Beating Nemesis without rares or uniques

In this log I go from the start of act 3 merciless to the front of pietys doorstep.


What a difference act 3 is from act 2. No more bordem and countering all damage with nothing but a life leach and sometimes a curse. Act 3 is where the game really starts to get more serious.

Each monster requires its own strategy if you encounter rare version or a swarm of magic ones.

For the bug queens I like to lay a decoy totem in one area to lure her spawn away and than attack her while her summons are distracted.

The vipers hit hurt with their chaos damage and chase me much better than other enemies. If they are mixed in with other groups I will run off screen, the vipers will follow but they will not have aid from other enemies. Decoy totem is very good vs them since (i suspect) the totem has a base chaos resist of 0, better than my negative chaos.

The undying do scarey physical damage and chase well. I enter the fight with a molten shell, when that pops I hit granite flask and than recast shell. I am never without an armor buff

The crematorium was pretty easy. I dance around the bomb throwers waiting for them to miss before I stop moving and lay the storm calls on them.

I don't encounter any necromancers in this trip through it, just mostly easily kited skeletons.
The dungeon design seems to be in my favor and often there are enemies blocked by gates, which I only open after clearing them. If they are too far to hit with lightning I will place a decoy totem inside the area to lure them closer.

I reach piety and let her damage after clearing her guards. Once with enfeeble and once without. I can face tank her with enfeeble but have to use potions otherwise. From this information I suspect the boss fight with her will be easy as long as I keep a curse refreshed.

2 different rare mobs from hell in just the first few quests alone.

One was a fallen with smoke mine who appeared out of nowhere. In the moment that he blocked my vision several of his friends jumped on me, surrounding me and cutting off escape. His friends were magically enchanted with some damage buff so I was taking a lot of damage.
I popped granite flask, enfeebled, and did molten shell. My life was going down so fast I didnt have time to remove my eyes from my globe. Quick reaction keeps me alive with constant flask injections.

Than in the sewers I was face rolling like normal. I kept molten shells ready for those leap slappers. Face tanking the initial leap with a molten shell makes them relatively harmless. When I find the toxin throwers I always lure them into big open spaces so I have plenty of room to maneuver around their gas clouds.

I have a habit of always scanning for monsters ahead so I know what to expect and Its a good fucking thing I practice that. Up in the distance TWO rare dischargers. I hadn't agroed them yet but I the moment I saw that I popped a quicksilver and ran backwards at f-zero speeds. Didn't even bother to read their mobs: all I know is double rare discharge=potentially instant death.

I sneak back in strategically placing a decoy totem behind me and I pull 1 of them with a well placed storm. I lure him back to the decoy so I can read his mods. Nothing too dangerous. I assassinate him and than pull his friend using the same method.


Trading was lucky today. I had an old bereks pass lying around and I someone payed 2 chaos for it. I bought 80 trasnmute orbs for 1 chaos

At this point I really felt like buying something. I had 10 hard chaos plus several other orbs. The temptation of shopping was too much and I decided that I wanted a quality concentrated effect to help stabilize my mana. The quality effect of concentrated effect is very strong. Most support gems have a tiny attack/cast speed or an 'increased' effect as their: something that you will already have tons and tons of from various sources. Concentrated effect has 'reduced mana' cost' which is almost non existent.

I tried doing trade chat first. Gems have a curious pricing effect. If they are very high level (level 18+) than they get a huge price increase. However is the level of it is below 18 the price is actually lower. Most players wanting to buy a gem are low level and buying it early so there is a much lower demand for a level 8-10 gem. I was hoping I could nab a high quality, partially leveld gem at a good price but no such luck.

Trade chat is a mess so I go back to poexyz. I do some cold-calling on several sellers of quality concentrated effect and I end up meeting Santa Clause.

The guy stopped playing Nemesis and offered to give me the remnants of stash (including the gem I want) for free.

To be honest this feels like cheating but after trying 5 other sellers and getting 'player is not online' its sort of my only option.

It's not too an usual of a situation. Many players hop from 1 server to another like some sort of illegal immigrant on the run. When they do they do a cross-server trade (doesnt violate TOS) for everything of value. The items they have which are difficult to trade they give out for free.

I did the same thing myself with my SC character's valuables.

