Path of Exile 3.0 (the other Diablo clone)

[lord_khaine]

Not really, that's one of the problems with Scion - all the nodes near her starting area suck a big fat one (except the life wheel, but it's a pain to have to go through there if you're not relying on melee damage and they're only like 8% melee increase anyway, so even for melee they're not great. For a gish, take the melee and life nodes on the right, then take the spell damage nodes out towards harrier. Most builds get those life nodes regardless of where they start and a large % of those builds will also grab Vaal Pact, which is just around the corner from Harrier. VP is generally something for later as early on you're not leeching enough to make giving up regen worthwhile.

Elemental Equilibrium can be very strong if you can use it reliably (almost always ends up being due to orb of storms), though that can get old fast and it's not as reliable as you'd think if your attack rate is too quick. And before you ask, no, if you have 2 or three elements, they all get + 25% resist and none of them get -50%.

Thanks, i take it with the life wheel you mean the one that contains Constitution and all the +Life points? And elemental equilibrium sounds rather complicated to use. I guess i will try and mainly pick general nodes while testing out the skills i bought at the end of act 1.

But another question, how highly should i value jewel sockets?

[Sian]

But another question, how highly should i value jewel sockets?

Depends on if there's any certain jewels that you know would fit, and how good the random jewels you find is.

---

Is there actually a compelling reason for Spellcasters using Wands/Spectres to invest in higher quality weapons, since they're likely never going to attack with them?

[Siosilvar]

Any jewel socket you pass by that's two points off your path is always worth it, since it's trivial to craft a jewel worth two passive points with just alts and augs. 3 points are usually worth taking too. Beyond that, not so much. As an example, here's a jewel I made last season with a regal:

Spoiler

Show

5% increased cast speed is worth more than a node by itself, and 25% increased damage is worth roughly two nodes, so it's possibly worth three points for; if this had a 6-7% life roll on it instead of one of the damage rolls I'd drop 3 points for it in a heartbeat.

Also, EE isn't complicated at all. To activate it, use a primary attack that doesn't hit (Scorching Ray comes to mind) and a secondary attack that does (Shield Charge + cold damage on a ring).

As for caster weapons: An Opal Wand can roll 42% increased spell damage as an implicit, and then you can roll up to around 140% from affixes. Compared to the 12% of a Driftwood Wand, it's not quite the boost that you get from physical weapons, but it's still one of the most important things to upgrade.

[lord_khaine]

Any jewel socket you pass by that's two points off your path is always worth it, since it's trivial to craft a jewel worth two passive points with just alts and augs. 3 points are usually worth taking too. Beyond that, not so much. As an example, here's a jewel I made last season with a regal:

Alright thanks, thats a good rule of thumb. Guess i just need to decide on a actual path :P
And it is a rather nice jewel. I guess one of the biggest advantages of a jewel is that they dont lock you down on any sort of choice.

Also, EE isn't complicated at all. To activate it, use a primary attack that doesn't hit (Scorching Ray comes to mind) and a secondary attack that does (Shield Charge + cold damage on a ring).

Hmm.. what do you mean with a attack that does not hit?
And how does EE work with added elemental damage from support skills? At the moment my main attack does all 3 kinds of elemental damage though weapon prefixes and support gems.

[Drasius]

Warlord's Mark? ... what does that do to significantly raise your 'effective survivability'? don't you mean Enfeeble?

No, I mean warlords mark (though Enfeeble IS very nice and usually the 2nd or 3rd curse you run depending on if you want more damage or more safety).
- There are very few ways to get leech from non-attacks (ie spells), but warlords gives 2% life and mana leech, so staying alive and powering spells is trivial.
- On top of that, you can now easily stunlock most things which means you don't get hit and thus don't take damage.
- On top of that, not only do endurance charges give you 4% damage reduction per charge (and you get 3 available by default with options for up to 3 more on the tree and more on gear and ascendancies), but there's a spell named Immortal Call that makes you invulnerable (literally take 0 damage) to all physical damage for a very short period, however, for every endurance charge you have at the time it's cast, you double (or more) the duration. You then link Immortal call to a Cast when Damage Taken gem (and increased duration) and you basically become immune to physical damage that doesn't one shot you as long as you can leech back the damage in the ~1-2 seconds (or longer with more charges) of immunity you have.

Oh... now THAT is useful information!

So basically, you add up all the percents, then multiply the total by base damage, right? This is a Parson's Gambit scenario, I suppose.

Sort of. There a difference between increased and more.

Example:

You do base 1000 damage.
You manage to get +100% increased damage.
Now you do 1000 * (1 + 1) = 2000 damage. Simple.
Now we find a 50% more damage source.
1000 * (1 + 1) * (1 + 0.5) = 3000 damage. More is better.

