Leveling new characters is unbearable aids - rant

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Fruz wrote:

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Legatus1982 wrote:

And give us all a reason why we should not compare VS to arc mines?

You are welcome to your your own brain to find that out, you are also welcome to read what I said, the reason was very obviously implied.

The rest is just irrelevant.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

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Pyrokar wrote:

To everyone that is playing pure melee poison builds: PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS TO YOURSELF. IT WILL HURT YOUR MENTAL STABILITY

This comes from someone who has suffered a lot from a pure poison viper strike build. Looked good in poeb with 1-2m shaper dps on a 5l but bosses was the only thing it was good at. With normal content you need something that can actually hit hard so that the monsters get stunned. This is needed even more so if you are melee, because if you don't stun them, they get to attack before they die. So in high tier maps it's like facing shaper dmg without the indication of the direction it is coming from.

So please, if you do name-locking melee, do it with high on-hit damage and stun, not with poison.

Sry for offtopic but i still got mental scars from playing that build.

This thread got me interested and I'm currently leveling up a viper striker ascendant (jugg + slayer).

I've got two VS gems, one for ST (high phys is the focus) and another for AOE (melee splash + ruthless). I'm currently using flicker strike for movement, mostly because it's a cool way to move around, although that will probably change to whirling blades later.

My intention is shield + dagger, Acro / Pacro, self cast IC + inc dur, grace + temp chains as auras (use AA on hexproof maps in place of temp chains). With a bit of block adders, I can get high-20s block even with the penalty from Acro. I'm considering putting blind gem somewhere, although I'm not sure where. I'm hoping that with all those layered defenses, she'll do OK.

She'll have a lot of crit chance / multiplier and good damage overall. I'm toying with putting bloodlust on the ST version and getting chance to bleed somewhere (passives perhaps, or chance to bleed gem on a melee range totem).

My guess is that (most) bosses won't be quite as big an issue as huge packs, so temp chains might prove to be a highly effective defense for most maps (as well as a damage boost).

I only play SSF, so I can read about high end builds like the one the OP is describing but I'll probably never attain anything like it.

Here's my planned passive tree:

Spoiler

https://www.poeplanner.com/AA0AARMADRAAAIYj9k2SjX0wfFFHjb_UIzBx3ahLeDpCBbXo1jIBshnPepsmFqo90QV9elNh67VIFr8mlWHiVUuMNonTcFIqC13yDkgRlnBWmhPb1AcelS7w1UlRNj2dqmyMYqy0xcLsKwoRL-tjBnAuI3p_2-dHBth2uT6sZizhfeOK8MSCsKu-p2VNvTZHfoTZdO0FLXrvQKAhYHTxj2BvJ5pqGNsUdXfXfytW-od2Sn1noOOf51Qk_f_eXhPvTpOoirNXVC_MtoqE72LswYIB3HfjqW55aMEEXz_G2FhjPfyMz_ZIFCDvDlBH6UbAv6mVDPesr5LQEuGi6jqtb4T_HAJfpAxg3qi7AMGEU-_97pB34mCzAAAAAAA=

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Pyrokar wrote:

Your build seems fine, you are not pure poison. By pure poison i mean boosting poison duration and reducing attack dmg in favour of the dot effect like with corralito's signature, gems and passives with such effect leaving you with barely any hit damage but with a ton of damage over time. Your build will probably struggle with high lvl bosses as it just can't get the dmg pure poison can get with a lot of poison stacks.

Hybrid poison builds (hit + dot) are more survivable than pure poison because as i said before, stun plays a big role. So please, don't play pure poison builds with name locking-skills. Even with reave your first few attacks are on melee range and can get you easily killed.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

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Pyrokar wrote:

Your build seems fine, you are not pure poison. By pure poison i mean boosting poison duration and reducing attack dmg in favour of the dot effect like with corralito's signature, gems and passives with such effect leaving you with barely any hit damage but with a ton of damage over time. Your build will probably struggle with high lvl bosses as it just can't get the dmg pure poison can get with a lot of poison stacks.

Hybrid poison builds (hit + dot) are more survivable than pure poison because as i said before, stun plays a big role. So please, don't play pure poison builds with name locking-skills. Even with reave your first few attacks are on melee range and can get you easily killed.

Actually I'm going to disagree with this. From my experiences this is incorrect. I initially thought the same thing, that it would be better to scale the attack damage while also scaling the poison damage through global damage modifiers, flat damage buffs, and otherwise attack speed. I prioritized frenzy charges (global more damage) and power charges with the swift killer ascendancy (increased global damage per charge), the scourge claws, and other generic damage buffs. That's where my initial attempt with VS went.

What I ended up with is that all my damage was still coming from poison on hard targets because the regular damage wasn't high enough to overcome the armor formula on armored enemies anyways, squishy targets would have died just as fast either way, and it was nearly impossible to find an ideal 6-link that improves both sides of the damage formula beyond the 2nd or 3rd gem, and global plain damage modifiers were too scarce both on gear and on the tree to make a build that works.

