Path of Exile 2.0 - Discussion

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Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
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I think we've found the real problem now... Arc is legit awful single target. You're basically going to be brickwalled by most red map bosses and any other strong boss, period.

You're doing, what, 10-20k single target dps? My maxblock gladiator does 20k and he can facetank nearly anything. If you arent insanely tanky you will need far higher single target to fight any strong boss.

Laser is still piss-easy to dodge though, even if you have to run through red circles sometimes on slower characters.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
I think we've found the real problem now... Arc is legit awful single target. You're basically going to be brickwalled by most red map bosses and any other strong boss, period.

But I'm not having problems with any other bosses, save the jungle valley "boss" of endless trash spawn. And I could probably kill it anyway, just haven't tried it since my last couple levels.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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Could always get a +1 gems 6L for super upgrade.

Theoretically, sure. I don't think I have enough currency.

Using my 5 link for CWDT right now, and another 4l CWDT, one leveled one unleveled, casting summon skeletons, molten shell, one offensive curse and one defensive curse. My other link is a faster casting lesser duration lightning warp.

Right now starting to get bored, my big damage increases happen when I level empower up, but that is going to take weeks. Just a long slow grind. I could probably improve my defenses with some item trading, but I really hate the system and abusers. Basically been playing self-found except if I need one key item for a build I will trade for it, such as the crest.
 

Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
1,654
2
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But I'm not having problems with any other bosses, save the jungle valley "boss" of endless trash spawn. And I could probably kill it anyway, just haven't tried it since my last couple levels.

Jungle Valley trash spam is ezmode for arc though... You dont even have to target it and they all die
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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At the time, nope. They took multiple hits to kill and re-spawned faster than I killed them. Like I said though, that was a week ago, probably when I was around level 78ish. I've leveled a few times and my DPS is higher now.
 

Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
1,654
2
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You shouldnt have been doing jungle valley at 78 lol.

Pre-80 doing > t4 maps is a waste of time. hell, dried lake is faster exp than any maps until 78.
 

Majes

Golden Member
Apr 8, 2008
1,164
148
106
Theoretically, sure. I don't think I have enough currency.

Using my 5 link for CWDT right now, and another 4l CWDT, one leveled one unleveled, casting summon skeletons, molten shell, one offensive curse and one defensive curse. My other link is a faster casting lesser duration lightning warp.

Right now starting to get bored, my big damage increases happen when I level empower up, but that is going to take weeks. Just a long slow grind. I could probably improve my defenses with some item trading, but I really hate the system and abusers. Basically been playing self-found except if I need one key item for a build I will trade for it, such as the crest.

I'll offer my opinion. Though you're certainly more than welcome to play the way you are most comfortable, generally you use the most links for your main skill.
So I would do the following...

Move Arc to your 5-link. It should be something like Arc, Added lightning, Spell Echo, Faster Casting, Lightning Penetration.

Move the 5-link CWDT to the former Arc 4 link. Drop the offensive Aura. This will allow you to frontload your damage to arc. That means it's less likely you take damage in the first place since you're killing things faster. Also it means you can drop whatever you're using to add an additional curse to monsters and add more damage/defense there.

With offensive curses you're better off casting them manually as a ranged character. It gives you a higher bonus to damage than waiting until you get hit for the cast to proc...

You are also missing out on a lot of damage by going blood magic. This means you're losing Herald or Aura damage increases to your spells... If you're maxing out your strength you can mitigate this by running Iron Will in your Arc links (instead of lightning penetration probably). Since you're traveling down to grab blood magic you're passing through the strength heavy part of the tree anyhow.

Just a couple suggestions from what I know of your character... I've had a lot of success with Iron Will Strength based casters and I think yours might benefit from it as well.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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My first character of the league was another witch, with a more typical mana based build hybrid life/ES (I considered going full ES, but it was impossible to gear for it at a reasonable cost). The character was essentially a failure though, for a couple reasons-

Lab as Hybrid life/es was horrible horrible horrible. The trap damage scaled on my total of life and ES, but I could only flask to restore my smaller life pool. Since I wasn't full all-out ES build, I didn't have all the faster ES restore nodes. Since I was using mana & auras, I spent numerous passive points collecting reduced mana reserved nodes, mana nodes, and mana regen nodes.


This second iteration has been vastly more successful. Because I don't use mana, I have saved about a dozen passives. By not going for auras at all, I again save numerous passives. By going pure life, I don't split my resources and flasking to survive a trap in the labyrinth is much more viable.

