Path of Exile

[grounded_dreams]

The PS4 version has finally got a release date, it comes out the 26th of this month

[Timmo]

https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP4956-CUSA11782_00-GGGPS4GAMEFULL01

 

PS4 version now out, just shy of 10GB.

[Siri]

 

Don't do it. Save yourselves.

 

Spoiler

I've probably added 700 hours since that picture

 

[dave7g]

I've just started this, well about 10 hours or so. I need to clarify a few things. 

 

I had a nice swing move on the circle button, but now it's gone. Are those moves attached to gems or to weapons?

 

Is it better to keep levelling up a weapon or to pick up a better one with higher stats.

 

Also how can you tell if armor is better than what you have equipped when it has no armor rating, just "evasive 13" for example?

 

Can someone tell me how the special attacks (i.e the ones on x, square etc.) are got? They just appear and disappear randomly and now I'm rightly fucked in the prison level with just one swing attack available.

 

Now I can't equip anything into my offhand slot. I'm a dualist and I'm trying to equip an axe to my other hand. 

 

It does a shitty job explaining why these things don't work.

 

Cheers!

[Siri]

I'll have to be quick, but I'll answer these as best I can:

 

- skills are attached to gems.

 

- with Melee, you should always look for better weapons as melee skill damage is (usually) a percentage based from the weapon you're using.

 

- knowing what determines if an armour is good or not will be down to trial and error initially. But usually, you'll want life and elemental resistances on gear, as well as the gem sockets you need.

 

- Armour/Evasion/Energy Shield can all play a part in mitigating damage, but all three of them do it differently and require different base stats. As Duelist, you'll likely be pathing towards Armour/Evasion.

 

- in terms of skills appearing/disappearing, that's down to either the gem not bring in your current equipment, or you're using the wrong weapon type. Your first skill you would have picked up (cleave) is limited to bladed weapons (1h/2h swords, 1h axes). If you need new/different skills from ones you've picked up from quest rewards (like when you've killed the big dude in the first area), Nessa (the girl) sells them in town.

 

- some weapons can't be dual wielded with one another, as for a time it was a big way to abuse stats on an offhand weapon. Example: two swords work, two clubs work, a sword and club together doesn't work.

 

- Check the 'help' screen in game. It's a massive, illustrated guide that tells you everything you need to know. If you like videos, check this thread a few pages back when the Xbox version launched. A YouTube channel called Engineering Eternity has an amazing video guide as well, and would explain things like the armour system way better than I could with a keyboard (phone, pc or otherwise)!

[dave7g]

1 hour ago, dave7g said:

 

 

5 minutes ago, Siri said:

I'll have to be quick, but I'll answer these as best I can:

 

- skills are attached to gems.

 

- with Melee, you should always look for better weapons as melee skill damage is (usually) a percentage based from the weapon you're using.

 

- knowing what determines if an armour is good or not will be down to trial and error initially. But usually, you'll want life and elemental resistances on gear, as well as the gem sockets you need.

 

- Armour/Evasion/Energy Shield can all play a part in mitigating damage, but all three of them do it differently and require different base stats. As Duelist, you'll likely be pathing towards Armour/Evasion.

 

- in terms of skills appearing/disappearing, that's down to either the gem not bring in your current equipment, or you're using the wrong weapon type. Your first skill you would have picked up (cleave) is limited to bladed weapons (1h/2h swords, 1h axes). If you need new/different skills from ones you've picked up from quest rewards (like when you've killed the big dude in the first area), Nessa (the girl) sells them in town.

 

- some weapons can't be dual wielded with one another, as for a time it was a big way to abuse stats on an offhand weapon. Example: two swords work, two clubs work, a sword and club together doesn't work.

 

- Check the 'help' screen in game. It's a massive, illustrated guide that tells you everything you need to know. If you like videos, check this thread a few pages back when the Xbox version launched. A YouTube channel called Engineering Eternity has an amazing video guide as well, and would explain things like the armour system way better than I could with a keyboard (phone, pc or otherwise)!