Do feel free to try it and I would love if such a build were to do as much damage as a pure poison build, but from what I've seen poison modifiers are just too good compared to generic damage modifiers.

To help you out though, the few sources I did find were the ones I mentioned there: dual wield scourge claws, use swift killer, get power and frenzy charges, and otherwise boost your attack speed. But yeah, that ended up being shit for me. With another ascendancy it might be better though, I tend to only play shadows.

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Pyrokar wrote:

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Legatus1982 wrote:

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Pyrokar wrote:

Your build seems fine, you are not pure poison. By pure poison i mean boosting poison duration and reducing attack dmg in favour of the dot effect like with corralito's signature, gems and passives with such effect leaving you with barely any hit damage but with a ton of damage over time. Your build will probably struggle with high lvl bosses as it just can't get the dmg pure poison can get with a lot of poison stacks.

Hybrid poison builds (hit + dot) are more survivable than pure poison because as i said before, stun plays a big role. So please, don't play pure poison builds with name locking-skills. Even with reave your first few attacks are on melee range and can get you easily killed.

Actually I'm going to disagree with this. From my experiences this is incorrect. I initially thought the same thing, that it would be better to scale the attack damage while also scaling the poison damage through global damage modifiers, flat damage buffs, and otherwise attack speed. I prioritized frenzy charges (global more damage) and power charges with the swift killer ascendancy (increased global damage per charge), the scourge claws, and other generic damage buffs. That's where my initial attempt with VS went.

What I ended up with is that all my damage was still coming from poison on hard targets because the regular damage wasn't high enough to overcome the armor formula on armored enemies anyways, squishy targets would have died just as fast either way, and it was nearly impossible to find an ideal 6-link that improves both sides of the damage formula beyond the 2nd or 3rd gem, and global plain damage modifiers were too scarce both on gear and on the tree to make a build that works.

Do feel free to try it and I would love if such a build were to do as much damage as a pure poison build, but from what I've seen poison modifiers are just too good compared to generic damage modifiers.

To help you out though, the few sources I did find were the ones I mentioned there: dual wield scourge claws, use swift killer, get power and frenzy charges, and otherwise boost your attack speed. But yeah, that ended up being shit for me. With another ascendancy it might be better though, I tend to only play shadows.

I don't really get what you are disagreeing with. I already said that your damage with hybrid won't be as good as with pure poison because poison scales better. But if you do that and you get those 10k hit dps and 1-2m poison dps builds then you should prepare for a hard time doing maps, cause then you don't stun or leech. Both are pretty important. You've been warned.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

What I ended up with is that all my damage was still coming from poison on hard targets because the regular damage wasn't high enough to overcome the armor formula on armored enemies anyways

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Legatus1982 wrote:

my VS character was totally fine, it was my flicker striker that I kept dying on vs act bosses while leveling with sunder and I got fed up with it.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

But the problem is every character after my first is an experiment where I am using hilariously underpowered gems to see what I can do with them. I made a viper striker - act bosses were unbearable shit because once you can't oneshot the boss you have to actually avoid their mechanics, and EVERY act boss from 5 to 10 has "mechanics" that are basically just screen-covering cancer. I spend about 90% dodging shit, 5% moving into or out of position, and 5% of the time actually dpsing the boss. Try it man, level a viper strike shadow. You can use sunder or double strike, but unless you're using megatwinked gear that costed 100 exalts you're going to have ZERO FUN doing these act bosses. And that's the problem.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

The OP has some valid points about boss fights, as POE has changed over the years from an ARPG into an isometric arcade shooter with lots of on-screen visual clutter during busy fights.

Still, it's late game mapping and end game bosses where the one shots and two-shots are more challenging to manage. Going through the leveling process to reach maps and even low-to-mid tier maps is a matter of learning. Full stop. If the OP doesn't see that then that's the first thing that needs to change before the leveling process will go better for the OP.

On a related point, the OP can figure out how to not die during the leveling phase boss fights either by watching video clips on youtube that explain mechanics for particular boss fights or through personally experienced trial and error (which also works, although it takes more patience).

I have slow and unreliable reflexes, a high misclick rate, and a dodgy internet connection. Nobody would confuse me with a top tier player if they ever saw me play. And yet, I get through to maps when playing SSF in hardcore much more often than not in every league I play. So, it's not only streamers with incredible reflexes who are making it to maps without dying.

You people aren't getting it.

First of all, nobody cares how great you or anyone else is or is not at poe.

The point is these bosses are unfun garbage that I don't want to do. And from the comments alone I'm not the only one who doesn't want to deal with the act bosses.

In maps if you don't want to do a boss you do the map and skip the boss. In the story you can't do that, and the story bosses are worse than any map boss up to like tier 10 maps