In theory, I may have lost some damage because I couldn't run wrath/herald of lightning or whatever, but in practice many of the passive skill points I saved went directly into DPS increasing nodes.

....


That said, your comment about Iron will is good- that was my original plan, go blood magic take lots of strength nodes and add Iron Will to my main damage spell. Perhaps I still will, but I think I need a 6 link.

My current dps 5487.6 on paper, with faster casting lighting penetration arc empower.

With a 6 link, removing empower and adding iron will, controlled destruction*, and spell echo I am at 11,997 on paper. *Not using crit at all, that was another problem with my first witch.

I'm actually glad you pushed me to test this, because I thought I was undercap resists without my chest, but apparently I'm not. I might just run around with a tabula for a few maps and see how it goes.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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You don't like spell echo? And there's nothing wrong with added lightning!

Added lightning is slightly lower dps than Iron Will. I am using spell echo with the 6 link test setup. I prefer faster casting in the 4 link for responsiveness.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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So after a little mapping, the DPS is nice, but the loss of about 20% physical reduction of armor is noticeable.

I wonder how hard it is to get a 6-link armor or armor/evasion chest with R-B-B-B-B-B
 

Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
1,654
2
81
... I cant even imagine trying to map on 5-10k dps. My low-dps varunastra block gladiator does nearly 20k dps. My marauder does nearly 100k. Neither is a crit build.

Your dps is 100% of your problems. You will take far less damage by simply doing a lot more damage. All those little things (links, gear, gem levels, passives, etc) add up to huge damage differences.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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... I cant even imagine trying to map on 5-10k dps. My low-dps varunastra block gladiator does nearly 20k dps. My marauder does nearly 100k. Neither is a crit build.

Your dps is 100% of your problems. You will take far less damage by simply doing a lot more damage. All those little things (links, gear, gem levels, passives, etc) add up to huge damage differences.

You keep on saying that, but I was not having problems outside of malformation piety.

DPS on paper is a small part of the story. I don't know what build you run, but since I have lightning penetration and conductivity up my listed DPS is about half of what is actually dealt after resists are accounted for, and the vast majority of the time I have shock and ignite up on every mob around me.

To take a silly example, I can swap out my lighting penetration gem for elemental focus to get 50% more tooltip DPS instantly pushing over 20k DPS listed, but in reality my actual damage dealt would become significantly lower.

" I cant even imagine trying to map on 5-10k dps"

It's funny, because you earlier suggested grinding dried lake for 20 levels in a row. Now *that* is something I could never imagine doing, I play for the fun of the game, mindlessly grinding the exact same thing over and over for some minuscule benefit is not my idea of fun. Doing a T7 or T8 map, outside of malformation, was fun and challenging and certainly didn't feel like a boring grind. I guess we just have different ways to enjoy playing.
 
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Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
1,654
2
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Doubling your damage (pen doubles or better your real damage but never doubles your damage relative to tooltip because tooltip is 0% resists) still puts you in pure-tank dps territory.

And of course you weren't having troubles, t1-t8 are the easy intro maps, a few bosses notwithstanding.

Have you ever done a village ruin? I bet you'll wish for more malformation piety. Ever done the trio before atziri, or atziri herself? Atziri's only a level 70 zone after all.

I strongly recommend trying a high dps build sometime, it will open your eyes at how bad your old builds were. I made an arc witch a long time ago, had a 5L Pledge and like 9k ES (CI build), like 15k arc tooltip with pen gem, still did shit for damage on bosses because arc is shit.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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Doubling your damage (pen doubles or better your real damage but never doubles your damage relative to tooltip because tooltip is 0% resists) still puts you in pure-tank dps territory.

You still haven't said what you use for DPS. EQ? Some other flavor of the month? I don't know why you assume I have never played anything but arc. I will admit that I played exclusively hardcore for the first 2-3 years playing the game, and it shows a bit in my softcore builds where I'd rather avoid potentials deaths even if it means my DPS will suffer.

As is, an ele reflect pack will kill me if I hit it more than twice before potting. If I had the silly DPS you think is mandatory reflect would be instant death. Do you just deal with dying every time you hit a reflect mob?

And of course you weren't having troubles, t1-t8 are the easy intro maps, a few bosses notwithstanding.

It's odd because just a few posts above you seemed to be trying to imply that it was foolish to step outside dried lake before 78, when I was doing T6 and T7 maps regularly. Now you are taking the opposite stance, claiming that T1-T8 maps don't even count because they are just newbie maps. Which is it?

