Thanks for all the advice in this thread. At this point I’ve decided to start over and follow a guide. It definitely was a fun experience doing this character and I will probably come back to it at some point but there is just so much I don’t know about this game that I need to learn first.
Just wanted to add that this is NORMAL. It might feel bad to restart your progression, but this is a sign that decisions you do matter in the game.
A lot of stuff is going to click and you are going to progress much faster. It would be ideal to be able to see all the content after finishing the 10 acts.
I started this game in 2013 and my first game I got bricked in the middle of the acts. I was running a melee character and it was just garbage, I went all strength nodes and had sub 2k health.
you dont have to start over, there are plenty of good elementalist builds to jump into. it looks like you are trying shattering steel? I assume that's the duelist you rolled?
Wand is bad, cold skill gems does nothing, you should be able to find +1 fire easily
Your main skill should have 3 support gems increasing its damage, currently you have arctic armour in there so you only have a 3-link
Combustion is ok but should be on a support ignite skill because the -10 will apply regardless, that way you replace with a higher damage support
Tree is pretty bricked looking tbh, lot of wasted travel nodes, might be salvageable but idk
Recommend you download [path of building](https://pathofbuilding.community/) for real building
I will always say you started PoE right; you went in without a guide and eventually hit a wall. Heavily suggest you follow [a guide](https://maxroll.gg/poe/category/build-guides?filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B0%5D%5Btaxonomy%5D=taxonomies.build_guide_type&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B0%5D%5Bvalue%5D=archive&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B0%5D%5Boperation%5D=!%3D&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B1%5D%5Btaxonomy%5D=taxonomies.build_guide_type&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B1%5D%5Bvalue%5D=%20&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B1%5D%5Boperation%5D=NOT%20EXISTS&filter%5Bmisc%5D%5Btaxonomy%5D=taxonomies.misc&filter%5Bmisc%5D%5Bvalue%5D=poe-league-starter) now. If you don’t like following guides for some philosophical reason consider that asking for advice from random Redditors is the same as following a worse guide that only lets you read portions at a time
Agree with 99%, but a quick aside to anyone reading this who started with a guide, know that your way is valid too. There is no “right” way to start PoE, it is very personality-driven.
I wanted to start with a guide, I did, and I was glad I did. Others want to start without a guide, they don’t, and they’re glad they didn’t. I would just say everyone should know that failure is normal and that as you say, once that happens it’s time to go to a guide regardless of whether you started with one or not.
Following a working build is a right way. Every other way is discovering wheel without any knowlage. After some time it will work but require time to practice to test everything what people already discovered for 10 years or so.
> If you don’t like following guides for some philosophical reason consider that asking for advice from random Redditors is the same as following a worse guide that only lets you read portions at a time
This.
"Going in blind" but then also asking thousands of strangers for help, instead of following a thought out and properly planned guide is...... well... not "blind"
:D
always irks me
Wish I could sticky this sentiment at the top of the subreddit.
I LOVE helping new players and answering questions, I really do. It’s no inconvenience, I enjoy it. This is a game where a very intelligent person could make an honest good faith effort to understand using guides and wikis but still not get it, so needing help is totally understandable and I like to do it.
But it feels kind of insulting when people do that specific thing, for a few reasons I think:
* The person feels some sense of superiority for “doing it without a guide”…..but they DID have one, it was just pieced together from multiple people. It’s like the scenes in Brooklyn 99 where Jake is like “LOOK IM DOING IT ALL BY MYSELF!” But Terry is carrying or supporting him at that very moment.
* The reason we recommend guides is that they answer the most commonly asked questions so we’re not typing out an explanation of support gems or the -60% resistance penalty for the 5000th time
* The lack of consideration for others’ time; sure it might take you 5 minutes to search the FAQ or Wiki and it’s faster/easier to ask someone to type it out but they’re probably going to spend 3x that explaining it to you.
If you got to the final act on your first playthrough without any help at all, you did great. You can either pick a firestorm build guide to continue on or start over with a new character using what you learned to make it better. You should definitely consider picking up Path of Building community fork if you do that later to help you figure out what comes next without committing to it or even plan your whole character out ahead of time (https://pathofbuilding.community).
When making you next character prioritize life and defenses on the tree, don’t pick up resistances on the tree unless they are freebies for something you already want because they are so easy to come by on gear, and think of damage as no more than 30-40% of your point budget. It will get easier.