But now this is where we see that more really does mean more
1000 base, 100% increased, another 50% increased, 50% more and another 25% more
1000 * (1 + 1 + 0.5) * (1 + 0.5) * (1 + 0.25) = 4687.5 damage. More is king because more always stacks multiplicatively while increased is always additive.

Same thing works for reduced and less, but they don't come up that often.

Once you get enough percentages, flat damage bonuses get the entire multiplier and might end up giving more end-result damage than the equivalent percentage boost.

Rare, but it can happen. You generally get flat damage on skill gems, a few support gems, rings, amulets, gloves and quivers. increased is usually weapons, jewllery and the skill tree, More is almost always support gems with a few execptions from unique items and a few acendancies (read: Berserker, which is broken)

With this in mind, I may well just go for the two passive skill points, which are NEVER a BAD thing.

Correct, more skill points are rarely bad.

Or, if I want to get a bit min-maxy, start off with Oak's because 1% regen and 20% damage and 2% damage mitigation is pretty damn sexy at the moment. Then around level 40ish or so, after those numbers are less attractive, I'll have the twenty regret orbs and get the passive skill points. But that sounds like a lot more trouble than it is really worth, even for the short term.

Just FYI - I've played *checks* roughly 50 hours (holy crap!) of 3.0 and I've found a grand total of 10 regrets. They're really not that common and if you're not trading, then you can't really get a hold of them easily.

I'd almost go for Alira for the resist all, which is ALWAYS going to be relevant, but I've almost got Resolute, so crits will be meaningless to me, and if I go Blood Magic (depending on how auras and reserved mana pool work), the mana regen will also be worthless to me. Of course, there is always Mortal Conviction right behind Blood Magic which reduces mana/life reservation by 50% to mitigate that significantly

While resists are nice, especially in SSF, eventually you won't need them due to having enough resists on your gear, at which point the resists don't do anything for you.

If you go blood magic (on the tree, not the skill gem), you now have 0 mana and everything that used to cost mana will now cost life, including reserving life for auras.

Here are another couple things that might help you:

You generally don't need elemental resists from passives--gear should be able to cover it more efficiently, especially later on. If you are a melee build, Oak is frequently a good pick--20% melee physical and 1% regen are already better than two bad nodes, and the 1% additional physical damage reduction scales well with armor.

Kraityn is nice too, especially if you are getting dodge chance from something else (note that that's dodge and not evasion--two different things).

Keep in mind that he's playing SSF so it's not quite as easy to cap resists, but yeah. I must say I think kraityn gets less consideration than he deserves, 6% attack and move speed are basically both notables on their own and a bit of evade never hurt anyone.

Thanks, i take it with the life wheel you mean the one that contains Constitution and all the +Life points? And elemental equilibrium sounds rather complicated to use. I guess i will try and mainly pick general nodes while testing out the skills i bought at the end of act 1.

But another question, how highly should i value jewel sockets?

Yep, that's them. While +% life isn't as useful early as it is late, more life is still more life.

EE is usually only really useful later on when cutting through resists means a massive jump in damage that a adding another gem or better pathing and skill nodes could never hope to compete with. Early on it will be more hassle than it's worth IMHO.

A for jewels, I'd wait until you get a good rare before worrying about them too much, though if you plan on using a skill with a threshold gem available in Act 5 (or at all really), frost blades for example, then I'd suggest having a node available at around level 40'ish. If you come across a really good jewel (say that has 2x damage mods that apply to you and another useful mod) then yeah, make grabbing a jewel slot a priority, otherwise there are usually more important things to worry about for the first 50 - 60 points.

Is there actually a compelling reason for Spellcasters using Wands/Spectres to invest in higher quality weapons, since they're likely never going to attack with them?

As for caster weapons: An Opal Wand can roll 42% increased spell damage as an implicit, and then you can roll up to around 140% from affixes. Compared to the 12% of a Driftwood Wand, it's not quite the boost that you get from physical weapons, but it's still one of the most important things to upgrade.

This. Unless you mean the quality you get from blacksmiths whetstones and such. Then, no, not really, though again, another thing you're not told is that increased quality means a better chance for more sockets and links when you use jewellers/fusings on the item, though with 3 link things, there's not really much difference at all, only for 6 link stuff like 2 handers and chests since it's an expoental thing for the number of orbs required for increased numbers of sockets/links.

[Drasius]

Hmm.. what do you mean with a attack that does not hit?
And how does EE work with added elemental damage from support skills? At the moment my main attack does all 3 kinds of elemental damage though weapon prefixes and support gems.

Most things hit with a few notable exceptions, the most common being Righteous Fire and Scorching Ray, both of which apply a debuff but don't use hit mechanics to do so.

