Beating Nemesis without rares or uniques

Finished up act 2, I already got to a good level through felshire grinding so I ran past a lot of enemies. I could have beaten the game progressingly normally like I do with other acts but I really hate act 2. Its a giant 'where the fuck do I go maze' I explored 90% of the forest before finding the entrance toe vaal ruins and Alira was hidden in the last place I looked.


It wasn't a matter of me having bad stats. I have between 70-75 in all element resists depending on how I swap my gear. I used my chaos resist gear when entering the spider cave and it was extremly easy.
I gave fedelis a decoy totem an enfeeble curse to pacify him while I nuked him down. I let him do a direct attack to my face just to see if I would die and it barely tickled. Slaying him got me to level 48 and I went back to town to wear my new amulet like it was olympic gold.

Act 1-2 mobs are extremly easy even on merciless because they tend to be slow to chase or attack. Even if the physical mobs which hit me pretty hard reacted too slow to be a real threat. Act 3 has all the hard mobs. Fast chasing bugs that endless spawn, crowd control effects like ice arrow, freezing pulse and puncture, powerful shield charges from black guards who resist every element and also have a high block/armor, lightning thorns trolling you, and corpse spitters bloating out the screen with guts, devourers that come in PACKS. Shit is scarey

Nothing too fancy in act 2 just nuking things down with bolts and enfeebling the enemy if it looks scarey. Having a faster healing and instant heal flask also helped since I coul pump more life into my veins faster. Curse removal flask is also very helpful.

Flasks are your friend, they allow you to be extremly durable with very little investment. I can not stress how much stronger you become when you have the right ones. Once I get hallow flasks I'm going on flask crafting spree.

When going to kill kraityn I fought 2 rare mobs at the same time. A fractured one and a soul eater. It was no problem since I killed the soul eater first. If I killed the fractured one first i would have probably died because I would empower the soul eater. Reading mobs mods and planning ahead is very importaint. You should know what your battle plan is before you actually engage.


This time I killed all the bandit quests. Kratyn and Alira were just face-roll. Oak is a bi trickier since he is very tanky and the fight tends to last so long your flasks go empty. Heres what you do.
Get life regen. like any life regen my 1% life regen node was good enough. Fight him man to man face tanking than run away and lose line of site on him. Let your life recover and repeat it. Only use potions if you fuck up. If you built a character with zero life regen nodes (why would you do this?) just buy a rejuv totem or vitality aura, if you have no strength than go to the vendor and get a strength amulet, buy several and craft them till you get a strength roll on it. Oak is a dumb ass who cant find you when he hide behind his own tent.

A berek's pass ring dropped. I have no idea who would use this ring. Outside of maps you should never be ignited if you have good fire resist. The only time I've ever had the debuff on me was from bringer of elements rares.
Once you get to maps you should be using ignite removaling flasks anyway. Troll drop.


While on the last section of vaal pyramid I met a nemesis monster with exploding blood. I didn't read its other mods but the fucker took off like 1200 health when he exploded. Maybe it was extra damage and powerful crits. I only had 2000 health so that was scarey. That was really stupid. I was playing overconfidently there.

This is why you need to stack health in PoE you will eventually make a dumb mistake, even if you NEVER make a mistake desync will get you and you need a life buffer. I'd like to point out that my character is relativily squishy with her build. Many node tree set ups spend less than 10 of their points on offense. I got nearly every single big damaging node in the witches area (I will get more later but for now I kill fast enough)

That 1200 crit to the face was definitly a warning sign that I am not longer invincible. I've been destroy the enemies because act 1&2 enemies tend to be extremly slow. Even if they hit hard they move and attack slowly so I can easily kite them or reposition. Act 3 monsters tend to be much faster and have tricky abilities like ice arrows, puncture, or very hard to dodge triple fireballs. Things will definitly get harder there.


Vaal went down fast. I can nuke him from off screen practically the fight was meh and I never even lost half my health.

Vaal is a pretty easy boss (until merciless when his rock smash starts to hurt for a lot).
If you are melee only attack him when he is summoning or spawning ice: he wont hammer smash you than. If you do this you wont even SEE his hammer animation play.

