Hi all,new player need help

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deda1234 wrote:

Thank you ,circle tactics work great ,i had some 50% res and done it at first try after your advice:)
tnx a lot

all good mate, its a tactic that comes into play a lot. Even against large groups of monsters that are not individually scary, if you stand your ground you may get surrounded and overwhelmed. If you stay on the outside of the pack, circle it, you sort of herd them into a ball where your aoe dps skills like reave, lightning tendrils, firestorm etc will maximise their damage while you stay quite safe. Sometimes its not circles, you may get 180 degrees around a pack and find another pack coming at you from above, and then you end up doing a figure of 8 sort of movement around both packs... the important part is moving in curves.

If you were to run away from merviel in a straight line that projectile attack she does would still hit you as its moving along the same straight line you are. When theres hordes of mobs on screen it can get impossible to keep track of all the stuff being thrown at you, but never standing still for prolonged periods and moving in curves will minimise the amount of damage that manages to connect. Often doing a half circle around a pack, stopping to dps them at a few points will be enough to kill them off, then you curve around the outside of the next pack the same way, forming a sort of snake of curves moving forward through a zone.

There are some skills like cyclone (whirlwind for the diablo vets) that are the exact opposite where you just mow straight into the heart of packs like a crazy person, but youll get a feel for whats appropriate as you try stuff out.

Tnx for videos:)

I do have another ,kind of test question just to see if i got this right...

So most important thing is stay alive then dmg right?

So importance goes like this>

life=ES>resistance>regen>mana>evasion>block>armor

from what i saw here on forums this should be oredr of importance right?

And taking this in consideration i made what i think would be good build for scion:

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgAAiq-QEYLkvrxKyF9q2-e0xdhN-ehodNpilKCDCRa_jDYHY8u95oFd8g5IJjwW8y-df8a4yjt8D8Sio9D1QZaus0yzU1JFnZrg6-4o-oLHfscb8eWLna6nCLiTtvr3po5kHRSPRoKb5CIabCycBUKvmxBYdhGHZSpTYpWycLQMRnHVpu08mjtG11cpcYXAGvMRsUKMdrcxlnS2hu0gaPJ8SxhdPO8RLysKtvcc3JMnpzTAnOOERwb2_GyMYqy5fIwL7LA2PXcHhxOcpG-eV8kNfOq6cFKJ03DVVcaD2wQHwGat8ew4njw2xR8C2CTfhELDAv4RlqcrNbkdTy0fXyrr5A==

Idea is to take as much as life,liferegen resistance and mana as posible from templar- witch - scion and then get, crit chance/multipliers from shadow side of the tree.

Could this work ? 8 points more ,where to cut, crit chance or crit multiplier?

Tnx a lot again for all help ,rly nice community here:)

Damage and survivability are both important but even a "pure damage dealer" /glasscannon build will need a significant investment into survivability while a "pure tank" will still need a significant investment into damage as well.
I wouldn't recommend to ever plan a build with more than 110 skillpoints since it takes a lot of time and dedication to even get that far. My recommendation would be to plan with ~105 skillpoints or better only 95-100 if this is your first endgame build.

To put it into perspective:
90 skillpoints (~lvl 72) takes two to four days to reach
100 skillpoints (~lvl 82) takes over a week to reach
105 skillpoints (~lvl 87) takes a couple weeks to reach
110 skillpoints (~lvl 92) takes over a month to reach
- and then things start to get really slow!

Note that those numbers are for experienced players with lots of time on their hands which take about 15-20 hours playtime from creating a char to getting into endgame maps.

The priority list you posted is right but only for a specific type of char and there are many different ways to set up your char so there aren't really generic answers.
Your skilltree isn't that bad compared to other first tries i have seen in this forum in the last couple months but besides having 20-25 too many skillpoints allocated, it seems that you tried to get a bit of everything, which isn't very effective.
Resistances from passives are one thing where people tend to have different opinions. You can basically get all the resists you ever need from gear but having some from passives gives you more room with gear choices. For me personally i found 10-40% allres (depending on the build) from passives to be a good tradeoff between passive investment and more flexible gearing since i play mostly self found with very little trading.

Every build needs a strong basic concept which will take most of the skillpoints spent.

Your build idea seems to lack that sort of clear concept since you have some life, some ES, some cold damage, some spellcrit but also accuracy etc. - many different things but not really much of either.
In short: i have no definitive idea what this build is meant to do (maybe some sort of life/ES hybrid cold crit caster?) or what skill you want to use with it.
If you give us some info on what you want to do, we can help you work out a solid basis for your build as well as refine/optimize pathing in the skilltree.
Talking about pathing: i have no idea why you get all that stuff but your pathing to get it looks very good and you waste only a few points. I found only two wasted passives at first glance, which is something i rarely see in a beginners build - kudos on that! :).

