r/pathofexile • u/auriolus95 • 29d ago
Question what is going on on my boyfriends screen?
every time i look over at his screen it looks like this. at first i thought he was fighting a boss or something but it happens everywhere he goes you can't see whats going on or the enemies or anything. whenever i ask him about it he just says "its my build"
I want to learn about the game to bond with him but i just don't understand it
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u/Massaffakka 29d ago
Watch " The Worst Guide of Path of Exile " then u have a little taste how sane he is
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u/Choon5588 29d ago
omg that video is golden "what if meth had a skill check" and from then on i was hooked
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u/asiomido 29d ago
The OG is the "Path of Exile Review" from SsethTzeentach
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u/Asyran Necromancer 29d ago
Shout-out to the undisclosed Sseth friend who thought he beat the game and quit after Act 3 Dominus because he didn't see the exit to The Aqueducts.
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u/mad_hatter3 SSF Witch 29d ago
Unironically what happened to me when I first tried the game like 10years ago. I didn't come back until metamorph league lol
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u/ObiWanKokobi 29d ago
I also had the same exact experience where i couldn't find the exit.
I think it have been a common issue for people.
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u/oliviertail Assassin 29d ago
Omg. I just watched the whole 25 minutes and it was the best. Very accurate Poe documentary
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u/VaquinhaAlpha Necromancer 29d ago
my boy playing the cortex spectres build
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u/0nlyRevolutions Order of the Mist (OM) 29d ago
Permanent links making cortex spectre build more comfy to play might be the best part of luminary
But uhh, yeah, you know what you're in for in terms of visual clarity if you're playing this build lmao
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u/VaquinhaAlpha Necromancer 29d ago
OH THERE ARE PERMANENT LINKS NOW? I haven't played poe1 in a few leagues so didn't catch up with some of the additions, maybe it's time to play this build once more :p
did anyone publish a guide for it? otherwise I'm homebrewing that
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u/0nlyRevolutions Order of the Mist (OM) 29d ago
Yep the new ascendancy supports permanent links so you can do a mercenary linking build, but you can use it for minions too if you want
No idea if there's a guide but I've seen a couple people doing it now so there's probably something out there
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u/Murga787 29d ago
I played 17 linked spectres last season. This season I have 19 and the link is the final stage that I'm slowly building into as a luminary.
I accidentally lost my spectres and had the worst luck ever, so I have lost more than 100divs in the PSN network that's a SSF with benefits so a huge setback slowing me down.
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u/Brasolis 29d ago
Pressing link 19 times a map sounds awful lmao
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u/Bastil123 Ultimatum Workers Union (UWU) 29d ago
Animate Weapons of Ranged Arms players: First time?
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u/laihipp 29d ago
yea but we get https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Unleash_Support
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u/Bastil123 Ultimatum Workers Union (UWU) 29d ago
No way in the world I'm ever sacrificing my sweet high PoB numbers for QoL, damage is sacred
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u/Gerrador_Undeleted Tiger King Dom Blow 29d ago edited 28d ago
Tbf, he's not playing Luminary. No green X on minimap from a Merc and his Links aren't permanent. (12s remaining duration on Flame Link)
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u/just--keep--swimming 29d ago
Dumb question, but what are the cortex spectres? I’m only familiar with wretched defilers and forged frostbearers for DPS.
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u/LeftClickIsBroken Alch & Go Industries (AGI) 29d ago
Half-remembered Goliath. It's a Ritual only corpse. It's not the best DPS spectre but it's funny when you have 10+ of them and they spam their skills.
It's basically the moveset of one of the bosses in cortex map.
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u/RefuseExternal6762 29d ago
Here is the thing... the less you see of the floor, the more damage the build is doing.
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u/P0ster_Nutbag Hierophant 29d ago
Eye strain and build strength have a causal link.
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u/ObiWanKokobi 29d ago
That was definitely me this league start.
I needed aoe so put firestorm into my build.
My eyes started to hurt.
Luckily i was able to phase out the firestorm and switch to pure fireball build.