Count the lightning bolts: dodge 3 and he wont shoot anymore
Only kill the aids when he is hidden underground. Kill the ranged ones first they have less health and are more likely to catch you.

The rock-fall is tricky: watch for shadows to see where they will land. They never fall in the same place twice so once you see one fall you know that area is safe.

Only kill his aids when he is underground, priortize the low health, accurate ranged guys first.

If vaal comes up from the ground underneath than hit your desync macro key, than pop a quicksilver and run, than hit it again.

If vaal is off screen and arn't 100% sure he is underground assume he is aiming a laser and dont stop moving till you know where he is and what he is doing.

Like I said vaal was complete face-roll but its importaint to treat each boss like you are playing on merciless to get practice. Better to learn their pattern when they are easier than to get to merciless and not have a clue about how to handle the beast. If you fight vaal properly you should never even see the animation for his infamous hammer.

I did some minor trading. Sold a reduced mana I found in a chest for 2 chaos. I got faster casting as a quest reward and sold it for 9 jewels. I probably should have held off on faster casting and waited till someone would pay pure chaos, see how hard it is to convert chaos to chaos.

This trading was much less painful than my last since I wasn't desperate. I just made a quick posts in the channel everytime I went to town and they sold eventually.

I caught a guy who wanted to convert some lower orbs into chaos chaos at a fair rate (forget which orbs) and I did that.

I found a 5% cleave gem which I might be able to peddle in the future.

RNG has not been kind to me with currency. I am conservative with my budget though so my chaos pile is growing. All of my purchases have been either end-game gear or gems that I could easily re-sell if I decide I no longer need them.


Remember how I said act 3 was way harder than act 2. The game wanted to remind me of that so the first fucking that happens is it sends one of those weird masked crawelers at me with 'allies cannot die' 'bringer of weakness' 'extra damage' and a swarm of hungry immortal carrion.

I set up my enfeeble+decoy totem combo and they rip it apart instantly. See that I know what will happen if I engage them myself. The hungry books and their overlord are fast but I'm faster. I dance around them dropping lightning bolts in their path. I never loved my movment speed boots so much at this point. I probably wouldnt die without them (i could have reset the instance, or just been extremly wastful with potions and town portals) but they really helped me here. They couldn't even get close to matching my speed. Movment speed is definitly one of the most powerful tools in the game. These boots: crafted from a few augment orbs, a white base, and 6 quicksilver flasks protected me better than expensive rare or unique I could have worn.

When the aura-bearing monster was almost dead I decided to finish it quickly. No more dancing around and kiting. I pop molten shell, run in, drink a granite flask. They bite down ony my flaming armor a huge magical explotion happens and when the dust settles only I remain.

Like ryuko matoi receiving a new power up after a particularly tough opponenent the boss monster rewards me with a set of white boots: one tier higher than my previous. With them I craft 30% move speed boots version 2. More armor than before and a 35% fire resist mod. I'm now way overcapped on fire so I swap some rings around getting a bit more health than before. Never been so excited for a white drop in a long time.

First Vaal, than the immortal bugs, whats next? With my new boots I walk forward into the unknown

I advance just a single screen when I see a rogue exile chilling in the distance. A fence blocks his line of site. 3 boss monsters in a row eh?

I give him a decoy totem to see what sort of challenge he poses. Etheral knives, bear trap, and a curse. Physical attacks are my weakness so I have to be carful. He's too smart to just stand still and attack the totem.

He run off screen to lose him and than carfully pull the mobs around him, clearing the screen of trash enemies to make sure nothing will interfear with our duel.

The trash mobs are dead and the stage is set. I ambush him laying down a conductivity curse and throwing thunder like an angry god. He tosses bear traps, probably the worst spell in the game for someone with low armor. I keep a mental image of the safe radius I can be at and circle around him.

His movement isn't predictable like the last monster and he's ES keeps regenerating, fucker just wont stand still. I drink an armor potion and intionally step on a bear trap to see how I handle it. Not too dangerous. This guy requires a different tactic than the previous boss.

