that sounds about right

actually though as of yesterday I think exalted are up to like 16 chaos and I saw multiple buyers offering 7 gcp throughout the day.


what's interesting to me is that apparently chaos is a weak currency on default league? (default players confirm?)

in hardcore, chaos is still very strong. It's hard to trade alchs or fusings for chaos, it's easy to trade chaos for alchs or fusing. (assuming normal 1:2 rate)


I've had 2 theories about why this is, 1 is that it's easier to multibox 60+ zones in default league and do the chaos recipe.

The other being that hardcore players are pickier about map mods and use more chaos orbs to roll maps.


Hmm, i don't know, interesting though.

Yeah, on default it is more like 22+ chaos per exalt (but still ~6 GCP per exalt).

Andddddd it's gone. Got insta owned by the trapper mob on my 49 shadow. Time for a break from this game.

I have no idea how I can ever play on hardcore. My lvl 50 Ranger is getting raped in Act3 Cruel. Can't even imagine merciless. Some of it is my gear which probably sucks but I have to almost creep along maps to try and get 1/2 mobs at a time. Ran into a group of ribbons in Solaris temple and was dead in .03 seconds.

My brother just made it to merciless and says it's practically impossible

I doubt many people get far with their first merciless character. You have to know what works and what doesn't, and it helps a lot if you have your earlier levelling gear the second time round.

Also, get lots of life nodes.

Edit: You can do a3 cruel Docks until you hit level 58. You should do that, then go rush through all the quests etc. Be careful of multi-proj dogs.

You probably need more life nodes and resist. For your first character it's probably best to pick an OP build that still deals awesome damage with a lot of defensive nodes. Elemental cleave comes to mind as your damage mostly comes from a few offensive passives, auras, and having +elemental damage on a few pieces of gear. I was cruising through cruel with like 1600 DPS with decent gear before I decided to afk in a zone and die.

1600DPS?! I think I'm around 500-550 with my current bow. Around 900hp's, 500 armor, 1300 evasion. Looking for more life nodes but there aren't that many around

Andddddddddd level 45 char goes from 1700 HP to 0 instantly from desyncing rhoa charges in ship graveyard. Now I'm mad. Mobs were standing next to me on my screen, as I was cleaving them, and then I suddenly insta died. Only two rhoas too.

Probably going to stick to scrubcore now because I just lost most like all the good gems and gear I had (again). Still got like 50 chaos on HC but I don't want to invest in a character and then just insta die to the same ****.

If it helps, my 49 ranger is a3 cruel, 66/70/61/-21 resists, 3700 armour, 1850 life, 230 dps (which is too little, I need some +ele jewelry without losing many resists, though I have LMP + chain lightning arrow so large groups are trivial). I'm not going to leave a3 cruel until I've reached 58 on docks (the map xp max), so probably won't reach ledge til 59.

Oh, and 63 shadow is a2 merciless, 2300 armour, 3500 life and 5x 600 dps gmp freezepulse, so again I can farm safely but some levels can get a bit hairy if I'm not careful. Resists are a bit meh and mana regen is too low really (51/75/49/-43 and 12 mana regen = lots of hybrid potions), but it's still viable and only needs gear upgrades really. If I can get a 2k armour chest then life is good.

Yeah my gear is always terribad. Honestly I've gotten three characters up to 45-49 range on HC now and the only items I've sold are exalts that I found. Haven't found any gear worth a crap to sell. My biggest issue is finding or buying upgrades because it seems most people are selling end game gear or terribad mid game stuff and it does not seem worth it to use orbs on level 30-50 stuff that you'll just replace.

So basically I'm running around with good weapons, rings, belt, and ammy and just **** armor that's way too low for my level. Any advice on getting some decent defensive stats? I've specced tons of HP and a few resist nodes, but my armor is always just complete ****. My 56 ranger on softcore is the worst by far though. I managed to have not a single good piece of gear and no currency at that level. -_-

I think that all the armour I'm using in the 50s-60s is still I rolled myself. None of it's great, but it'll do. This is my shadow:







Gloves are there purely for BBGG gems.

49 Ranger:

Yikes, it looks like your gear is pretty heavy life/armor based. Mine is pretty much all over the place. Can't seem to get anything decent when I roll them. Whats your skill tree look like?

Just started a1 merciless @ lvl 51. 39/8/-8/-38 resists, 508DPS, 1057 life, 515 mana, 615 armor, 1500 evade. Gonna try to just make it to the ledge and then grind from there.

My ranger's survivability is based on the passive that converts evade into armour, then lots of +armour passives. It's:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...rtg-4O7078xQ==

With the intention of going somewhere like this:

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...7wH_Pd9kj8xQ==

When I get troll's blood I can hopefully move to blood magic on lightning chain/lmp then get the auras. Grace + purity + whatever the armour one is called would help me a lot. At the moment I can only run the armour one.

The obvious thing for you to upgrade is the amulet - I use my alchs on jewelry so I rarely have any unless I have another plan for them.

The new melee gems are pretty awesome I think, especially multistrike.

If it wasn't a one-way instant desync ticket to default I'd use multistrike flickerstrike just because it looks completely hilarious, but I think the most viable normal-ish build would be ele cleave multistrike. Probably going to reroll a marauder to do some sort of melee build.

What are your guys' thoughts on new viable melee builds?

I think the problem is going to be getting multistrike. I quite like the idea of infernal blow + melee splash + multistrike and will get to level 19 to pick up the melee splash and see where I am.

I think the main problem with infernal blow is that there is no way to not die to reflect later on, you'd have to switch skills for that.

Also, as a hilarious single-target DPS I think double strike + multistrike would look hilarious. 6 hits in half a second or so? Sign me up!

But yeah, getting multistrike is going to be the hard part, at least now in the beginning. Later on it's going to be affordable, every other drop only gem is, altho more expensive than quest ones obviously.

I think you'd need to get dual strike (?) or similar anyway for single targets. I dunno how good that is late game though. Viable?

Dual is for two onehanders, double is for a single onehander or twohander. I just said double because the animation with multistrike would be funnier, because you hit twice x3 multistrike, while dual strike is just 3 times.

Also, I think stacking attack speed with a multistriked frenzy would be great fun. Going the max frenzy charge route in the skilltree can get you 77% frenzy atspd, multiplicative with the 88+% on multistrike, plus gear. That probably gets close to the D2 zeal pallies or bear druids with I think it was maul (or hunger?) that was pushing the 4 frame attack speeds.

I don't really know how frenzy charges work, but that sounds pretty fun.

I've just got melee splash and am using it with infernal blow + life on hit. It's amusing.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-...eEtPnsOO988B8=

150 infernal blow DPS, 350 dual strike, 550 life. I imagine I can just run through to cruel but it's more fun running around in western forest one shotting crowds of 50 monsters.

Anyone have any alchs to trade? I have about 20 fusings. Do they trade about 1:1?

They are pretty much 1:1 on hardcore. You shouldn't have any trouble trying to swap 20 fuses for 20 alchs.

If anyone is interested I have about 4 or 5 rolled overgrown ruins maps. I'm trading them for any other rolled map (or unrolled + alts). I also have a maze + blood magic overgrown ruins that I can't run (I'm CI) which I'm trading for any other maze map. Dungeons are ok. My build is fairly ok vs dungeon Brutus but very vulnerable to the overgrown ruins boss room, that's what I'm trading them.

This isn't really efficient, unless they changed the mechanic in the last month. The +armor % passives apply before IR is applied, so it's better to get tons of evasion pieces and then get +evasion % passives with IR.

Aha, that makes sense, thanks.