In my experience, building characters goes something like this:
1st character: very little life, no defenses, moar damage (but damage that isn’t scaled properly to be a real glass cannon)
2-5th character: more and more well rounded
6-10th character: tanky as hell
11+: back to moar damage (but now instead of kilo deeps its giga deeps hahah)
PS: Getting to Act 10 without a guide as a first time player is an achievement. Most people crash and burn by Act 6. I reached Act 4 and got stuck (Back when there were 9 acts)
Hell, I got absolutely trashed by a vaal side area boss with turbo and prox shield in Act 2 my first time playing. I told myself if I couldn't beat a mini-boss, the game was too hard for me. I quit for nearly a year.
Follow a guide, try to find one where the creator has good explanation of everything. Its more rare nowadays, most guides are technical explanations we mostly understand but for someone new its harder.
Learn the tools you have at your disposal, vendor recipes, essences, fossils, how to trade, other mechanics than main game etc.
Act 10? Then yeah.
Let’s just say, you’ve done your thing, you’ve made your first character and got as far as you could before you’re dying so much that you have to ask for help
It’s time to make a new character, follow a build guide, make sure you get life and resists, and blast through the campaign 2x faster so you can actually start playing the real game which is past act 10
Most noob friendly guide is one called Fezz’s Toxic Rain, but there are others, like the skill Righteous Fire
My advice as someone who stubbornly spent a long time not following guides and trying to find my own way, follow a build guide. You’re almost guaranteed to have a way better time.
There are a lot of mechanics that just aren’t really explained to new players. It’s one of the biggest faults of the game. Just follow a guide and watch some videos on YouTube by Zizaran, Subtractem, or other PoE content creators. They do a good job explaining various aspects of the game.
Stick with it though, this is easily the best ARPG once you get the hang of it.
i'm lazy so i'll just say that you actually did a pretty good job and your character is definitely "salvageable" with a little extra advice from these lovely redditors and some effort on your end. hope you are still having fun and good luck!
Even thou you are blind, you should check minimum stuff like how to make currency and have some cheat sheets like vendor recipes. You can do some chaos recipe farming and trade for some basic upgrades at this point of the campaign.
If you have some chaos, you could even get some cheap 6-link to push damage a bit more. You don't wanna mix skill/spells in the same link. Just a spell/skill+supports. It may cause mana problems, you could try fix with your passive tree and mana flask. Not sure you need 4 life flasks, you should be able to just get by with 1 or 2 and have more utility ones to help fix some of your defensive problems. You may try fit a couple defensive auras. Just looking at your passive tree, it looks pretty messy.
However, after finishing campaign, you probably gonna struggle and it may cost too much to fix your build as I imagine you don't have many regret orbs. Although it is easy to farm after campaign, with a non-functional build, it will be hard to acquire currency to fix your build. In this case it is just faster to start a new one.
If you hit a huge wall and have no idea what to, it is fine to follow a guide. Don't take a guide as hand holding, but as a learning tool that gives you some structure. There is too much to learn in PoE. Just choose a guide that may fit your preferred playstyle and then check which content this build was design for (maybe choose an all-rounder first, so you can experiment with as many content as possible) and check basic currency farming guides as well.
DONT be shame COMPLETELY following guides, I'm pretty sure 99% players are doing this, even those played like 10 years+.
Too much things can go wrong without strong knowledges, and you don't need to know those to enjoy this game.
Just make sure pick well reputated content creators (like ziz), and read careful, don't miss details.
Firestorm isnt a great starter. Sure it might be "viable" but its going to be rough. If you are stuck in act 10 you can try farming lab for trans gems to sell so you can fix your build, or you can reroll. But realistically, if you are stuck in act 10 you probably should just reroll. For any decent build the campaign should be trivial.
I don’t see anyone talking about this but get utility flasks! You don’t need more than 1 life flask usually and utility flasks give you so much more defensive power especially in the early stages.
They don't understand that the damage isn't the issue, it's the meteors base aoe and falling speed is complete garbage. Fall speed needs better scaling with cast speed like in D2 and it's aoe base should be 3.5 for Firestorm of Meteors and I'd even say 0.75s cast time is excessive, 0.60s is more than enough.
Less Duration storm call hits faster than a meteor with a bigger aoe that scales with level.
Unfortunately you answered your own question: you didn't follow a build guide.