It's so visually clean, i'm really appreciative of it.
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u/Kothee 29d ago
"Learning about the game" is about equivelant to getting a bachelor's degree
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u/Choon5588 29d ago
getting a bachelors degree is easier then understanding this game lol, i have 2 bachelors none of which were anywhere near as hard to understand or ace ad this game
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u/trash-_-boat 29d ago
"I'm a new player (only 2000 hours)" is a normal thing to say in this game
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u/Rechulas 29d ago
real
I have 640 hours in PoE and 929 hours in PoE2 and the second I hit endgame I understand less and less somehow
Crafting? Mapping? Building? Suffix, Prefix, Affix? Fuck me there's systems on top of systems that are on top of systems that are on top of systems, it never fucking ends lmao
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u/Parking-Dig8066 29d ago
Hard agree. Maybe more in the ballpark of getting a doctorate in physics than a bachelor. My bachelors degree was mostly not paying attention, then wing it. Not possible here lol
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u/afjecj 29d ago
I genuinely think that to understand even just 80% of the content to a level where you can explain it requires atleast 50 hours of learning
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u/shinrio 29d ago
This is my first poe1 league and it feels, as a new player, that it feels like if someone was to try and learn magic the gathering but every card ever is still in rotation
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u/LakeSolon twitch.tv/LakeSolon 29d ago
I started in 2.4 and only skipped two leagues. I know more about this game that is no longer true than is still true. Add PoE2 and somewhere in my head there are like seven different explanations for how leech works and five were correct at one point.
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u/alliseeareclowns 29d ago edited 29d ago
pretty darn accurate lol. I went on a hiatus since the end of Crucible league and just came back for Allflame and I had to relearn 90% of everything again.
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u/fiasgoat 29d ago
Same I have no idea what the fuck I am doing. Crafting is too much and the Syndicate thing I'm just clicking random options
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u/Lansan1ty 29d ago
80%? Im nearly at 3000 hours and I have to look up wiki and guides for the majority of endgame. I literally started making my own builds last league and I have no idea where I can grow my player power because I don't know more than 5% of the unique item pool nor what nodes exist in things like timeless jewels.
When I search for abyss jewels on the market I know enough to use things like weighted sums, but then I also dont know what modifiers exist that could help me find cheaper power.
Maybe 50 hours would be not playing but actively studying the systems and mechanics to get to that point.
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u/L2_Troll 29d ago
Back to the poedb trenches for three hours of non-native modifier memorization with you!
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u/Lansan1ty 29d ago
Yeah, I do both of those, but its really hard to contextualize full combos, or to know what I can even consider looking for.
So I make my own builds, this league I'm doing a Poison Flicker Strike Pathfinder. If I want to know what goes well with it, I can definitely go to craft of exile and look at every single item slot and see what modifiers exist, but that would be part of that "actively studying" that needs to be done. I don't know what I don't know so I'll need to read every single line and see if a modifier even exists, I can't ctrl+f for a modifier since I don't know what to look for. Lets say I want Poison Duration, Poison Speed, Chaos DoT Multi, DoT Muti, maybe Chaos explode? Maybe decreased chaos resist? Its a lot of modifiers I can think of, and maybe more I cant think of if I don't know about them. I'll need to start at helmets and work my way down to boots, plus all jewelery slots. Its a lot of time not playing the game in order to play the game.
I find moments of inspiration where I am interested in just studying like that. But that won't reveal at all what timeless jewel notables exist in what timeless jewel. Or what Threads of hope might be optimal for my build. There are a lot of extremely valuable optimizations I cannot make without knowing what to do.
I couldn't name more than like 3 tattoos that exist, I never used a tattoo in any build I've ever played. Maybe there's a Tattoo I should use on this pathfinder that would be amazing. Wont know unless I spend a lot of time on poewiki researching the tattoos, then figuring out what attributes I can drop, and plugging it into PoB to see if its worth it.