I think I can do a direct approach. I pop molten shell, go in with molten shell. Directly in his face he switches from trap tossing to EK throws. We exchange curses but I remove his with a flask. I keep my eye on granite flask's timer refreshing it when I need to. Standing still he is an easy target for storm call and molten shell chunks off his health. I refresh molten shell when needed and mend wonds with seething flask when he crits.

He goes down and I make my way to sarn


Overall I think this shows why PoE is great as an action game.
Vaal I overcame with simple pattern memorization, the nemesis monster with kiting, and the rogue exile with buff refreshment and potion managment.

Im in act 3 now with nearly capped resists and more than 2k health.
Just bear-bone life+resist gear is all I need. Not very creative but it works
For those of you who play with rares that can have 4 other affixes on your gear so you can have a lot more freedom. Feel free to run around with crit, item find, light radius, or whatever other stats you enjoy.

I can get my defenese high with only magic items, theres plenty of room for offense or utility if you play with rares or uniques.

I rescue Nissa with no incinidents.

The game will get a lot harder very soon. Discharg spammers await me down below, puncturing monsters in the street, and piety deep in her dungeon. Dominus watches it all from below. I'm coming for him though.

Nothing is going to stop me now.

Here is my current build and gear.
I had to use some quest reward respec points to get +20 strength +30 life node in order to wear my gear.
To be honest I havn't planned my tree beyound act 2 merciless and I'm wondering what to do.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAuMHpRVQFm8ZhR0UHwIkqij6LJwtHzGeNZI2xTbpOuE9X0GHRKtFnUmyTeNSU1WuVcZXK3B9dhF6qn6vgFaCEILHiPGNGY9Gj6aa4KZXpwisWbc-uJPBtM9l0NDYJN2M37DgEuNq5OznY-vu8kX56PrS_gr-jw==

Here is my gear. I have never once used an aura other than clarity just saving them for later and letting them level up. Havnt used skeletons either


This is the gear that I keep in my stash because I'm not high enough level for it or I'm saving it for swapping.




This is my wealth


I'll be joining the big boys in merciless soon

WOW this is a big entry.
This entry covers my advnture from the crematorium to slaying the general. There were a lot of unrelated small events so the text is pretty lengthy and doesnt focus on 1 particular theme.


I met a fan today. I'm pretty happy with the success of the log. Seems to entertain people and maybe they can learn something.

He was a duel wand dualist which is a pretty neat idea.

I sold him a really great set of rare gloves: level 40 duel resist, life, and an enhanced armor roll for 6 glassblowers.

Nemesis economy is prettty brutal: its difficult to get ANYTHING AT ALL for under 1 alch so i really undersold myself there.

The guy admited that he doesnt know prices very well to me (never, ever do this when trading its just asking to be scammed) normally I am a huge ass hole in trade. When a noob tells me he doesnt know prices I find a way to exploit it: this time I'm doing that because a) it would incredibly rude to do that to a fan b) I'm trying to show you something impressive. I could sit in trade chat all day flipping orbs and scamming noobs but I won't.

Later on a rare wand dropped. I sold it to him but not for orbs. Our agreement was that he would get the wand for free if he converted some of my currency to chaos: 4 fuses and 2 alchs for 3 chaos.

Using converation as payment is an advanced trading technique. I don't know if anyone else thought of it but its been something usful to me. I plan to purchase some pretty in-demand goods and being able to pure with chaos is a great bargaining tool.

On the reverse side you can get items you want in exchange for converting their currency. On one of my old characters I purchased a 5 link item for a very low price: in exchange for the great price I agreed to buy every single alch orb the guy had at 2 alch:1 chaos.
He give me around 80 alchs and I give him around 40 chaos.

To be honest I have never played nemesis before so i don't know the economy very well. My background in HC standard tells me that 1 alch=1scour=1fuse=.5 chaos

I love talking with my fans. I've gotten quite a for whispers. I'll answer any questions you have. I once had a pretty wealthy player offer to give me free currency: I don't take hand outs but I will buy or sell items with you at a fair rate.



