What games are you playing and why?

I think there's 3 servers depending on your location, and I'm on the U.S. server.

 

I've been playing PoE since somewhat early in CB, it's actually a lot simpler than it looks at first, I'll agree with that - with one exception. The currency system is insanely convoluted and probably the worst thing about the game.

 

I actually really like the currency system, it allows for MASSIVE item customization possibilities. You can upgrade items, reroll stats, change sockets, change socket links etc etc.

Right, socket links! This is a really cool concept. There are "normal" skill gems that grant you abilities like Fireball or Ground Slam. You socket them in items and they level up as you gain XP. But there is another category of gems - support gems. They are not skills by themselves, they grant skill modifiers. It's sort of like the different skill runes in Diablo 3, but here you can mix and match active skills with support gems as you wish. Some examples of support gems: Multiple Projectiles (so if it's linked with a Fireball it'll spit 3 smaller fireballs instead of one big), Chain (projectiles chain to multiple enemies), Blood Magic (you actually use life instead of mana to cast the affected skill) and many, many others. You can link one support gem with multiple active skills or vice versa, as long as your item has the proper socket/link configuration. You can see now that the skill gem system along with crafting via currency items allows for really deep customization.

And some links!
Skill gems
Passive tree
Items (Currency/crafting)

 

So it's like Final Fantasy VII's support materia.

 

It's not the orbs and scrolls that bother me - I actually really like the way those work. But either a universal gold-esque currency that you use to them buy the scrolls/orbs/etc or a linear progression (like 10 transmutation orbs -> orb of alchemy etc) would be nice - as-is, the currency system has a learning curve, and that's really not a good thing. It's not unworkable, and when I say that it's the worst thing about the game it's not because of how unbearable it is so much as that everything else is actually quite good. But where the passive skill tree and skill gems and slots are so intuitive, the currency system is decidedly unintuitive and frankly a big pain in the *** to manage.

 

Can you respec the web a'la newer games or is it locked in a'la d2?

 

I believe it's a very limited respec. From the faq:

In other words, you are best off planning your build in advance and then using those respecs to correct mistakes. My main issue with that is it suggests that you are already knowledgable about the game, what's good, what's not so good, etc. without actually having played it. And it makes it tough to experiment.

 

The game is damn stingy with them, as well. I believe I had 15 or somewhere in that neighborhood at the end of act 2. Even if you save up every respec point you get, I'm fairly certain you still won't be able to do a full respec. Definitely go in with a well-defined build plan. Thankfully there's a very good skill planner up on the game's official site.

 

Well, well-defined build is one thing, but I don't envy people who envisioned themselves a build and put points towards it only to learn that this build is sub-optimal for some reason they didn't know about after 70 or 80 points.

 

I have no idea whether the build I'm working towards will be effective. I'm just taking the same philosophy I did with D2 - play a build that looks interesting as far as possible, and start a new character when it becomes impossible to progress.

 

Sounds good, but what do you do when you are totally incompetent at action gaming? How do you know when it's your sucky play and not your sucky build?

 

That's just the kind of game PoE is, I guess. I'd prefer a slower and more methodical playstyle but it is every bit as much of a twitchy clickfest as its' inspiration was. Maybe a tanky build would work better if you want to mitigate the reliance on twitch reflexes?

 

Click-to-walk and twitch go extremely badly together, which I guess is my biggest problem with the entire genre, and it mainly stems from click-to-[redacted]-walk. You want to give me dodge or die twitch, you give me [redacted] keyboard movement.

 

ASDW keys work just fine, so I have no complaints in this case. But click to walk annoys me as well, but it's hardly a universal thing in the genre. If you are using ranged weapons, there's generally even a way to prevent it (typically it involves holding down the shift key while you attack).

My problem is simply that I'm not good at anything that may require quickly shifting visual focus or focusing on fast moving objects trying to click on them as they move. I've never been good at that. This is not a problem that originally became known to me through video games -- it's something I've had all my life. A teacher of mine discovered the problem from when I took my very first standardized test, with those tiny circles to fill in, though I learned to adapt in that case -- those dots tend not to move very fast, fortunately. I learned to just slow down and be careful and that handled the problem pretty well once I put my mind to it. Later, I had lots of problems transitioning from operating systems like DOS and VMS to Windows and the like, because of the issues with clicking on radio buttons and tiny Xs and selecting things from scrolling menus.

I'm not INCAPABLE of playing action games, I'm just not good at it, because my eyes don't focus fast enough. They are just slow. Spamming attacks until nothing is left moving can work really well at times. But don't ever ask me what happened on the screen, because I couldn't tell you. It's just a blur to me.

 

Oops, I played this some this evening and reallized that the game DOES NOT use ASDW to move lol. I don't know why my memory told me that it did lol.

In any case, I did try creating a tank-like character and he's doing great, going sword and shield and using Cleave as his main swarm-killing attack. His AC gives him great survivability. Main difficulty is that things die SOOO slowly (to be expected), and he's always running out of mana far too fast. Other games usually get around the warrior mana problem by calling it something else (such as energy or stamina) and allowing warriors to have that particular resource -- it's effectively not any different than making mana equally available to warriors, but it just sounds nicer than a warrior dealing with mana. There's really no warrior mana passives anywhere near Marrauder on the skill web.

BTW, what the hell should I be doing with all of these skill gems that I can't use? Things like Fire Arrow (requires me to wield a bow), and 2 OR 3 copies of detonate corpse (a dex-based skill so no good for a marrauder) plus one other that requires the wrong weapon type. I actually had detonate corpse equipped until its dex requirement got too high.

 

Trade them with other players, would be my recommendation.

Have you given Righteous Fire a look for tank damage? It's dangerous but with large fire resist you can roast masses of weaker enemies quite fast with it. It probably doesn't fit so well into the build you're currently pursuing but it's worth keeping in mind.

 

I checked and Righteous Fire is Int-Based, so yeah, it's probably not great for my build (but I can always try a Templar at some point, or I suppose I could take it and not level it very far. It just seems to me that to pursue it would take a commitment in a completely different direction.

BTW, while researching this, I saw that Cleave requires dexterity at some point. I'll either have to go down the dex, route after the gem hits level 5+, or at some point I'll have to consider finding an AE skill to replace it. Sweep is totally strength-based and very similar but it requires a 2-hander, so that also will change the complexion of things.

Y'see, that's why the game needs a total respec option lol.

I haven't gone down far so I could always recreate the character as a duelist -- that might solve the problem quite handily.

 

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...0vrRz_gryRedjl_6T15tqPT7E9ndi5PGEY8QVPQ999Q==

This actually gives me enough diversity in stats with a Marrauder that I don't need to restart. I'm still learning...