I end up with a pile of crap quality gems, several popular support gems like mana leach, some glassblowers, scrolls, transmutes, and a few low level uniques. Not anything of real value but it was free!

I assume the player did not know the GCP recipe because I have several GCP worth of trash gems here.

I got a 13% quality concentrated effect in my haul. I put it in gear to level up. I may use it near the very end of the game once it has gained some levels, maybe I'll even GCP it to 20 if my mana flows need it.

I don't really have a use for this wealth anyway. I could get some rings with slightly better health rolls or a slightly better scepter but I don't think I really need it. I may do so once I get to dominus though.

At this point I decided to stop playing. After much pestering I'm finally going to get an internet plan that is fit for streaming. I want to preserve as much of my upcoming adventure for streaming. Its a shame I didn't do this from the start. I honestly didn't expect such a reception.

I have no use for these uniques I was given and I don't want to sit in trade chat trying to peddle them and I have more than enough wealth to buy what I need. I'll give them out during my stream.

Yes thats right! You wont have to read giant walls of text(although there seems to be an audience for it and I enjoy writing so I will continue that).

I think streaming would more legitimacy to my insult to scrubs and a new avenue of entertainment for non scrubs.

While its a shame I couldnt record the entire thing I'm at the most difficult section of the game now

The above text was written several days ago.
I just got back on today. Internet shopping is taking longer than I thought and I've been craving PoE. It feels awful to drop the game when I'm so close to being done.

I jumped back and decided to advance a little farther.

I'm kind of over the shock of the huge difficulty spike that act 3 is. PoE has a very weird difficulty curve. The entire area in between ledge and vaal is about the same difficulty but once you hit act 3 its a huge bump up. All the enemies are faster and theres a lot more annoying debuffs.

After doing a few encounters with the new foes though it feels easy again. I know to keep molten shell refreshed against the fallen, leap slammers, and mini-mantles. Enfeeble elemental damage damagers. If my health ever starts to drop fast I just inject some health pots.

I made the mistake of running into a group of ribbons without reading their mods, one was a storm herald and I barely even flinched. It required a lot of pot spamming and a quick thought to pull him back (incase another rare was nearby) but the whole thing felt stale and simple.

Part of this is I have a mindset of always treating enemies like they are dangerous. Even at normel mode I play 'seriously' so by the time I am fighting the merciless version I already have basic idea of what I need to do.

Once you know the tactic to deal with an enemy the next step is to know exactly how much damage they deal to you under a variety of circumstances (cursed, uncursed, granite flask, no granite flask). With these 2 pieces of information you can than play extremely well because you know the limits of your character.

The reason I can face tank so much is because I know exactly what will happen before it does. When 5 enemies leap slam on me I know its going to hurt but I already put granite flask on before hand and my fingers hover over health flask buttons incase some of them crit.

Ive started finding rare mobs in pairs but I've already had plenty of practice pulling enemies apart. I can use walls to make it so 1 rare can see me but the other doesn't and lure it away. If 1 rare mob is faster than another I will simply run backwards until the slower one is lost. If I have no line of site trick and both are the same speed I will set a decoy totem up so only 1 rare mob is affected by it and than pull the other one off screen.


When fighting trash mobs I position myself in areas I think off-screen enemies are less likely to see me. I'm not going to fight facing the entrance to a room, ill be slightly to a side with a wall blocking my view of the enemies. I always kill enemies instead of run from them so I wont get surrounded.

The area up to barracks was completely uneventful. I got a new scepter but nothing really dangerous.

I now enter barracks, the most dangerous zone in the game. The game is nice enough to grant me a level up to storm call on my first black guard kill which significantly boosts my dps and thus survivability via life leech.

The black guard mages are adamant about casting lightning thorns and the knights seem to have a reflect elemental damage rare in every formation. I am not greedy with my dps. I use enfeeble over conductivity and sometime stop dpsing and back off so my healing can work its magic. The reflect hurts but I manage to live through it by reacting properly. I also kill the caster mobs first to get rid of the thorns affect early.

I sneak in through the barracks, often going around tents or other big obstacles and getting to scout at the enemies and plan my attack. Much safer than trying to dodge shield charges, which I end up dying anyway.

