Idk how many of you play in pub groups but I do quite a bit for leveling and I figured I'd come post this here. There's a bug going around right now where you can put 5 stacks of explosive arrow on a mob and then conversion trap it and the burning damage pretty much instantly kills your entire party. The range is absurd too.

I was farming merciless Ledge earlier and some d-bag level 76 guy joined and insta killed 3 people in my group by doing this (I dropped to like 20% HP). And after they died he says, "OMG what happened?!?" like he had no idea. I ended up running about 3-4 ledges with him before I realized he was trying to PK me, and then left the group and told him a few choice words.

lol wow, that's dirty

Yeah it is stupid. I can understand tricking people into bandit PKs or whatever, but there's no way to fight back with this and you pretty much instantly die.

Wow, Kripp's group is almost level 80 and doing lvl 71 maps already in the week race. It's been what now, like 3 days?

That is so fast haha.

I'm sure he's played minimum of 12 hours a day and when you have people running ahead to give you quests and WPs to grind it isn't that hard. Leveling in a group where everyone knows WTF is going on is a lot faster than solo too and you also get much better loot.

I was impressed by the map progression. It only takes like 8 hours solo to get to mid 50s, less if you have twinked gear.

I get like 15-20% per day at level 84 doing level 68 maps solo which is about 1% per map.

For sure. How do You get to mid 50s in 8 hours? I'm 66 and have like 36 hours played and I farmed all the good zones asap while skipping side quests.

Kripp does it in the races without any loot. I imagine with good gear setup beforehand you could do it faster.

It's pretty much level to 21ish in western, level 24ish before vaal, level to 29ish in sarn, level to 33ish in docks. This can be done in less than 3 hours solo.

Then you move to cruel, etc.. You can do a lot in those 5 hours.

Guess I'm doing it wrong. First 20 levels take me a while.

Basically you have to know a lot about the game to reach 50 in 8 hours. It's not so hard to get to 20 in 1 (or whatever it is). Run past everything, kill Hillock. Run past everything, be careful with hellrake (if that's the name - the cold fire boss) and take medicine cabinet. Run past everything and reach ledge waypoint. Run ledge until you hit XP cap. Run past everything to Brutus, do the ghost captain side quest and be careful, run past everything to Meriveil and use two light resist rings. If on the way you run into a room with 20 mages, do not attempt to run past them all but slowly kill them instead.

Then run straight to the cemetery or western forest. Kill the weaver at level 19 if you need the reward, and you probably do.

I'm sure there're better ways in races, but if you retain your gear between HC chars then this is a pretty safe system. I assume the key difference is the loot and knowing how to maximise what drops, but also that I'll farm ledge/forest/docks until I hit the xp cap for that level. It makes it a lot safer while being less efficient.

Oh I know all these things. With that said, it takes me longer than it seems it should. And I don't really retain gear because I prefer to fill my stash with a bunch of worthless crap instead.

it's also a lot faster to level by joining groups and scrounging Waypoints/TPs, especially areas like Chamber of Sin/Vaal Pyramids where there is 2/3 levels before the objective with pretty annoying mobs.

it's important to know what items to look out for for your build and what items start dropping in certain areas etc. Check for a coral after hillock, run to mudflats, run to ledge.. hit 8 or whatever you preference is and then run to coves... hitt 13-14 and do merv with a coral/COLD res ring (not lit like someone said).

They changed Western too, so it's a little less efficient with that 100% unique dude

Got to 60 in the 1 week, probably just gonna stop until Friday because I'm too scared to do Brutus and forward...

Using this shadow FP build:
http://www.exilepro.com/builds/shado...eze-pulse-tank

and lol at the word tank... I'd call it glass cannon. I have 2800ish hp, resists like 55/25/75, jack **** for armor and my gear is mediocre at best. I do insane DPS especially with all the crits, but if there's a pack of archers my life just drops chunks at a time. I also have to alt f4 everytime I see a reflect elemental damage mob. I wasn't fortunate enough to get a 5L or a faster projectiles wand or a quality FP so I feel like the lack of projectile speed is really hurting me... I have to get right in mobs faces in order to do max damage and leech any sort of life.

It's been a fun race though, never grinded this game that much and I feel like I learned quite a bit. I found like 7 unis, so that was cool even if most of them blew (found a rats nest that seems pretty awesome). I have 2 level 60 chars now but still don't have the sack to get past A1 Merciless =/

I will say PoE >>>>> D3. The game is such a challenge and they're adding so much cool **** all the time, my hat goes off to GGG.

Agreed. D3 is still unmatched in actual combat/gameplay polish in my opinion, but in just about every other system (skill tree, stats, loot, game modes, etc) PoE blows it out of the water.

Yea it's definitely got a lot more than d3. I burn out quick though. Almost 66 now and scared to do vaal. I've got 80 res all and like 5700 armor 3400 hp but my dps is pitiful. Still using a 5link grove bow cause I can't afford a thicket.

Just lost what must be the 12th char between 30 and 60 to ****ty Internet/desync issues. Mostly my own fault tho, my home wifi sucks.
Seriously considering switching to softcore to at least experience endgame, even tho the rush is less.

Can't you just run a cable from your router to your PC? It's probably going to be faster too.

I feel like the combat in PoE is so much better. There's no bs "always hit" mechanics where all player skill is removed from the game.

In PoE you can weave in and out of really dangerous situations and dodge attacks by moving out of the way.

Yeap. Not like d3 where they literally made impossible to dodge hits so that more skilled players didn't have an advantage.

made it to 70 in the 1week for 8points (lol). Probably would have made it further on my first char if I knew they changed lit thorns~~

Try and find a party for vaal and have one guy summon him and then everyone goes down (pretty sure his hp rolls as if there was just 1 person)

Vaal isn't all that dangerous in big parties if you don't have to stand next to him to deal damage

the rocks can crit, which is pretty messed up... on merciless anyway.. running to or from a tp can be dangerous. If you have a stack of lit shock on, even more game ova

If I can get one shottee with my current defensive stats and hp then f it.