Act 3 requires an adaption in my play style. I have nearly perfect resists 75 ice/fire 72 lightning 2 chaos but my physical defense really suck: 320 evasion (only have this from level ups) 750 armor and 25% block chance. This at level 50.

The elemental enemies are no problem, they bearly put a dent in my life bear. The physical ones though are tricky. I watch my granite flask charges carfully. When under its effects I can stand toe to toe with them trading blows. When its empty I play more cautious using my movment boots to kite or using enfeeble or molten shell.

I've been experiemtning with letting enemies get free hits on me so I know what sort of damage to expect. Its very importaint to know exactly how much damage an enemy can do, that way you know what you can face tank and what you can't. One these rare monsters leap slammed on me and did nearly 800 damage!


Nemesis enemies are getting more tricky requring more tactics than just enfeeble curse and potion chugging.

A storm caller bug queen posed a pretty big challenge. It was in a closed area so I knew if I got up close to her than her bugs might block my escape. I didn't want to be caught trapped between the queen and her bugs so I gathered up all her spawn at one end of the screen than zoomed away to assassinate the queen while her guards struggled to catch up. Your ability to reposition enemies is a powerful tool you have in this game.

Another nemesis rare had bringer of bones. He and his skeleton friends almsot trapped me. I was on a stair case when he spawned them and there was almost no room to run move my character. I barely managed to get out but if I there wasn't room for me to move I would have had to alt+f4 or use a portal scroll.

I don't ever want to be in a position where I'm at the mercy of the disconnection speed. Even after you al+f4 you are still sometimes in the game world for a second. Knowing this would happen again in the future I went to town, chromed my boots to get a blue socket and got a lightning warp from my stash. I'll be ready the next time

I went into the crematirum and kicked pietys ass again. With 72% lightning resist her attacks still did a respectable amount of damage but with enfeeble she was a pussy cat.

I traveled into the sewers and met another rogue exile: the one with cold snap and glacial hammer. He tried to ambush me with his chilling hand but his aim sucks. I pulled him away from the rest of the mobs just to be safe (never know when a hex-front haste aura mob will come along). I didn't even need enfeeble for this guy. He couldnt even chill me let alone freeze me.

As I said before elemental mobs do not scare me. High physical damage mobs scare me: what I am most afraid of seeing in act 3 is a shield charging black guard with extra damage or a giant pack of hasted puncturing enemies.


I ran out of wisdom scrolls.
I'm pretty sure that higher item level monsters have increased drop odds because my supply of wisdom scrolls has been shrinking: I used to find just as many as I used. I use a lot more ID scrolls than your average player since I ID so many damn blues.

I purchased 160 for 1 hard chaos.



I get the rest of the busts. I had to do market place with no bleed removal flask because I am too cheap to craft one. Bleed being physical damage is one of the things I fear most in the game. I knew that this is one of the most likely zones in the game to kill me.

I decided to kill every monster in the zone like a bad-ass. Slow tactical use of molten shell, decoy totem, and enfeeble make up for my shitty armor. I do a /remaining and theres 1 monster left. Fuck that I go to the battlefield waypoint.


It just occured to me that at this monster level range I can start getting a scepter or wand rolled with high spell damage. I decided to start saving crappy blue ones for the 5 of a kind vendo recipe. Come to think of it I should be doing that with every item slot since the game is actually getting hard now.

I take one of my premium tabs label it 'recycle' and devote it to the recipe. Buy GGG's premium tabs they are a great asset!

Solaris temple and battlefront arn't much of a threat. They do hit pretty hard but my fast healing potions resolve it. I meet an extremly ugly women with large breasts who wants to blow things up.

I go to docks to pick up her bombs. I find a rare fire dog monster sent from hell hiding behind a crate. Good thing I read the mods or I'd be dead.
Blessing of elements
Powerful Crit
Extra Projectile

I could have reset the instance but what fun would that be. I clear the mobs around him and several in other directions to make a nice empty battle field. using +30 movment speed boots I can easily out run him. My decoy totem distracts him for a half a second, long enough for the storm bolts to connect. Run, decoy, storm, repeat.

After that I see a lone skeleton with the only nemesis mod I've never seen before: Inner Treasure.