A couple notes. Prior to end game, playing with spells I have faster clear speed, with melee i have a much easier time against bosses. I would say spells are going to be the easiest to start with (over ranged attack as well). Avoid crit. Crit is an end game stat with very little exception.

What i have in mind is a elemental caster character primary using
cold snap ,lightning tendrils and some fire dmg spell(don't know which fire spell is good for fast aoe grind and farming materials)

I took so many different support like regen noods ,ES nods,res nods,
for a simple reason im used to, from other games to build equipment around my build then to build "build" around equipment you get.

Idea was to get as much supportive nods of any kind so that i can focus on dmg equipment and not be hampered by lack of defense.

In this few days i have played having ele.res was hardest to get for me ,could be just bad luck on drops by i generally tend to ignore this in any game i play trying always to get EQ with dmg and crit stats that is why i had so much resistance points.

I have also tried to get as much cast reduction, as its very rare, at least at lvl 34 that im now to get some equipment with it. Not sure how important this is later on.

So after some thought this is Templar build i will aim for to finish game and unlock Scion ,and farm some unique equipment>


https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgUATwT53cCai4zAZtn8Cap8DqdVW6BDyGjyGF08763xlnR8S7aGgpvtIO98n9_Vpu08mjuMdp487DjAGrcxcYVG11cpsULauX7HG_Hli52uGmzkIgQHHwI2xdgkpwhfKuvkVcaD20yzBUJBlq6z0PUsnD1fUlOXlR1PLR-nKzW5U1JFnZrg6-64k5Sg2mJodPnogsco-g18V8m2-vemjmQdFI9Gh2UQWHYRr5s=



All i know for now is that i like caster class(more def passives) even at this low lvl i die easy as melee so i will leave that for when i get to know game mechanics much better,

i will use cold snap and lightning tendrils or some other aoe elemental skill if you can suggest some for better farming.

AS for equipment i really have no idea since this is my 5th-ish day of casual playing and no idea what i can expect in future since ,
I see from other build posts that ppl build whole game play concept around some unique staff drop, with some crazy stats on it and its quite random!?!? Or is it not???

I must say again that after some 20 years of mmos and at least 15-20 different games this is best community ever ,thank you all so much for effort :)

ok had a look at the builds you posted, people are right for first timer builds theyre actually pretty solid mate, not perfect but better than I did at first for sure.



Ok, going to throw some theory at you, might get a bit heavy going but in case its of help, Ill put it out there, huge post incoming.

This game is very strict and precise with terminology, specific words are used that have specific meanings, and where ever you see these words on gear, nodes, gems etc they always used on purpose to specify exactly what is going on, technical terms if you like. Ill throw a few out there that might help.


Attacking vs Casting, 2 entirely separate mechanics that work very differently in a number of ways.

An 'attack' is made with a weapon or your fists if you are unarmed and punch someone. A spell is cast, you need nothing equipped to cast a spell. All offensive skill gems are usually either an attack or a spell, they will say at the top which they are in their keywords.



firestorm is a spell, Reave is an attack. Attacks are scaled by attack speed, spells are scaled by cast speed, attack speed will not effect a spell at all and vice versa. Attacks can miss, aka can be evaded by enemies. Evasion is a formula that plays off the attackers accuracy vs the victims evasion rating to see if the hit landed or was evaded. Spells cannot be evaded, if you cast a firestorm on a mob it cannot evade it, hence 'accuracy' does absolutely nothing for spells, that 'Precision' string of green nodes you took in the templar area for example wont effect anything you are doing as a caster.

Attacks are performed with weapons, you attack with a sword, attack with a bow, attack with a wand... now that last one, yes you can actually attack with a wand, it shoots a projectile, if you hold a wand and use default attack you will shoot with it. That is an attack, not a spell, even tho its a wand. Anywhere you see something like "15% increased damage with wands" that is referring to an attack made with the wand, '...with X weapon' is always an attack made with that weapon, casting a spell with a wand in your hand wont count as "damage with a wand". Only global stats apply to spells, 'elemental damage' 'spell damage' 'critical strike chance' 'global critical strike chance' etc, or things that specify 'with spells'.

You will notice in the keywords of both those skill gems they are both "AOE" skills, standing for Area Of Effect. This means that area damage like the Amplify node you took will scale both of them.



Increased and More, 2 specifically different forms of amplifying something, like damage for example. Increases are all additive with each other, for example if you have 100% increased elemental damage + 100% increased area damage + 100% increased spell damage + 100% increased fire damage, and you are using a fire damage aoe spell like firestorm, they all add together, so 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 = 400% increased damage. If you original damage was 100, you will now do 500 damage.