 

 

That's so great thanks. Although I was using an axe and a rapier together for a while so it's put me right off.

[Siri]

Yeah, first starting off can be a very confusing mess of grasping the systems in the game. Also, near the end of act 1, you'll usually pick up another attack skill that's more 'intermediate', and can carry you through several acts if you know what you're doing, so unless you have a plan from the start of act 1 to that point, it's going to be slow going. Experienced players usually get through all of act 1 in an hour, and race participants do it in far less!

 

If you want to make it easier on yourself, look to socket skill (and support!) gems into your armour. That will let you change your weapons about and check if a weapon you pick up will do more damage with the skill without repeatedly socketing the gems you had in the weapon.

 

Also, look at the description on the gem. It will always say what weapons can use the skill. Like an attack skill? Keep those weapons in mind when picking things up. Like a weapon or found a unique? Have a look at what Nessa has and get a skill that works with it.

 

Also, I don't know how to access it until I start on the PS4 version (hopefully today), but in the options somewhere there should be something about a 'loot filter'. Enable it if it hasn't been already - it will highlight drops that are worth picking up (like if they're a rare likely to roll with good mods when identified, if it has linked gem sockets to have good skill/support combos, and so on).

EDIT: just a reminder, here's Engineering Eternity's guide on everything Path of Exile.

EDIT NUMBAH 2: Alright, I'm playing the PS4 version now.

OH GOD THERE'S TOO MUCH LOOT WHAT DO (Loot Filter):
- Options button, select options
- scroll all the way down to the bottom, to 'list of item filters'
- You'll have default, and 'NS' 0 to 6. These are actually filters from Neversink, whose loot filters got popular enough to have a website to customise your own. Go with NS0 or NS1 for now, the later ones are for when you're capable of going really fucking fast in maps and are blitzing everything for mass loot farming.

[dave7g]

Thanks for all that. Not sure how much more I'll play now. I got to Act 2 and the difficulty spike is outrageous. I also nearly punched myself in the face trying to figure out that memory fragments stuff. It's just ridiculous.

 

I'm certainly going to give Diablo a go sometime for sure.

[koefoed]

Level 22 now, really enjoying it on PS4. Played it at release on PC but never made it beyond Act 1.

 

Playing a Witch casting fire spells all over the place. Seems quite good, and I have just entered the part of the chart which gives me +25% fire damage no matter which points I choose 

[Siri]

So I started the PS4 version on Friday, ended up getting to endgame by about.. Saturday evening, I think. Early enough to be in the top 1% of players at the time, according to the trophy system 

 

Things I like about the PS4 version:

 

- like the Xbox version, it's still an enjoyable experience on a pad with certain builds, and smart targeting is sensible enough.

 

- multiplayer integration seems a lot better, thanks to the lack of an XBLG wall.

 

- I really like the trade system in this iteration - just being able to chuck in some currency into an effective dropbox as an offer is great. You can also potentially abuse this for more storage by offering a bunch of items worth nothing for a pair of skyforths 

 

Things I'm not so keen about:

 

- performance on a standard PS4 seems a bit shit - not just to pc, but to a standard Xbox One as well. Might be something about DX12 implementations, perhaps. Might need to play the bone version again.

 

- I'm not sold on the flask implementation on the d-pad - it's hard to use a bunch of utility flasks with the smart-flask function, and you're taking your thumb off of movement. It might be better served by the right stick, or swipes on the touch pad like Warframe.

 

- The trade system is nice, but it needs improvement for filtering and not just text. Because of a lack of it, prices are all over the shop, or at the very worst just being an item dump where nobody prices anything and rejects all your offers.

 

- Don't bother with using the PS4's WiFi for playing this game. Admittedly, that's the same with any other console/pc WiFi for this game.

 

But still, it's held my attention very well, and I do look forward to turning my PS4 on in the evening instead of.. well, letting it gather dust because I stopped playing games on it compared to my PC.