Has my economic break finally come? A few storm calls and he's down.

Here is my prize


Meh could have been worse.

I grab the bomb and head back to town.


Time to start crafting a few flasks. I purchase a bundle of white quicksilver flasks for a few chance and transmute them. All crap.

I spam alterations and augments until I get this.
Would have been better with 'increased charge recovery' but it do. I throw my glassblowers on it and wear it.

I'll explain why this an importaint flask. First of all curses are really fucking dangerous, they can amplify damage down to you or prevent you from escaping. Curse immunity stops this and also neuters several nemesis mods. Health and mana flasks stop working (thus no immunity) when your mana/health becomes full. Quicksilver lasts for ever and has a longer duration than other flasks.

I do not need the movment mod on flasks because I already outrun every 99% of all mobs with my awesome boots.

I purchase a white granite flask for 1 fuse (very lucky trade I expected to pay double). Now I have 2 granites one I will wear and the other I will keep to craft on when I have excess currency.

I massacre my altertion pile and get a good % armor mod than drop the rest of my glassblowers on it.

This is why I was so stingy with spending alts to craft. I knew it would take many to get the mods I wanted.

I may spend even more to try to get a granite of armor/charge recovery and a quicksilver of curse/charge recovery but not until I have purchased more core items.

I still have a large pile of transmutes. Soon I will have a mass genocide of these orbs once I fight level 53 monsters that can start dropping hallow flasks.

Let us take a moment to morn for the many orbs who gave their lives so that I may live.


My new flasks are incredible. I laugh at curse nemesis mods, being completly immune to them.

My granite flask takes me from a pathetic 750 armor to an unreal 7300 armor. When I'm under granite affect and I face tank white or magic physical enemies I actually OUTHEAL THEM WITH JUST MY 1% HEALTH REGEN

Flasks man. You gotta get good flasks.

In the sewers on the way to the general I meet what I thought would be my greatest enemy. A physical damage rogue exile. This guy with flicker strike and double strike. Granite flask+molten shell=god mode on

Its not fool proof though, I need to actually press the butten before they hit me. I might end up dead If I play cocky and dont read the mods of enemies before they come at me or if the enemies ambush me.

Well I'd love to kill Gravicus and write about it but desync is getting pretty heavy. I think its prime server time so I'll take a break.

I've been getting really scarey types of desync and I probably should have stopped a long time ago. Sometimes the game would roll me back several seconds, somtimes it would just freeze for half a second. A few times my /oos macro didn't affect and I almost pulled the plug again.

Maybe I'll stay online and try to peddle some wares. Maybe I'll watch some anime. What ever I do I'm not going into the barracks with this desync.

Here is my current build and gear
I'm catching some extra health before my big showdown with dominus. Later I'll take the witches starting nodes and get extra mana and mana regen, than more health. After that I'll be in mercilss where the enemies health becomes higher and I'll get some shock chance to boost my dps.
No fucking clue what I'll do after that. I'll have to see how my resists look to decide any further.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAuMHpRVQFm8ZhR0UHwIkqij6LJwtHzGeNZI2xTbpOuE9X0GHRKtFnUmyTeNSU1WuVcZXK2aecH12EXqqfq-AVoIQgseI8Y0Zj0aPppBVmuCmV6cIrFm3PriTwBrBtM9l0NDYJN2M37DgEuNq5OznY-vu8kX56PrS_gr-jw==



Not much in terms of upgrades. I've had really shitty luck with finding the next tier of base items to craft with. I might start getting serious about gearing soon and I actually invest some alts/trasnmutes. Right now I'm just wearing whatever is a good item drop. I'm going to need higher life rolls on some of these gear. I have only 2.5k health right now and I think dominus could 1 shot me right now.

Here is gear I have incase i need to switch around items or gear I am saving for later


This is my wealth. If you would like to help me on my quest consider buying my face breaker or 5% cleave. I'll sell the cleave for only 1 alch or a handful of glassblower orbs.



My chaos collection is pretty sizable for a first time level 52.

Next session I will kill the general and do all the optional quests in preperation for piety.
I may also finally get my hallowed flasks.