And are you really implying that after leveling up my DPS is not going to increase at all? I still have 3 more levels for my arc gem, not to mention potential to 20q all my gems for another significant boost. Possibly even more if I can buy or corrupt a level 21 arc gem. Maybe if you are a weapon attack user you forget just how much the DPS of a spell can scale from a few levels up, if you would answer my question I would have an idea where you were coming from.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
You still haven't said what you use for DPS. EQ? Some other flavor of the month? I don't know why you assume I have never played anything but arc. I will admit that I played exclusively hardcore for the first 2-3 years playing the game, and it shows a bit in my softcore builds where I'd rather avoid potentials deaths even if it means my DPS will suffer.

As is, an ele reflect pack will kill me if I hit it more than twice before potting. If I had the silly DPS you think is mandatory reflect would be instant death. Do you just deal with dying every time you hit a reflect mob?



It's odd because just a few posts above you seemed to be trying to imply that it was foolish to step outside dried lake before 78, when I was doing T6 and T7 maps regularly. Now you are taking the opposite stance, claiming that T1-T8 maps don't even count because they are just newbie maps. Which is it?

And are you really implying that after leveling up my DPS is not going to increase at all? I still have 3 more levels for my arc gem, not to mention potential to 20q all my gems for another significant boost. Possibly even more if I can buy or corrupt a level 21 arc gem. Maybe if you are a weapon attack user you forget just how much the DPS of a spell can scale from a few levels up, if you would answer my question I would have an idea where you were coming from.

Mapping before 78 is foolish when considering the possibilities of XP efficiency and possible drops. You're still in the high percentage of XP gained from Dried Lakes before 78 (one could argue up until 80 is worth it), you don't waste any currency on maps and you certainly have the chance of a good drop without the problems of tracking down 90%+ of the mobs. You could argue you'd rather do 100 maps to get from like 70-78 rather than 100 Dried Lake runs, but that doesn't make it not foolish. It's foolish to drink a bottle of wine and play HC, but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy some of it.

And, if you're having trouble with reflect, your build needs some more work.
 

Jax Omen

Golden Member
Mar 14, 2008
1,654
2
81
On the low (20k) dps gladiator, goddamn viper strike (tooltip does not include the poison). On the marauder, sunder.

If you threeshot yourself on a reflect mob (reflect packs haven't existed for nearly a year), with that low dps, you have shit resists and/or shit hp.

My gladiator is nearly unkillable and does far more damage, and he's in the 70s. I chose not to compare to my witch because her gear is stacked as fuck (9k es shavs crit freeze pulse, does about 50k dps and far safer than the marauder), but I am familiar with how spells work.

My girlfriend is a ball lightning templar, and her non-crit casts do as much damage per tick (ball lightning ticks 5x a second) as your arc casts do, and she gets to run auras for damage AND has over 5k hp AND she usually crits, which straight ignore resists.
My point is, instead of complaining that piety is hard, fix your bad build. The fact that you made it to t9 maps with such a bad build is testament to the fact that you could do well with a real build.

PS piety is harder in temple/shrine LOL
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
If you threeshot yourself on a reflect mob (reflect packs haven't existed for nearly a year), with that low dps, you have shit resists and/or shit hp.


PS piety is harder in temple/shrine LOL

Reflect packs exist all the time if you do a map with elemental reflect. Since I will run a corrupted unID map, or an unid map sold by zana, I may do an ele reflect map occasionally.

I don't think my resists are a serious issue, 76 fire/75/75. It's simple math. 3500 avg damage per hit base, chaining 6 times, and repeating once via echo = 42000 damage. Now if I have crit recently (unless I was afk this is generally true) I have 40% MORE damage, so increase that to 58,800 damage. 13% reflect means 7644 damage reflected, reduced down to 1911 after my resists are taken into account.

So two separate casts will put me down to about 1k life and I'll die on the 3rd cast if I don't immediately flask. This might sound like a slow death, but my cast speed is such that 3 casts takes less than a second, cast time is like .28 seconds. Also, that isn't even taking into account shock, if the targets are shocked or if I am shocked (or both) the damage will be accordingly higher, and some situations a mere 2 casts will instagib myself.

I guess I could waste a dozen passives to go for the +1 max lightning resist node, and reduce the damage taken a bit, but I would still die in 3 casts on a reflect pack, or less given shocks.

All in all, it's manageable now, because I test the map and if it is reflect I just know to flask over every pack I fight.

But... if I follow your advice and get MOAR DPS I could probably reach a point where a single cast kills me on reflect.

PS- no she isn't. I did 4 unID temple maps today without dying, compared to malformation boss BS, temple piety is a joke.
 