[RadgyAdgy]

I started this the other night on PS4 as well and apart from some weird controls and the steepish learning curve I'm loving it. I may be missing something obvious but so far there doesn't seem to be much in the way of  F2P nonsense and microtransactions.  The amount of content seems crazy for something that's free, I'm assuming in the end game there must be someway they start making more money.

[Siri]

The main way GGG make money is through two things:

 

- cosmetics/effects

- stash tabs

 

Stash tabs are the main thing - with the amount of currency, maps and uniques you accrue over a League (so, the next three months), you'll run out of space on the four tabs you have very quickly, unless you're super stingy about your space and vendor everything.

 

Also, if you want to get into actually selling the gear you find (and make currency super quick if you know how to price), you need premium stash tabs. There's also some special tabs that hold a thousands of a type of item in an organised manner and a space to put one item to craft on it (currency tab, essence tab, map tab etc).

 

About every three or four weeks, there's a sale on these tabs over a weekend, so that's the best time to buy. Combine this with a supporter pack (where you pay anything from 20 to 200 quid, and you get the mtx currency for that amount and some extra cosmetics), and you'll get pretty much everything you need for each League for about £30.

 

Extra tabs don't go away after a League - when the league ends, the tabs for that League gets moved to standard (and become remove-only), and you get a fresh set for the new League.

 

Basically, you'll only need to spend money when you're a power user/addict - either changing the way things look after a few hundred hours, and are playing multiple characters so you want to mule good gear to new builds 

 

EDIT: I'm looking at the MTX shop right now. TBH, you can get away with doing the following if you want to get in on the Billy Big Balls action:

 

- buy the first blood pack for about 20 quid. That gives you 200 points/vbucks, an extra stash tab and a weapon effect.

 

- spend 15 of those points to upgrade that extra tab you got to a premium tab. You can colour this and allocate it to selling things you find.

 

- buy a currency tab for 75 points. Seriously, this is the first tab anyone should buy, because it stacks EVERYTHING currency wise. You no longer worry about finding chaos orbs amongst the crap in your stash.

 

- buy a divination card tab for 50. Same logic - you can stack divination cards while endgame mapping until you're blue in the face. That, and there's hundreds of the fuckers.

 

- spend the remaining 60 points on two extra stash tabs, non-premium. Keep these for storing all the remaining bits you'll come across (fossils in delve, essences, endgame fragments).

 

With this setup, you'll be able to quickly organise two space hungry aspects of the game (stacks of currency and cards), have a dedicated selling tab when something super flashy pops up on a strict loot filter, and a bit more space for any essentials. You'll still need to be ruthless with space (there's a LOT of shitty uniques in this game - price check everything via poe.ninja and vendor anything less than a chaos), but you'll also be set for some real meaty grinding.

[Siri]

FYI, Especially PS4 players - it's the stash tab sale weekend! You'll get about 25% off all tabs. In order of importance, here are the most cost effective specialist tabs (as mentioned, upgrade at least one of your normal tabs to premium to sell stuff unless you want to use third party software:

 

Currency Tab - 60 points - the daddy. Turns all your 10-stack currency into a single stack of thousands.

 

Divination Tab - 40 points - cards start to rack up at the end of the game, especially if you're solo self found and are looking for particular cards to get an item.

 

Essence Tab - 30 points - Farming Essences via the map modifier in endgame is a viable option to make currency due to this League's fractured item mechanic. This lets you hoard stacks of every type (there's something dumb like 20 types, each with about five tiers of strength), and you can upgrade without taking to the vendor.

 

Map Tab - 120 points - expensive, but you get an absolute ton of redundant maps later on so you need to keep on top of them otherwise. Also, the tab logs which maps you have completed (and if you've done the Atlas Bonus Objective), which is fantastic if you don't want to futz around with trying to figure out what maps you haven't done to complete the Atlas.

