Path of Exile Questions and Answers

Hi,

just wanted to find out if i can set up Hotkeys for common tasks such as Portals, also can you set up macros for PoE?

thanks for you help

Except for what’s in the options, there are no additional hotkeys you can set up.

As for macros, GGG allows using macros which don’t perform more than 1 function (official confirmation). If you want to set up macros you’ll need to do it through a 3rd party program (such as Autohotkey).

Typical and basic macros players use are for /oos, /remaining and /itemlevel. They don’t even give you any gameplay advantage and are more of a convenience. There’s actually a recent video by Willywonka that will help you set those macros up.

Abyssus Ezomyte Burgonet

A question about this equip, is the 40% increased dmg taken from monsters very noticeable?

Abyssus increases your damage a lot, but physical damage reflect can become a huge issue with it. You also do take a lot more damage than you normally would, but that can be offset to a degree if your other equipment is above average.

Considering many physical builds focused on critical strikes have trouble with reflect, using Abyssus could be very risky, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend it in any hardcore leagues. If you have no issues with reflect (or survivability) overall, you can consider trying this head, but generally you need pretty amazing equipment to make it work well (typically CI, ton of energy shield and probably near or over 20% life leech with Vaal Pact).

I haven’t tried any builds with Abyssus so I can’t really provide more insightful thoughts abouit it, hope it helps anyway.

Chaos Inoculation and Health

For the keystone , Chaos innoculation, does it make all my hp nodes a waste?

Yes, it does. Chaos Inoculation makes you completely immune to Chaos damage, but in turn you have only 1 HP. Your character’s base health, health gains per level or via equipment as well as skill tree nodes become completely irrelevant. Your health becomes 1 and there’s no way to increase it.

You can however obtain large amounts of Energy Shield, especially with Chaos Inoculation. The Infused Shield notable point after CI gives you 12% “more energy shield” (most nodes are “increased energy shield”: “more” literally gives you 12% more shield after all other nodes and values are taken into account.

If you intend to build an energy shield based character, you should definitely consider taking CI. Just the fact that you don’t have to worry about Chaos resistance or health on your gear can be very beneficial, and putting points in your skill tree nodes for both your HP and ES is pretty difficult.

Is Vaal Pact worth taking?

Hard to say without knowing which build you’re playing, and even then.

For my own build I prefer to play without it. With 5000 health I have 300 health regen per second which often takes care of all projectile damage, and a significant portion of chaos damage I take, and I think it would be a shame not to take advantage of it. But it’s up to you: depending on how far away Vaal Pact is in your build you could test it out and remove those skill points later.

A lot of Energy Shield based builds go for Vaal Pact paired with Ghost Reaver & Chaos Inoculation, that’s definitely effective since there’s no downside to it, other than possibly being further away in the skill tree than most ES builds go.

Generally if your build relies a lot on lifesteal for survivability, Vaal Pact is a good choice.

Bringer of Rain Thoughts?

Depends a bit on the build you’re going for, but I think most builds will eventually want to switch to a 6L chest and a head piece with better defenses. Bringer of Rain WAS a good item to get you started until about a week ago when its price skyrocketed from 5 to 15 Exalted. Right now for 15ex you can get a pretty good 6L chest along with an Alpha’s Howl or another decent headpiece with health and resists, which in my opinion gives you more bang for your buck.

The “support gems” automatically linked to your abilities in BoR are level 18 and without any additional quality: having a level 20 Melee Physical Damage & Faster Attacks preferably with +quality will definitely give you additional DPS as well, but it’s more or less equalized since BoR adds 20-30 Physical Damage as well.

There’s more upsides to Bringer as well: it increases your block chance by 15% providing good additional defense, which has great synergy by giving you a chance to get an Endurance Charge every time you block. 200-220 life it gives is also more than an average chest + head will give you.

It’s armor and evasion bonuses however are in most cases lower than what you could get with fairly average chest + head combo: 1376 combined armor & evasion for a max roll isn’t very high, as a chest alone can give you that much very easily.