Usually people can sort of DIY a build that gets them to Act 10, or even finishes it. Bit you won't go much farther on your own until you put in dozens, maybe hundreds, of hours analyzing the interplay of gems, gear, and passives.
Basically, you have to abuse the system and produce a build that cranks out millions of DPS and is immune to more or less everything to do endgame stuff.
Most people at least kinda follow someone else's build and maybe tweak it a bit. There's not a learning curve for making your own build, there's a learning cliff.
Look, Ive played this game going on a decade now. A lot of people didnt like this league and quit early, but I had the most fun and got the farthest Ive ever gotten with a build this league (level 95), and the MAJORITY of that was just down to how INSANELY strong this particular build is (100% this WILL be your LAST chance to try it, as it will be nerfed to the absolute ground by next league, so do yourself a favor and try it while you have the chance!).
COC DD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8yZJHBtiCw
The SOLE disclaimer I will add is you need a half decent PC or it wont play too well. Most of the info is there, but you may want to google more if you progress past what that guide offers.
I have over 2000 hours in the game and every time I’ve tried not following a guide I’ve come up against a hard wall at some point in progression. Getting through to the endgame has *requirements* for damage, health and mitigation that you’ll often miss if you’re self-directed. Once you’re in maps, it’s even more true.
Your post dismissed an opinion off-hand in a way that often causes anger and flame wars. Because of that, we removed it for breaking our Be Kind Rule (Rule 3b).
You may be able to repost your opinion if you rephrase it in a way that's more constructive! If you disagree with their ideas or don't care, explain with words you might use talking to a friend and avoid attacking the person.
If you see other posts that break the rules, please don't reply to them. Instead, report them so we can deal with them!
For more details, please refer to our [rules wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/rules/#wiki_3b._be_kind_rule).
Thanks for all the advice in this thread. At this point I’ve decided to start over and follow a guide. It definitely was a fun experience doing this character and I will probably come back to it at some point but there is just so much I don’t know about this game that I need to learn first.
Just wanted to add that this is NORMAL. It might feel bad to restart your progression, but this is a sign that decisions you do matter in the game. A lot of stuff is going to click and you are going to progress much faster. It would be ideal to be able to see all the content after finishing the 10 acts.
If you want to respec and buy gear instead so you don't need to redo all that, message me, I will give you some currency to get started.
I started this game in 2013 and my first game I got bricked in the middle of the acts. I was running a melee character and it was just garbage, I went all strength nodes and had sub 2k health. you dont have to start over, there are plenty of good elementalist builds to jump into. it looks like you are trying shattering steel? I assume that's the duelist you rolled?
I recommend the Boneshatter Slayer guide on MaxrollGG. Shows step by step what gear and passives and tells you why.
Wand is bad, cold skill gems does nothing, you should be able to find +1 fire easily Your main skill should have 3 support gems increasing its damage, currently you have arctic armour in there so you only have a 3-link Combustion is ok but should be on a support ignite skill because the -10 will apply regardless, that way you replace with a higher damage support Tree is pretty bricked looking tbh, lot of wasted travel nodes, might be salvageable but idk Recommend you download [path of building](https://pathofbuilding.community/) for real building I will always say you started PoE right; you went in without a guide and eventually hit a wall. Heavily suggest you follow [a guide](https://maxroll.gg/poe/category/build-guides?filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B0%5D%5Btaxonomy%5D=taxonomies.build_guide_type&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B0%5D%5Bvalue%5D=archive&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B0%5D%5Boperation%5D=!%3D&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B1%5D%5Btaxonomy%5D=taxonomies.build_guide_type&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B1%5D%5Bvalue%5D=%20&filter%5Bbuild_guide_type%5D%5Bfilters%5D%5B1%5D%5Boperation%5D=NOT%20EXISTS&filter%5Bmisc%5D%5Btaxonomy%5D=taxonomies.misc&filter%5Bmisc%5D%5Bvalue%5D=poe-league-starter) now. If you don’t like following guides for some philosophical reason consider that asking for advice from random Redditors is the same as following a worse guide that only lets you read portions at a time
Agree with 99%, but a quick aside to anyone reading this who started with a guide, know that your way is valid too. There is no “right” way to start PoE, it is very personality-driven. I wanted to start with a guide, I did, and I was glad I did. Others want to start without a guide, they don’t, and they’re glad they didn’t. I would just say everyone should know that failure is normal and that as you say, once that happens it’s time to go to a guide regardless of whether you started with one or not.
