[PB57] Pindicator searches for his mascot

[Krill]

Only if you want. That was all blowing off steam on my end.

Also, great to have you back around the forums

Hey, I'm the last person to say a player shouldn't use their thread to vent. Vent away. Onto the main question:

Short answer is that I thought I could make it better. I still stand by what I said when I ditched PB46, RtR is now balanced to the point where it is neighbour luck and map differences which matters. Balancing the mod any more is irrelevant if those factors aren't going to be managed, and I'm not interested in managing them; this is why I've stopped tinkering. I didn't stop until that point because I had not come to that realization yet.

I stand by the point of making WE need HBR, Construction and either IW (straightforward tech constraints) or Iron (lower tech constraints but opens up diplomatic choices), so that Classical era warfare does not have a hard cap on it. WE, even in their nerfed form, are counters to swords, HA and Xbows, if they are available too early then it pushes players more towards a knight rush (which the strength nerf of the WE opens up compared to base BtS!) And counters that some players get because of map inequalities are bullshit, we balance for horse and iron so we should balance for ivory but then we start fucking with the happy balance, which affects traits and feeds back to other tech choices (Currency for Markets). Better to just strip that out and fix the unit balance IMO.

Also, it's good to be around friends again

[naufragar]

Expect another Path of Exile update soon.

[pindicator]

Expect another Path of Exile update soon.

Was that really a week ago?  Well, I guess when Gavagai sits on each turn for a full day then the days go by faster than the turns.

But the character is a lot of fun!  I've gotten to level 92 and have been slowed down a bit in my progression since hitting red maps, but I'm still making gains.  Here is my character window and stats when I've got the full 8 frenzy charges up and going, along with flasks:

The frenzy charges really make all the difference;  without them my dps shows as only 5k, and my dodge goes down to 55%.
You can see my resistances need a little work: I had just swapped some gear and stats around and now I'm going to have to figure out how to get my resists up again. Probably will need to swap out a damage jewel for something that helps bolster them, especially since my lightning res is under cap.

So one of the reasons I was interested in this build is that it doesn't require really hard-to-find uniques.  There are really 3 uniques that I need:

Darkray Vectors - Mostly for the +1 to maximum frenzy charges, though the dodge is very nice.

Winter Burial - The area of effect addition to Glacial Hammer really makes all the difference in clear speed.  It's this plus the passive tree notable "Tribal Fury" that gives Glacial Hammer a smooth mapping experience.  Well, relatively - it isn't Essence Drain levels of clear.  But other strike skills need Ancestral Call support gem to get better mapping, and we can focus more on damage supports instead.

Frostbreath - This is the surprising one, at least it was to me when I first realized it was likely the best weapon I could get.  The real kicker is the last line: "Attacks with this weapon deal double damage to chilled enemies".  So the 130k damage I'm doing we can effectively double to 260k. This one is corrupted because I found a second one a few days later and tried to change the implicit to something better for me than stun threshold reduction.

I was able to find all three of them relatively early in mapping. Darkray Vector was in maybe my 3rd or 4th map. Winter's Burial came a bit later on - it's one of the more common threshold jewels so I wasn't too surprised to see it fall early. And then Frostbreath was the one that held out the longest; it didn't drop until I had been at it a couple days.

I got absurdly lucky when I did my eternal lab for the final ascendancy points: I got +30% freeze chance for glacial hammer as my helm enchant. Now I've found a better helm and I'm not sure if I'm going to swap it out without getting another Glacial Hammer enchant on it first

The items are slowly improving. Today I found perhaps the most ridiculous jewel I've ever seen drop: 8% attack speed with maces, 14% increased critical chance, 6% life, and 11% area damage. Not perfect for me but very close. Naturally I used a vaal orb on it while my brother shook his head at me: I didn't get a good implicit (or any implicit), but I didn't destroy the item either. I really would like to improve my shield next: I'm still using Atziri's Mirror, which is good, but I want to get more life (and resistances). I'd really like to get around 5.5k life in total, and I'm still 1,000 off.

One last picture: here is my passive tree, but using Path of Building since I really don't like the web tool Path of Exile has for viewing passive trees:



*Everything not circled is likely damage. Or a Keystone.

It was just today that I found a second cluster jewel - an 8 passive mace jewel - and finally rolled the mana leach notable so I could move my tree around. I've gotten more damage, but given up some life. Right now I'm only at +142% on the tree. But really the only way I'm going to get more is to find some small life cluster jewels, and cluster jewels seem to be dropping less often than before.