When I get the chance I pull half the black guards behind a tent and kill them all before their buddies catch up to them. Sometimes I run in circles around obstacles leading them around like Benny Hill, popping up to throw out stormcalls and assassinating key enemies (mages or elite guards). After their forces are worn down I play more aggressive.

Against some of the smaller swarms I can lay a decoy totem down and have most of them dead before they finish killing the totem.

I reach the general and slowly pull some of his guards off them, killing them first. As i said before his guards have better vision than the general and agro earlier. Once the guards and mages are gone the general is easy, much easier than the cruel version actually. I straight up face tank him with enfeeble stopping only briefly to use a portal to refill my mana pots.

I still havnt gotten a perfect mana flow.

I had many close calls where I quickly lost half my health but fast fingers on flasks remedy it.

I take a short stroll through the imperial guardians. I plan to kill piety early because her skill points will help my mana flows but I want the WP in the gardens.

The usual corpse-stealing trick with zombie, detonate dead, or devouring totem still works on the enemies in the guardian and its a good thing because if they get their ammo they hit hard.

The stone statues are easily taken out with molten shell.

But man those spike spitters. They hit so hard with their suicide attack. I can avoid it by dropping a decoy totem when they are at low health and killing them from a distance but that takes time and open space which isn't always available.

I let them hit me a few times for free to become familiar with how hard it can hit.

A bit of experimenting shows that enfeeble works on their suicide attack and makes it a lot more manageable. I can mitigate nearly 100% of the damage with molten shell+granite+enfeeble but for most encounters enfeeble is good enough

I encounter the unique suicide spitter he is nice enough to stay behind a fence for 100% of the fight. We trade spells and I almost completely outheal his ice bullets with my life leech.

The gardens require careful play. Sometimes I am destroying corpses while the spitters run for their ammo while at the same time making sure I enfeeble the porcupines just before they explode and spamming flasks to counter some unexpected burst. Lots of FUN!

The WP is found and its back to barracks. I clear out most of the black guards just because I can and than advance into solaris temple.

Just before I open the first door in the temple I notice a light off in the distance and crowned frog. Theres no frogs in the temple unless....could this be my re-match with the leap slamming rogue exile? No its some templar who spams spark and lightning warp.

He hits hard, this shouldn't be happening. I never had any issue with elemental damage before. What is going on.
I guzzle flasks and than have to port out to refill them, at this rate I'm not even sure I can out dps his energy shield.
Than I realize I had my off-weapons and wasn't using my prized kite shield....that would have been a very stupid way to die.
A quick hit of the x butten and I go back into the fight. He's pathetic now I don't even need potions to outheal him. He struggles to stay alive by teleporting around and running, waiting for his ES to recharge. I dont show him any mercy and he drops dead.

Next challenge.

The first floor of lunaris is almost 100% fixed. Once you memorize where the enemies are its easy to make sure you only fight a few at time. I sneak around corners and pick off the ones waiting in the shadow before going down the red carpet. This avoids the dangerous '8 elite black guards shield charging you at once' situation. I also make sure to assassinate the scientists early so I dont have to tread over land mine corpses. If I cant reach a scientist I simply dispose of the corpses with devouring totem.

Everything dies except me.

Onto floor 2. The first group of enemies I kill off everyone except the fire-spitter. I let her hit me both enfeebled and unfeebled to learn her dps. Dangerous but not too bad if shes cursed.
I assassinate them early when I see them in groups, once I know there are no more fire spitters I drop myself in the middle of the enemy group, enfeeble them and feed off their damage until they give out their last breath.

My play style is needlessly reckless but very fast and fun. When I let them swarm around me it also means each storm call will hit the entire group of enemies.

I make the mistake of thinking the 'vulnerability on hit' monsters arnt on this floor' and while doing my suicide tactic one manages to sneak in and tag me with it. Instantly my health drops to very low amount. I smile, satisfied the game can still do something unexpected. My health goes to full from my quick flask reaction and I start to run away, running my mouse over the enemies scanning for the anomaly. I see the enemy among them, swallow my curse immune flask and run back into the fray. The sneaky bastard dies with her friends.

Whenever I enter a new room I swap out my aggressive play style for a more cowardly one. I lean against a wall, out of line of site, carefully inspect the room: kole is always in the same room a large open one with 3 scientists. I advance slowly and low out totems to scout. If I see trash mobs I know the room is safe and I return to my aggressive nature.