Bottom line, for a lot of dual-wield or 1h+shield builds Bringer of Rain is potentially a cheaper alternative than getting a 6L chest and a head, but doesn’t offer as much in terms of defenses as other items might. If the price continues to remain at 15ex and more you might want to consider getting Alpha’s Howl (freeze immunity, reduced mana reserved from auras and additional aura levels) which costs about 2-3ex at most, and you should be able to find a 6L chest with health and over 1000 armor or evasion for about 10ex, in the end costing cheaper than a Bringer of Rain.

Are socket colors weighted by attributes requirements?

A pure evasion item typically has mostly green sockets, armor items red sockets and energy shield blue sockets. Rolling other sockets colors is of course possible with Chromatic Orbs but it’s very difficult to get for example 5 green sockets on a Glorious Plate (full armor item). It’s not impossible, but you’re looking at hundreds (if you’re lucky) or more likely thousands of Chromatics if you try to get 5 off-colors.

Hybrid items have a better chance to roll mixed colors, so if you can find an item with both Armor & Evasion as base stats it’s fairly easy to roll 3-4 red or green sockets on it, and even 5 sockets of one color isn’t too uncommon on these.

It’s interesting to note that having “Reduced Attribute Requirements” roll on an item increases your chance to get off-colors, so whether an item requires 100 Dexterity to wear or 150 does directly affect the chances of rolling off-colors. As an example Wanderlust, a low-level unique with energy shield has an equal chance to roll any socket colors since it has no attribute requirements.

Hope that answers your question. I’d love to provide more specific numbers pertaining to the chances of rolling uncommon socket colors on an item but as far as I know they were never revealed. There’s a calculator/spreadsheet here that might help you calculate the chances to get off-color sockets on a particular item, but it’s all basically just speculation.

Spark of Freeze Pulse for Magic Find build?

Which would make a better magic find build? Spark dual totem or freeze pulse dual totem? Doesn’t spark do less damage? Explain to me. I’m just trying to find the best mf build to work up some currencies I need.

First off all, Spark is generally more popular because it’s more reliable. Spark linked with Spell Totem shoots out a ton of projectiles that also bounce off of walls, which makes clearing indoor areas extremely fast. Additionally, Shock stacks are nothing to laugh at either and they increase your overall damage a lot. Freeze obviously has its benefits, but overall dual totem builds are incredibly safe to play and there’s really no need for additional slows/freezes.

Also, Spark goes well beyond your screen size and covers an enormous area, while Freezing Pulse has a significantly shorter range and requires monsters to be grouped up more than usual to be most effective. Spark doesn’t require you to reposition totems as often as other abilities.

Since there are dozens of sparks all across the screen at all times, it also helps when you have Culling Strike in groups, making sure you’re the one that finishes most monsters. It applies shock stacks easier, bounces off of walls, and more than makes up for apparent low damage due to the number of sparks up.

Hopefully that explains why players are usually picking Spark. I’d definitely go for a Sporker as it’s proven to work well for both solo and group play, and there are possibly dozens of guides on the official forums available that you can take a look at and learn from to see the best ways to build your character.

Why am I getting stunned with Unwavering Stance?

Freeze is an elemental status effect/ailment, falling in the same category as Burn/Ignite or Shock. You get frozen whenever monsters hit you with a frost-based attack and score a critical hit.

Stun is a separate mechanic, it occurs when a single hit you take deals certain damage. In order to get a chance to be stunned (or to stun) you have to take or deal at least 10% of monsters HP, while if you deal 50% or more of monsters health in one hit the stun is guaranteed.

Unwavering Stance gives you only stun immunity, since Freeze is a completely separate mechanic it’s not in any way affected by US.

There’s a few things you can do to help prevent freezes:

• Take several nodes in your passive skill tree to have a percentage to avoid getting frozen
• Use Dream Fragments or Alpha’s Howl unique items, both of which have freeze immunity
• There are two more uniques with freeze immunity, Wanderlust and Shiversting, but both are low-level items and probably not useful to you in endgame

Alpha’s Howl currently costs about 2 Exalted Orbs, Dream Fragments 2-3 Exalted. On most builds either of these two items is almost mandatory to have as Freeze can hurt really badly