I regretfully have to record the end of my dual Arc totem summoner witch's time in the Hardcore league. She died to me panicing under an unfortunate fact of life for summoners, you just don't have enough buttons to do everything you want. I decided that I would try to kill Piety before switching back to my low life Witch. Everything was going fine until I got to the bottem level of Lunaris. I had just gotten started when a rough fight with Tentacle Miscreations had wiped out most of my zombies and spectres. I switched action slots to revive more zombies when more Tentacle Miscreations attacked from the other direction. When I tried to move out of the line of fire, I went nowhere because I foolishly used my move button as a temporary home the Raise Zombie skill. Then I hesitated about what to do. If I had immediately lightning Warped, or immediately gone for Alt-F4, I probably would have been fine. Even summoning skeletons to use as cannon fodder might have given my a moment to collect myself. By the time I settled on Alt-F4 it was too late, but probably not by much. I thought I saw the Resurrect button, but I wasn't 100% sure until I restarted the game and saw my character listed in Standard League.
I'm really torn about what to do next. I wanted to see how the character would do mapping. While it wasn't a super strong build for leveling, I think it should start to do better as the minions come much more into their own at higher levels. An idea occured to me while writing this which was to grind out a level in the docks, then try for a Piety kill again. Assuming I survive that, move into mapping with the understanding that the character is going to be deleted if she dies again. It sounds like there should be some substantial improvements for summoners in the POE 2.0, so I'm OK with trying a new summoner after that goes live.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
Low Life is Amazing!
I killed Piety before I switched to low life, but I did have the two skill points from killing her in reserve. I also a slightly leveled Blood Magic gem, so I decided to just see what combination of Auras was needed to qualify as low life since I hit level 35 in Lunaris and could equip the gem. I was actually punching numbers into a calculator to make sure I didn't accidently kill myself by activating something that reserved too much life. I very much reccomend the following calculator.
So, once I got onto low life without killing myself, I then started crafting my Redbeak swords to have three sockets each and Chroming them so that the sockets were useful. I also needed to use the two points from Piety to get extra strength and Ghost Reaver. Once I had done that, I felt compelled to try the build out, but wasn't confident in my survivability. I went back to Act II and finished the Fellshrine quests. Since I was one shotting everything in such low level content, I decided to run City of Sarn. I was pretty much one or two shotting everything there also, so I decided to give Docks a try. I wasn't one shotting things any longer, but I was usually getting one cast kills with Ball Lightning linked to Spell Echo.
I was clearing Docks so quickly, I ran it a few times to level to 37 so I could equip Zahndethus' Cassock. That caused some further equipment and aura changes as I had more ES from my gear, but my elemental resistances were pretty much garbage. I started running Purity of Elements instead of Discipline, which did cost me ES, but having the much improved chaos resistance gave me some piece of mind, but more on that later. You can't mindlessly face tank, but you kill things quickly enough that you usually just have to dodge a little bit of damange before your foes are dead.
Since I handled Docks, I went into the Ebony Baracks, and killed Gravicius again. It was really easy with as much damage as I do on low life. Then I ran into the Imperial Gardan intending to just get the waypoint. The Porcupine Goliaths were actually a bit scary when they died. Getting hit with two sets of quills at once does three to four hundred points of damage, not fun. However, retreating after firing a few Ball Lightning orbs into a pack seemed safe enough.
I really was going to quit after I got the Library Waypoint, but I found The Sceptre of God first, so I decided that Waypoint would work just as well. However, I found the stairs to the Upper Sceptre before I found the Waypoint. Along the way, I had devastated Caliga the Imperatrix with Lightning Tendrils linked in with Concentrated Effect. Between that and Pain Attunement, when Lightning Tendrils leveled it went from 1100 DPS to 1600 DPS. Even Act I bosses don't stand up to that kind of damage for long. The listed DPS on Ball Lightning is about 250, but since I'm using Spell Echo, most monsters get zapped about four times per cast, so it's pretty punishing as well.
Anyway, I decided to keep going up. You can guess what happened from here. I made it to Dominus, and decided to see how the fight would go. I breezed through the first set of three uniques. I started the fight by dropping a Flame Strike in the area they start in, and that did a massive amount of damage before I really started fighting.