Eventually my caution pays off. Louds stomping and the desync king himself shows up. I've got plenty of room to maneuver so no need to bother with the totem shenanigans. I pop my quicksilver run for the nearest exit. Foot steps are still pounding behind me so I don't stop. I continue running at full speed, find the way point and take it to safety.

I'm not fighting Kole he desyncs like crazy.

Time to take a break

Well that was fun. Its nice to return back to exile.

Hopefully I'll get dat streaming soon.
For now I don't see any problems up until Dominus himself, lots of danger but I won't die.

Look forward to seeing my play live and piety dying for the third and final time!


Heres my gear. Nice new scepter.


I still only run clarity as my aura. I got a lot of random gems gaining levels which I nevere ended up using and probably never will.

Heres my tree: I've gotten all the big damage and health nodes. All thats left is getting the 7% cost reduction and 20% mana regen. That should fix my mana issue. After that well I need some good nodes to counter dominus.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEC4wSzB2MHpQj0FE0VUBZvGYUaOB0UHwIkqij6LJwtHzGIMZ4yiTWSNsU26TrhPV9Bh0SrRZ1Jsk3jT31SU1WuVcZXK1fiZp5nvXB9c1N2EXkDeqp-r4BWghCCx4jxjRmPRo-mkFWa4JuhogCmV6cIp4SsWbc-uJPAGsBUwbTPZdDQ2CTdjN-w4BLjauTs52Pr7uw47m_wH_JF-ej60v4K_o8=

Heres my wealth. Its nicely sized for a first time character. I think this shows that you don't need to be very rich to win.



I spent several chaos on some items I plan to use on another character.

Well its been a long break but I'm back. Did you miss me?
See you again soon, hopfully live!

In this log I experience the boring grind of maps, finally get some gear upgrades, and kill piety for the third and final time

I do a few maps to gain a level up. Its been a long time since I actually did them.

A tropical island with icy covering the ground and swarming with all sorts of monsters that shouldnt be in jungle a boss I end up skipping because it takes too long and he never drops anything good anyway, no goals to look forward to other than the experience going up.

Yep its all coming back to me. Mapping is terrible, its pointless. You repeat recycled content over and over to get gear that allows you to do this same recycled content but slightly faster! You grind to become more efficient at grinding..

Any possible sense of immersion you could ever have is destroyed in maps. Why is my witch doing a quest in the story mode? Well see there's this evil sorceress named piety and she has an entire labortory filled with frankensteins, she tortured grigor, killed Clarisas boyfriend, made that evil bastard kole, and only you can stop her because you are a bad-ass. Wow thats cool
Why is she throwing transmute orbs to make her 'map' harder? Well because theres these things called mods...and drop rate...and well its accounting really. When you enter maps you leave wraclast and enter the world of number crunching.

Oh well this is the way all 'end game' works: its the absolute worst part of the game, shoved far far away from players access as if the devs were trying to hide their shamful work. If end game was actually well designed devs would actually make it more prominent in the game.

Theres nothing to maps, no real change from one to another, no stories to tell, the best you have to look forward to is getting a drop that will allow you to run the same set of maps but slightly faster.

Thats probably why when the budget is distributed amoung various aspects of the game: new abilities and items, buffing unusable skills, improving the art and sound, and creating entirly new zones (act 4) mapping always gets the table scraps.

Fans of maps (the people who ran baal 10,000 times in a row on diablo 2 and run the same maps 10,000 times in a row in poe) want an endless game above all else. If there maps ever came to and end and a message popped up saying 'you won' they would be disapointed. An endless game requires an endless budget, which GGG doesnt have, so to meet their wish they the game just loop itself over and over like pacman.

This is a good thing: dumping money into maps wouldnt appease the shit sockers. If maps got some cool new featuers (like all new assets not just torn from the main quest) than the shit sockers would be only be amused for the first 5 or 6 maps. After they their daily 20 maps the new content would already be stale to them. Besides they will keep playing no matter how shitty the mapping is as long as they can make numbers go up.

The older I get the more I hate grinding in games. It only took 3 maps to get my level up but it was not enjoyable.


There are 2 main differences in tactics between maps and non maps.
The first is that anything can spawn at any point so you have to be throughly check to make sure you clear everything and be cautious when advancing the screen so you dont get ambushed. You need to play like a rare devourer can pop any time, because it can.