EE doesn't care how the damage gets applied (beyond requiring it to hit), if the target gets hit by an attack, it checks to see what types of damage was done. If fire/Light/cold, then the target gets +25% resistance to those and -50% to any of those that it wasn't hit by. It also doesn't stack, it just applies the change to a monsters base stats every time an attack hits

EE Examples:
1) You hit a monster for 1000 fire, 400 lightning and 10 cold. The monster will now have +25% resistance to fire, lightning and cold.
2) You hit a monster for 1000 lightning and 1000 cold. The monster will now have +25% resistance to lightning and cold and -50% to fire
3) You hit a monster for 100000 lightning. The monster will now have +25% resistance to lightning and -50% to fire and cold
4) You hit a monster for 100 physical and 400 chaos. The monster will now have the same resistance it had before because neither phys nor chaos are considered to be elemental
5) You hit a monster for 1000 lightning and then again for 1000 cold with a different attack. The monster will now have +25% resistance to cold and -50% to fire and lightning (and would have had -50% resistance to cold for the cold attack due to being hit with lightning beforehand)

Basically, you can't just stack multiple damage types to "game" the system. People usually use orb of storms to proc it on bosses or if they're using of the aforementioned skills which doesn't hit, then you can use an attack that does hit with a different element and then apply the debuff damage from EE, then apply your ailment damage.

Example:
You hit a monster with shield charge and do 100 physical and 5 cold damage (some flat cold damage on a ring or something). The monster now has +25 cold resist and -50% fire and lightning resist. You then apply the Burning status via Scorching Ray and the monster burns for [x] fire damage over time. Since Scorching Ray doesn't hit, it doesn't proc EE, so now you've got a "free" 50% damage increase (or more if the target already had some fire resistance).

[Siosilvar]

Hmm.. what do you mean with a attack that does not hit?
And how does EE work with added elemental damage from support skills? At the moment my main attack does all 3 kinds of elemental damage though weapon prefixes and support gems.

I should've said a skill that doesn't hit, since IIRC every attack hits, but I mean exactly that. Scorching Ray, Searing Bond, and things like that don't hit and so they don't trigger EE. Another classic EE skill is a 100% cold to fire conversion Vortex (though this isn't a simple thing to do any more, if it's even still possible without a legacy Pyre ring). The initial hit applies fire damage, boosting the DoT portion which is still cold since only hits can have their damage converted to a different type.

When you have EE and hit an enemy, they get +25% resistance to all the elements they took damage from and lose 50% resistance to all the others. If you hit them with all 3, all of their resistances increase.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I have my initial goal. Now I can never have my attacks be evaded, in exchange for never being able to crit. I consider it a worthwhile trade for even DPS.

As I'm not sure if I am going to be doing Blood Magic, I'm considering detouring through the nearby Mace circle, since I'm going to be using maces. Lot of tasty things in that circle, it seems, and gives me a chance to check out these auras that are supposedly coming up soon that I may want to reconsider Blood Magic over.

I've got two two-stone rings, one of fire/lighting and one of cold/lightning, both magic. Now all I need is a fire/cold, and I can sell all three for a Prismatic ring... correct? I'm needing to at least make a half-hearted attempt at getting some resists, and that seems like a really good way to start going about doing it.

[Drasius]

I've got two two-stone rings, one of fire/lighting and one of cold/lightning, both magic. Now all I need is a fire/cold, and I can sell all three for a Prismatic ring... correct? I'm needing to at least make a half-hearted attempt at getting some resists, and that seems like a really good way to start going about doing it.

Yes, 1 of each gets you a prismatic, but be aware that it's got a lvl 30 requirement to wear even a white non-magic one, so it might be a while before it's of any use to you.

Resists aren't that important until maybe ... the Vaal temple in act 2? Even then it's not super important if you've got enough life (rough guide would be ~act# * 350). You definately want to have your resists capped before you head into solaris though - the, ahem, "titty b*tches" as they're affectionately known, will drop you hard if you've got low fire resist, Piety will mess you up without solid cold & lightning resist and Dominus will smoke you unless you've got high lightning and some bleed removal, not to mention those annoying buggers in the tower with their cold shenanigans.

[Siosilvar]

Two-stones are marginally better than prismatics anyway, they roll 24-32% total resists and prismatics only roll 24-30%. And the resist rolls on magic and rare items are the same in every slot, so it's better to get them from armor when possible where there's fewer useful stats you could roll instead.

[lord_khaine]

Example:
You hit a monster with shield charge and do 100 physical and 5 cold damage (some flat cold damage on a ring or something). The monster now has +25 cold resist and -50% fire and lightning resist. You then apply the Burning status via Scorching Ray and the monster burns for [x] fire damage over time. Since Scorching Ray doesn't hit, it doesn't proc EE, so now you've got a "free" 50% damage increase (or more if the target already had some fire resistance).

Ahh.. alright that makes a bit more sense, i can see how usefull that would be. I can also see that my playstyle is sufficiently chaotic to that this skill wont work for me.

