Path of Exile

[djzombie]

I played this during the stress test weekend and found it to be pretty fun. I was more impressed with this beta than I was with d3's, granted d3's was severely limited in scope compared to path of exiles.

It just has alot of interesting features that I found myself scratching my head wondering why diablo hadn't done this yet.

Skill Gem System -- A fun twist on Jewels from D2. Every usable skill in PoE comes from one of these gems. Socket it in your gear to be able to use it. Linked sockets allow you to throw in support gems to boost these skills too.

To me this is what I liked about the game the most, the skill gems to me seem like the materia system from ff7, which I really enjoyed. I didn't play much of it since I had other things going on, but my buddy said you could level up those gems, and there is no penalty for removing them, I think you can even trade them to other people after you've leveled them.

I've been going back and forth about purchasing beta access, a friend of mine said it was going into open beta in june, though for 10 bucks, I might just do it anyways to help support what seems like a great game.

[Dezzimal]

I've spent some time in endgame and I have some criticism of the game now.

Stat values change dramatically once you hit endgame. Armor and Evasion on gear are no longer useful, HP is the only thing that will allow you to survive in the Chaos zone. With maximum physical damage reduction (75%) and less than 1000 HP, you will die nearly instantly. The reason for this is Granite flasks with the Surgeon's mod combined with Diamond flasks. The flask system is as such, instead of one-time use potions on your belt, you have five flasks. Flasks refill as you kill enemies, and sometimes have other mods that allow you to refill them even faster when you deal a critical hit (Surgeon's Mod).

Diamond Flask - All hits are critical for the next 2 sec at max quality. Put 3 of these on your belt so you can have them up all the time.
Surgeon's Granite Flask of Iron Skin - Armor +10,000, Armor Increased by up to 100%, gains charges when you crit so it refills extremely quick if you're AoEing.

With that setup, even a cloth-wearer will hit the Armor damage reduction cap of 75%, so you can see why what armor class you choose has no effect on your survivability with regards to armor rating. Plate armor wearers have around 2-3k base armor which grants them ~60% damage reduction. There is a way to get to 90% damage reduction using Endurance Charges which are a buff gained upon shouting at enemies or killing them while they have a specific debuff. Each charge reduces physical damage taken by 5%, and you can have up to 6 of them if you go down the passive skill tree properly.

There are 3 types of basic stats that go on armor. Evasion, Armor and Energy Shield. Energy Shield is more or less fast-recharging HP, and is highly desired along with item mods that boost your max HP. These combine into 6 armor classes, you either have a split of those two stats (Leather is usually Evasion and Armor), or a single stat (Plate is just Armor).

One more note, Avatar of Fire on the left side of the passive skill tree is horrendously brokenly good, but they're addressing that.

[vrumpt]

Public beta event going on this weekend for this game. Its honestly not bad, worth a look if you are bored of waiting for Diablo 3. Love the HD this game brings to the genre, and the sphere grid (yeah like the one from Final Fantasy X) that this game uses for its skill points.

[Zeb]

The game is in open beta for the weekend if anyone wants to try it out.

[Kaelan?]

I liked the gameplay videos and been craving a good RPG recently, so I said what the hell and dropped $10 to get into the close beta.

Only played for a couple of days, but damn, I gotta say it. I love this game. This is seriously what Diablo 3 should have been, and it's not even out yet. The skill system is amazing...I expected it to be a generic, straight-forward "Warriorss hit bash things, Wizards blow people up, Rangers shoot things" type of setup; instead everytime I look at the skill system I figure out some cool little nuance I never knew about before.

It's still not completely in open beta, but if you've ever had any interest in Diablo1/2 (and especially if you didn't like 3 as much), give this game a try. You won't be disappointed. Definitely one to watch for when they go live.

[schlomo]

Shameless bump, anyone playing this game currently, thinking of spending the 10 bucks to get a key.

[Insanecyclone]

23rd is Open Beta

[Syntex]

This is what Diablo 3 should have been on so many levels. They took everything right with D2 and expanded that. Kripp on twitch is doing daily coverage of it and has made a few videos on youtube about different builds and whatnot. Looks fun to say the least.

[Metah]

I had a beta key but since I've only had a netbook for the last 5 months I haven't had a chance to even use it. What a shame.

[Kaelan?]

Open Beta starts on this Wednesday

[Pikarya]

Open Beta now open. 1.5gb patch

http://www.pathofexile.com/

[Shadowhusky]

Came up with an error during patching and now I have to redownload the entire patch. What a pain...

[Odon]

Was lucky enough to be playing this game since the Alpha, one of the Devs is in my WoW guild. It's definently worth a look at if you have any spare time. Very fun game.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

I'm liking it so far. There's a ton of customization (specific weapon specs, choice of defense prowess, etc.). I'm loving that there's no gold either.

[schlomo]

If you want to add me, Clicking_is_hard im playing on softcore im around lvl 12 at the moment.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I find this boring. The spec tree's vastness is cool but the gameplay is a snoozer for me. I'm not into diablo though so perhaps that's why..

[Kaelan?]

Gameplay takes a while to pick up. There's not a lot to do when you're on your first character, have no resources to craft, can't try out funky builds, don't have access to many items or skill gems, etc. The pace picks up a lot as you play more.

[Maaglin]

I pretty much just assume that I'm going to fuck up my first few characters. I can't really be bothered to plan ahead with an online skill tree. I figure I'll just playthrough for awhile, save some twink gear, then if I fuck it all up, just start again.

[Kaelan?]

A few things, for people just starting out:

- Sell everything you find early on. Takes longer, but the extra crafting materials will come in handy (and are way way more useful than gold ever was in Diablo). You don't need to identify anything you won't use, it sells for about the same either way. You may want to stash unidentified rares for vendor recipes (see below).

- Save all the good materials for later, especially things that modify sockets, rerolls stats or adds new mods. You can find all of the crafting stuff at any level, so look out for them (I found a Gemcutter's Prism on my witch at level 4, and it's like this game's rough equivalent of a D2 SoJ)

- There are special "vendor recipes", where you'll get something better than usual for selling multiple items that meet specific conditions together. Some of them are really useful early on (i.e.: Iron Ring + Skill gem = Resistance ring, Amulet + 1 gem of each color = An amulet with +10~20 to all stats).

- You only find skill gems as drops every now and then, but several quests give them as guaranteed rewards, and what you get to pick from depends on your class. If you want to level a character to help out another one, make sure they're related classes (i.e. don't use a marauder to farm for a witch).

Make sure you stash all the skill gems you don't need, to use on other characters. The ones you equip and level up will gain higher level requirements, and there's no way to level them down other than using some somewhat rare crafting materials

I ran a templar with pretty much nothing but regular attack + glacial hammer till the end of normal Act2 just to farm some gems for my witch. Auras + Summons + Ice Nova + Ethereal Knives and some decent gear makes starting caster way easier (and faster).

[Ollieyk]

Enjoying it so far...it's a really nice change of pace from Diablo. I couldn't find it in the key configuration but is there a force move shortcut? I've grown so accustomed to using Space to mvoe my character in Diablo it's really annoying to not have that option in PoE...