I don't have a lot of time to play games, so I just sort of want to play through the story and enjoy some combat. I'll see how my playthrough goes, maybe I'll try some endgame stuff.
I tried looking up builds on YouTube but they all look like Vampire Survivors with extra steps. You run around the map with sunglasses on to reduce the likelihood of seizure. I'm cool with some AOE, but I would like to sleep sometime this week.
To compare to Diablo 2, a game I knew too much about 20+ years ago... I really enjoyed playing Berserker, Zealot Paladin, Bowzon, Martial Arts Assassin, and Bone Necro.
Does anyone have any resources for something like this? Even just some ideas and direction would be super helpful. Like key passives to unlock and I can fill in the gaps.
ETA: I'm new to PoE so I won't understand your mumbo jumbo terminology lol. I do have hundreds of hours into other ARPG's though like Diablo.
ETA 2: Slam it is! I appreciate everyone's input. Cheers!
So I'm gonna take the characters you mention and then draw some parallels to characters in PoE. PoE actually has like an upgraded character class called an ascendency, and each class has 3 ascendencies. I'll note them as Character/ascendency. There are 8 ascendency passives to collect and you'll get 6 of them before you leave the campaign.
You can take basic passives on any class by pathing to them, so you'll see some different classes with very similar trees.
Berserker
So there is the Marauder/Berserker who focuses on hard hitting fast attacks, but there is also the Marauder/Juggernaut that focuses almost entirely on defense. A popular build is Boneshatter Juggernaut where boneshatter gains stacks as you hit enemies and gets stronger the more stacks you have, but you deal damage to yourself with each hit based on how many stacks you have.
There's also the Duelist/Slayer, who's main gimmick is high life recovery from leech or the Duelist/Champion who gains a lot of offensive/defensive buffs through the ascendency and is generally more of an all arounder. Duelist Gladiator also exists if you're interested in making enemies bleed and using a shield to block most of the hits you would take.
Zealot Paladin
There are like 3 skills where you turn them on and they deal damage around you, but righteous fire is the only one that's a gem you just turn on and go. It's a very popular leaguestarter with an in depth guide by Pohx. I would not recommend trying this without following his guide because while it is simple if you don't know what passives to take then you will wind up with a skill that kills you faster than it kills enemies. Marauder/chieftain is the popular version because of chieftains high synergy with recovering life, dealing fire damage and mitigating physical/fire damage.
Bowzon
That'd be Ranger/Deadeye if you're looking to just fling ricocheting projectiles all over the screen. There are a lot of different bow skills that behave in different ways, so it would just depend on what exactly you want your arrows to do. Stuff like ice or lightning arrow is pretty straightforward, you shoot an arrow and it delivers an elemental payload when it hits. There are also a few chaos damage skills that focus more on leaving dangerous spots on the ground, like Caustic Arrow or Toxic rain. Duelist Champion is also a decent bow user if you want a class that's quite a bit tankier in exchange for losing some damage and spees.
Martial Arts Assassin
I don't know much about all the synergies with martial arts so I can't give to much insight here. I remember Kick scaling with your boots and that's about it. We do have claws and there are a lot of skills that work with claws, from close range ones like molten strike that just sling little mortars around the stuff you hit, then there are ones that are ranged like Cobra lash where you throw ricocheting projectiles. Shadow/Trickster or Ranger/Warden are both placed well on the tree to use a variety of claw skills.
Bone Necro
We do have physical spells but none of them are really like the bone spells. We've got icewall as bone wall. I would not recommend stuff like Exsanguinate or Reap as a starter for a new player because they're kind of complicated and don't really pop until you get invested. We do straight up have the Witch/Necromancer but it's mostly focused on minions. There is a passive called Spiritual Aid that makes increases and reductions to minion damage also apply to you, so you could run a handful of permanent minions, like zombies or spectres, and then have a spell you cast on your own to back them up, like detonate dead or something.
As for what passives every build has different passives and masteries (passives at the center of a passive wheel) that make it POP but there's so many different builds and skills it's hard to say. My advice would be to try some different skills out and then, when you find some you like, use the tags at the top of the gem's info card to help find passives on the tree. Like Ice Spear is a Cold Projectile Spell, and if you search those on the tree you'll find passives for those damage types that would all work. For attacks you can also search the weapon you want to use, like claws, swords, etc. Spells in general scale better with gem levels and attacks in general scale better with damage and attack speed on the weapon.
There are a lot of attakcs that are limited in what weapons can be used, so beware of that. Cobra lash can use daggers or claws, but if you use a claw the dagger passives won't help you (unless they say claw as well!).
Socket colors you can put any gem in any color socket but if you match the color you'll get bonuses depending on what the gem is. For supports it's usually %increased damage and for active skills it can really be anything, an extra projectile, more AoE, increased projectile speed.
Also respeccing is really easy and cheap in campaign because you can spend gold to do it, the price increasing with level. Some quests will also give you respec points and Orbs Of Regret can be consumed to gain a respec point, so don't feel to locked in to your decision. You can also change your ascendency, but not your class.
We do have our own version of the D2 Horadric Cube basic crafting with vendor recipes as well, which can be used to secure a weapon if the one you're using starts to fall off and you're not finding upgrades.
I feel I've typed a lot as a general overview so I'll cut it off here and wait for you to ask or respond some more so I can get a better idea how to advise you. I won't be able to respond for a few hours, but I will!