Also, is Warlords Mark a must for all melee builds? I kinda guess that it means getting life/mana leach from skills are suddenly less important?

And how useful is the ability that increases skill duration? It seems like a good match with fx spinning blade.

[Drasius]

Ahh.. alright that makes a bit more sense, i can see how usefull that would be. I can also see that my playstyle is sufficiently chaotic to that this skill wont work for me.

Also, is Warlords Mark a must for all melee builds? I kinda guess that it means getting life/mana leach from skills are suddenly less important?

And how useful is the ability that increases skill duration? It seems like a good match with fx spinning blade.

Warlords is probably more useful to casters since they have a harder time getting leech and endurance charges while basically any attack skill can leech from the tree, jewels, gear or ascendancies. Warlords is still great since it neatly solves most builds issue with how they power their skills and making it easier to stun monsters is always a winner if you're already near the threshold.

Increased duration is fantastic for some builds, useful for most and absolutely terrible for others. For example, blade vortex as you mentioned works very, very well with it (I'd probably go so far as to say that it is rather annoying to use without increased duration from the tree), as do things like firestorm and poisons. Situational buffs like Tempest shield, blood rage and Bone Offering have greatly improved quality of life, but aren't really worth devoting points to it while other things like storm call and lightning warp want reduced duration, so for them it's actually a bad choice.

[Starwulf]

Just wanted to link this for Shneekey: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vendor_recipe_system

Please read and abuse the hell out of what it says in there, it is the best possible way for a Solo Self Found to get various orb types, especially Chaos and Regal orbs once item level 60's start dropping(but even before that, Chance orbs are fairly useful as well, giving you a decent shot at turning a white into a rare, and a very, very small chance of turning a white into a unique(I've never personally done it, and I've been playing off and on since the very start of the game. The last 4 seasons I played I dumped hundreds, if not 1k+ chance orbs into white's trying for a unique(since it's an achievement) and it never happened).

The recipes I'm specifically referring to(all on that page have there use though) are halfway down the page, and I just wanted to throw out an additional tidibit: When doing the chance/chaos/regal recipe, you can use a 2h weapon in place of a 1h weapon and a shield for the complete weapon/armor set, OR you can do 2x 1h weapon instead of a shield(Which is a huge boon since shields often take up a ton of space in stash tabs).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Just wanted to link this for Shneekey: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vendor_recipe_system

Please read and abuse the hell out of what it says in there, it is the best possible way for a Solo Self Found to get various orb types, especially Chaos and Regal orbs once item level 60's start dropping(but even before that, Chance orbs are fairly useful as well, giving you a decent shot at turning a white into a rare, and a very, very small chance of turning a white into a unique(I've never personally done it, and I've been playing off and on since the very start of the game. The last 4 seasons I played I dumped hundreds, if not 1k+ chance orbs into white's trying for a unique(since it's an achievement) and it never happened).

The recipes I'm specifically referring to(all on that page have there use though) are halfway down the page, and I just wanted to throw out an additional tidibit: When doing the chance/chaos/regal recipe, you can use a 2h weapon in place of a 1h weapon and a shield for the complete weapon/armor set, OR you can do 2x 1h weapon instead of a shield(Which is a huge boon since shields often take up a ton of space in stash tabs).

Now that's interesting. So if I get a bunch of rares, I can turn them in for Orbs of Chance or even potentially Regal Orbs. Nice.

I just got my first Legendary item, Tear of Purity. I guess the game heard me when I said I wanted to beef up my elemental resistances, because the aura it lets me cast is Resist All 25%. Not too happy about the mana reservation, though. Also got a Superior Bismuth Flask (like 13%), which is also VERY nice for burst resist all. I also managed to craft my first Prismatic Ring, but can't wear until level 30.

I completed the bandit quests, got the two passive points since I figure I can't go wrong there. I got a Warcry out of it, since I didn't have the Int score for Champion of Ash, which seems to be an aura of sorts. Not sure how I'm supposed to be able to use it, maybe once I find a 'cast upon being hit' support?

Right now, Sunder is holding me in good stead as my primary attack, and Leap Attack is my mobility skill I am using.

Which is good, because most of my armor is utter crap.

I tried getting the next tier 2h mace, a sash (I used one of those 'rare + guaranteed Dex things since I have zero use for dex to guarantee me a rare) and a Smith's Whetstone to make me something decent, but it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Shame, had three linked red slots. Even blew a dozen or so orbs to shuffle things around, but that only made it worse. So I'm out some mats, and wiser in experience.

I'm really seriously considering blood magic, since most auras seem to have an Int requirement I can't match, unless that's going to change soon?

[lord_khaine]

I'm really seriously considering blood magic, since most auras seem to have an Int requirement I can't match, unless that's going to change soon?