If however you had 100% increased elemental damage + 100% increased spell damage + 100% increased fire damage + 100% more area damage, the more is not additive with the increases, it is a separate multiplier that applies on its own. So 100 + 100 + 100 = 300%, your original damage was 100, you now have 400 damage after the 3 damage increases, THEN the more damage is factored in, so 100% of 400 = 400, so your damage with be 800 after that layer of multiplication. More damage multipliers are always on their own layer of calculation, multiplying your total damage after all the increased damage is applied. This doesnt just work for damage, 'Infused Shield' passive node is 15% more maximum energy shield, Determination aura is 50% more armour...




concentrated effect, 69% more area damage, that is going to do a lot more for your damage than equipping a wand with "69% increased spell damage" as the increase is additive with all your other damage increases and the more is taking the total and multiplying that on its own layer of scaling your damage.





Thoughts on the trees and defenses. Having many layers of defense is important, but no character can efficiently stack all the different forms of mitigation on offer. Usually you will see a character using say "life + armour + block + endurance charges" or "life + evasion + dodge + endurance charges" or "life + armour + evasion".

Energy shield is rarely used with life, its becoming more of a thing now, I have a character that uses "life + energy shield + armour + block", but this is still quite an unconventional way of building a character. There are 2 main, conventional ways of using energy shield in a build....

Eldritch Battery its a passive node keystone on the tree, check it out. This converts all energy shield to mana. Chars who take this node often end up with 3000 to 5000 mana in endgame, as opposed to 600 to 800 more often seen without it. Your mana regen is based on a % of your maximum mana, so the more mana you have, the more you regen, EB characters are often getting 400, 500 mana regen per second. This makes paying for your skills a no brainer, you can spam any quantity of spells as fast as you like. It also opens up the ability to use something called Arctic Armour



which drains your mana, the more you level it the higher the mana drain and the higher the amount of physical and fire damage it reduces from incoming attacks/spells. There is another mana based mitigation method called "Mind Over Matter", again its a node on the tree, check it out. It takes 30% of the damage you recieve from your mana rather than life, so if you have 5k life + 5k mana, and huge mana regen, thats absorbing a lot of damage. Now the node is very far away from Eldritch Battery, so more often an EB spell caster will use one of these unique chests



which grants the Mind Over Matter node without having to travel all the way to get it. Cloak Of Defiance + Arctic Armour + Eldritch Battery is a staple setup for many caster builds and that is how they use energy shield to mitigate damage.



Chaos Inoculation + Infused Shield + Ghost Reaver, this is the other main method of using energy shield, those are all nodes check them out. Now the thing with energy shield, chaos damage goes right through it and hits your life directly, so you might be able in endgame to get 7,000 energy shield which is tons of effective health points to take damage, but chaos is going to bypass it and eat right into your life. (note, chaos damage is like 'nature' damage if you will, sort of, poison, plague, acid etc).

Chaos inoculation sets your maximum life to 1, so any damage to your life is instant death, but it makes you immune to chaos damage which is the only thing that can bypass energy shield. Guarded behind CI is Infused Shield, 15% more energy shield. Life based characters are getting maybe 5k life average endgame, CI Infused Shield builds are getting anywhere from 8k to 14k energy shield, then using Ghost Reaver node to leech to the their energy shield instead of life. Now life builds can use life potions, theres no energy shield potions, so that is the trade off, massive amounts of HP but you are relying on shield recharge and leech alone to recover from damage taken. It does free you however to use 5 utility flasks like armour flasks, resistance flasks etc. This is the second conventional use for energy shield.




Going a hybrid of Life + Energy shield, it can be done, I do it. I have a char with 4,800 life + 3,800 energy shield, I have the Ghost Reaver node so that I leech to my shield, if I didnt do that my shield would be down most of the time. It works, its very strong, masses of HP, still can use pots etc, but its very fiddly, very gear intensive, its a complex and quirky way of working.



I use this shield, which gives me back a % of my armour as energy shield when I block, along with this flask



which also helps keep my energy shield up at all times.


I wouldnt advise having energy shield and life together as a beginner, if you want to use energy shield then I would advise speccing into Eldritch Battery, using it as mana, using arctic armour, going that route. If you are in the Templar tree then you have access to Sanctity + Devotion nodes which increase ES and Armour, use Armour + Energy Shield gear along with the arctic armour, thats what Id focus on unless you find a Cloak Of Defiance, then that would open up using Mind Over Matter. If you use a shield and get a bit of block too that cant hurt, block is really good.




Most spell builds specialise into 1 element, but theres no harm going for all 3, its unconventional but it can work. Youve take the 3 'walker' nodes, Fire Walker etc, Im presuming as much for the resists as for the damage. Its not a bad choice, however if you find later you cap your resists without them, unspec those 4 points and get the "Ash, Frost and Storm" wheel down near the scion start, its more damage for the same points and will apply evenly to all your elemental spells.