In this entry I complete all other quests in act 3 other than piety and dominus.


Just about every build has 1 certain monster that seems like it was designed to counter them.
Black guards are that way with every single build and the barracks are one of the most zones annoying in the game because of that.

Black guards resist ALL elements and if you arn't a wizard they have high armor and block chance also. The fact they create so much desync with their shield charge means its not smart to do the zone aggressivily. I have 72 lightning resist and was only shocked once by a magic blackguard with powerful crits.

I advance forward slowly always making sure I have an obstacle (tent, rock, or other terrain) in my blind spit so the black guards can't shield charge me. When I engage them I try to do it in between the nooks created by all the obstacles around the ground so that only 2-3 can be in melee range at a time. Black guards are very fast at traveling in straight line due to their shield charge but when you force them walk around debree or tents they don't all swarm you at once. I kill the casters first they have less health and have that annoying lightning thorns.

My usual bag of tricks: +7000 armor flask, molten shell, enfeeble, and decoy totem guide my through the area.

The way fill you fill your gem slots in poe is you get 1-2 damaging abilities (a single target and a multi-target, or if you are a caster just 1 good spell) slap as many damage boosting support gems on it as you can. Than you put utility abilities in every other gem slot. Your hot bar should be filled with utility. I run 2 different curses and switch when I need. Any build can do this.

Gravicus isn't too hard. One trick is that the general himself has a smaller agro radius than his aids. You can pull them first by slowly advancing or just spawning any totem up ahead. I fail at this trick and pull them all. =p

I run off screen. The general is slow to chase me and some of his more ferveant guards reach me before the general does, they go down. With his knights dead I move up the stair case again and run circles around the general caling down storms on his mages. I am carful to not go too far towards his tent because I may alert the guards in there.

With the general's knights and mages dead I pull him onto the stair case, far from any wandering guards.

I play extremely dangerous on him, standing there face tanking everything, chugging flasks, and using conductivity. When his ES is gone I pop a portal to restock my potions and continue the fight with a more defenesive approach. Enfeeble curse and a bit of kiting away from his aoes. Once his ES is gone all you need to do is hit him every once in awhile to make it. He goes down and I get a faster casting as a reward I will try to sell later. If you won't personally use your quest reward gem its best to pick the most valued one and sell it than use the currency to buy gems you will use.

I make sure to kill every last black guard. As I said before I think with my low armor barracks is the most dangerous zone in the game so naturally I give the zone every single chance it has to kill me: it doesnt.

I'm going to be at low armor all game. All armor boosting mods on gear are prefixes and health is also a prefix. Rares may have up to prefixes but I'm limited to one.

One of last ones I killed had the corrupting blood mod. I still dont have bleed removel so I did a hit n run strategy. I damaged him until I around 5-6 stacks on me than I ran off screen (sometimes destracting him with a totem, running behind cover to lose line of site, or quicksilvering so he can't catch up) wait for the debufs to expire than go back in. 3 rounds of this hit n run and he's dead.

I plan to do all of the side quests before piety. I take a quick trip to town to pick up my old zombie gem. Corpse spitters without corpses are like assault rifles without ammo. Rejuv totem or detonate dead would also work (any class can do this trick) but Im already running a totem and I dont have detonate dead.

The spine enemies that have their final attack are deadly. Even just 1 of their deaths do a good chunk of my health. If I got hit with say 6 or 8 at once than I would be dead but I have a variety of tactics to use. I can decoy totem and kill them from a distance, use molten shell or a flask to boost my armor, I can even use lightning strike's delay to my advance, plant a few marks under them than run away and I'm like an action movie hero running from an explotion.

Physical damage is my weakness and using proper technique to deal with strong physical hits is now a matter of life and death. This is not going to be true for normel players: you guys can get those sweet +200 flat or +75% extra armor on your gear in addition to the life roll: I can't.


I head into the archives to get my elemental proliferation. I always knew that I would a 5 link combo
storm call, faser casting, lightning penetration, concentrated effect, and for the 5th skill either added lightning damage, elemental proliferation, or life leach. Getting elemental proliferation or life leach late and having them be under leveled wont be much of an issue since they dont gain too much benefit form level anyway.