As i understand things, blood magic wont help you with the Int requirement. It will only solve your mana issue.

But for the int bit, then your tree should have a huge +30 int block somewhere? And you could always craft a pure +int amulet if you really want that aura.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

As i understand things, blood magic wont help you with the Int requirement. It will only solve your mana issue.

But for the int bit, then your tree should have a huge +30 int block somewhere? And you could always craft a pure +int amulet if you really want that aura.

The thing is, without the Int for the Auras, I have no negative consequence for going into Blood Magic, since I won't have any life reserved since I won't have any auras up.

Also, did some testing with my lag, it's latency. Hovers around 35-40ish ms but will spike to 300+ at the worst times. And apparently I'm not the only one, half the first-page tech support forum posts are complaining about the latency spikes.

[Drasius]

Just wanted to link this for Shneekey: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vendor_recipe_system

Uhhh, not only did I already posts that last page, you also thanked me for posting it?

See here: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vendor_recipe_system for the various options that you're never told about (unless they're in the new help section that just got added to 3.0).

Also wanted to thank/praise you for posting that.

I completed the bandit quests, got the two passive points since I figure I can't go wrong there. I got a Warcry out of it, since I didn't have the Int score for Champion of Ash, which seems to be an aura of sorts. Not sure how I'm supposed to be able to use it, maybe once I find a 'cast upon being hit' support?

Right now, Sunder is holding me in good stead as my primary attack, and Leap Attack is my mobility skill I am using.

All 3 heralds are basically auras and, like almost everything that has to do with mana, require at least some Int. They work just like auras in that you press their button once and then they do their thing (add elemental damage plus secondary effect for the 3 heralds). They're passive in that they don't require input, which is why they reserve mana. Or did you mean you can't figure out how to use the warcry?

Sunder will see you all the way through to endgame, it's one of the strongest melee skills out there at the moment.

[Starwulf]

Uhhh, not only did I already posts that last page, you also thanked me for posting it?

roflwaffles, yes, you did, and yes I did. Short memory span lately, lot of stress in RL causing me to forget **** all the time(not even joking about that, unfortunately). Beyond that, I guess I can at least say that I was specifically pointing him towards the recipes halfway down(I remember the first time I looked through that list, it was so much to take in that I didn't even notice the chance/chaos/regal recipe), as doing so is a huge source of Chaos orbs(like...for a semi-serious player like myself(basically one or 2 steps above casual, I know the chaos recipe is 80% or more of my entire chaos orb collection, even after I start doing maps and start finding things worth selling on poe.trade.xyz. Hell, I don't even do the Regal recipe anymore, as they just usually aren't worth it(2 seasons ago I could trade 2 chaos for 3 regal), I just make sure I throw in a level 60-75 item in with a full set of 76+ stuff just to make sure I get a chaos out of it.

[lord_khaine]

Alright, another question. Is there a way to get rid of those gems in the top right corner, in case i dont want to level them up?

Edit.
And found my first Val Orb. Advice on what to do with it?

[Drasius]

Alright, another question. Is there a way to get rid of those gems in the top right corner, in case i dont want to level them up?

Edit.
And found my first Val Orb. Advice on what to do with it?

Right click the little "+" button. If you want to level them later, just open your inventory and the little "+" button will be down the bottom.

Depends on what you're playing. For most builds, you generally either leave them alone until late game or if you need a specific Vaal Skill gem for levelling, then use it on the regular version, but for the most part, they have rather niche uses since not only is the result random, it can be fantastic, good, mediocre, do nothing or make things muc, much worse.

The most common uses are
- corrupting uniques to get specific mods (like +1 curse or +1 frenzy charge) that you can't get any other way, but the risk is that the unique gets turned into a randomly rolled rare
- using it on a rare with a bad implicit mod (say a studded leather belt because stun recovery is generally worthless) but great starts (+life/+resists/+flask effect/duration) since then there's not muc to lose but a huge amount to gain
- Corrupting rares to get a 7th mod since you can normally only have 6.
- Adding a level to a level 20 skill gem or adding up to +3% quality to a 20% quality gem (generally you wait until one is 20/20 since then either result is good, though you generally always want +1 level)
- Adding mods to a map or keeping the map mods the same (ie, known to be safe for that character) but unidentifying it for higher rewards and completing a challenge

More often than not, you'll just ruin whatever you use it on since there's no way to ever change the item once it's been Vaal'ed. No adding more stuff, no adding sockets, no adding links, no changing socket colours, no increased quality, nothing.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Good news: Found another Legendary. Bad news: it is one that is compeltely worthless to me. Shidebreath. Amulet with Basically lots of mana regeneration and minion stuff.

