Vorph

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
11,576
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Curse and traps. Smart use of conversion trap is a big part of it at higher levels.

I wouldn't really agree that it's very defensive simply because there just aren't that many %ES nodes to begin with. It takes like 20 points to get all the relevant ones, and everything else goes into mana+regen, cold dmg, crits, double curses/totems, and the generic +10's that connect it together. The blood magic ranger build I play is closer to 50% defensive nodes, between %HP nodes and various resists--and I still wouldn't really call it HC material unless twinked.
 
N

Nutron_sl

shitlord
712
0
I'm running an elemental bow duelist at the moment and am wondering if I'm going the right way here having not done a ton of theorycrafting on the build...

Basicaly, i run elemental hit + WED + FA + Leech for single target and LA + LMP + Leech + FA for aoe.

is this build viable later on? Since i cant crit, i figure i cant put shock on mobs with LA nor from all of them from elemental hit... I'm aiming at a high level thicket with max attack speed and physical + physical %. running grace and anger (thats why i picked up the int node).

I'm going towards the templar start picking up the hp nodes atm.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...X2SPih-rH-Cv6P

Up to act 2 merciless at the moment and i am starting to question...
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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There's isnt really anything "clever" about this build, seems a fairly cookie cutter CI dual totem build, with spectres. I mean it mixes a bit of multiple builds, specifically the spectre part but it seems like a very normal CI build. And obviously CI builds don't take any health, that's very irrelevant when they end up taking 20-25points in ES nodes anyway and are even more gear dependant than health builds. They do save a lot of points however so you have more freedom to grab offensive nodes, but generally you end up with the same result eventually in a health build too.

If I take a look at my build and the linked build, at 92points spent in both, I have 33points spent in defensive nodes(I count health, body and soul and points leading to health nodes I wouldn't take otherwise). The build linked has 25(ES nodes, body and soul and nullification and points leading to them he wouldn't otherwise take). Not a huge difference. However at 60 I basically only had defensive nodes and stat nodes leading to them because I need to grab those 33defensive nodes FIRST so I survive then I can increase my damage.

The main issue I pointed out earlier with health(or ES) is there's a finite amount of health you can get on gear, which you reach fairly quickly. You might get small upgrades, but not a huge deal. At lvl 80 you'll have 530base health and assuming a generous 90health per slot 900health from gear for a total of 1430. This is simply not enough to survive basically anything. So you NEED health % in the passives. CI is in a similar state, without any ES% nodes, you're not gonna get enough ES to survive(you should be able to get more than health though). Even if you stack ALL the armor nodes, run determination and say 3 or 4 granites, your base hp is still far from enough to think about surviving. You need at the very least +100% from passives. On the other hand, you don't really need damage passives. While the amount of damage is also finite, it goes way beyond your needs to kill stuff even without any points invested. The spell scaling or weapon scaling along with all the supports you can link to a skill make it so that without any points invested into increasing damage, your damage is still more than you need. The only stopping point here is mana issues, which are completely rendered obsolete by specific keystones(Eldritch Battery and especially Blood Magic) or by using specific supports(such as mana leech but also totems since they require a bigger cost only once to cast the spell for the next 20seconds for "free").

That leads to stacking defensive nodes first and especially health or ES if CI, because it is NEEDED and because everything else is NOT and/or is useless without first stacking health/ES(armor and evasion). I do think this limits builds quite a lot, however there's still a lot of possibilities within the acceptable amount of health/ES needed so there's a lot of viable builds. I just think we should probably get more base health(like from leveling) and less from health % passives, and obviously reduce the health % passives either in number or in power so that stacking them doesn't become crazy, but not stacking them is also viable with proper defenses(which do need to be buffed still, to at least be useful without the use of further defensive measures like damage reduction % from enfeeble and endurance charges).
 
Vorph

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
11,576
5,383
Pyros_sl said:
And obviously CI builds don't take any health, that's very irrelevant when they end up taking 20-25points in ES nodes anyway and are even more gear dependant than health builds.
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Eh, that build isn't particularly gear dependent at all. Especially not compared to the other things I've played.


And yeah I knew that saying that the build I like best so far doesn't take any hp would make it obvious that it was a CI build. It was just a response to the notion that the game was already stale because every build loads up on hp and defense with very little variety beyond that. The three main builds I play (CI totems, EK/EB shadow, and BM frenzy ranger) all are built much differently, play much differently, and have vastly different gearing strategies. For someone to say that that's not enough variety... well, I don't know how they could possibly enjoyanyARPG.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Well I guess it's dual totems so it's safer, but still you need a fair amount of ES before you can venture into maps because if you do get hit, you still get hit very hard and if you only have like 2000ES, it's extremely risky I think. But yeah I guess it's not that gear dependent vs health, just annoying to find ES specific gear I feel, I often see health gear for sale but rarely see high ES pieces without health(or even with health).

Completely agree on build diversity, but besides CI, most of them will stack health as much as possible is what he meant I assume. How you utilize that health and how you end up playing the game is way different however, it's just a very basic need to pick many health passives. I think D2 was like that though, almost every build was stack vit every level, maybe 1point in some stat until you reach the small needed amount to have items +stat get you to the needed amount for your max skills. And Torchlight 2 had the same "issue" with most builds in the harder difficulty having to stack some damage reduction % gems, at least a fair amount of them, to survive hits. D3 became the contrary but early on it was the same thing on melees, on DH and Wizard it was actually ignore all health and stack all damage due to mechanics, which isn't really quite different. Nowadays though it's supposedly stack damage on everything again.

Qarl the balance guy though said it was normal for the balance to be fucked, they just added a lot of content so until they adjust everything correctly, like new mobs dmg and stuff, balance won't be very good. Currently, you need to stack health for the "oh shit" moments. But literally 99% of the rest of time, you don't need health stacking like much at all. You do want some, but with like only +100%health you can be just fine with high damage and a decent self regen like a life leech or life gain on hit support. The problem is the 1% left is times where you get hit for absolutely stupid large amounts, like Kole and Brutus on maps with damage modifiers or Alchemists with damage modifiers and other similar large hit mobs/combos. Those hit so hard that unless you have a very large health buffer, you will probably die in one hit. Not a huge deal for softcore characters but it still sets you back a lot, and obviously a deal breaker for HC. That's why everyone who wants to go endgame will tend to stack health to prevent those 1% deaths, even though it's entirely redundant the rest of the time.

For example in my current build I don't have any regen other than pots, I don't have any points in damage and the result is that I have a lot of health, however I don't think I've dropped under 40% more than once, when I did a map at lvl 68 to make a video and test my build out. Literally a large amount of my passives are pretty much wasted for now as I haven't needed them. But I'm still not respecing them because who knows what can happen.
 
Ash80

Ash80

228
1
So what about that ladder season?, and or lvl 28 pvp twinks, we need to get a Raidcall,Mumble server rockin. talk about stats an shit !
 
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