When the second wave of minibosses spawned, Kali went down almost instantaneously, but Alal almost killed me. I had 59% chaos resistance, and needed every bit of it. I'm not sure what tiny little bit of life I had when she died, but it's was probably less than 50, maybe even less than 20. I probably hit a life potion just in time. After that Orcus went down very easily. I also had an easy time with Dominus. Normally fighting his is a matter of patiently shaving off health, but every time I caught him with Ball Lightning or even better, Lightning Tendrils, he lost major chunks of health. In his second form I did run through my portal once just because I didn't feel comfortable with the amount of ES I lost during a one of the bleed attacks. I might have been able to regenerate it by leeching, but didn't want to risk it. Once I had my flasks and ES refilled, I went back and quickly ended the fight with Lightning Tendrils.
A large portion of your safety in this build comes from killing things quickly. I probably should have done the Dominus fight as hybrid life and ES because of the chaos damage coming from Alal. However, other than that, the build feels pretty safe on low life otherwise. Usually a single dodge is enough to stay out of trouble. For example, the Rogue Exile witch with Minion Instability is usually a huge pain and very dangerous. I killed myself a few times in standard before realizing that I was dealing with Minion Instability. With this low life build, Ball Lightning kills the minions at a safe distance and the piercing nature of the spell means that I'm damaging the exile through her wall of minions.
Here's the skill tree I've got now. My next goals are to get the nodes to boost elemental resistance at the same time picking up ES and Evasion. I also want to transition over to Amathest rings so that my chaos resistance by the time I need to face the Weaver and Black Death in act II. To that same end, I'll probably try to pick up 1% Life Regen so that if I do take a bit of chaos damage, it starts regenerating immediately. I really haven't had this much fun in a while playing PoE, as the length of this post might suggest.
Skill Tree
So, once I got onto low life without killing myself, I then started crafting my Redbeak swords to have three sockets each and Chroming them so that the sockets were useful. I also needed to use the two points from Piety to get extra strength and Ghost Reaver. Once I had done that, I felt compelled to try the build out, but wasn't confident in my survivability. I went back to Act II and finished the Fellshrine quests. Since I was one shotting everything in such low level content, I decided to run City of Sarn. I was pretty much one or two shotting everything there also, so I decided to give Docks a try. I wasn't one shotting things any longer, but I was usually getting one cast kills with Ball Lightning linked to Spell Echo.
I was clearing Docks so quickly, I ran it a few times to level to 37 so I could equip Zahndethus' Cassock. That caused some further equipment and aura changes as I had more ES from my gear, but my elemental resistances were pretty much garbage. I started running Purity of Elements instead of Discipline, which did cost me ES, but having the much improved chaos resistance gave me some piece of mind, but more on that later. You can't mindlessly face tank, but you kill things quickly enough that you usually just have to dodge a little bit of damange before your foes are dead.
Since I handled Docks, I went into the Ebony Baracks, and killed Gravicius again. It was really easy with as much damage as I do on low life. Then I ran into the Imperial Gardan intending to just get the waypoint. The Porcupine Goliaths were actually a bit scary when they died. Getting hit with two sets of quills at once does three to four hundred points of damage, not fun. However, retreating after firing a few Ball Lightning orbs into a pack seemed safe enough.
I really was going to quit after I got the Library Waypoint, but I found The Sceptre of God first, so I decided that Waypoint would work just as well. However, I found the stairs to the Upper Sceptre before I found the Waypoint. Along the way, I had devastated Caliga the Imperatrix with Lightning Tendrils linked in with Concentrated Effect. Between that and Pain Attunement, when Lightning Tendrils leveled it went from 1100 DPS to 1600 DPS. Even Act I bosses don't stand up to that kind of damage for long. The listed DPS on Ball Lightning is about 250, but since I'm using Spell Echo, most monsters get zapped about four times per cast, so it's pretty punishing as well.
Anyway, I decided to keep going up. You can guess what happened from here. I made it to Dominus, and decided to see how the fight would go. I breezed through the first set of three uniques. I started the fight by dropping a Flame Strike in the area they start in, and that did a massive amount of damage before I really started fighting.