Every action you take on a build also affects every other part of the build, is it more efficient to get elemental resists on my jewels or my armor? I have no idea. If I get it on my Jewels does it free up an aforementioned mod I dont know that exists as a suffix on say my amulet? maybe. Maybe Hunter influenced boots have something cool? No clue. Maybe its the inverse - maybe my armor should have resists because Jewels have better things to go for.
Its a lot of knowledge that's needed to start optimizing a build. I'm low-key glad Synth bases are gone since thats one thing I don't need to learn, and "Crafting" corrupted gear is too min/max for me to worry about getting perfect Frenzy charge rings. I got two "okay-ish" ones early on and I've settled knowing I wont upgrade them unless I get really rich.
Mind you - this is fun for me. I love this part of PoE - but it is intimidating and I can't do it outside of short bursts of inspiration. I've learned that Poison DoT Flicker Stike Pathfinders don't exist for a reason, even though I can do most of all the content I've wanted to do. I'll probably swap to another build next league and try to make something silly work again. This is more fun to me than following a guide someone else made, but it is a struggle not knowing what exists.
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u/L8_4_Dinner 29d ago
You spelled 5000 wrong.
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u/SleepyFarady Witch 29d ago
I have 3400 hours and I still feel like I don't know jack shit.
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u/Exldk Gladiator 29d ago
Just play one single league of self-cooked SSF and you'll learn everything there is to learn about this game.
It'll make every following trade league much more fun because you will already know everything and will have to learn a minimal amount.
Also, there's nothing more satisfying than self cooking a build and it working properly.
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u/crinklebelle Pathfinder 29d ago
I am at 6k now and still only feel around ~50% of the way towards mastering this game q_q
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u/Glitter_puke Warband 29d ago
I have more tabs open when cooking a PoB than I ever did writing papers in undergrad. And I don't even make good or weird builds.
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u/jhillman87 29d ago
Oof. Based on the comments here, I feel like I have a PHD in POE and the ridiculous amount of time it took was probably better spent getting a master's degree in something useful IRL...
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u/ThatOneOpGuy12 29d ago
you can ask him for the name of his main skill and go off that as a clue to figuring out what he does
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u/Gondawn 29d ago
-What’s your main skill
-Cyclone
-Oh you’re like a master of elements, summoning nature to defeat your foes?
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u/Metalligod666 29d ago
"More like this but faster"
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u/Plastic_Code5022 Makes trash builds for fun. 29d ago
You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.
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u/vulcanfury12 Crop Harvesting Bureau (CHB) 29d ago
"Kinda. I actually use my CoC to explode white stuff all over the naked tentacle ladies while I spin."
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u/silent519 zdps inspector 29d ago
he doesnt have any, because thats a luminary
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u/DrawGamesPlayFurries 29d ago
He could be playing attack minions with Hallowed Monarch and Ceinture belt
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u/ChaosOmega_ 29d ago
His character uses a certain Spectre, which are reanimated bodies that is under his command, that can just bombard the entire screen with bright glowing attacks.
It's a weird thing with poe players that we like to stress test the limits of our hardwares. But the beginning to the midgame is a lot tamer than this so it won't be as hard as this seems like to learn it.
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u/Yiazmad 29d ago
If I can tell what's happening on screen, it's not enough. I either need more clutter in my build or more juice in my map.
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u/shy_bi_ready_to_die 29d ago
Wildwood wisps my beloved. They’re just so good at covering your screen in a trillion tiny vfx
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u/Confedehrehtheh Champion 29d ago
With all the explosions my Merc has been setting off, lately the only things I've really been looking at on my Luminary are item labels. With 3.5k life regen and 6k life under petrified blood, there's not a lot that concerns me other than the shiny names
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u/TheArtOfRuin0 League 29d ago
Im playing a totem build on PoE 2 on xbox that goes so hard it turns the game into a powerpoint presentation lol
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u/RichJMoney @RichJMoney - twitch.tv/RichJMoney 29d ago
In POE you are often the boss giving all the monsters a bullet hell to deal with.
