A somewhat new player's review of Path of VexOhmIstDol

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Archwizard wrote:

It's interesting that you say that, because I've made that same essential statement numerous times, and you're the first person to disagree with it (and many have agreed).

The high end grind has gotten harder, because there's more lower level content to get instead (which is why in other places I've advocated or agreed with others who've advocated some sort of floor on affixes, such as ilvl - 50).

But progressing to higher xp levels has gotten easier, and I've found dealing with maps easier, especially with recent changes.

I have to say that almost everyone that I know of on the forums (including me) have stated that trading reliance has gotten much worse, not better, since CB

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Splift wrote:

There are tons of cheap eq options for characters moving up in their gear progression. In this game just from leveling up to 60 you usually get 5-10 chaos at least of currency (at least) whereas in d2 you will get nothing till you start farming bosses aside from a lucky nm or hell forge.

I'm sorry sir but this is totally incorrect. You make it sound so simple to get 10 chaos from leveling, which I can attest to as a fallacy. The only way to accomplish that would be to trade which goes back to some of the original posters complaints.

Your experience may have or may be as such. If you truly have that much just by leveling then I'm amazed and somewhat jealous honestly. Jealous that some have such an easy time whereas others struggle to even have enough to acquire upgrades when a wall is hit. I know. I've been there. My first few characters, before figuring out the formula, would hit the proverbial wall and could not progress due to gear. I had not been so lucky as you with currency or gear drops and simply had to abandon those characters due to the fact that I was bound and determined to make it without trading.

So when making such blanket statements and professing the ease at which one could acquire currency be mindful that not all experiences are the same.

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Natharias wrote:

Atziri's Foible

This essentially solves any mana problems you'll have and allows you to run around with fewer mana potions. Or, you can spend more points elsewhere and rely solely on potions and this on mana. Very powerful, especially since you can level gems and equip gear sooner and with less of a hassle from attributes on gear.

Perandus Signet

The increased experience gain and mana attributes greatly help. Although the increased experience is only very good for certain situations, and other rings provide many greater bonuses, this can really help level quickly.

Wanderlust

These shoes stay equipped until about level thirty. The bonuses they give are okay, but they work for quite some time.

Facebreaker

The single best leveling item in the game. This and two Iron Rings can easily do all the damage you require in order to survive.

Goldrim

Purely for the resistances. This really helps and is viable for even late game builds for the resistance if you lack any good gear with resistances on it.

Crest of Perandus

This shield has the highest block chance in the game. It offers a huge resistance to the worst element in this game, in my opinion. The life regeneration is icing on the top.

All of these are wonderful leveling items that make leveling easy, but it's mostly in the gems and that can vary depending on what you plan on doing.

Some of these items such as Facebreakers and Crest of Perandus are amazing. On my Facebreaker marauder Crest is on equipment swap due to the block, leech and ... well it' an awesome shield as are most that you mentioned.

Things like Sundance boots, Death's Harp, Goddess Scorned and Bound.. the list goes on. This is one of the highlights of the game are these amazing uniques. Most are not godly..but then again they kind of are because they are viable for so long.

OP, you need to explore the game more. this isn't d3 or maple story or anything like that. min/maxing means more than just "hurr durr make numbers bigger". you're right that poe has a lot of depth, but you're not seeing the right kind. your statistics background is betraying you and you're only looking at quantitative optimizations and are being totally oblivious to the qualitative ones

namely, the materia based skill system that lets you swap out to less big number optimized skills to more situationally effective optimized ones. that is how you deal with your edge case scenarios. chaos damage? amethyst flasks, rolled amethyst rings. absurd spike damage? enfeeble, decoy totem, skel totem, etc. reflect? drop damage supports for life leech. lit thorns? use your high dex to equip and use high level traps...or stop using a 36+ small hits lit arrow like a fool and switch to something where you can manage flat reflect damage...like a single target frenzy or poison arrows


min/maxing doesn't always mean you can faceroll the game with nothing but blessed hammer. sometimes you actually have to press a different button in this game



as for the rest...