When the second wave of minibosses spawned, Kali went down almost instantaneously, but Alal almost killed me. I had 59% chaos resistance, and needed every bit of it. I'm not sure what tiny little bit of life I had when she died, but it's was probably less than 50, maybe even less than 20. I probably hit a life potion just in time. After that Orcus went down very easily. I also had an easy time with Dominus. Normally fighting his is a matter of patiently shaving off health, but every time I caught him with Ball Lightning or even better, Lightning Tendrils, he lost major chunks of health. In his second form I did run through my portal once just because I didn't feel comfortable with the amount of ES I lost during a one of the bleed attacks. I might have been able to regenerate it by leeching, but didn't want to risk it. Once I had my flasks and ES refilled, I went back and quickly ended the fight with Lightning Tendrils.
A large portion of your safety in this build comes from killing things quickly. I probably should have done the Dominus fight as hybrid life and ES because of the chaos damage coming from Alal. However, other than that, the build feels pretty safe on low life otherwise. Usually a single dodge is enough to stay out of trouble. For example, the Rogue Exile witch with Minion Instability is usually a huge pain and very dangerous. I killed myself a few times in standard before realizing that I was dealing with Minion Instability. With this low life build, Ball Lightning kills the minions at a safe distance and the piercing nature of the spell means that I'm damaging the exile through her wall of minions.
Here's the skill tree I've got now. My next goals are to get the nodes to boost elemental resistance at the same time picking up ES and Evasion. I also want to transition over to Amathest rings so that my chaos resistance by the time I need to face the Weaver and Black Death in act II. To that same end, I'll probably try to pick up 1% Life Regen so that if I do take a bit of chaos damage, it starts regenerating immediately. I really haven't had this much fun in a while playing PoE, as the length of this post might suggest.
Skill Tree
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Ran a Map with Lady Frankenstein Build
It was a Tropical Island map where monsters reflected physical damage and gained Frenzy Charges I believe. Since I mostly do lightning damage, and it is coming from either totems or minions, that was a decent set of mods, but it took a while to get a set of map mods I liked.
I've cruised through Merciless on this build since the close call in level 3 of the Chamber of Sins. This map was also straightforward. I've had troublesome rogue exiles to deal with in that they wipe out my minions forcing me to retreat and summon new ones, but none of them have given me a cheating death experience while fighting them.
I didn't get a replacement map to drop on this run, but I got decent currency loot. I was looking back at my notes where I would regard killing Piety and running a map as "graduation" for a character concept. I guess I need to stick with this character a little while longer to go through the sewers to get to the Ebony Baracks and Lunaris Temple. However, I've decided to start leveling my budget low life witch. I actually started last night and finished Act I and the very early parts of Act II to hit level 16. I'm going to try to get Sins done tonight and hit about level 20 or so. I'm not running anything special yet on my new witch, just leveling with Lightning Tendrils and supporting that with a bit of Fire Trapping.
I've cruised through Merciless on this build since the close call in level 3 of the Chamber of Sins. This map was also straightforward. I've had troublesome rogue exiles to deal with in that they wipe out my minions forcing me to retreat and summon new ones, but none of them have given me a cheating death experience while fighting them.
I didn't get a replacement map to drop on this run, but I got decent currency loot. I was looking back at my notes where I would regard killing Piety and running a map as "graduation" for a character concept. I guess I need to stick with this character a little while longer to go through the sewers to get to the Ebony Baracks and Lunaris Temple. However, I've decided to start leveling my budget low life witch. I actually started last night and finished Act I and the very early parts of Act II to hit level 16. I'm going to try to get Sins done tonight and hit about level 20 or so. I'm not running anything special yet on my new witch, just leveling with Lightning Tendrils and supporting that with a bit of Fire Trapping.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Into Merciless Act III
This build seems to be picking up steam. Act III may cause me to reassess, but I rolled through act II. The fight with the Vaal Oversoul was really easy. My only brush with death came in Chamber of Sins Level 3 and not from Fidelitis. It was a pack of blue Croaking Chimeral. I had run ahead of my minions because I was feeling good about myself for killing The Black Death without noticing he was there until after he was already under half health. I was probably down to four or five hundred health by the time I got out of harms way with no potions. It was pretty skillless on my part. I kept thinking I still was using a quartz flask instead of using lightning warp. Altogether too close for comfort.
The weaver was a slow fight dealing with the mass of spiders that spawn in Merciless, but somewhat like The Black Death fight in reverse, I ended up finishing off the weaver without realizing it. The joys of totems and minions. Here's my skill tree at Level 61. I'm close to leveling, so I'll probably run City of Sarn once or twice to get level 62. I'm probably going to put off the sewers until later. I'm not wild about the idea of facing potentially large amounts of Chaos damage until I make the switch to CI, and I'm going to need a lot more energy shield for that. I did swap out a lot of gear after finishing Act II. I probably should have done that ahead of time, but I didn't even realize I wasn't running around without max resistances.