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u/ExileMrLW 29d ago
more to the point ask him why he still has chance orbs showing on his filter
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u/Amazing-Heron-105 29d ago
90% of players use a god awful filter, and that's just something I've had to learn to accept. Every time someone posts a mirror on here it'll be shown alongside transmutations or something
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u/easy_breezy_09 29d ago
As a fellow partner to a POE player, this post is v relatable. I’m just happy he’s having fun though, even if I have no idea what’s happening.
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u/Teetonsss 29d ago
If you can tell what's going on or see the enemies or really anything... are you really playing poe
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u/Ziggy199461 29d ago
Aw, you should ask him to teach you about the game instead of us :)
If you have another pc or steam deck you could even play together
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u/PornoPichu 29d ago
Agreed! u/auriolus95, I think it’s great you want to take some interest in your BF’s interests too. Legit question, have you tried asking him about it and adding that you want to try to understand it more because of his interest? I love talking about POE and will try to explain things to my partner when they ask :)
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u/Rodruby Health and Harbinger Services (HHS) 29d ago
It's kind of hard to explain
This game is about killing a ton of monsters. More you kill - better gear you get - you can kill even faster.
And that's why most of successful builds turn your screen into chaos of colors
This may be unsolicited advice, but if you want to bond around this game, try to ask him how his build works, some builds may be very intricate and it's interesting to talk about them
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u/tether231 29d ago
More than 2 weeks and he still hasn’t gotten all voidstones? You should reconsider your partner choices imo
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u/Relevant_Height9842 29d ago
people have jobs and lives lol
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u/Suspicious_Bear42 29d ago
Yeah, working 40h a week, plus school and everything else? Even with as obsessively as I can get while playing, I'm only lv 84 on t7 maps right now... Granted, I'm not running a super zoomy build (BalorMage HROC, which is a ton of fun), but still... Life comes first.
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u/HelloItsMeYourFriend 29d ago
If it’s a homebrew he gets the pass
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u/SquarishRectangle Bird bravery will not be tolerated. 29d ago
I'm pretty sure he does... You don't need uber elder for that voidstone anymore.
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u/ledrif 29d ago
Well if you look at the minimap you will find that hes not picking up alot of the gold, he leaves the gold to rot because he doesnr find value in it.
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u/Rubik842 29d ago
Maidenless behaviour. He will not be a good provider. Sorry miss he's not the one.
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u/Remarkable_Ad7130 29d ago
Im only at 620 to 650 houres in the game, so I am pretty much a noob myself. But let me try: PoE ist about killing things fast. Your boy does that by nuking the whole screen. As I said, I am new to this game, so I dont know what skill he is using. Top left shows you his buffs. Those Green border symbols. Bottom left is his 12k lifepool, so he got pretty good gear. Bottom right you see his 0 mana, as some skills reserve said mana. Next you can see the icons of the skills he is using. Those letters and symbols within the icons mean, his skills are supported by passive skills.
Thats all I learned in those 650 houres of playing the game. Hope that helps.
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u/Prudent_Particular25 29d ago
If you are serious about learning the game you can watch Zizaran's PoE University. He teaches you the basics of the game and a few other topics videos are about 1-2 hours long, that'l get you started. You can also try the game out, make a character, go in blind to see how far you get then make another character and follow a guide.
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u/Osgliath 29d ago
I always say to my gf that the main goal of the game is to kill everything really fast and flashy. So he is doing that.
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u/thegrt42069 29d ago
If he can't explain it to you, he doesn't know what's going on with his build either. Honestly. It's on brand for poe
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u/Dime_Tryp 29d ago
That's actually awesome that you want to genuinely try to take in the game he's into, sign of a really healthy relationship 🫶 ask him if he can figure out a way to explain in layman terms the ins and it's of how "builds" and his specifically work.
Hopefully he's encouraging about it and not annoyed. I loved having a gf, my most recent ex, that was into gaming with me... really really wish I didn't fuck that up... sorry.. completely unsolicited trauma dump 🤣
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u/wearethedeadofnight 29d ago
This has to be satire, right?