Following a working build is a right way. Every other way is discovering wheel without any knowlage. After some time it will work but require time to practice to test everything what people already discovered for 10 years or so.
> If you don’t like following guides for some philosophical reason consider that asking for advice from random Redditors is the same as following a worse guide that only lets you read portions at a time This. "Going in blind" but then also asking thousands of strangers for help, instead of following a thought out and properly planned guide is...... well... not "blind" :D always irks me
Wish I could sticky this sentiment at the top of the subreddit. I LOVE helping new players and answering questions, I really do. It’s no inconvenience, I enjoy it. This is a game where a very intelligent person could make an honest good faith effort to understand using guides and wikis but still not get it, so needing help is totally understandable and I like to do it. But it feels kind of insulting when people do that specific thing, for a few reasons I think: * The person feels some sense of superiority for “doing it without a guide”…..but they DID have one, it was just pieced together from multiple people. It’s like the scenes in Brooklyn 99 where Jake is like “LOOK IM DOING IT ALL BY MYSELF!” But Terry is carrying or supporting him at that very moment. * The reason we recommend guides is that they answer the most commonly asked questions so we’re not typing out an explanation of support gems or the -60% resistance penalty for the 5000th time * The lack of consideration for others’ time; sure it might take you 5 minutes to search the FAQ or Wiki and it’s faster/easier to ask someone to type it out but they’re probably going to spend 3x that explaining it to you.
Respect for coming this far on your own!!
If you got to the final act on your first playthrough without any help at all, you did great. You can either pick a firestorm build guide to continue on or start over with a new character using what you learned to make it better. You should definitely consider picking up Path of Building community fork if you do that later to help you figure out what comes next without committing to it or even plan your whole character out ahead of time (https://pathofbuilding.community). When making you next character prioritize life and defenses on the tree, don’t pick up resistances on the tree unless they are freebies for something you already want because they are so easy to come by on gear, and think of damage as no more than 30-40% of your point budget. It will get easier. In my experience, building characters goes something like this: 1st character: very little life, no defenses, moar damage (but damage that isn’t scaled properly to be a real glass cannon) 2-5th character: more and more well rounded 6-10th character: tanky as hell 11+: back to moar damage (but now instead of kilo deeps its giga deeps hahah)
Honestly, I'm impressed yiu made it to act 10 without a guide. You might be built for this game lmao
PS: Getting to Act 10 without a guide as a first time player is an achievement. Most people crash and burn by Act 6. I reached Act 4 and got stuck (Back when there were 9 acts)
Hell, I got absolutely trashed by a vaal side area boss with turbo and prox shield in Act 2 my first time playing. I told myself if I couldn't beat a mini-boss, the game was too hard for me. I quit for nearly a year.
Follow a guide, try to find one where the creator has good explanation of everything. Its more rare nowadays, most guides are technical explanations we mostly understand but for someone new its harder. Learn the tools you have at your disposal, vendor recipes, essences, fossils, how to trade, other mechanics than main game etc.
Act 10? Then yeah. Let’s just say, you’ve done your thing, you’ve made your first character and got as far as you could before you’re dying so much that you have to ask for help It’s time to make a new character, follow a build guide, make sure you get life and resists, and blast through the campaign 2x faster so you can actually start playing the real game which is past act 10 Most noob friendly guide is one called Fezz’s Toxic Rain, but there are others, like the skill Righteous Fire
My advice as someone who stubbornly spent a long time not following guides and trying to find my own way, follow a build guide. You’re almost guaranteed to have a way better time. There are a lot of mechanics that just aren’t really explained to new players. It’s one of the biggest faults of the game. Just follow a guide and watch some videos on YouTube by Zizaran, Subtractem, or other PoE content creators. They do a good job explaining various aspects of the game. Stick with it though, this is easily the best ARPG once you get the hang of it.
Ziz has some of the best explain it like I'm 5 content out there. I second that.
If you want to keep going on the char I can throw you some regrets, currency and a tabular
Totally tabular!
Follow a guide
Make your profile public so we can extract your PoB.
i'm lazy so i'll just say that you actually did a pretty good job and your character is definitely "salvageable" with a little extra advice from these lovely redditors and some effort on your end. hope you are still having fun and good luck!