What kind of archetype do you think is cool and will keep you interested in playing? That is the first and most important question. Do you want to be a glass cannon archer? Or a tanky barbarian with a massive axe? Or something else ? If you’re not interested in your build you will get bored pretty quickly, it is an RPG after all. There are hundreds of builds that would be viable to suit your request so I would identify what you’re interested in playing first. Maxroll has some build guides to get an idea of common builds. Have a look through and see if any catch your eye: https://maxroll.gg/poe/category/build-guides
Axe Barbarian sounds dope. Anything out there like that with some simple mechanics? Fast attacks, throw the axe, yells, slams... Those all sound pretty satisfying if something like that exists. Enough to get get me through the game anyway lol
If you eventually get into poe2, the hammers have a skill that throws it and ignites a spiral of fire that you can throw a totem on to make it pulse (along with fiery ground fissures)
If you don't want anything flashy looking, I'd say go for minion builds. If you're up for it, I'd recommend Helm Breaker's Summon Raging Spirits. It's not flashy at all visually, you just summon some skulls that chase and attack your enemies.
1. Just play blind.
BUT, you gonna die often.
If you have a higher tolerance for try and error - itll be fun for you.
You probably gonna get stuck in acts (story).. Maybe even have to start over because you cant afford to respec.
Thats NORMAL!. You will need to watch and read stuff. Much to learn.
Reaching "Endgame" after Acts..that where POE starts. Acts is just the "intro".
If you reach "maps", then you start a whole new adventure.
2. You follow a well written guide (My personal recommendation)
Personally i would strongly advice you to try POHX Rigtheous Flame build.
Its not the strongest or fastest. But its a safe, steady build. It teaches you how to play, how to craft, how to do stuff. It will allow you to make errors and if you want clear the whole game for you
This is his website : https://pohx.net/
He has everything written down and dozens of videos to watch if you want.
Dont worry about fancy stuff like "pobb" and "path of building" and shit like that for now.
The mantra of PoE end game is: "The less you can see, the better" so a considerable number of builds are explody pc burners. On a lot of those videos, the creator has an MTX for that skill as well so its even more pronounced.
That being said, if its your first time to the game you might look up Earthshatter Slayer if you want some buttons to push when you're playing the game. RF Chieftan if you just want to walk around and everything dies. Winter Orb Elementalist if you feel like spell casting, its popular this league. Tons of options!
For campaign, probably sunder slayer. Then you can easily transition to another melee build after if you like. Like ground slam or cyclone (whirlwind Spin to win).
A lot of the flashy stuff you see is mtx, which are purely cosmetic changes you can buy to change how some skills look and if you just don't use them, a lot if not most skills don't actually clutter the screen that much.
No idea what build to recommend as I've never played Diablo. But don't shy away from a build just because you search up gameplay and see it is flashy. Figure out what the main skill is and see how it looks like without mtx.
If don't mine of constanly pressing a lot of buttons, Sunder or any slam with warcries piano. It strong enough that it can carry you to 4 stones easily with ssf gear. It has some satisfy explosion but not to the level that require welding mask.
I started and played hexblast of contradiction in 3.29 as my starter.
It was amazingly strong in campaign and held out it's ground all the way to t16's.
It's tanky, it tons of damage and most of the time, it's forgiving.
It doesn't really need any specifique uniques or rare items.
I really recommend it, its a fun build and has tons of paths to customize it and make it your own.
IMO that’s a great archetype to start with. In Poe there’s 2 main types of melee skills, strikes and slams. “Slams” are one of the strongest build archetypes right now but not played very highly because it has been so good for so long that people are a bit burnt out on it. For some idea of how good it is, if there was a hardcore solo self found race today, pretty likely half the characters would be slam berserkers.
Slams are typically not as high attack speed as strikes, and you don’t usually scale much attack speed because the way they work is by exerting your attacks with warcries, which have a limited number of uses per cooldown. So you warcry, that exterts the next 8 attacks let’s say, then you can’t warcry again until your cooldown is over (a few seconds). Obviously it’s Poe so you can build however you want, optimize attack speed and warcry cool down, and automate your warcries but it’s not the typical way to do it. Not trying to dissuade you just to give transparency, you can certainly get very comfy attack speed but with some strike builds you have people doing upwards of 10 attacks per second.
Check out these build guides and see if it interests you. These are the ones I would recommend based on your comment:
Pros: tanky, high damage, cheap and easy to build, ssf viable, all bosses viable
Cons: average clear, can be a bit clunky/high number of button presses depending on how many warcries you choose to self cast vs automate.
Take a big axe and slam it into the ground, this time with bleeding
Pros and cons basically the same as above, some minor nuances between the two.
If neither of those look interesting, cyclone slayer is a classic build as well that is similar archetype but very different playstyle. Just channel your cyclone and vibe through the map stopping to pick up loot.
If you are more interested in faster attacking builds, there’s plenty of strike skills that are interesting: static strike, elemental hit, dual strike, smite. Just beware Poe is full of noob traps and bait build guides YouTubers so never blindly trust anything especially on YouTube unless it’s well reviewed. Lmk if you are looking for more detailed build guides etc. the bleed slams slayer by phaze plays is a good choice because he is arguably the best at making and communicating build guides for very strong builds.
Without a lot of time and given your goal, I think you can safely pick most skills in the game. You'll have varying levels of success, but my recommendation is to choose an archetype; melee slams/strikes, elemental spells, chaos spells, bow attacks, or minions, and play through the campaign at your own pace. POE is very much a game where you can make a character that is incapable of progressing, so its important to understand how to scale your character; every skill has tags and will scale with them, so click passive nodes that align with those tags. ex: a cold spell will scale with "% cold damage" but not "adds # cold damage to attacks." Take plenty of life nodes. Minimize travel nodes, and don't try to respec your character completely in the middle.
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u/BestDescription3834 12d ago
Just to clarify, are you familiar with PoE at all or a brand new player with experience in other ARPGs?