Here's my current skill tree. I've got about 1700 ES and 2000 life in my current gear.
Skill Tree
The weaver was a slow fight dealing with the mass of spiders that spawn in Merciless, but somewhat like The Black Death fight in reverse, I ended up finishing off the weaver without realizing it. The joys of totems and minions. Here's my skill tree at Level 61. I'm close to leveling, so I'll probably run City of Sarn once or twice to get level 62. I'm probably going to put off the sewers until later. I'm not wild about the idea of facing potentially large amounts of Chaos damage until I make the switch to CI, and I'm going to need a lot more energy shield for that. I did swap out a lot of gear after finishing Act II. I probably should have done that ahead of time, but I didn't even realize I wasn't running around without max resistances.
Here's my current skill tree. I've got about 1700 ES and 2000 life in my current gear.
Skill Tree
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
A Minor Setback
Thankfully it was minor, and not a RIP. Merveil gave me problems again by spawning too many adds. I used the same trick I did on Dominus by getting a new crop of minions and spectres, but between all the adds and the rain of ice AOE, I couldn't make progress. In fact, she got me down to half health several times and sent me running for my portal.
So, I gave up on the fight and ran Coves a few times to level. I found some boots that improved my overall resistance levels, so that should really help when I get back to Merveil. I also swapped out Faster Casting for Lightning Pen on my Arc totem. It makes the tool-tip damage go down, but I think it makes the overall damage go up more than faster casting because of the Less Casting Speed mod totems have. So hopefully with an extra skill node and some modified totems, I'll have a better time with Merveil on my next attempt.
UPDATE:
The 2nd try at taking down Merveil went much better than the 1st. I'm not sure it was the Lightning Penetration gem or not, but the fight just went smoothly from the start. Maybe it was better totem placement. Either way, I got through her health much more quickly and got her into her second form before she could overwhelm me with summons.
So, I gave up on the fight and ran Coves a few times to level. I found some boots that improved my overall resistance levels, so that should really help when I get back to Merveil. I also swapped out Faster Casting for Lightning Pen on my Arc totem. It makes the tool-tip damage go down, but I think it makes the overall damage go up more than faster casting because of the Less Casting Speed mod totems have. So hopefully with an extra skill node and some modified totems, I'll have a better time with Merveil on my next attempt.
UPDATE:
The 2nd try at taking down Merveil went much better than the 1st. I'm not sure it was the Lightning Penetration gem or not, but the fight just went smoothly from the start. Maybe it was better totem placement. Either way, I got through her health much more quickly and got her into her second form before she could overwhelm me with summons.
Monday, May 4, 2015
Into Merciless
As I was ascending the Scepter of God, it became clear that I wasn't going to quite hit level 54 just in the tower. I'm really glad that I dropped a portal and got the last little bit of XP I needed to level in the docks. The fight was chalenging enough that I'm glad I took the time to grab the notable Light of Divinity. It's a good sized damage boost, so without it, the fight would have been longer and more dangerous.
Here's my skill tree at the time I beat Dominus. It's not quite ideal in my opinion. Skill Tree It would have been better if I had gone ahead and taken extra mana instead of a strength node on the way to a totem wheel. The reason I say this is that I dropped Clarity and switched to Discipline. On one of the trips back to town, I had to pick up a mana potion. Still, this did work pretty well. I breazed through all of Act III.
However, Cruel Dominus is much tougher than the rest of the level. I actually had an easy time of Dominus's bodyguards. Two of the first three were down to less than half health in the time it took to set a few lightning traps. The dual specters help in the offensive output. They didn't make it through the entire fight, but they are pretty durable now as long as they aren't fighting a boss or half the guardians of a strongbox.
Now, I did need to refill potions several times after getting Dominus to his final form. One of those was a close shave that had me running for the portal almost as soon as I spawned it. The dangerous part of that fight is that if there are too many tentacle miscreations on the screen at once you can get hammered just coming through your portal. After that close call, I made sure to go into docks and raise a full set of minions before going back to the roof of the tower. With enough meat shields, returning to the battle wasn't nearly as dangerous.