The area is dark with lots of hidden corners containing deadly enemies that prey on low armor characters. Often I can nuke down high damage monsters before they dent me up too much but theres a lot of 'resist all element' monsters here so its not always an option.

I find a set of boots with a high life roll (no movment speed so they arnt as good) I put them away incase I find some enemy that I am forced to facetank. Like dominu's last form.

I leave to get a sandwich and the instannce has despawned: great need to go back in there.


I notice that I play alot better after that sandwich: maybe I should eat a big meal before fighting cruel. I slay the book throwing unique monster: I've foughten him many times before but just now I realized that he reminds me a lot of I.M. MEEN who is also a wizard that throws books. Maybe GGG is a fan of CDI. I find a chaos orb in there =D

I hadn't mentioned this before in my previous logs but I look up white 5 links on poe xyz a long time ago before I even got to cruel. Converting my currency into hard chaos payed off. I purchased a 5 link armor/ES chest plate for 7 chaos. I will not make use of the ES on it but I want to have 4-5 blue sockets on it. I craft on it a bit and get a life/fire resist mod at average rolls: good enough.

At this point I do not see myself using poexyz very much anymore. Trading is an essential part of this game and I think I illustrate very well here that you can afford a 5 link chest piece without having to grind much. I purchased it before I was even at the level where I could wear it.

I'd also like to stress that this trading was very effortless. I found several different sellers with similar armor and it took less than 5 minutes to contact them, negotiate a price, and complete the trade.

I do agree though that PoE's trading is a mess. I could have found this 5 link without poexyz but it would require a miserable experience of scanning a trade window that moves too fast, looking for rich players and whispering them "do you have any crafting 5s5l es/armor".

We don't need an auction house: that would fix currency prices and ruin lots of cool non-currency trades (trading item for item, or doing the 'currency convertion offer' I used before). What we need is a way for players to search for items they want with specific stats and than contact the seller. Poexyz is good for this sometimes but its a pain in the ass when the person is off-line. If we had some sort of mailing system like WoW or other mmos than it would solve the problem: you would simply write them a letter saying "im interesting in your item and offer this". A mailing system and an official version search system similar to poexyz that is accessed in-game.

With my elemental equilibrium gotten i decide to shop for a life leach. I figure now that I got my big important items its ok to be the smaller ones. WOW 6 chaos for life leach? Is this serious? On my home severer of HC standard its 2 chaos tops. Maybe the guy was trying to trick me I dont know nemesis prices very well. I didn't buy. A bit of asking global and doing a wtb in trade tells me he was. I buy one from someone else for 3 scour.

I may never use life leach but I can easily resell later. For now Its going to stick with me gaining experience. Life leach, added lightning, or elemental proliferation? Which will it be? I have plenty of time to think about it. At level 58 i must make the choice though.

I am level 53 now and I have a new piece of utility on my hot-bar: spell totem+summon skeletons.
Decoy totem is good for tanking swarms of weak enemies or forcing enemies to reposition in a way i want. Skeleton totem is good for tanking enemies with big single hits like devourers.

At this point my bar is getting full. Left click is move. Right click is storm call. Middle mouse butten is molten shell. Q is decoy totem w and e are my curses R is my skeletons, T is the zombie spell I use to rob the corpse spitters of their food and my lightning warp is now in my swithch weapon.

This is what a strong hotbar looks like: filled to the brim with tricks. Batman has a utility betl you have a hotbar.

I head towards the hedge maze: devourers hit pretty hard but with all my utility spellls and powerful granite flask I manage it. In big open areas that might be tightly packed with devourers I place totems ahead of me to scout.

The corpse spitters are pretty hilarious without when deprived of bodies. Sometimes they still start to eat one and I will turn into a zombie. The animation for their eating still plays but they dont get their ammo, they just sit there helpless.

Some of them will refuse to attack me and just run around looking desperatly for a body while thunder falls down on them.