1/2)newb gear? crap unis. shiversting, hrimir's piece of crap, limbsplit, perandus, foxshade, goldrim, crappeak, crapbeak, the other crapbeak....they're a hell of a lot better than d2's crap unis and sets, and are easily purchasable for an alch or less. in fact they're so worthless I throw them back on the floor now...but only cuz I'm lazy

3)ledge...fellshrine...docks...hillock runs or catacombs from previous difficulty if you're really really inept....

4)crap unis...they're not so crap when you're level 15. some things like goldrim and mightflay and wurm's molt easily take you through hell

5)vendor recipes, support materia.....



I promise you no one self finds their perfect grif in d2 either, bots or not. no one self finds conviction rw. jsp was required. both games are paced well enough that self find is good enough to take you into endgame. perfect builds are gonna need trading, in any mmorpg

you can still upgrade rares by yourself, or 20 qual your own gems



desync, second rate optimization, and map progrssion are the only major problems with this game, imo. but the rest of your complaints are invalid, and are a result of your lack of exploration of all the possibilities the game offers

stop trying to play d3 in poe. you need to play poe in poe

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testinglk wrote:

OP, you need to explore the game more. this isn't d3 or maple story or anything like that. min/maxing means more than just "hurr durr make numbers bigger". you're right that poe has a lot of depth, but you're not seeing the right kind. your statistics background is betraying you and you're only looking at quantitative optimizations and are being totally oblivious to the qualitative ones

namely, the materia based skill system that lets you swap out to less big number optimized skills to more situationally effective optimized ones. that is how you deal with your edge case scenarios. chaos damage? amethyst flasks, rolled amethyst rings. absurd spike damage? enfeeble, decoy totem, skel totem, etc. reflect? drop damage supports for life leech. lit thorns? use your high dex to equip and use high level traps...or stop using a 36+ small hits lit arrow like a fool and switch to something where you can manage flat reflect damage...like a single target frenzy or poison arrows


min/maxing doesn't always mean you can faceroll the game with nothing but blessed hammer. sometimes you actually have to press a different button in this game



as for the rest...

1/2)newb gear? crap unis. shiversting, hrimir's piece of crap, limbsplit, perandus, foxshade, goldrim, crappeak, crapbeak, the other crapbeak....they're a hell of a lot better than d2's crap unis and sets, and are easily purchasable for an alch or less. in fact they're so worthless I throw them back on the floor now...but only cuz I'm lazy

3)ledge...fellshrine...docks...hillock runs or catacombs from previous difficulty if you're really really inept....

4)crap unis...they're not so crap when you're level 15. some things like goldrim and mightflay and wurm's molt easily take you through hell

5)vendor recipes, support materia.....



I promise you no one self finds their perfect grif in d2 either, bots or not. no one self finds conviction rw. jsp was required. both games are paced well enough that self find is good enough to take you into endgame. perfect builds are gonna need trading, in any mmorpg

you can still upgrade rares by yourself, or 20 qual your own gems


desync, second rate optimization, and map progrssion are the only major problems with this game, imo. but the rest of your complaints are invalid, and are a result of your lack of exploration of all the possibilities the game offers

stop trying to play d3 in poe. you need to play poe in poe

Here's the problem:

The crap uniques don't drop when they'd be useful for actually helping you out. I never once found a death's harp, though I traded for one.

As for ledge/felshrine/docks:

I CANNOT FIND A VOLTAXIC IN THOSE PLACES.

I WILL REPEAT MYSELF.

I CANNOT FIND VOLTAXIC IN THOSE PLACES. OR ANY OF THE OTHER MAP-ONLY ITEMS.

Yes, it sounds obnoxious, but what made the Mausoleum/Ancient Tunnels/The Pit/The Crypt such wonderful farming areas wasn't just the easy monsters.

It was that they were the highest monster level and dropped the best treasure class loot in the game.

