Play around with this: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?heatmap

Arc and blade vortex are the vast majority of the metagame. After them is winter orb, which seems like it's pretty similar play to blade vortex but cold and perhaps for people nostagic for Diablo 2.

I'm playing a consecrated path jugg that's been pretty enjoyable and that should be viable for the uber elder with the right gear.

Aside, I'm really digging the Betrayal content. Einhar is super fun to play with, between the delightfully-now-easy beast catching, his catch phrases, and his awesomely powerful crossbow. The villains are fun, especially when the seem to remember and resent that you interrogated them and have the dialogue to let you know about it. In some leagues, like Incursion, the incursions were too difficult for early builds, so I ended up skipping them until I had something resembling a complete build. Here, it's scaled better, so you can still do most things.

I am thinking the league bosses are a little overtuned. A lot of them synergize too well with the critters and each other leading to almost no way to fight. With one fort fight I had Rexxar guy (Korrel?) just face tanking me while some mobs were just spam healing him from inside the fort. As soon as I kill some stuff, some necro yellow mob rezzes them. I just wasn't going anywhere with that fort.

You basically have to be able to kill the adds in sub 1 second with some of those packs to make it worth even trying.

best league ever yet im already playing a lot but wish i could compete more, having massive headaches for a few weeks this is INTRUDING ON MY POE >.<

Loving the league, ripped yesterday my 68 char in safehouse encounter, although before the boss. All of sudden ~50 mobs spawned around me and didn't log out in time. I'd die eventually to one of the members anyway because I didn't understand how the mechanics work and pretty sure I had them leveled up wrongly without any regard for the danger they pose. Only thing I pay attention to was unfavorable buffs but if someone had a good reward then I'd try to rank them up regardless. On my second char I can plan it a bit better safer or wait before ranking everyone up once I'm level 90+ and geared up enough.

I think GGG needs to go back to balancing around HC. I level'd a gc miner to maps, tried to do a syndie thing third map in and Janus 100-0'd me. I don't mind rippy content like delve but Betrayal dudes you cannot even tell what's up with them. lol

I,ve heard the term "anused by Janus" quite a few times

I was getting pissed at syndicate stunning me out of portal and killing me before I get out of stun.

Now I am just resigned to them being death traps. I actually start lightning warp as soon as I see portal now.

You mash?

Saw a reddit thread on it, someone is learning how the servers should be configured the hard way...

So I am still having trouble sustaining map levels although I've been transmuting them all. Should I also improve quality to 20 before transmuting? Just wondering because I don't think I got that many items to improve map quality and was trying to save them for higher levels.

Save your chisels for red maps. When you're doing red maps only save the chisels only for t13+.

I died again last night to a disconnect at 39 so it was annoying. Not sure if playing Arc Hiero in HC is a good choice. Eventually this build is getting MoM, using a shield and is running around away from mobs so should be fine, however during leveling it feels fairly squishy if I don't spend much time trying to upgrade most of my gear in some intervals. I have to keep gems for arc 3l/4l, flame dash, wrath, clarity, golem (low prio) so I can't really afford a CWDT setup (or should I try to prioritise it?). Maxed resists are no longer enough in later acts, especially with some of the insane syndicate members.

I really want to get 90 though for the achievement. Previous league I played I was happy with downing Uber Elder so wanted to approach the game differently. Arc is great on paper since AoE is again needed like never before, but not sure if the build is good enough for HC. What could I do still to improve its survivability? Should I pick something else? I think I'll give it a 3rd shot then decide if I want to play normal betrayal instead. I'm thinking maybe even about ignoring most Syndicate stuff until I'm geared up so that should help me with succeeding. Once I'm 90 I can play normally the game and try to RIP my char in a normal satisfying way by progressing content.

Found this build which looks interesting:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2088267

However, in hc betrayal arc totems are most popular atm together with wo bv elementalist and arc trapper so maybe I should stick to it. BV WO sounds fun but I'm not going melee.

Phew. That thing is a sunnuvabitch.

My last 1 hour break turned into 8 hours of mapping, at the detriment of studying for my finals. Uninstalled till the 20th. This game is triggering too many D2 chain lightning mage meories.

I'm thinking of giving a very last shot at HC with this build from ZiggyD:

https://pastebin.com/xaNwcEd6

it has both leveling tree and CI (it goes first up towards cold dmg then left templar then shadow and respecs afterward slowly toward CI), Waggle is playing it in HC and seems to be working out for him, any thoughts?

I'm playing basically the same build in SC, level 84 currently and working on completing all T5 maps. I've died about 30 times I think but tbh all of them were perfectly preventable with either more careful play or actually doing a leveling tree instead of full ES nodes from the start. Damage seems really strong and that's only on a Rime Gaze (I have Vortex in that) + 4-link chest (Vaal Cold Snap).

Edit: This is my character right now https://pastebin.com/LTkncq4K but I'd just assume that ZiggyD's setup is more efficient than mine.

The worst part is that 2 out of 3 of my deaths were really meh, once to DC at 39 and last night to High Templar Avarius 2nd stage the sparks thingy. I didn't know that it hurt so much, wiki says even with capped resis it's deadly, but who reads wiki for bosses in a game where I have 1,5k hours in. I had 50% fire res which I ignored (I thought it's good enough) but I guess it probably contributed to it. So even if the build is capable of progressing further there are so many ****ty ways to die in HC.

got the headhunter boyssss lets gooo

Took you a whole week? Slacker.

RF Jugg got old fast. It works as intended... tanky with OKAY DPS but walking in circles to kill stuff got old fast.

lol

omg i just died 3 times from TWO full screens away, at over 50% of lvl 99 to 100



rip top 5 sabo

I have revised my Cold Occultist build and will be doing another HC try tonight, woohoo! Thanks for the suffering.