I’m a newbie GD and I’ve been trying to get my feet wet with the game by looking at GD through the lens of my years of Path of Exile experience. Obviously they’re very different games in many ways, so I’ve struggled to really get a handle on how to make my way through GD. I’m just going to shotgun some questions and would greatly appreciate any assistance.
I’m a big fan of DoT effects, especially ones that self-proliferate. I messed around with Bloody Pox but it seemed rather underwhelming in the early game. Is BP a viable early game skill? As a newbie, am I better off with another skill or mastery for DoT play?
Gear is making my head spin. In PoE you don’t really pick up magic items, only rares and above. But that doesn’t seem to be a smart idea in GD, especially at the start. Generally speaking, how picky do I need to be about what I pick up?
ATTRIBUTES. I have no idea how to distribute these. I read one post from like 2013 that said most people just dump into physique for armor and such since spirit and cunning requirements for other stuff tend to be relatively low. There is no reset mechanic for these that I can see and I’m betting I’m going to screw this up royally on my current character.
Just how viable are “non-meta” builds? Like other ARPGs I’d bet there are builds that are seen as top tier for clearspeed or whatever, but how much success could I expect to have in approaching or clearing ultimate difficulty with someone I put together myself with relatively little game knowledge?
When do I need to start caring about resistances? Is there one or more that I should prioritize in the early game / normal difficulty?
At least some areas some to scale with your level, which means you could farm them for extra drops / XP. Is this worth doing in the early game for any reason? Or is this generally reserved for ultimate legendary farming and such?
A little different: What are your favorite mods? Are there any that are considered “essential” in making the game better overall? I gravitate toward mods that affect the game as a whole (rebalancing, new zones, that kinda thing) or mods that add masteries (if done well).
Attributes are best used to meet gear requirements, then after that put them in Physique. You should make sure you always have atleast 10 attribute points still unused so you can be able to equip everything you find that you want to equip. They can’t be re-specced in the game so its possible you will make a mistake at some point.
Most of my builds end up with atleast 75 of the 90 available attribute points in Physique
There are self proliferating dots, and they are pretty decent. Bloody Pox just isn’t one of them. Although if you want a DoT build you would be better looking at Dreeg’s Evil Eye, with it’s transmutor.
Yellows are generally grabbed for the first while, but you do use the filter to filter them out later on to just greens or above. I generally do it around Old Arkovia.
Depends on the build. So long as you have core game knowledge you can make just about ANYTHING within reason work. Some people have made builds with 0 points invested in attacking skills work, humorously enough.
Generally most people start caring about resistances in act 4 of normal/veteran. Before then they are just a minor bonus on an item, and you are better prioritizing health or damage boost. The only major resistances to care about are in act 1 elite to have a ton of poison and bleed resistance, because it spams it at you massively.
Areas have a level range, within that range, they stay about 5 levels ahead of you. Second, farming isn’t worth it except at the end of a difficulty if you feel you are too weak for the next one. With good game knowledge and some gear set aside, you can blitz through the campaign of each difficulty without ever pausing to farm though. Also, XP gear is insanely powerful in GD, despite it’s hidden impact.
Mods are definitely not needed in GD, the base game has an absolute fuckton of content. I’m at 1200 hours and only just about to consider diving into mods, and that’s only to hold over till the new content from the massive expansion coming in ~3-4 months.
Any particular reason for this? My first character was a 2H melee shaman who is in ultimate and pumping straight physique just made the most sense with that character.
But now I plan on making a chaos/vitality occultist and have been pumping all of my points into spirit so far. Am I making a mistake?
You can pump like 20 into spirit for occultist just to use endgame caster gear as you may struggle with spirit, but most points should go into physique for ANY build. Most of my casters run pure 90 physique, because it’s the only valuable stat really. The bonus scaling from spirit/cunning is shit, while physique offers the triple play of hp, regen, and DA, all of which you need in the endgame.
bloody pox is getting a HUGE upgrade in 1.0.0.8 which is coming out very soon…so it WILL be a viable dot build
My 2hand warder only has 15 into physique and 6 into spirit and the rest I put into cunning and I’m blowing through everything, have over 13k hp, over 2k DA, almost 3k OA and it triple dips for me also because I get physical / bleed / trauma dmg increase per point.