Let's see.... wasn't there a vendor recipe about trading in one of the same type in White, Magic, Rare, and Legendary? Might be the best use of that particular piece of crap. Too bad there's not a system like in TL2 where you turn in four legendaries to get a random legendary with iLev roughly around the lowest one submitted.

Anyway, I'm in Act III now. I've now got Physical Damage Support instead of Fire. I did go ahead and grab Blood Magic since none of the auras really have any interest for me.

Warlord's Mark seems... interesting. I'd like to figure out how to use it properly. Same with Enduring Cry. However, they would have to be set up in some sort of passive thing, like 'on hit' or something, for them to be useful.

Yanno, maybe it is time to see how the 'other half' lives. Does anyone know a good minionmancer/summoner build that doesn't require multiple legendaries? That amulet would probably be pretty rockin' for one.

[Siosilvar]

Warcries can't be triggered, all the "cast when X" *only* applies to spells which warcries haven't been since before 2.0.

Curses like Warlord's Mark can use Blasphemy to turn them into an aura, or you can use a Curse on Hit setup too. My first character that I mapped with had a 4 link of Leap Slam + Fortify + Curse on Hit + Warlord's Mark. Herald of Thunder is popular for Curse on Hit if you can consistently shock enemies to trigger it. But self-casting isn't that bad, you can always link it with Faster Casting and/or Increased AoE to make it more effective.

My first thought for a summoning build, especially one that isn't gear reliant, is Summon Raging Spirits. Casting a constant stream of flying, flaming skulls at things is pretty amusing, and it's a great cheap build commonly used both for league starters and to level up before switching to another summoning build.

More often than not, you'll just ruin whatever you use it on since there's no way to ever change the item once it's been Vaal'ed. No adding more stuff, no adding sockets, no adding links, no changing socket colours, no increased quality, nothing.

That's not technically true, a level 8 Vorici can mess with sockets, colors, and links if you give him X Vaal orbs in addition to the X jeweler's/chromes/fuses it would normally take to do it.

[Drasius]

Good news: Found another Legendary. Bad news: it is one that is compeltely worthless to me. Shidebreath. Amulet with Basically lots of mana regeneration and minion stuff.

Let's see.... wasn't there a vendor recipe about trading in one of the same type in White, Magic, Rare, and Legendary? Might be the best use of that particular piece of crap. Too bad there's not a system like in TL2 where you turn in four legendaries to get a random legendary with iLev roughly around the lowest one submitted.

Anyway, I'm in Act III now. I've now got Physical Damage Support instead of Fire. I did go ahead and grab Blood Magic since none of the auras really have any interest for me.

Warlord's Mark seems... interesting. I'd like to figure out how to use it properly. Same with Enduring Cry. However, they would have to be set up in some sort of passive thing, like 'on hit' or something, for them to be useful.

Yanno, maybe it is time to see how the 'other half' lives. Does anyone know a good minionmancer/summoner build that doesn't require multiple legendaries? That amulet would probably be pretty rockin' for one.

There's a fairly common prophecy (give a silver coin to Navali via the seek a prophecy dialouge) that lets you trade 5 uniques to a vendor for a random with the ilvl of the random equal to the lowest ilvl of the 5 your gave the vendor.

Curses can be used either as self cast, an aura (requires the blasphemy gem and reserves mana [or life if you've taken blood magic] that automatically curses everything in it's radius every 0.5 seconds or in combination with a curse on hit gem that's linked to another skill (one that hits, so, basically not scorching ray, righteous fire, essence drain or similar) and it will automatically apply the curse to anything that skill hits and costs no mana (but eats up at least 3 gem slots)

Warcries are very simple: push button, recieve bacon buff. The more enemies are around you, the better the buff gets (for enduring cry, it's more endurance charges).

Minions are probably one of the easiest builds at the moment and while there's very few that wouldn't be better off with The Baron as their helmet, it's certainly not required. The obvious choice is witch into Necromancer, though you can probably do it with quite a few other ascendancies just as well.

Gem links are dependant on details of build, but for a very quick and easy generic summoner in order of importance
Zombies - minion life - minion speed - minion damage
Spell Totem - Summon Raging Spirits - melee damage - melee splash
Summon raging spirits - melee damage - melee splash - faster casting
Flesh offering - increased duration
and then whatever you want from there, but that's enough to get you pretty deep into the game and you can ditch self casts SRS for a spell like firestorm if you want to dabble in blasting stuff with basically no loss in damage and you've still got a bunch of links free to do whatever you like with.

Skills just involve getting life for you, life and damage for your minions and some increased duration if it's not too far out of the way, then it's basically whatever you want.

A small pointer - your summons have the same AI as their base type (so zombies act exactly as stupid as the enemy zombies in the game) with 1 exception - they will go where you last cast a spell and then their AI takes over again. If you move more than ~ 1 screen away, they'll stop what they're doing and follow you, but that's about it, otherwise they'll just attack whatever's closest generally.