Personally I think this makes maps work. You could argue it makes them harder but it also forces you to treat all maps the same. In contrast the main quest has devourer zones where you must play cautious, zones where you can play more aggressive, and everything inbetween.

The second thing is you can't depend on flasks as much since you only get 5 portal scrolls to refill your pots with. If you depend entirly on seething spam than you will have to exit the map early (all this does is make you have to grind slightly longer though, not a very good deterent). When I map use molten shell and enfeeble on every enemy formation to preserve flask charges for when shit hits the fan.

Well the grind is over and its back to the fun part!

I head back into Pietys temple. I find a big open room with 3 scientists in it. Kole is here. I run the fuck away.

The run through Lunars is the usual play style. Play cautious until key enemies (cursers and firespitters) are killed off than go into a more aggressive approach. I use my standard enfeeble+molten shell. Moltens shell is so, so strong as a caster when linked with life leech. When it detonates half the white mobs die and my health instantly shoots up to full.

I have many close calls where my health is dropping fast but my fingers and fast acting pots resolve this. I never enter a battle without first checking if I have high flask charges. If I'm low I'll play a kiting method or relay on totems until they recover. I heal out of combat with devouring totem to preserve flask charges.

I got cursed many times but I am expecting it, checking the top of the screen for the debuff to see when I need drink my anti curse flask.

I meet a rare mob from hell and boy is it tough one.
A rare fire spitter with storm herald, allies cant die, powerful crits, and life leech. To make matters worst she found in a tight corridor (the stairs that connect rooms in lunaris 3) so I didnt have room to dodge her attacks. What horrible luck.

I knew a rare mob was up ahead because I spotted the aura from a distance, I had enfeeble ready so I didnt get bursted. I ran off the stairs luring the rare and her minion horde into a room where I had more room to dodge.

Using a decoy totem behind the rare and line of site i manage to seperate her aids from the boss and lure the aids out of the aura range. With the aura gone I kill them quickly with conductivity+stormcall.

The next part was hard. The rare leeches for so much health and she kept igniting me, between all the various damage sources and her huge leech I couldn't win a sustained fight. I would have lost all my potion charges and died if I just straight up tanked her.

I took a burst-style approach. I got her into a room were there was a nearby wall. I jump out behind the wall, enfeeble, throw out some lightning, and run behind the wall guzzling flasks to counter her insane damage.

The wall storm herald cant hit me over the wall and I lose line of site on her, letting my innate health regen heal me up to full. Another 2 rounds of that hit n run burst and she dies.

That was really fun, I really want more exciting moments like that in the game. Stupid logs take up all my time.

I continue on and than finally meet piety. To be honest I'm really impressed with myself, everything went according to plan.

The absolute best place to fight piety is the big area in the back room. its very far away from her blood pool so her trash mobs almost never come there, theres lots of pillars to block her ice shots, and the runes she spawns there are usually in easy reach so you can almost always destroy the blue ones.

I try to gode her into only fighting there but she refuses to get anywhere near it and just stays at the bottem hanging out with her summons no matter what I try.

I keep enfeeble refreshed on her at nearly all times.

I can sustain against her lightning balls with potion spam and sort of trade blows with her due to life leech but I only do that approach if I have no room to dodge her balls because its very wastful of flasks. You dont want to burn them all at once.

I allow piety to take her red portals and hang out near them to encourage her to take them.
When she takes one I already have molten shell on, take a granite flask and I can face tank her. Even if she gets lucky damage rolls I can mend it with flasks. In this situation its ok to burn 100% of your flask charges on her because after her fire form dies out she always becomes very passive and runs away which is when you can safely portal to restock flasks.

If you are partially out of flasks you can get piety off screen so she wont hunt you and stock on on flask charges with her minions. If this isnt your goal you should keep the spawning pool off screen.

During one part I was completly out of flask charges and I had ice piety staring at me in the face while I was navigating my inventory to open up portals and eating her ice arrows. I was about half a second away from getting killed when it happened.

When I was doing it i thought "i know exactly how much dps she does, I have time to pull this out"
When I made it town I thought "wow that was really fucking stupid"
Now that I'm writing this I am very proud of that.