Just a note, no mobs in this game have actual immunity to a specific element, they can heavily resist them though, in turn there are resistance penetrating mechanics to break through their defenses. These can actually push mobs into negative resistance values afaik, theyre never doing nothing because a mob already has 0 resistance to a given element.

Regarding gear, unique items can have really odd stats on odd slots, but in terms of general rare gear, the boots, gloves, chest, belt and hat cannot roll anything that gives damage to spells at all. So on those bits you are just stacking defenses, life, armour, energy shield, resist, and maybe core stats if you need them to use gems, items etc.



Ok that post was huge, best thing u can do is get stuck in, make characters, find gear, make mistakes, youll pick it all up as you go and information will make more sense the more first hand experience you get with it. Its a very complex game but, unlike a lot of games, very little is hidden, the more you get in tune with the terminology and mechanics the more you will know exactly what is going on and you will be able to theorise things with certainty, have ideas, explore them, find ways of utilising strange unique items and passive nodes in interesting fashions. Theres constantly new uniques, new gems, new nodes being added, the learning never stops, the next effective build is constantly being discovered.

Wow,awesome and yet again thank you.

Your assumptions on why i took particular nods was right especialy concerning elemental resistance.
At the lvl Im playing now i have a choice get res rings-amulets or use it to get some stat points as + str or what ever i need for next EQ requirement.

Since hardest fight i had was Marviel siren act1 final boss,which totally destroyed my play as it was(i used cold spells mostly and didnt care about res at all) i came to realize that i need to have a second option for an attack as lightnig ,fire is there simply for fire trap which i use as a filler spell or i set up traps, cast fires storm, and then open those reward chests guarded by 3 packs of mobs and they are mostly dead when i turn around.

My next experience of a harder fight was in act2 where lots of mobs cast those bouncing lightning bolts,i had to port to town and get some res rings and do it.

This just tells me i want to get that ele-res nodes and try to get my equipment with other stats,like mana i do spend that mana pool pretty fast and i find my self using that basic attack skill but i guess later on i will find better ways to replenish mana .


Any way best thing to do now is stop posting and start playing(i do post form my office where i can not play )

Info was amazing and you guyz are great :)


GG all

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deda1234 wrote:

Since hardest fight i had was Marviel siren act1 final boss,which totally destroyed my play as it was(i used cold spells mostly and didnt care about res at all) i came to realize that i need to have a second option for an attack as lightnig ,fire

As Snorkle mentioned, there are ways to negate part of or even all elemental resistances on enemies which makes single element casters viable in all situations. These options are:

* elemental penetration support gem: basically a must have for any single element caster.

* elemental weakness curses (generic and element specific): also very useful although not as powerful as the penetration support.


@Snorkle_UK:
That is some serious wall-of-texting you did there and must have taken quite a while to write down ;). Quite a long text but still surprisingly short and to the point considering how many things you cover since it is basically 1/3 of a "how to make your own build" beginner guide (namely the game mechanic basics section). If it is fine with you, i will post a link in Noperative's beginner guide so maybe he can put a link or the whole post in his guide.

@Snorkle_uk excellent post, enjoyed reading. it even covers the biggest mistake, people start playing casters usually do: thinking that "adds x damage" from gear applies to their spells.

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vargorn wrote:

@Snorkle_UK:
That is some serious wall-of-texting you did there and must have taken quite a while to write down ;). Quite a long text but still surprisingly short and to the point considering how many things you cover since it is basically 1/3 of a "how to make your own build" beginner guide (namely the game mechanic basics section). If it is fine with you, i will post a link in Noperative's beginner guide so maybe he can put a link or the whole post in his guide.

ya sure mate, do what u want with it, copy/pasta it anywhere, cop it up and edit to make it non topic specific or whatever you like. You dont have to credit it to me where it gets used if anyone whats to chuck it into part of an existing guide etc, Im not bothered at all about that sort of thing, if its going to help people and make for better players and a more informed community then great.


Honestly I type at pretty ferocious speeds, probably faster than I can talk, perhaps why Im often making lofty, waffling posts. I rarely read back what Ive typed right away as that would probably take as long or longer than it took to drum it out, again probably why i repeat myself sometimes and maybe even come off a bit harsh and confrontational sometimes. Ive read back my posts a few days later to see exactly what someone was responding to before now and though oh, thats maybe a bit of a harsh way of saying what I said. If you could see my face, hear the playful way Im emphasizing things in my london accent it wouldnt be harsh at all but read in a cold, pure text fashion it maybe didnt come off like that, even to me when I read it back in a very straight emotionless manner as text often is.