New League Info! Torment & Bloodlines & PvP & HYPEEEEE

Read it Here!

In other news I will be away from my computer for the weekend so I won't be posting again till Monday. 

Have a nice weekend and... "Stay a while and listen"...

Flame Totem Test Build - 04

Today I had a couple of hours this morning so I plowed through normal difficulty and finished the session in act 1 cruel. I now have dual flame totem linked to LMP and Faster casting. I finally have become a dual flame totem build!

So today I Worked up and through Dominus. I managed to get my first master to level 3. As you can see in the second picture, I have now gotten a hideout. Followed by killing Piety and Dominus using searing bond. This was fairly easy to be honest, not quick though. Feeling good! p.s. I also took blood magic.

Click to Enlarge

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

Flame Totem Test Build - 03

I managed to fins a couple of hours today to play a bit on my marauder and managed to get quite a bit of progress. I am now in act 3 and finally switched from Spectral Throw to Searing Bond + Ancestral Bond. Although I'm not quite at Flame Totem yet, I am finally getting a feel as to what it's like playing a totem build.

Along the way I fought a few exiles and had my first RIP. I guess you should still pay attention even playing on normal. Finished up the session at level 26, not too shabby but still in the early stages. 

Click to Enlarge

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

Currency Flipping

Here is a quote I saw on a post on the PoE reddit /r/Pathofexile which I thought was pretty interesting so I wanted to share it. Here it is:

People have been playing this game for a long time, and if they know the market they can flip currency by buying when stuff is cheap. Divine orbs are a good example, in new leagues (this one was an exception because of the elreon mod) divine orbs can be as low as 5 chaos each. Investing when the price is low allows you to sell high later.

This guy may have been hoarding these divine's for the last 2 years, they're at an all time high now. Or, he's hacking.

 Sorry for the short post today... "Stay a while and listen"...

Flame Totem Test Build - 02

Sadly I didn't get a lot of time to play today because I have been busy with work and getting other things together but I did find about 30 minuites in which I managed to take a few combat photos and progress a couple more levels, so basically I achieved nothing (apart from the new footer image!). Hope you enjoy!

Click to enlarge

"Stay a while and listen..."

Flame Totem Test Build - 01

So I have just started a new character so I can test out weather I like the play style of a totem build or not. A while back I created a second account to make a MF character to cull but I never got round to it so I have very little currency/items. This is a good test bed for a new league. So far I haven't had a lot of time to play, probably around an hour, but I managed to kill Mervail and get into act 2. I'll be updating my progress as I go on. Here is where I am at the moment. In the next update I will be doing more screen shots because I have found you can press F8 in game to screen shot. If anyone wants to play with me I am called Opaque_Martem.

click to enlarge

Hope you enjoy this new format..."Stay a while and listen"...

Build Review - 1.2 Tanky Dual Flame Totems - Beyond/HC viable

The Build Thread

This looks to me to be a reasonably solid build. Having a look at the tree it's focusing on life and taking the standard route for damage. I especially like the tree because it passes EE which I plan on taking.

The key difference in this build is it's use of Cybil's Paw unique

The +(5 to 8) Life gained foe each enemy hit by your Spells Combined with the fast attacks of the flame totem makes it much tankier!

New Skill Tree Teaser!!!!

Well now, here is something very interesting! Teaser 1 / Teaser 2 . The original post from GGG can be found here, it also contains all the old build of the week videos which is use full.

EDIT:
one awesome redditor superimposed the teasers over the existing skill tree. Image 1 / Image 2

"Stay a while and listen"...

Elemental Equilibrium & Ancestral Bond

So I was thinking about how to use these two keystones in the same build. While watching Lifting Nerd Bro's stream I asked him how I could. He suggested using Ice Nova + Trap which would work perfectly. 

After having a look at a couple of different skill trees I went back to Lifting Nerd Bro's Manly Marauder build. This skill tree path directly past the EE keystone so it will be super easy to pick it up. Of course in the new leagues there will be changes but hopefully i'll be able to piece this skill tree back together after the patch.

I also looked at a CI alternative, again this will be an old tree. It's a 120 point build so I'll never get close to it but I think it looks pretty solid.

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

Flame Totem 3 Dragons - Review

So as I previously said I would do an initial review of my thoughts on the previously mentioned builds. This post is looking at using Flame Totem with Three Dragons unique to change the burn damage to shock stacking.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/884155

First let's look at the Three Dragons unique Helmet.

This unique item definitely earns the title of "unique". So as you can see different elemental status ailments change due to the kind of elemental damage you do. In our case the burn damage changes to shock stacks. This doesn't mean that fire does lightning damage however. The other nice thing about the helmet that doesn't make it just a gimmick is the addition o 26 to 30 all elemental resistance. The helmet is missing a lot of other stats such as life and armor but that's something we can make up with other items.

From playing for a little while I have seen a lot of people playing fire and ice builds but for some reason lightning seems a little less popular. This may have changed now with the addition of lightning tendrils. I think shock stacking is something that will aid the majority of parties.