This is why I emphasis that you should always pay attention to how much damage you take under a variety of circumstances. Once this information because second nature to you than you can do kill things like me! The reverse side of this is being the guy who charges forward and dies to a discharger instantly than complains on the forum that he lost 15% of an level.

Eventually I get her to do what I want and the fight happens up at the top of the room. With no spawn, and easy pickings on destroying her blue portal she becomes much more predictable and after a few rounds of 1v1 with her fire form she dies for the third and final time.

She drops a really good rare item. To bad I cant use it.


Well that was exciting. Piety is a very well designed boss, even though she is highly predictable theres a nice mix up of tempo. You play aggressive vs fire, defensive vs ice, and sort of in between on her lightning form you are always active, even if she isnt on screen theres portals you can attack.

Not much is left. I want to have my storm call at level 17 by the time I fight Dominus. I've got the library quest left and a walk up the tower which isn't enough experience. Maybe I could grind a bit more. I'd also like to buy coral ring of life and resist all.

Equipemnt and build


At this point upgrading my gear would be extremly difficult. The next 'tier' of affixes and prefixes are only available in high end maps and even if I did get something nice I would probably have to juggle around other equipment slots to make it all function right. At that point gearing becomes less about strategy, budgeting, and planning and more about grinding.


http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEC4wSzB2MHpQj0FE0VUBZvGYUaOB0UHwIkqij6LJwtHzGIMZ4yiTWSNsU26TrhPV9Bh0SrRZ1Jsk3jT31SU1WuVcZXK1fiYG1mnme9cH1zU3YReQN6qn6vgFaCEILHgziI8Y0Zj0aPppBVmuCboZ2AogCmV6cIp4SsWbc-uJPAGsBUwbTPZdDQ2CTdjN-w4BLjauTs52Pr7uw47m_wH_JF-ej60v4K_o8=
Heres my tree

The pathings I chose were primary decided by what gives the most life nodes but there is still a strong mix of damage, mana, resist.

Armor was intentionally avoided because I have such shitty base armor it wouldnt matter what nodes I got. If I did it all over again I would have taken nearly the same path but gotten attributes slightly early. If I had the rares needed to get life+armor rolls I would have probably gotten body and soul over weapon elemental damage. I may have also not gotten the lightning damage/cast speed since I would probably have a stronger scepter.

Look forward to my next log and footage with my finalle with Dominus.
I'm not ready for him yet though.

There is an increasing number of players who seem to look at this post for advise.

I have tried to compile a short, organized list of playing tips. I will try to only mention advise I think is not commonly said.

If you have anyone you are trying to teach how to not die show them this manual.

Tips are arranged by category for easier viewing

-GENERAL PLAYING
*Relay on your skills as a player over the stats on your items. Its more fun this way and player skill is more powerful than item skill. I'm going through the game with vendor trash gear because I'm damn good. In contrast someone not as good may die while wearing amazing rares and uniques. I can't really teach skill, that comes from within. The most importaint thing to do is be attentive and ask yourself what you did wrong and how you could have done it better. Do this even when you are winning. No one will make you improve but yourself.
*Be aware of exactly how much damage you take from enemies, if you encounter new enemies let them beat you up a little till you get a feel for how dangerous they are. Pay attention how much damage you take under a variety of situations. When you see an enemy with certain mods you should be able to guess correctly how hard they hit
*Always read the rare mods
*Treat everything like its dangerous so that staying alert becomes a habit and you dont die from an idiot mistake. You should even treat ledge grinding like its dangerous
*Life leech is extremely strong since it converts an offense into a defense
*Do not spend orbs unless you actually need to. If you craft/buy something than out level it the orbs you spent are gone. Because of this it is good to buy leveling items that are very easy to resell once you are done with them
*Understand the distance enemies agro at and how to loose line of site on them to deagro them
*Use line of site and good positioning to make it so you dont get hit by all the attacks at once
*Kill dangerous enemies first.
*Use utility skills if the enemies are dangerous. Thats how I've been surviving.
*Do not play when tired or abscent minded you will make an idiot mistake and die. If you still want to play than level an alt or only do safe zones like ledge.
*Get an /oos macro. There are many instructions on how to do this. Bind it to ctrl.
*If you dont understand a bosses pattern go refight the boss in an easy difficulty and try to learn it there. Your goal with boss fights is to find a way to hit them without taking damage yourself, or failing that to try to find times you can trade blows without a risk of dying.
*Only grind as a last resort or if you are 1-2 levels away from a very strong node. Grinding doesn't help you become better as a player