If you're after something a little more in depth, I'll link some guides (since there are a billion SRS starter guides out for 3.0 at the moment).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

So, started my little witch on her way to victory on the bodies of her foes... literally.

Right now, she's got Summon Zombies and Blight as her two active skills. Debuff and direct with Blight, and let the zombies kill things, adding in some support with my wand where necessary.

Is this going to be able to be like a Totem Build where I never need to attack anything, or is this going to need some direct-fire support as well as curses?

Also, I have just discovered the Search function of the passive skill tree. Searched for 'minion', got a good idea of where I want to go. One of the nodes seems to be in someone else's area... Necromantic something, which gives my minions the benefit of my shield. Sounds like it could be really handy for them, but it is technically in the tree due south of me. One of the minion circles is also down there. Not sure whose that is, but it seems like it's got a mix of darn near everything in there, which doesn't particularly strike me as a good idea for a character.

On the way, I can pick up my first +1 Zombies skill. Right now I'm picking up Mana and Mana Regen on my way, because I really won't need Spell Damage since I'm not casting any direct damage.

[lord_khaine]

Blight is surprisingly effective. my Scion had a lot of fun with it in the first part of act 2.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oh wow, I didn't notice previously that Blight is a Channeled spell. This thing is crazy good at close range.

So, apparently I can get all of the minions passive skills in roughly 57 or so points. Not too shabby. From there... I guess whatever I want, depending on what else I do besides minions.

Is Energy Shield a good thing to focus on as a defense? Most of the gear I am wanting provides energy shield. I thought I heard something about 'Energy Shield used to be OP, but got nerfed to oblivion' or something like that.

[Drasius]

Is this going to be able to be like a Totem Build where I never need to attack anything, or is this going to need some direct-fire support as well as curses?

It can be, depending on how you build it. If you focus only on summons and supporting them, then yes, you can turn it into a walking simulator, though you can just as easily choose to have a more active role if that's your thing too.

Also, I have just discovered the Search function of the passive skill tree. Searched for 'minion', got a good idea of where I want to go. One of the nodes seems to be in someone else's area... Necromantic something, which gives my minions the benefit of my shield. Sounds like it could be really handy for them, but it is technically in the tree due south of me. One of the minion circles is also down there. Not sure whose that is, but it seems like it's got a mix of darn near everything in there, which doesn't particularly strike me as a good idea for a character.

Necromantic Aegis. It's generally a long way out of your way and unless you've got one of a few specific uniques, it's almost never worth it.

That area is the Scion, and she's been pretty bad for a while now, mainly due to exactly what you've noticed - focusing on multiple things here just means you can't do anything well enough to succeed and the nodes in her starting area are all less effective than every other character and going 1 direction means you have to waste a bunch of points if you also want something from the other side of the tree. She's less bad now, but still generally not as good as the other characters.

One thing to keep in mind is that just because a character starts in an area, doesn't mean they can't venture to the other side of the tree, you just have to be smart about how you path there.

On the way, I can pick up my first +1 Zombies skill. Right now I'm picking up Mana and Mana Regen on my way, because I really won't need Spell Damage since I'm not casting any direct damage.

If you're doing that, strongly consider Mind over Matter since summoners don't really use that much mana if they're just maintaining their army and the survival boost is notable.

So, apparently I can get all of the minions passive skills in roughly 57 or so points. Not too shabby. From there... I guess whatever I want, depending on what else I do besides minions.

Generally your choice of quality of life (get more life, increased duration, jewel sockets, aura nodes etc) if you're going to rely on your summons or pick a damage spell and pour the rest of your points into that. Keep in mind that generally speaking, you're going to want ~3,500 life by the time you face the act 10 boss (~lvl 65-70), so picking up a lot of life nodes is highly recommended.

Is Energy Shield a good thing to focus on as a defense? Most of the gear I am wanting provides energy shield. I thought I heard something about 'Energy Shield used to be OP, but got nerfed to oblivion' or something like that.

ES is OK for a summoner since you're generally not getting hit that much due to having a meatwall in front of you and not being stuck in place trying to deal damage means you're free to dodge around. ES values on gear got cut by ~30% across the board in 3.0 and Vaal Pact no longer works with ES (IE, you used to be able to get 15-20k ES and refill it instantly, making you more or less immortal against basically everything except ~3 attacks in the game). The further you get into the game, the more stuff is going to be able to bypass your minions due to pierce and AoE though, and without dedicating effort, skills and gear to getting high ES values and high recharge rates, then you can be in for a rough time in places.