By getting past Dominus in Cruel, especially solo, I've accomplished one of the main goals for this character. When I was first playing PoE, this was a huge roadblock. Things could be going fine in Act III, then half a dozen deaths trying to move into Merciless. The next major stumbling block I remember, other than the general increase in nastiness in Act III, was the Weaver's Chambers. The number of adds is insane. I have Brutus and Merveil to look forward to in the meantime, but that's the next big chalenge I'm expecting.
Here's my skill tree at the time I beat Dominus. It's not quite ideal in my opinion. Skill Tree It would have been better if I had gone ahead and taken extra mana instead of a strength node on the way to a totem wheel. The reason I say this is that I dropped Clarity and switched to Discipline. On one of the trips back to town, I had to pick up a mana potion. Still, this did work pretty well. I breazed through all of Act III.
However, Cruel Dominus is much tougher than the rest of the level. I actually had an easy time of Dominus's bodyguards. Two of the first three were down to less than half health in the time it took to set a few lightning traps. The dual specters help in the offensive output. They didn't make it through the entire fight, but they are pretty durable now as long as they aren't fighting a boss or half the guardians of a strongbox.
Now, I did need to refill potions several times after getting Dominus to his final form. One of those was a close shave that had me running for the portal almost as soon as I spawned it. The dangerous part of that fight is that if there are too many tentacle miscreations on the screen at once you can get hammered just coming through your portal. After that close call, I made sure to go into docks and raise a full set of minions before going back to the roof of the tower. With enough meat shields, returning to the battle wasn't nearly as dangerous.
By getting past Dominus in Cruel, especially solo, I've accomplished one of the main goals for this character. When I was first playing PoE, this was a huge roadblock. Things could be going fine in Act III, then half a dozen deaths trying to move into Merciless. The next major stumbling block I remember, other than the general increase in nastiness in Act III, was the Weaver's Chambers. The number of adds is insane. I have Brutus and Merveil to look forward to in the meantime, but that's the next big chalenge I'm expecting.
Friday, May 1, 2015
Still Cruising with Lady Frankenstein Build
I finished up act two of cruel last night with no difficulties. I did grind out a level by running level 1 of The Chamber of Sins 4-5 times, and I did the Felshrine quest before finishing the act. Other than that I just went through the act like I normally would. I didn't feel like I was rushing, but I might have gotten back to being right at zone level if I hadn't done Fellshire before going into the Vaal pyramid.
The dual Arc Totems worked great against the Vaal Oversoul. I never had to get into Vaal Smash range, and the way Arc works, I was killing the monsters the Oversoul spawns almost automatically. Now there are certainly builds with much higher DPS that could have killed the Oversoul more quickly, but it felt like a very safe kill.
I did run City of Sarn twice, because I was very close to leveling after making it to the Sarn encampment. I also picked up a higher level robe and got pretty good resistance by Alching it, which didn't matter too much since I was already capped, but it will help as I shift into Merciless difficulty and allowed me to play with the links supporting my Zombie gem. I think faster attacks will really boost their attacks quite a bit. I plugged in a LMP gem for my Spectere gem while I was rearranging things.
I'm looking forward to getting this character into Merciless difficulty. I actually came upon the idea of Arc Totems after an attempt at a Spork Witch was killed in Hardcore League by Cruel Dominus. I went back and tried some different skills in Standard, and Arc worked really well.
The dual Arc Totems worked great against the Vaal Oversoul. I never had to get into Vaal Smash range, and the way Arc works, I was killing the monsters the Oversoul spawns almost automatically. Now there are certainly builds with much higher DPS that could have killed the Oversoul more quickly, but it felt like a very safe kill.
I did run City of Sarn twice, because I was very close to leveling after making it to the Sarn encampment. I also picked up a higher level robe and got pretty good resistance by Alching it, which didn't matter too much since I was already capped, but it will help as I shift into Merciless difficulty and allowed me to play with the links supporting my Zombie gem. I think faster attacks will really boost their attacks quite a bit. I plugged in a LMP gem for my Spectere gem while I was rearranging things.
I'm looking forward to getting this character into Merciless difficulty. I actually came upon the idea of Arc Totems after an attempt at a Spork Witch was killed in Hardcore League by Cruel Dominus. I went back and tried some different skills in Standard, and Arc worked really well.
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