Path of Exile - upcoming F2P Daiablo clone

[frunk]

Poet's Pen with Arc is ridiculous.  I finished the Labyrinth at level 25.

Dual wield Poet's Pen is even crazier.  Proccing Arc and Lightning Warp makes for my fastest clear speed character ever.  I need to swap out the Lightning Warp on boss fights, but other than that it is very fast.

[Syt]

Instead of trying to forge my own way, I've been following this SSF Arc Witch build. I'm Lvl 68 and started Act 9. The clear speed is slightly silly.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1147951

My char: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Syt1976/characters?characterName=MourningBecomesElectra

I think all my chars from here on will have pretentious literary names.

[Berkut]

My main delve character is an arc withch, I think she is up to 70something now.

It is kind of boring really. Everything just melts away, you don't have to aim, you just press the button and everything dies.

[Syt]

You say it like it's a bad thing?

Tbh, this is a game I usually play while listening to podcasts or watching a YouTube series.

[Berkut]

I was trying to Mine arc, because it said it was well suited for Delve, and I thought it might be fun to come up with a build optimized for Delving.

But I am not sure I get it. I drop mines, then press the button to make them go off, and they shoot out arc lightning.

Why not just shoot it out to begin with? How does dropping them on the ground, then shooting them out make anything better? It sure as hell is a lot more annoying to play....

[frunk]

I was trying to Mine arc, because it said it was well suited for Delve, and I thought it might be fun to come up with a build optimized for Delving.

But I am not sure I get it. I drop mines, then press the button to make them go off, and they shoot out arc lightning.

Why not just shoot it out to begin with? How does dropping them on the ground, then shooting them out make anything better? It sure as hell is a lot more annoying to play....

Mine and Trap are generally useful for either setting up before a fight and/or for safer play.  If you can drop a bunch of mines/traps and then run away the rest of the time it improves survivability.  If it is well built the dps is similar if not better to self cast with less risk.  The downside is more work on your end.

[Berkut]

OK, so I my miner Arc is up to 28, and I am defintely seeing the attraction. Once you get some mine related skills, a lot changes.

I now drop three mines with each press of the button, so that results in three Arc spels triggering when I set the mines off, and you can really highly buff the mine damage.

I can drop those mines MUCH faster as well.

Also, I can do that three times before triggering them, so that is now 9 Arc spells going off at once, and unlike Arc itself, I don't have to stop when casting them. I can just drop them, keep moving, and trigger them on the go.

The only issue I have now is keeping mana up, and defense. THe character is distressingly squishy still.

[crazy canuck]

OK, so I my miner Arc is up to 28, and I am defintely seeing the attraction. Once you get some mine related skills, a lot changes.

I now drop three mines with each press of the button, so that results in three Arc spels triggering when I set the mines off, and you can really highly buff the mine damage.

I can drop those mines MUCH faster as well.

Also, I can do that three times before triggering them, so that is now 9 Arc spells going off at once, and unlike Arc itself, I don't have to stop when casting them. I can just drop them, keep moving, and trigger them on the go.

The only issue I have now is keeping mana up, and defense. THe character is distressingly squishy still.

Yeah, it is superior in every way to self casting.  It is one of the main things they need to balance out.   Mana shouldn't be a problem with the mana regen aura - spend time getting your evasion and life up, you are going to need that more than a few more percent of damage.

[frunk]

I have my first build that can farm the Labyrinth comfortably.  77% move speed unbuffed means most traps can be ignored, and I can take down Izaro in ~15 seconds.  <10 minutes start to finish gets me 2-3 keys and an enchantment.  I'm working on actually getting a useful helm enchantment, which I've never had (edit: actually I have had a marginal one, reduced Vengeance cooldown).

Just Merciless Labyrinth right now, I'm still missing one trial for Eternal.

[frunk]

The Labyrinth farming has been meh.  I've run around 15-20 times without getting anything.  The numbers indicate I'd need about 35 runs to give good odds of getting a helmet enchant that is useful, and twice that for one that is really good. 

OTOH my 5 Golem build is pretty fun.  I'm immune to shock, freeze, chill and burning, and I'm close to picking up CI as well.  That should make me plenty tanky while my minions finish off the tough fights.

[frunk]

I've started running Atziri, primarily to clear out the ridiculous number of fragments I've collected from all the Vaal side areas.  My poison build is the first one I've had that can run Atziri without dying, so it's already way more fun than running the Labyrinth again and again hoping for a decent enchant.

[frunk]

I picked up the last two specialty stash Tabs this weekend, so now I can rank them all.

Currency - Essential for any amount of play time.  The quality of life improvement for it is huge.
Essence - Very useful for organizing Essences, which can be a pain to keep track of otherwise.
Map - Handy if you get deep into mid tier mapping or higher.  Otherwise not really worth it.
Divination - Nice to have but not needed unless you are holding on to tons of cards that you don't want to redeem.
Fragment - Fine for cleaning up all the Vaal Sacrifice fragments, but not needed.

In general I would say a Premium Stash Tab or Premium Quad Stash Tab is better and more useful for the cost than Map, Divination and Fragment unless you play a lot.  So:

Play a little: Currency, regular Stash tabs if hoarder.
Play a lot but don't really do mapping: Add in Essence, convert regular to Premium, additional Premium Stash Tabs if hoarder.
Mapping a bit (low tier maps): Add more Premium Stash Tabs for space, maybe Divination.
Mapping a lot (mid tier maps): Add Map, Divination.
Map completion (high tier maps): Add Fragment.

[crazy canuck]

What do the stash tabs do?

[Syt]

Sort your items into neatly sorted stacks, usually stacking more than the default 20 or 40. E.g. the currency stash tab looks like this:

[frunk]

What do the stash tabs do?

Stash Tabs are enhancements to the player's inventory.  Once purchased they apply to every existing and future league.  The can only be purchased with money.  Divide points by 10 to get the cost in dollars.  It is best to wait for a sale on the given item, which happens regularly.

If you haven't gotten a Currency Stash Tab and you plan to continue playing I'd highly recommend buying it the next time it is on sale.