-BUYING, SELLING, AND CRAFTING
*For many orbs their price is decided by vendors. 1 fuse=4 jewel=16 alt because vendors will accept these rates.
*When buying items it is best to purchase items which have a very large pool of suffixes and prefixes
(info on that is here) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0ArsB7KohOhhpdHoyZzU2WVZZNXQxMDg4MVk1b0FGbkE&f=true&noheader=true&gid=17
Slots such as boots, helm, chest, and belt have a very small pool of mods so you will eventually find good
ones just from random drops or crafting.
Slots such as weapon,jewelery, and gloves have much larger pools so more of what you find will be crap
*Whenever you see someone wanting to sell chaos orbs at a fair price take the offer, its easier to trade with chaos.
Similarly never trade away chaos unless there is no other choice
*Difficult to sell items such as mediocre rares, unpopular uniques, and underused gems should be sold at the first
possible offer even if its low. You may not get another
*Easy to sell items such as godly rares, highly demanded uniques like brightbreak and tabula rasa, and super popular gems like reduced mana and faster attacks are ones you should be selective with. Its ok to turn down 10 sellers because an 11th will always show up.
*If you want a somewhat generic item use trade chat to shop. If you want a very specific one use poexyz. Saying you want "concentrated effect and a mid level amulet" is for trade chat
saying you want "10+quality concentrated effect and an amulet with life,cast speed, and resist all" is for poexyz
*For crafting only attempt to craft gear which has a low number of mods. Alching a chest armor is way more likely to get triple resist than alching an amulet. You should never craft with orbs more valuable than an alch until you are doing extremly high level maps and have
more money than you know what to do with
*If you need a very hard to get socket combo (for example you MUST have 4linked boots) its best to find a white base that has what you already want and craft that. Trying to 4link and 4 socket boots can be costly
*If you want a very specific mod (such as +2 to levels of gems) its cheaper craft a blue with the mod than to craft a rare. Would you rather spend 10 alchs or 20 alts to get the mod?
poe xyz is also good
*Do not relay on item upgrades to succeed. Only buy them when you actually need them.
If you relay too much on them it becomes a crutch and you do not grow as a player, you also
go broke.
*There are 3 powerful vendor recipes for crafting (look them up)
One produces a blue +1 to gem level wand
One makes a blue weapon with %increased damage
One makesa blue move speed boots
These are the most valuable mods you can get for these types so it may be worth wearing a blue over a rare for them

-MAKING A GOOD TREE
*Except for CI a good tree is one that has lots of life nodes. Life nodes protects against all forms of damage, has an inherit synergy with any other defensive stat, is the only reliable anti-burst and scales incredibly well from life rolls on gear
Draw a line between as many life nodes as you can, what you do with your points inbetween life nodes is entirely up to you.
*For most nodes other than life it is best to not get a node cluser unless it has a big node inside it.
*Be aware of what attributes you will need to wear your gems when deciding what path to take
*Feel free to invest in as many resist nodes as you need while leveling. You can always unspec them if you end up getting good resist gear
*Do not play as a shadow unless there is no other choice, he has the worst potential life nodes in the game, the witch's life potential is alot better because she can take the scions life cluster.
*Always get oaks life reward
*Life regen nodes are strong because they preserve flask charges, better to use flasks for real danger than quickly patching yourself up. Always have at least 1 life regen node
*You have much more control over your stat tree than your gear. If you want a hard to get type of stat (mana regen, attack speed etc) get it from the tree

-GEARING PROPERLY
*Life and resist are the most importaint rolls on gear for all builds except CI.
Once you level normel mode your resists should be capped at all times
Every piece of gear should have a life roll on it
You should give up all other stats (except life) if it is nessary to cap your resists
*Chaos resist does not need to be capped. Being at 0% is excellent, being at -30% is good enough.
Memorize where the chaos monsters are and keep extra chaos resist gear in your stash for these areas if you are afraid
*ES is not a substitute for health, ES is a secondary defense not a primary (unless you
pay an arm and leg for godly gear)
*For most classes 75% of your dps will come from gems+your weapon. You can have good dps with no damage rolls on anything except your weapon
*Most uniques have no life roll. Its ok to give up a few gear slots to get uniques if they have strong abilities but if you give up too many you will be vunerable.
*get a 5 link 5socket, preferably in chest since you replace weapons more than chests. They can be as low as 5 chaos and greatly raise your dps. Do it even if the 5link chest has bad rolls. You can always scour it and spam alterations till you get life+resist roll