 

Fragment Tab - 55 points - cheap, but only really necessary after multiple leagues. Atziri Fragments can be ran in the map device for the more expensive Midnight fragment (which can be sold), Offerings to the Goddess can be sold per offering, and breach fragments stack to 99 anyway.

 

Unique Tab - 110 points - Again, multiple League tab. It only holds one of every unique, so it really is just a collector's tab instead of being particularly useful.

 

The first four tabs will cost you 250 points together. Consider the First Blood pack if you haven't got it already for £20 and then whatever price break in solus point transactions to get that magic 250 points (260 with the premium tab upgrade for selling items!), or buy one of the supporter packs and pick up everything listed, as well as a Quad Tab (120) or a Premium Tab Bundle (165).

 

http://imgur.com/Sd7AQsG

[df0]

Thanks @Siri I for one appreciate your long posts aimed at newbies like myself.

[SuperBrother]

I played the bone version a while back but got sidetracked with other stuff and moved on.

Now this is on PS4 I’m back into it again and trying to get to grips. Up to act 3 as a lightning based witch and it’s great fun. 

Huge thank you to @Siri for the hints and tips above, I’ve gone and spaffed on the extra tabs and that even though I have no idea what I’m doing. 

 

[edit] tabs make sense now, currency is a godsend and I think I understand selling gear

[SuperBrother]

Update time, I’m now up to level 62 lightning based elementalist.

Almost done with the campaign then it’s onto maps and farming ready for the next season where I’ll try out a melee character.

Love this game, IMO better than Diablo 3 and mind boggling that it’s an FTP. Do yourself a favour and give it a try

[Siri]

Quick Update - New League announced for June: Legion!

 

 

- It's breach, but you get to pick what/who you fight by hitting them in the face while they're frozen in time.

 

- New and reworked uniques that fit around the five factions that are involved. Voll's protector now also converts frenzy charges to power charges, and there's a Vaal themed endgame jewel which 'corrupts' a radius of the passive skill tree when socketed. This includes the introduction of corrupted keystone passives.

 

- You can unlock a fifth map device socket. Lets you unlock the endgame of the Legion mechanic, and add more modifiers to endgame content.

 

- Melee has finally had a rework. You can now cancel out of attacks and skills, all skills and attacks have mild targeting and melee splash, and movement skills are now instant. There's new dodge abilities, Cyclone's a channeling skill, and there's a MOTHERFUCKING HOOKSHOT SKILL. Like spells last League, new skills, entire rebalance of existing skills.

 

June 7th on PC. NEAT.

[SuperBrother]

I only just found out that your stash is not imported when you start a new league! 

Goodbye to over 300 chaos orbs once the reroll happens

Had my fun with getting a storm brand elementalist up to level 85, time to try a cyclone build when we’re back from hols.

[Siri]

Legion Starts at 9pm!

Here's the patch notes: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2513456

Here's a condensed thing (which is very helpful):

 

Spoilers: YOU SHOULD PROBABLY PLAY MELEE. Here's a compilation on Reddit for Starter builds posted by streamers: 

 

 

Don't forget to update your loot filter if you're on PC!

[SuperBrother]

Back from hols with an extra day off so 12 hours straight on my new league starter ice cyclone build. Melee is off the hook!

I don’t think I will ever stop playing this game.........

[Siri]

That's what's so great about this game. There's plenty of shifts in the meta every few months that rolling a new character feels great every time. Even when you do burn out, you can usually leave it for a League and just come back.

 

I've had a couple of bum starts this League. Cyclone was good this League but my progression with slayer felt a bit lackluster, while Righteous Fire Chieftain felt safe but simply didn't provide enough damage output on bosses and rare packs.

 

Essence Drain Trickster feels pretty good at the moment, and the contagion cascade feels very good when popping the Legion artifact - it's hitting a lot of stuff, meaning building currency and drops feel a lot better.

 

I still want something.. immediate. Perhaps going two-handed melee is the trick. Maybe beserker, maybe flicker strike - I did do a quick an dirty respec of my cyclone character to try it out, and flicker is much more accessible before maps due to the skill generating charges for itself.

