What games are you playing right now? Anything you'd recommend?

[Mummelmann]

SvennoJ said:

Mummelmann said:

I have two characters in the level 70s now, and I'm doing maps with them both. At this point, I'm hitting walls here and there, which require significant boost to knock down. Defense is the hardest part. My Witch minion build works really poorly in certain maps, namely ones with tight corners or narrow sections; most of my minions get stuck and I'm left with only half my army. My Monk is very squishy but does decent damage with the Frost Strike, crazy damage with the Bell in place (using Power Charges alone gets me somewhere around 30-40k dps right now).

I started a Sorceress with Spark focus, but it's slow and kind of boring, the damage isn't all that either in the early game. I also rolled a Ranger, only level 22 or 23 so far, and this one is also a slow start (I didn't pick only damage nodes at the beginning). I switched to WASD controls today; it's really something else, especially on ranged characters and builds. I don't think I can go back now.

As for Act 3, it's pretty long, I'd say about 50% more so than Act 2. I've done them a few times now, so it's mostly smooth sailing, but parts of Act 3 are kind of a slog, the maps are huge.

All in all, I'm still having lots of fun, I'll be farming gear and waystones for now, and trying to get my Ranger going and get some more dps soon. Keep on going!

What happens when you defeat the ACT 3 boss? To be continued screen? Or is there new game+ for the first 3 acts?

We're lvl 50 now, no clue what power charges are or do. We're in the torture zone now, disgusting, but seems we have to level up / farm more there. The boss kills us very easily. It was already late though, not enough mind power left to make sense of all that's happening on screen. Plus I broke my wife's warrior by 'upgrading' her belt. Didn't notice half of here skills didn't work anymore due to lost str. Redemption tomorrow!

How do you see how much damage the bell does? It seems to be a lot when we both hammer on it. I also like that it keeps my monk in place instead of jumping around attracting more trouble!

End of Act 3 on Cruel transitions into Endgame, you're given a new base with a regular waypoint and can still visit all previous Acts. From my understanding, the Cruel act repeat was implemented to cover for the full game's 6 main acts, and the level scaling is supposedly the same. After Cruel, your characters are likely around level 66-67. When you finish the first "batch" of Act I, II and III, you're tossed into the beginning area of Act I via a portal, no real fanfare to it.

What boss are you fighting? Some of them are a real pain. For me, the first playthrough was tough, but subsequent ones have been much easier. Not just because of choosing different classes and paths (although that certainly helps), but because I learned boss moves and setup along the way. At this point, all three act bosses are quite easy for me, depending on build and gear. I'll be trying a new Warrior run some time this month, just to see what's up. It's still among the slower starts right now, but can be built into stupidly powerful juggernauts (some totem builds are ridiculous). There is one boss, with a present "cheer-leading squad", that can be a real pain, and it's actually tougher on multiplayer by most accounts.

The Bell amplifies damage via Shockwave and Impact, based on which elemental types/damage are striking it. I think it's 30% per damage type, in my case that's 60% (Ice and Lightning). In addition, it does Impact damage giving almost 150% damage on the strikes themselves, as long as you're within melee range (you'll note that large bosses standing on top of the bell take a lot more damage than mobs a few feet away from it, it's essentially a double-smack). I've stacked Cold and Lightning damage on nodes and gear, but my gear isn't very good at the moment (I don't trade at all).

My three-strike Ice Strike combos are something like this (bear with me, I'm not entirely sure of the math here):

Two first strikes - 4900 damage at 4.13 strikes per second (20300 DPS total)

Third strike (the jumping one) - 10950 at 2.06 strikes per second (22550 DPS total)

Add on Charged Staff, which gives me an additional 80% Lightning damage - the math here is difficult as it doesn't say on the skill description. But my DPS goes into the 35-37k range with Charged Staff activated alone.

With the Bell modifiers, and Charged Staff activated, my damage output (more or less) is something like 56-59k DPS with the Shockwave and 52-55k on Impact. But it doesn't pop on the skill windows in the same way. In theory, I should be smacking out around 108-114k DPS on enemies that get the full brunt of both Shockwave and Impact from the Bell. Even the Shockwave hitting enemies several meters away does crazy damage on its own.

My Quarterstaff has terrible base damage, I've seen weapons at my level with literally 3-4 times the Physical damage as base, which would likely send my DPS into 110-155k territory without issue. And that's without the Bell. With more Spirit, I could also use Herald of Lightning, meaning double Herald bonuses (Frost and Lightning), that would be another large boost. PoE is all about synergies in skills, items, and additions. In many ways, it's a continuation of what Diablo II did with patches/updates years ago; where skills started affecting one another through direct synergies, where they merely acted like flat output before.