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Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
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Mapping before 78 is foolish when considering the possibilities of XP efficiency and possible drops. You're still in the high percentage of XP gained from Dried Lakes before 78 (one could argue up until 80 is worth it), you don't waste any currency on maps and you certainly have the chance of a good drop without the problems of tracking down 90%+ of the mobs. You could argue you'd rather do 100 maps to get from like 70-78 rather than 100 Dried Lake runs, but that doesn't make it not foolish.

Foolish how?

A T1 map gives same xp and better iiq iir, in what way is that worse than dried lake?

Maybe having a kid puts me in a different category of player. I don't have unlimited time to play. "Running out of currency" running maps is a non-issue, I will run out of playing time long before I run out of currency. It's rare that I can run much more than the maps sold by Zana each day. Besides, using a couple alteration and transmutation on each map isn't really a net loss when the map run nets 2-3C+ in currency.

I've been vendoring Tier 1-4 maps because I don't have room for them in my stash. This whole idea of running out of maps just sounds like crazytalk to me. Do you not do Zana dailies or something?
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
Foolish how?



A T1 map gives same xp and better iiq iir, in what way is that worse than dried lake?



Maybe having a kid puts me in a different category of player. I don't have unlimited time to play. "Running out of currency" running maps is a non-issue, I will run out of playing time long before I run out of currency. It's rare that I can run much more than the maps sold by Zana each day. Besides, using a couple alteration and transmutation on each map isn't really a net loss when the map run nets 2-3C+ in currency.



I've been vendoring Tier 1-4 maps because I don't have room for them in my stash. This whole idea of running out of maps just sounds like crazytalk to me. Do you not do Zana dailies or something?



Iirc iirq has zero to do with currency drops or card drops. A 68 map has nothing except the uniques that can drop snd random currency. Dried lake has exactly the same curry plus the headhunter card making it far superior even if you ignore the fact if you don't fully clear a map, it's inefficient.
 

XiandreX

Golden Member
Jan 14, 2011
1,172
16
81
Just ran malformation with a friend. Beam hit me once and yes it hits hard but with 5400 life I was fine.
Our dps was strong (2 Spark builds) and she died VERY quickly.
I dont see the issue. I was able to run ahead of the beam with only 20% movement speed.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
Just ran malformation with a friend. Beam hit me once and yes it hits hard but with 5400 life I was fine.
Our dps was strong (2 Spark builds) and she died VERY quickly.
I dont see the issue. I was able to run ahead of the beam with only 20% movement speed.

I believe the beam was moving faster in my map because of a faster casting boss map mod, or some other such. I don't know, and don't care enough to try it again with "safer" map mods, the risk/reward is way out of whack and I'd rather just do any other map and get better drops without any risk of death.

Since you have 5400, sounds like at 5100 life I was a just barely too low to survive the beam, maybe it'll be an easier fight in a couple levels.


"Iirc iirq has zero to do with currency drops or card drops. A 68 map has nothing except the uniques that can drop snd random currency. Dried lake has exactly the same curry plus the headhunter card making it far superior even if you ignore the fact if you don't fully clear a map, it's inefficient."

That is wrong. Increased rarity doesn't directly increase currency drops, but it does a lot more yellows to vendor for chaos or regal recipe, and increases the chances of getting a drop that is worth selling or using.

Increased quantity absolutely works on currency.

Increased Item Quantity (IIQ)
Increases the average number of items that drop from monsters (aka Drop Rate). This includes currency, scrolls, skill gems and divination cards.[5] There is no cap on the usefulness of this modifier, since there is no limit to the number of items a monster can drop. Only the IIQ of the containing area and the party bonus affects chests or strongboxes,[6] and it does not affect the type, quality, or rarity of item dropped, only the chance that something will drop.[3] A player's IIQ does not affect the amount of maps that drop from enemies.[7] However, a map's IIQ does affect the amount of map drops.[8]


Since last night, I tracked my drops for the last few maps I did.

http://imgur.com/a/oWJsM

Not trying to brag, just showing that the drops from maps, compared to dried lake, are preeeety good overall. Sure, there is some variance, but I can absolutely sustain mapping like this, and my currency cost to roll the maps is trivial compared to what I walk out of the map with. Even if you ignore the RNG luck of getting an exalted orb in one of the maps, still coming out way ahead on currency.

One minor note: on the jungle valley map, I dumped my working stack of wisdom scrolls, those didn't drop in the map. I didn't bother with scrolls or perandus coins for any of the loot tabs because value is pretty insignificant.

These maps were either unID blue maps, or white maps I used an alc + vaal orb on. Most of them were around 100 iiq.