However, one of the nice things for Solo Self Found characters (which technically I am not, I'm playing in the trade league but only because I play with my brother on occasion - I don't plan on trading for items here) is that the new Maven endgame and Atlas passives make it easier to target farm certain items. So since I want to get cluster jewels, I picked up the +10% Delirium chance node in Tirn's End and I've been running that as much as possible. So far no luck: i've gotten a few small evasion cluster jewels but no life ones.

Other major points to upgrade are really crafting projects: Warlord influenced Gloves have a +1 frenzy charges mod. Rings have a mod for 4-7 cold damage per frenzy charge. And then if I ever do decide to trade, I could go buy Synthesis bases with +1 frenzy charges on the base. Good luck getting those to drop normally.

Here's a link to my character page again if you want to look closer at items or the passive tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view.../ThrowAway The character name is PindisUltimateHammer

[Miguelito]

nice, I think I understand most about this build, and it must be fun to hammer away at high speed

I think I never ever found anything remotely useful on a helmet enchant, so that's some nice lottery draw. Would it make sense to scour your helmet and recraft it with fossils or whatever you are supposed to be using these days?

Also do frozen enemies count as chilled? I seem to remember that they become chilled as they unfreeze?

[pindicator]

nice, I think I understand most about this build, and it must be fun to hammer away at high speed

Yep! Most of the damage nodes are Accuracy, Attack Speed, and Elemental Damage. I'm moving things over to Cluster Jewels as I've gotten them.

I think I never ever found anything remotely useful on a helmet enchant, so that's some nice lottery draw. Would it make sense to scour your helmet and recraft it with fossils or whatever you are supposed to be using these days?

Having the lab show you 3 options to choose from is a nice help, but you're probably right. It probably is better to just try and reroll my current helm. But I might run a few labs anyway, because I need to get enchants for my boots and gloves here anyway. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky again

Also do frozen enemies count as chilled? I seem to remember that they become chilled as they unfreeze?

Yep, they do!

[pindicator]

nice, I think I understand most about this build, and it must be fun to hammer away at high speed

Yep!  Most of the damage nodes are Accuracy, Attack Speed, and Elemental Damage.  I'm moving things over to Cluster Jewels as I've gotten them.

So I've been thinking about this more, and starting level a Rage Support gem. Tried swapping it in at level 19 and the tooltip DPS went from 135k to over 200k ... but only at max Rage. I know that the Ruthless gem doesn't show up in tooltip DPS because it's only every 3rd hit, but adding a 1.44 modifier to 135k gets me to 195k. So breakeven would be a pretty high value of Rage. Now I'm wondering if I want to change the skill tree around, and try to aim for the Scion life wheel, grabbing the Berserking cluster for more max Rage and slowing the rate Rage wears off.

Another option would be the Chains of Emancipation belt unique. I believe all you need is one pop of a curse immune flask after being hit and then you're instantly at max. That would solve the problem of how to get ramped up to max rage.

I'm not sure, but it's interesting.

[pindicator]

Turn 103




I like how TBS got Guilds before Currency this game. That seems a little messed up that he can do that and be the leader at the same time, but Knights are pretty good compared to everything else contemporary. Not unlike another mounted unit that has been nerfed. He must have bulbed a number of techs, thanks to PHI/IND. He's building them everywhere, so at least all these EP points are good for showing me the impending doom of ... someone.

Great Prophet finally born. Theology bulb seems like a mistake in hindsight, but really an obvious one. I've played parts of this too much like a SP game. A second great person is in the works for our first golden age. Elephants and catapults are being built but I'm trying to sneak in a couple stables / revolting to Organized Religion to get Sankore done quicker / some other needed infrastructure. I have 1 library and 0 markets in my empire. I also have health issues, but nobody seems to have any spare wheat and I have zero wheat altogether. So I'm going to need to build an aqueduct in the capital sometime after the wonder. Or hope for health to pop up somewhere.

[pindicator]

Turn 105

Old Harry asked me to go to war with TBS ... finally? Except no. Because Old Harry just got himself enforced peace with TBS, so either he's telling me to get ready in 10 turns, or he's telling me to go at TBS while he does nothing. Realistically I hope he's hinting at the first, but the way everybody has just sat back and hoped I would take care of TBS, I suspect it's really the second.

[pindicator]

PB59 is within 30 turns now. Damn, Gav is really trying hard to make sure nobody plays sequential again

[Thoth]

Have you considered a PYFT war?