Hey, just picked this up finally a few days ago and I’m loving it so far. I’ve played Diablo and a bit of Torchlight but never PoE. So there’s a few things that are a little confusing to me but I’m enjoying it. I’m near the end of the campaign or at least I think I am. Playing a lich so far, I’ve tried out a shaman, paladin, and runemaster. But lich and shaman are my favorite so far.
I’m trying not to follow any guides so far. I’ve looked at a few to get ideas but I’m trying to just enjoy the leveling. I think I respec too often though. I keep running out of money trying to shatter things, respec, and buying stash tabs.
I don’t have much more to say just saw the community and it was pretty quiet so I figured I’d make a post, see if people are around and maybe find some people to ask questions to if there’s anyone watching the community here.
Thanks those tips are great! I just got into I think the last act. Had to pick between the bazaar and observatory. My build is working fine so far but now I’m really struggling between things like resistances, health, specific damage (poison in my case) or just spell damage. Like I went all in on poison because I figured picking one element and sticking to it was best but I’m realizing that I’m also (almost) exclusively using spells so I’m wondering if I needed all that instead of the more generic things like spell damage.
And of course all those extra stats like defensives, endurance, leech, etc.
For now I’m flying through the story and enjoying it so I must be doing okay but I’m always worried I’m going to pass up something I should be trying to forge into something for me later once I start into monoliths and later levels. Or things I should be shattering for later. I’m hanging onto most of the uniques and set pieces though in case I change my build or level an alt.
What’s your build? I’m happy to make some suggestions! I will say, for a first character the merchants guild is much stronger, but once you have some gold from selling items, you should be able to buy some decent gear. Eventually you’ll have decent gold for stash tabs and whatnot, and shards for forging, then the circle can be more fun on a second character. Note that any item tagged with a guild can’t be used by a character outside that guild.
Poison damage is in a weird place but it can work. If your main damage is damage over time, don’t forget that’s another modifier, so get that buff as well for even more damage!
Well I can get more into the details next time I log in but essentially at the moment I’m going for poison damage and leech. The majority of my leech is coming from my passives though. I’m playing a Lich and my skills are Wandering Spirits, Hungering Souls, Death Seal, Decay Aura, and Reaper Form. This is working fine for the majority of the time. I specced all my skills into poison. I get healing from decay aura so I can stay in Reaper Form for a long time, and it heals me enough that I don’t need to turn it off when I’m out of reaper form. But once reaper form drops I need to play more cautiously until it’s up.
I know my resistances need to be higher and defensives in general probably need to be better but where I’m struggling in general is sort of what you mentioned with damage over time. There’s spell damage which should apply to everything other than Reap, and Aura of Decay, Poison damage which applies to all of it in some way but technically Reap still does some necrotic along with Death Seal (they’re mostly for the other benefits though and can poison.) There’s also damage over time and possibly others I’m not thinking of.
It’s hard to know what to focus on. More broadly, I have a shaman that I started leveling but probably won’t get back to until I finish up the story with my Lich. I want to go caster but they can do so many different elemental effects. I switched everything I could to lightning damage but I’m starting to think that isn’t strictly necessary since there’s also spell damage as an affix.
Like in general I guess it’s just how do you know which affixes to focus on for damage. I think I understand the defensive things more. Get all your resistances to 75%+, Get health (% and combined are most important), endurance and movement are good to have, and armor can’t hurt.
But for offense do I just pick one thing? Like spell damage, or lightning, or poison? Since I’m mostly doing damage over time is it fine to just get one? Since I can take multiple does it matter? Should I just get any that are an improvement? I gave you examples if it helps you with my current confusion but I’m trying to learn what to do in case I change my build or create an alt. I know you can’t give hard and fast rules but the fact that things scale with so many different tags actually makes it hard for me to know which ones to focus on. Which would give me more spaces to fill with defensive affixes.
All really good questions! The easiest answer for damage is focus first on your general damage (spells vs physical) and go from there. Remember that spell crit and regular crit are different, and damage over time cant crit. You typically want +stats in addition to your damage types, so lich usually benefits from +int, then probably +spell damage, and +poison damage.
Make sure to pay close attention to the skill tags, hover over your skills and see what they are. Lich in particular is cool but a little difficult to master, she excels in low life, ward based builds, and necrotic is a little easier to pump out damage usually.
Shaman is situationally fun once you figure it out! Flat totem damage, go thorn totem, get 5 points in beastmaster, use the spriggan form. Theres a way to get like 10 thorn and 2 storm totems :)
And get critical strike avoidance or minus bonus crit damage! Get one of those to 100%
Cool, thanks for the tips!