Also, yet another thing that isn't made clear/obvious unless you go looking for it, chaos damage bypasses Energy Shield, so even if you have 10,000 ES and 1,000 life, if you get hit for 1,000 chaos damage, you're dead (unless you have Chaos Innoculation, but that's not for beginners since it permanantly sets your maximum life to 1).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yeeeeesh

Okay, so not going for Necromantic Ageis then, I'll go snag all the other lovely minion-related nodes on the cheap.

I would imagine that Chaos Inoculation was a LOT more popular before the nerf-bat to ES.

Right now, I've got Zombies, Skeletons, and SRS as my summons, all of them with Summon Damage Support, and Blight with Chaos Support (trades bonus chaos for less elemental, it's a green gem?) and Arcane Surge support.

In practice, what my zombies don't clean up, SRS or Blight will, and Skeletons are thrown in because they're kinda free of charge, if temporary. They do help me build up my meat wall of zombies, though.

Also, lucked into a rare circlet with +1 Minion Gems on it. Gonna be a while before I grow outta that one. It also popped with decent Quality, so I spent a couple of Armorer's Scraps to top it off to 20%, and spent two Chromatic Orbs to get the colors on the already linked slots right. Right now, I have my Zombies installed in it, and consider it a worthwhile investment. Considering I picked up four armor pieces that had three linked red/blue/greens for chroma orbs, I'm still ahead of the game. I also, ironically, found one on a vendor. Traded a trans orb for a chroma orb, in effect. And considering I can make trans orbs by selling unidentified blues and yellows, I consider the trade more than worthwhile.

Now at the beginning of Act II. Got a Bubbly Large Health Flask of Iron Skin for burst damage negation, which makes me feel more comfortable.

I did run across a 'hidden path' which apparently made enemies nastier (and gave them the poison on hit buff) but had better loots? That's where I found the hat and a couple of the things I traded for Chroma Orbs. Also found a wand, but it was going to be too much to make it worthwhile.

[Starwulf]

So, I've heard about the ES nerf(buddy of mine keeps me informed on major nerfs), but did they buff armor or evasion any to make up for it? 2 seasons ago Evasion was pretty meh, unless you ran specific builds and equipment to get up to 25k+(and that wasn't possible with my bow chick), so I was a really squishy person, I even eventually had to start buying hybrid armor/eva armors so I had more pure damage mitigation to complement the evasion(which was really, really costly, I ended up spending about 6 exalt on re-outfitting my chickie with all those hybrid armors with the same stats my eva gear had). Was very frustrating with how badly it performed, even with nearly 8k life I was dying so fast the moment stuff got near to me.

I would imagine that Chaos Inoculation was a LOT more popular before the nerf-bat to ES.

Very much so. My aforementioned buddy ran a cold caster witch with CI and 18-20k ES, and only stuff in the highest tier of maps and special bosses(Like Shaper and the like) could kill him. It was fun to run maps with him because of that, he would run into the thick of things freezing them while I hung back and peppered them with arrows. Pretty weird to have a mage-type character being the tank, but it was very effective. He had certain passives and gear that would make it so once his Energy Shield started to regenerate it couldn't be interrupted by taking damage(which normally it would be), and it would start regenerating considerably faster then normal(I believe it's normally 3 seconds without being hit? Or maybe 5. And he had it down to like 1-2 seconds).

[Drasius]

I would imagine that Chaos Inoculation was a LOT more popular before the nerf-bat to ES.

ES/CI/VP or go home basically.

Also, lucked into a rare circlet with +1 Minion Gems on it. Gonna be a while before I grow outta that one.

You should be looking to update your gear every ~10 levels, though certain things can let you push this well out.

I did run across a 'hidden path' which apparently made enemies nastier (and gave them the poison on hit buff) but had better loots? That's where I found the hat and a couple of the things I traded for Chroma Orbs. Also found a wand, but it was going to be too much to make it worthwhile.

This is your intro to the idea behind maps (which come after the Act 10 boss). Monsters get harder, loot gets better and as a bonus for these Vaal areas, there's a special container with either a Vaal gem or a Vaal fragment once you kill the boss. The Vaal gems are very handy as they're very powerful but recharge like flasks while the fragments are needed to access one of the end game bosses.

So, I've heard about the ES nerf(buddy of mine keeps me informed on major nerfs), but did they buff armor or evasion any to make up for it?

Not really. A slight boost, ~5% on gear for both armour and Evasion, a life/armour, life/evasion and life/ES mod for rares and that's it. A large amount of people are having trouble with later acts due to believing that armour is useless due to all the memeing though, which is amusing. It's still useless for endgame, but for leveling, armour is king.

He had certain passives and gear that would make it so once his Energy Shield started to regenerate it couldn't be interrupted by taking damage(which normally it would be), and it would start regenerating considerably faster then normal(I believe it's normally 3 seconds without being hit? Or maybe 5. And he had it down to like 1-2 seconds).

2 seconds. You can reliably get it down to 1, but the investment beyond that is probably a bit too much.