What Video Games Have You Been Playing? IX: Now With 4K VR!

[Takhisis]

Does the honour of Naming the Thread go to Phrossack now?

 

[Arakhor]

It does indeed. @Phrossack, you have 24 hours from now to start the tenth thread or it will pass to Hobbs.

 

[caketastydelish]

I am, after a very long hiatus, getting back into the civilization series. I stopped playing it due to not being good but I have better strategies to implement now.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Path of Exile: My lightning-throwing Templar seems to have hit a wall, when it comes to the boss fights. Around level 60, I'm clearing out rooms full of goons with ease, but I'm getting really frustrated with the bosses. I guess my single-target DPS & Debuffs just aren't sufficient. The fight with Doedre was incredibly tedious, even after I Googled the mother[lover] to figure out what I was missing (it was the bit with turning the valves to throw off the debuffs). And I'm not even in the endgame yet. One problem seems to be that when I die, it happens so fast that I don't know what killed me or which part of my defenses failed. So far I've built on items that provide Armor and Energy Shield and skipped Evasion. My Elemental Resistances are around 110% and my Chaos Resistance is around 30%. I think Arctic Armor is my only enemy-debuff, and that's really aimed at numbers of bad guys in close quarters; it does next-to-nothing to bosses, or to anyone using ranged attacks. Last night I tried to fight Yugul in the High Gardens and I didn't even scratch his paint before he smashed me; I just said "screw this" and moved on to other things. Either my build is fatally flawed or the jump in difficulty from the minions in the High Gardens to Yugul himself is totally out of whack. The idea of abandoning this character and starting over from scratch doesn't sound appealing.

Yeah I'd guess uncapped resists or too little life. Yugul is a pia boss. My strategy is to face tank him each time he is there and run around when he isn't. AW is a big help.

To be honest, the best defense for the average build is simply to stack a lot of life, both on items and on the passive tree. At a minimum, I'd aim to get about 350 life per act while playing through the story. You want your elemental resistances to be capped (75%, but you lose 30% each time you kill Kitava), Chaos res isn't too important - it doesn't come up often, although when it does, it tends to hurt - so while getting some to offset the Kitava debuff is nice, you can always run a flask against specific bosses (e.g. that Doedre fight). Energy shield can be used basically as an alternative to life, but requires committing heavily in doing so, and typically either the Chaos Innoculation keystone, or specific items like Shavronne's Wrappings. It's not really a path I'd recommend a newer player following. You can go for a lfie/ES hybrid, but that tends to be more of a temporary option while levelling before converting fully over to ES at high levels. Armour or evasion is good to have but not at the cost of raw life. For a caster build, Mind Over Matter along with some mana increases is very good and something I'd highly recommend, The other good defensive option is taking acrobatics and phase acrobatics for dodge, but that's on the wrong side of the tree for an templar. A curse like Enfeeble or Temporal Chains could help with survivabilty too, and if you're not using MoM, you could link it to the Blasphemy gem to make it into an aura that automatically effects anything near you.

The kind of items you're looking for are going to have a good life roll (50+), some resistances (maybe 30%+ total) and, if you're MoM, some mana. Anything else is just gravy at this point.

On top of this though, there is one very strong mitigation option available to all characters - don't get hit. The main reason melee is thought of as kinda weak at the present is not that it's damage is bad, but that it's damage is no better than ranged or casters, yet it has to take on a lot of extra risk to deal said damage. Having a quick activating movement power (Flame Dash linked to Faster Casting is a good one for a caster - and you can also slot an Arcane Surge in there to keep a nice buff up) to dodge around is a key part in fighting bosses. Yugul is a good example of this. The average build from a new player cannot facetank him. You need to keep moving, throwing out a couple off attacks when you've got some space. To tie into this, if your main attack skill has some degree of "fire and forget" to it, it can make boss fights much easier as you can focus on avoiding the damage. I could imagine the new brand skills being good for a newer player for this reason - it gives you more of a chance to learn the fights. Storm Brand is even a lightning focused skill so should fit into your build (the brand skills are also just really strong at the present).

Finally, in general, I highly recommend following build guides for PoE, at least when you're getting into the game. Its very easy to mess up a character if you don't know what your doing. Follow guides for your first few characters while you get the hang of what's going on, and only then take the leap into doing your own thing.

Good advice.

I think I'm going to assemble a set of gear focused on Armor without Energy Shield and see how that goes (as a bonus, this Great Crown I'm wearing is f'ugly). And I was just looking at Mind Over Matter. I'm only a couple of points away from it, so it wouldn't be too hard to get. I think I'd have to put some more points into increasing my Mana and Mana Regeneration, though, to make it worthwhile. The only "fire and forget" attack power I have is my lil' buddy, Sriracha. Word of advice, never ask your flame golem, "Hey, hand me that book, would ya?"

I wouldn't focus too much on armour on your gear. They key things are:
a - Sockets and links. Getting your key skills 4-6 linked is more important than any stats. There's a reason why Tabula Rasa is probably the best levelling item in the game (it's a chestpiece with 6 linked white sockets and no stats)
b - Life. As I said, it's the best way to survive.
c - Resistances. At least until you've hit 75% to each element.
d - Mana if you've got MoM
A pair of gloves with 10 energy shield, 4 correctly coloured linked sockets, 50 life and 15% to fire and cold res is much better than a pair with 300 armour, 3 unlinked sockets, 15 life and reflects 15 damage to attackers.