I had a group of 3 of them just stand there helplessly while I kileld them and they didnt even melee me (wasn't desync they are just a really buggy enemy)

Sometimes with a properly placed totem I could BLOCK THE ENEMIES FROM GETTING TO ME if they were in a big room with only 1 narrow exit they couldnt do shit. Skeletons keep popping up blocking their escape while I blow them up.

I tried to kill all monsters in the zone but couldnt find 3 of them: oh well.

Several of the monsters were in an inaccessible area (could still hit them with storm call)

Hedgemaze may be the buggiest zone in the game.

I forget to get the wp at docks so I fight my way back to fairgraves and turn in the quest (i get nothing good) nothing dangerous in there.

Now that I have gotten more used to using my totems and armor boosting abilities this game feels a lot easier. Act 3 has gotten EASIER as I have progressed through it because I have grown in personal skill as a player while the monsters havn't changed much (I'd actually say this is a sign of bad development, a good game should get harder and harder even when played by a skillled player)



I'd like to mention something about my slow clear speed. An extremly skilled player can go from level 1-mapping in 3 days of shit-socking (with rares of course). The method of doing it extremly fast involves running from as many monsters as possible heading to grinding zones (ledge, felshire, city of sarn, docks) grinding them than rushing to the next grind zone. They skip quests when possible. This is one way to play PoE, if all you care about how much cash you make per hour its the best way, but its not my way (and its not the right way to illustrate my points) I kill all enemies I find, I rarely grind, I do the quests. I'm not trying to speed run I'm trying to survive.

I'd also like to point out that my build is extremly generic: I could have done the same build with fire storm replacing stormcall and flammability replacing conductivity.
The path I choose in my tree uses very common and universial nodes. My selection of skills is also very generic. My gear is also incredibly generic: I use only the most normel of stats:
health, resist and when I can find it some mana regen.

There are lot of very niche tricks I could use: one user mentioned freeze spamming, another guy suggested I just build a giant army of summons, theres also just chilling off-screen while duel totems do all the work. All of these are perfectly viable for my challenge but I choose a very simple build to illustrate that it doesn't take a very specific kind of build: just about any build will do.


This is my current gear: Amazing how little I have upgraded it. I don't really NEED an upgrade yet I'm still saving my transmutes and alts for flask crafting. If you can save currency by not upgrading its a good idea.




I have never once used my 2 auras that I have been leveling. Perhaps I will use purity of lightning on dominus. I will probably use purity of elements in merciless to pump up my resists. Its always a good idea to be leveling gems in your off-weapon.

Here is gear I have stored away for wearing in the future. I will get that nice shield soon and I may gear swap into some of these other blues later



Here is everything I have of value


These are some pretty nice rares: I don't need them. If you would like to buy them and help me I can sell them for just a few transmutes, altertions, or white hallow life flasks.



The old unique ring was sold for some glassblowers.


My bank is in pretty bad shape after that big trade but I do need see myself doing any big purchases for a long time so I can manage it. So far my drop rates have been very consistant with what low level players should experience (absolute crap). As I said before I budget carfully. I have only purchased 'end game' items, I do not craft unless I absolutely most, I convert currencies into chaos when I can, if I buy an unnessary item such as my life leach than it is an item I can easily resell if I decide it was a bad idea.

Here is my tree
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAuMHpRVQFm8ZhR0UHwIkqij6LJwtHzGeNZI2xTbpOuE9X0GHRKtFnUmyTeNSU1WuVcZXK2aecH12EXqqfq-AVoIQgseI8Y0Zj0aPppBVmuCmV6cIp4SsWbc-uJPAGsG0z2XQ0Ngk3YzfsOAS42rk7Odj6-7yRfno-tL-Cv6P

I am very pleased with my descion to invest heavily into damage. Being able to kill enemies fast means when I do meet hard hitting ones they dont stay alive for long. I Still need more strength to wear some of these gems though!

I am looking forward to getting the mana nodes in the witch area: If my mana is good enough I will throw away my 1 mana flask and get another seething life flask or another granite flask.
That would be a big help.

Piety is up next. It will probably be a very short log entry. (I'm going to give dominus his own log later) so to fill the space why don't you ask me some questions and I'll try to answer them as best I can?