 

There's also Bowzerker, which sounds.. appropriate.

[SuperBrother]

I’m rolling with the fire version of this (a few posts down the thread) PoE build

Not got cyclone yet as I’m up to level 25 or so but versus my previous elementalist the tankyness is lovely.

I face tanked the first couple of act bosses without worrying about mechanics, I’m sure this will change later 

[Siri]

To be honest, the motto of PoE is something along the lines of 'one shot everything until something kills you exactly the same way' 

 

This League has the potential to be extremely rippy - at least until last night's patch, there was at least one enemy type that could kill you from off-screen  

[Sumire]

Tempted to play this, but what is the catch with it being "free" Is it a pay to win game, or is all the paid DLC cosmetic and expansions etc?

[SuperBrother]

5 hours ago, Sumire said:

Tempted to play this, but what is the catch with it being "free" Is it a pay to win game, or is all the paid DLC cosmetic and expansions etc?

 

You can play totally free, there are paid cosmetics and quality of life stuff like more storage but by no means essential.

[Sumire]

7 hours ago, SuperBrother said:

 

You can play totally free, there are paid cosmetics and quality of life stuff like more storage but by no means essential.

 

Cool, sounds good. I have been playing Grim Dawn and liked that. I'll try it out this weekend.

[Siri]

Speaking of the paid stuff - It's the stash tab sale this weekend! Here's what I posted earlier: 

 

One thing I would change is that the newer Unique Tab has turned out to be very, very handy when you're running through the game multiple times or have a very fast clearing build - there's a whole lot of uniques in the game, and having a dump tab so you can easily see if you've got a duplicate that needs to be binned or sold is very handy. Turns out you have a lot of space when you're not hoarding junky two-hander weapons!

 

ED/Contagion build has hit maps. Still feels good, although I'm still not sold on builds that use acrobatics as damage mitigation. Far too easy for an enemy hit to go right past all the defense checks and kill you in one hit!

[SuperBrother]

2 hand berserker cyclone is in effect now, crazy uptick in clear speed & XP gain. I did like 12 levels in a few hours last night

[Siri]

Cyclone is so good right now - I started my Duelist over, and picked Champion for the impale stacking and it's a far more enjoyable experience.

 

I have no doubt Slayer would do it better, but I think my selection of ascendancies went wrong. Went with the node that gives your weapons more base crit - I think that should be more a Merc lab pickup because it's about that time you would move from levelling weapons to crafted gear, which is when you'd be able to take advantage of low crit bases that naturally have BIGGER NUMBERS. I think Slayer would be better off picking Impact or the start of the Bane of Legends perk.

 

I still want to pick up something that takes advantage of Rage, mind. Maybe flicker? I'll see how I feel about it after spin 2 win loses its appeal!

[Siri]

My suspicions turned out to be relatively correct about Slayer - the Overwhelm node is definitely an Uber Lab pick, and you're far better off going Headsman/Bane of Legends/Impact over the course of the ten acts.

 

... Of course, in the meantime, I've been playing as Champion Cyclone, now up to level 89 and have cleared all the white and yellow tiers of the atlas. I'm not that far off tackling Shaper, and it's definitely the furthest I've made in the game before getting bored.

 

I think this is mainly down to currency - the Legion mechanic absolutely throws tons of currency at you, as well as some really interesting gear (pre-enchanted labyrinth helms, Atzoatl modded items, and veiled items). It's been a very good League to start on, especially as there's also avenues to really special items (Headhunter is a global Legion drop, and the divination card chests give out lots of Stacked Deck items which give you a random card - which can be anything up to a Doctor card worth 20+ exalts).

 

The servers are constantly shitting themselves, mind, and that's really the biggest problem I've had with the game. I'm not entirely sure if this is down to oversubscription or a fault with instance generation, but I guess we'll find out in a few weeks when numbers fall.