-FLASKS
*Flasks are very important, as much as gear or your tree.
*You should have yourself proper flasks once you feel the game is hard
*You must have at least 2 health flasks at least one must be seething.
*You must have some form of bleed removal by merciless
*Find a non mana/non health flask (quicksilver, jade, or the resist flasks) and give it the curse immunity mod. That way you can have 4-5 seconds of curse immunity
*All builds need a granite flask of iron skin. If you do not have a granite flask buy one as soon as you can.
*If you only have 1 alch and nothing else get a granite flask. Its the best investment you will make

-GEMS
*Fill up your hotkey bar with utility gems: molten shell for an armor boost, smoke mine for an evasion boost, 1 offensive curse, 1 defensive curse, various totems. Utility skills will save your ass when your stats arn't up to par
*Always have at least 1 aura
*Have a way to banish corpses, it hard counters several enemies
*Put gems you think may be usful later in your off-hand and let them gain experience
*Experiment with a variety of abilities

-SCALING DAMAGE
I don't really number crunch my dps very much.
Once you understand the principles about what your dps to be happy you can sort of tell at a glance whether a certain build will be good. This is not always the case, builds that scale themself in very weird ways might require doing some 9th grade math.

Being able to 'feel' how stats affect your dps is much better than looking at the tool tip. There are a lot of things that are not reflected in the tooltip. Duration does boost the dps of fire storm, projectile speed does boost the dps of arrows, lightning penetration does boost the dps of stormcall.

Apart from that some abilities are just plain easy to hit with.

Video games didn't always have tool tips saying your dps. They used to be very cryptic about these things and 'feeling' your dps was just how you had to play. You would learn by actually playing instead of turning your video game into a math test.

While using a calculator and tool tips does have a place thats boring and doesnt tell you the whole picture. I'm going to say how to
'feel' your dps

First an ability has its base damage, the damage it does before anything boosts it. For stormcall the base damage is the gems damage+my added lightning. For noncasters its based on your weapon (including all the weapons own mods). I should mention most forms of damage multiplication do not apply to weapon elemental damage so for most builds consider only the physical aspect.

Than you want to multiplier the base damage from as many DIFFERENT STATS as you can. Its not so much the numbers on your stats but the variety.

Due to this your DPS is almost always tied to how many links you have since you get to have more and more support gems.

So for my stormcall its dps is
base damageX'increased damage'X'more damage'Xcast speedXresistance penetratedXdamage boost from shock

I know my dps will be good because I have many different layers of multication and good base. Notice my build gets a mixture of many different ways multiply the damage. I dont only have cast speed or only have 'increased'

If you have 200% 'increased damage'. 20% increased cast speed, and 0 lightning penetration. Getting more 'increased damage' will not raise dps much, getting cast speed will affect dps somewhat, and getting lightning penetration will affect dps greatly

As long as your base damage is good (for spell casters that means have xp on the gem, for non casters it means a weapon with good base physical damage) and you get a variety of different gems and stats that each boost the damage in different ways your DPS will be good.

So 'good' dps is one where you have a weapon or spell with high base damage and many different types of multiplication (like my stormcall)

'bad dps' is when where the base is either too low (artic breath or using a weapon with low base damage) or where there isn't enough types of multiplication (viper strike, puncture).

Most abilities in the game have the potential to be 'good dps'

Of course as I said before dps isnt everything, abilities that have strong utility, versatility. or are easier to use also have worth.

I have intentionally not mentioned crit or crit damage multiplier. Crit has terribly low numbers and doesnt raise the dps very well at all. This is probably intentional by GGG. The purpose of crit isn't to do damage its do elemental effects. There are a few builds that can turn crit into a strong DPS stat (like ice spear) but theres are few and far between. Do not think of crit as a dps stat, think of it has a status effect enabler. Also crit physical is a joke and will probably get you killed on reflect.