The tradeoff was on monster density. I.e. if you were god on earth, you could go and farm WS3 for the same exaxct benefit and see a lot more monsters in a lot less time. But if you weren't, well, there were still areas of the game that you could farm to kingdom come and get some excellent items.

I personally think that map only mobs was a completely trash of an idea and goes against GGG's own mantra of having the possibility, however small, of an epic item dropping in the game

Ok so I#m here to give a bit of feedback too. Please don't judge my english...
I'm playing POE since CB, and I am not a nerd-farmer nolifer. I play POE few hours a week.
I rarely trade (because I don't have time - I'd better play).
I'm playing hardcore.


So what's my problem with POE:

1. Desync - the main problem and the cause of most deaths. It doesn't matter what internet connection you have - desync is still there. Yes in D2 you also had rubberbanding, desyncs, etc. But D2 is 13 years old! I used to play D2 with 56k modem. IMO a game made nowadays should be somehow more stable and more suited for multiplayer.

2. Drops - you get only CRAP. Basically all magic/rare items are crap. They re only worth selling them to vendors to get some alterations (later trade them to chaos and then trade chaos to an item you want... needs weeks of farm). Something I don't understand: Low level uniques (quill rain, crest, goldrim, shiversting, searing touch, lochtonial, etc.) never drop at low levels when you need them. But they start to drop if you are already in merciless. But in merciless you will never get a high-level unique drop. Why? If you compare to D2, after some days of farm you was sure to get some high level uniques (baal runs ftw!)

3. Trade - it is almost imposssible to buy anything if you don't farm for hours every day. The prices are absurd. If you want to buy not-a-crap item (good life/res rares or good uniques) you will have to pay exalts. I just went to standard league and switched trade chat on: 100 exalts for a trires/life ring. 40 exalts for spelldmg/caspspd amulet. How the hell I am supposed to get all these exalts? In my whole 1,5 years POE careeer I got 1 exalt!

4. gear dependant game - If you don't have good gear, you won't get to end-game. If you re not in end-game you won't get any gear. There are some builds that said to be gear-independant, but in fact all builds rely heavily on your gear. Most gear-independant build I've seen so far is an Arc dual totem witch (4L will be enough and is easy to get + you don't have to tank)

5. Endless ledge - Ledge is the only savely farmable zone. Fellshrine golems with increased phys damage aura can desync badly and kill you, if not, skele archers will do the job. Same with Docks.

6. Craft - craft doesn't exist, unless you have tons of currency. I'd better save my chaos to buy something rather than spending it on an item, because (see point 2.) you will get only crap. Chance'ing and alch'ing items also doesn't make sense, most of rares you get will vendored for alt shards. Same problem with socketing/linking items - I'd better buy a 5L than link it by myself.

I would LOVE a one month solo no trade race. No increased drops or anything. Just so people can see that you can beat the game and map without trading.

Not sure what argument you're trying to make here with the Voltaxic Rift, D2 had plenty of Baal (which was easy with mediocre gear) only uniques that could drop and the only source of Hellfire Torches was running ubers which required plenty of luck in terms of item drops to even see let alone kill.

I had maybe a single Gul rune drop in my long time playing D2 yet I still managed to trade my way upwards to getting a couple of highish runewords and had plenty of fun without them. In fact I found I generally moved on to other games once I was able to easily do ubers as I didn't find much point in grinding for even better gear to do exactly the same content as you can already do.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

I would LOVE a one month solo no trade race. No increased drops or anything. Just so people can see that you can beat the game and map without trading.

Make it a 4 month SC league, for accessibility. I think (think) 1 month races get less attention than ladder leagues, because despite their duration, they're still "races" which excludes it as an option for the general/non-racing portion of the community. I think, after a 1-month race, you could go "see, I did it!" but everybody else who didn't participate would be unaffected, and their opinions would remain unchanged.

But yeah, I agree. While I'm not a proponent of the ill proposed SFL, I'd like an SF test league just for people to have the experience, and get an idea of what pros and cons exist in the vacuum of no-trading. It's a completely different game, with merits and flaws worth exposing.