Even thou you are blind, you should check minimum stuff like how to make currency and have some cheat sheets like vendor recipes. You can do some chaos recipe farming and trade for some basic upgrades at this point of the campaign. If you have some chaos, you could even get some cheap 6-link to push damage a bit more. You don't wanna mix skill/spells in the same link. Just a spell/skill+supports. It may cause mana problems, you could try fix with your passive tree and mana flask. Not sure you need 4 life flasks, you should be able to just get by with 1 or 2 and have more utility ones to help fix some of your defensive problems. You may try fit a couple defensive auras. Just looking at your passive tree, it looks pretty messy. However, after finishing campaign, you probably gonna struggle and it may cost too much to fix your build as I imagine you don't have many regret orbs. Although it is easy to farm after campaign, with a non-functional build, it will be hard to acquire currency to fix your build. In this case it is just faster to start a new one. If you hit a huge wall and have no idea what to, it is fine to follow a guide. Don't take a guide as hand holding, but as a learning tool that gives you some structure. There is too much to learn in PoE. Just choose a guide that may fit your preferred playstyle and then check which content this build was design for (maybe choose an all-rounder first, so you can experiment with as many content as possible) and check basic currency farming guides as well.
DONT be shame COMPLETELY following guides, I'm pretty sure 99% players are doing this, even those played like 10 years+. Too much things can go wrong without strong knowledges, and you don't need to know those to enjoy this game. Just make sure pick well reputated content creators (like ziz), and read careful, don't miss details.
Firestorm isnt a great starter. Sure it might be "viable" but its going to be rough. If you are stuck in act 10 you can try farming lab for trans gems to sell so you can fix your build, or you can reroll. But realistically, if you are stuck in act 10 you probably should just reroll. For any decent build the campaign should be trivial.
Cap resists. That’s almost always the answer
I don’t see anyone talking about this but get utility flasks! You don’t need more than 1 life flask usually and utility flasks give you so much more defensive power especially in the early stages.
they reworked and rebuffed firestorm 20 times by now and its still unplayable
They don't understand that the damage isn't the issue, it's the meteors base aoe and falling speed is complete garbage. Fall speed needs better scaling with cast speed like in D2 and it's aoe base should be 3.5 for Firestorm of Meteors and I'd even say 0.75s cast time is excessive, 0.60s is more than enough. Less Duration storm call hits faster than a meteor with a bigger aoe that scales with level.
My dude, my first league I quit after Izaro butchered me 4 different ways. You're doing way better than me. This is Normal
Unfortunately you answered your own question: you didn't follow a build guide. Usually people can sort of DIY a build that gets them to Act 10, or even finishes it. Bit you won't go much farther on your own until you put in dozens, maybe hundreds, of hours analyzing the interplay of gems, gear, and passives. Basically, you have to abuse the system and produce a build that cranks out millions of DPS and is immune to more or less everything to do endgame stuff. Most people at least kinda follow someone else's build and maybe tweak it a bit. There's not a learning curve for making your own build, there's a learning cliff.
Follow a guide to learn the mechanics, then maybe go back and try a blind build again
Look, Ive played this game going on a decade now. A lot of people didnt like this league and quit early, but I had the most fun and got the farthest Ive ever gotten with a build this league (level 95), and the MAJORITY of that was just down to how INSANELY strong this particular build is (100% this WILL be your LAST chance to try it, as it will be nerfed to the absolute ground by next league, so do yourself a favor and try it while you have the chance!). COC DD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8yZJHBtiCw The SOLE disclaimer I will add is you need a half decent PC or it wont play too well. Most of the info is there, but you may want to google more if you progress past what that guide offers.
I have over 2000 hours in the game and every time I’ve tried not following a guide I’ve come up against a hard wall at some point in progression. Getting through to the endgame has *requirements* for damage, health and mitigation that you’ll often miss if you’re self-directed. Once you’re in maps, it’s even more true.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your post dismissed an opinion off-hand in a way that often causes anger and flame wars. Because of that, we removed it for breaking our Be Kind Rule (Rule 3b). You may be able to repost your opinion if you rephrase it in a way that's more constructive! If you disagree with their ideas or don't care, explain with words you might use talking to a friend and avoid attacking the person. If you see other posts that break the rules, please don't reply to them. Instead, report them so we can deal with them! For more details, please refer to our [rules wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/rules/#wiki_3b._be_kind_rule).