One nice thing about MoM is that the 4 nodes behind it on the tree add a good chunk of mana to get you started. I can't remember the exact formula, but with just the 30% effect from the keystone node (there are other sources of MoM on items and ascendancies), you want to have unreserved mana equal to about 40% of your life total. That way your life and mana will run out at the same time - i.e. you get the maximum amount of protection from it. But even if you have less than that, it still gives some good mitigation. Just make sure you've got a mana potion available. It might also be worth linking your movement skill with a blood magic support - that way you won't run into the situation where MoM has consumed all your mana so you can't run away from whatever is hitting you.

Golems don't really do much in the way of offense unless you commit heavily to them (in particular there are some jewels that give major bonuses to them). They're mainly there for the buff they give you.

One other thing I just thought of to help survivability is a Cast When Damage Taken Immortal Call setup. Immortal Call gives you a very short duration (less than half a second base) buff that makes you immune to physical damage (it gets longer with Endurance Charges but they're not necessary). Cast When Damage Taken does exactly what it says on the tin. If you keep the gems low level (CWDT starts at 38 IIRC), you can have it so that every time you take ~550 damage, you trigger the immortal call. It really helps survive damage spikes. If you're got the sockets, you can put an Increased Duration support in there too, and possibly even something like an Enfeeble curse or Molten Shell to further help your defenses (or you can get lazy and put a low level golem in there so you don't have to keep recasting him when he inevitably dies).

I love the POE discussion! I have been playing for quite some time, but only play melee builds. Lots of good advice has been posted.
Some best practices to survive with life builds:

• Get life on all gear
• Max resists necessary once you hit maps
• CWDT is an awesome addition to both attack and defense. I use this combo with most builds: CWDT+Immortal call+blood rage+increased duration or a golem or curse.
• Ancestral protector is good for faster attacks
• Ancestral warchief for dps
• Hatred adds great dps
• Go for 4000 life by maps
• Aim for +30 or more movespeed

Melee is very viable and doesn't need expensive gear. I use cleave mostly and can get to level 90 and map tier 13 in each league. In standard my last goals are Shaper, uber Atziri and red map elder.

IGN in Betrayal: Eight_Gates come join me; If you are not SSF I have gear to give.

 

[shadowplay]

I am, after a very long hiatus, getting back into the civilization series. I stopped playing it due to not being good but I have better strategies to implement now.

What version? I've been playing a lot of Civ lately too. I'm really looking forward to the new Civ6 X-Pac...it's a nice feeling.

 

[caketastydelish]

Civ 6. The main thing I learned that I have been ignoring previously is you want specialties with your cities. Or that each city should specialize in something rather than just having all of them do/build a little bit of everything. Knowing this makes a huge difference.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

In SoulSilver, I got a hold of a False Swipe TM, and put it on my utility Paras. Now he knows Cut, False Swipe, Stun Spore, and Spore. I might eventually replace Stun Spore with Aromatherapy, though that's quite a few levels away.

I put False Swipe to good use and caught a female Meowth (Hardy nature) on Johto Route 38. Effect Spore kicked in and poisoned her before I could get a Spore in, but I managed to catch her with a standard Pokeball before she fainted. I named her Sassy, after my own cat.

I actually have a spreadsheet of my Pokemon from every game.

 

[Phrossack]

It does indeed. @Phrossack, you have 24 hours from now to start the tenth thread or it will pass to Hobbs.

Oh dear.

How do I hide a link in text so I can link to this thread?

 

[Lexicus]

How do I hide a link in text so I can link to this thread?

There's a little button that looks like two chain links, highlight whatever text you want as a link, click that button and then paste the URL in the box that appears.

 

[Arakhor]

The code is [url=your_weblink_here]your text here[/url]

.

 

[civvver]

I bought Thrive on sale. Hope it's good. Looks like the spore creature creator. I hope to have time to start it this weekend.

 

[Lexicus]

I bought Thrive on sale. Hope it's good. Looks like the spore creature creator. I hope to have time to start it this weekend.

You mean this one?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=292354241

 

[Thorgalaeg]

To anybody interested in flight sims, i am returning to Flight Simulator (well it is Lockheed Martin Prepar3d indeed) after some time with XPlane 11. As somebody said, XPlane is a good simulator with bad add-ons (well not that bad anymore but still incomplete) while Prepar3d is a bad simulator with amazing add-ons. Which means that while compared to XPlane it sucks in many ways, nothing can beat a good Prepar3d setup with all the proper stuff, at least for flying big iron. To illustrate it, I am currently running Prepar3d along five additionally programs in the background: weather engine, chart display, ATC engine, camera engine and traffic engine plus a number of 3rd party DLL modules running inside Prepar3d, plus a number of quality add-ons as payware planes and sceneries. All put together with blood, sweat and money.

Problem is I am having fun, which is illegal according to Prepar3d EULA.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

For any future readers of this thread, the new one is here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...playing-part-10-or-a-shameful-display.640937/

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: Thank you Aimee. Thread closed.