I also like the way it uses the Power charge on Critical Gem with Ice Spear. I think this is a potent combination.

Definitely something I'm thinking of trying. Maybe not at first but I may transition into it when I have some currency. Go Chaos Inoculation and Three Dragons when I have the gear and respec points totaled up.

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

News whilst I was away.

I've been away for the last few days and there has been some exciting announcements on the new leagues! Take a look.

"Today's news post covers a preliminary timeline for when we're planning the release of the 1.3.0 update, new challenge leagues and upcoming race/PvP seasons. 

The following times are all in the Pacific Timezone (21 hours behind New Zealand).

Thursday November 20 (1pm): Beyond/Rampage challenge leagues end
Thursday November 20 (11pm): Race Season Nine ends
Monday November 24 (3pm?): Prizes awarded for Race Season Nine
Friday November 28 (5pm?): One-week Rampage/Beyond race starts
Friday December 5 (5pm?): One-week Rampage/Beyond race ends
Friday December 12 (5pm?): 1.3.0 Released and new Challenge Leagues start
Monday December 15: PvP Season One and Race Season Ten both start
December 20-21: PvP Season One Swiss Tournament Weekend 1
December 27-28: PvP Season One Swiss Tournament Weekend 2
January 3-4: PvP Season One Swiss Tournament Weekend 3
January 10-11: PvP Season One Swiss Tournament Weekend 4. Race Season Ten ends
January 17-18: PvP Season One Finals Weekend (for victors of the weekend swiss tournaments)
Around Monday January 19: PvP Season Two and Race Season Eleven both start"

"Stay a while and listen"...

Note to Self - Read These

Here are a few builds I found quickly on the forums. I'm going to read through them eventually and list parts that I like from them and parts I don't. Here's the list:

Fireball for beginners
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/558896

Tri Curse Burn Build
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1068387

Flame Totem magic find
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802

Glass cannon crit Flame totem
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041994

Flame Totem 3 dragons
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/884155

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

Blogger Profile

In case you were curious this is where I got my blogger profile from. It is the portrait of the witch then edited in MS Paint. I drew over the picture with the pencil tool to make it look it's a stencil.

"Stay a while and listen"...

Thoughts on new builds

So i have been looking at a few different totem build and I think, depending on the patch for the new leagues, I will play a dual flame totem build like seen in this video by LiftingNerdBro on Youtube . I also saw the video Ghudda posted about his fireball trap build and thought that his use of Elemental Equilibrium was really interesting. I like the safety that the dual totems give and the damage of EE, but does the lack of damage from Ancestral Bond mean that EE wont proc?

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

Previous Success

You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you I dropped 2 exalted orbs when leveling my first character in Rampage. Well it happened while I was leveling my EK shadow. I managed to get myself some good gear such as Geofri's Crest and Belly of the Beast among others. This was the first time I was really experimenting with what I would consider a costly build. All of my previous builds didn't have more than a few chaos to rub between them. It was really cool for me to get a start in trading.

I had dabbled a bit here and there but nothing with the idea of making currency though it, just getting items I needed. Now it's incredible for me to think that I went so long without using such a vital part of the game. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of fun to be had playing some self found builds but trading makes up a huge portion of the game, especially if you want to get into the higher maps.

Before my EK shadow I was playing a fireball witch. I was following a guide that was fairly loose and was looking at a few other guides at the same time. I managed to get into merciless docks and farmed a bit and then also managed to solo Piety. I never did Dominus solo, frankly because the way I built the character sucked. I had on Voidbringer gloves which I thought looked really cool. The mechanic on them is interesting where you can get huge damage but all your skills cost a lot of mana. Honestly I should ave probably sold these and bought something better but I wanted to experiment. This was the downfall of this character.

In the new leagues I want to try something new. Perhaps totems or a summoner. I'm going to have a look now and see what I can find for incineration and then try to create my own build. Hopefully some of the reader will be able to give me a push in the right direction when I lead myself astray.

Thanks for reading... "Stay a while and listen"...

New Beginnings

Thing being the first post means I feel I should explain what I want to do. I enjoy video games a huge amount. I have played a lot of Xbox and a lot of PC titles. Diablo 2 was probably on of the games I had played for the longest time (apart from Runescape, but I was young then) and when Diablo 3 came out I was hungry to play the update in the Diablo franchise. I plugged about 80 hours into it in the first week and played it for around a month afterwards. Now I am bored with it.

This lead me to finding Path of Exile to feed my hunger. Here is where the blog begins. I want to document through this blog my experiences in the new leagues in Path of Exile which will be starting soon. 

I am by no means an excellent player but I do think that I'm decent. I have tried a couple of builds I put together myself but only really found success through following other guides. In the lead up to the new season I will try to theory craft myself something that I can play in the softcore league till maps, and I will probably find something that looks fun to me to try in hardcore. I do play predominantly in softcore but find hardcore a lot of fun. The reason for me is because of time. I usually don't have a huge amount of time to play so when I die on hardcore it really hits me hard.

hopefully I'll be able to bring you my best, worst and weirdest moments.

So please... "Stay a while and listen"...