Speedrunner and community streamer, Lightee7 is a familiar face in the Path of Exile racing scene with multiple winner titles to his name including the most recent Gauntlet event! We sat down with Lightee7 to get some racing tips as well as find out what his life is like outside of gaming!

Hi Lightee7, thank you for taking part in the interview! Please introduce yourself.

Hi I'm Ben. I'm a gamer who plays games and streams at http://twitch.tv/lightee7. I'm known for winning a few HCSSF events and being okay at the game.

When did you first get into Path of Exile?

I first started playing Path of Exile in late 2012 along with a horde of other people who followed Kripparian.

What one thing caught your attention in the beginning and what one thing kept you coming back?

When I first started playing I just wanted to keep making new builds with new skills. I would open the wiki to a page that shows all of the active skill gems and just scroll through the list and pick one that I hadn’t played yet. This was way before PoB or any real planning tools so the process was pretty much just to throw together a tree that didn’t look terrible and start gaming.

Nowadays the endgame has much more depth so I don’t feel the need to make new builds with random skills. I just play whatever feels good and enjoy the game itself.

You are well-known in the Path of Exile community foremost as a racer and speedrunner. What was the moment when you realized this is what you want to do in the game?

I’ve always been competitive in any game I play and the only real competition in PvE games is to go faster. I used to push XP in 1 week events back when those existed. I never got into the early game racing stuff because personally I’ve never enjoyed that part of the game. Zizaran hosting large end game focused competitions is what caused me to primarily focus on Path of Exile.

You've won a decent amount of racing events, including the recent Boss Kill Event. What are your top tips for beginner PoE racers who would like to succeed one day?

The best advice I can give to anyone trying to get better at any game is to record their gameplay. The majority of large PoE events are run in SSFHC so the first step is to stop dying. Despite what you might read elsewhere, there are very few unpredictable deaths in PoE. Unless you disconnect, there is a 99.9%+ chance that you could have played better to avoid your demise. Analyzing your mistakes is a required step to avoid repeating them.

What would you most like to see for the Path of Exile Racing community in future?

I really like what we currently have. Path of Exile is a game best played in bursts in my opinion. This pattern of a new league - small break - Gauntlet - small break - new league is fantastic for avoiding burnout while still always having something close to look forward to. I guess to directly answer : I would like more customizability in the private league creation process so that the various community-run events can have a greater selection and more control over the mods in their league.

Aside from being a Path of Exile racer, you are also a streamer. How long have you been streaming for? How did you get into it?

I started streaming in Perandus league when I was farming Uber Atziri on a poison Bladefall mine build. I wouldn’t say I was really a “streamer” though until after the Harvest gauntlet.

What can people expect from your stream? What kind of schedule do you follow?

Expect to get ghosted for weeks at a time, especially if the last stream ended with me saying “I will definitely stream tomorrow”. I’ll stream new leagues and gauntlets but anything in between those is not guaranteed.

What were you doing before you started streaming?

Towards the end of my time in higher education I started competing in the World of Warcraft MDI and RWF. That took up the majority of my time and then the PoE events started popping up and this game is substantially more fun so here I am.

Are there any highlights from your time playing PoE that stand out in your memory?

Winning the Awakener event in Metamorph league was definitely the most exhilarating experience I’ve had in PoE. A close second was probably when my friend opened a chest offscreen and a Mirror of Kalandra dropped in my name.

Are there any up and coming streamers that you'd like to shine a spotlight on?

quantrik for PoB streams and carn_ for the best Slayer copium.

What hobbies or interests do you have outside of speedrunning and streaming?

Mostly just other games. I still compete in the Race to World First for WoW and dabble in various shooter games. Although I pretty much never stream those.

What is one thing you think every Path of Exile player should hear?

If you want to enjoy your experience playing Path of Exile, avoid the subreddit.

Thank you so much for participating in the interview! If you'd like to follow Lightee, you can do so on Twitter and Twitch. Also, don't forget that you can support both Lightee and the development of Path of Exile by buying microtransactions from his Nexus page!