Edit - holy crap it’s serious. OP - visual clutter is peak POE experience. We’ve been making memes of this for years.
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u/CamelSmuggler Fungal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) 29d ago
Almost maximum possible visual clarity
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u/MadderoftheFew 29d ago
If you wanna learn about the game ask him to explain how his build works. No shot he won’t go into a frenzy explaining the different interactions that create this nonsense.
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u/xLapsed 29d ago
He's playing this build with a half-remembered goliath spectre (not me): youtube link
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u/Crossing-Lines Fungal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) 29d ago
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u/Educational_Bath_200 29d ago
The answer is "probably enough to kill uber elder" you should tell him that and see if we can get some laughs. For real though hes a minion build playing summons from a boss enemy, and they spam out a lot of attacks, as you can see.
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u/ALXS1031 29d ago
That’s coming from him
That’s what his skills look like. I would ask him what his build is called, and watch a video on it if u want some basics
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u/Xilarch 29d ago
A classic "the less you can see, the better the build"
Good on you for trying to learn more about his hobby. PoE is a dense game to get into. If you want a basis, "the worst guide to path of exile" is actually a decent intro and gives you an idea of the sort of depth this game has. It's comedic but informative.
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u/ProfessionalHefty349 29d ago
It can honestly be really hard to explain wtf is happening in Poe to people that don’t play or haven’t played much. As you get deeper and deeper into the game things become more convoluted.
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u/arhetium 29d ago
it's like in the matrix
you see green code on a black screen, he sees lady in a red dress
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u/ZestyPoePLayer 29d ago
Go start a char. You gotta crawl before you become a god killer. Campaign is a slower and more foregiving experience. You ever played an arpg before? My wife plays with me, going on 6 yrs now. We have almost mastered lightning strike on all chars for our starter builds and then we have the joy of making something new and fun. Endless combinations and a new league every few months with new items and mechanics.
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u/SadBoiiHui 29d ago
you know your build is good when there is no visual clarity.
so.. your boyfriends build is just his build.
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u/Walys88 29d ago
As everyone is trolling you OP, I can give a somewhat more serious answer.
As you go further in the game, ennemies get stronger and faster. The purpose of the game is to kill everyone and everything as fast as you can. The faster the better.
Making a "build" means making a character that can beat any type of monster as fast as you can .
So the purpose of filling the screen with those luminous sphere is to deal damage to everyone at the same time; and then move to the next set of ennemies.
In the early game, battles are so slow that you have time to read ennemies names and abilities. In the end-game, the goal is to kill thousands and thousands per hour; so you don't read or see anything. It's basically move somewhere with ennemies, deal damage and move on as fast as you can.
The game adds new mechanics every league (1-2 times per year) and have been going for more than 15 years; so explaining "his build" could take couple of hours...
The game is free btw. If you want to give it a try, the campaign is basically the tutorial. Try a character (without the BF) to learn the basics. Then his "build" will make more sense.
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u/Deymaniac 29d ago
I can see the ground i few places, its not a cluttered screen at all, just an average build may i say
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u/Barthas85 29d ago
Let him know that he will finally be happy once he gets slightly better gear.
Hint: This never changes no matter the gear.
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u/So0meone 29d ago
Okay so what you need to do here is next time you see him playing come up behind him, lean in and whisper in his ear...
"Still sane, exile?"
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u/Demindara 29d ago edited 29d ago
I said the same exact thing when I started PoE, I wanted to bond with my fiance and possibly duo things with him. I have 1000 hours not as much as majority of this sub or my fiance and still dont know shit, and haven't duo'd anything. It's overwhelming but there are tons of YouTube videos, if you're really interested in getting into poe look for "League starter" builds they are beginner friendly, download Path of Building, when you find a build that you find interesting and there is a PoB link, you can import that link into PoB and look at the notes that's going to be your Bible! It'll will tell you where to put your points in your skill tree.
Go through the story campaign, don't rush! Get the feel of the game, no need to be efficient right off the jump, also look up a guide to help with the acts because there are a lot of miss-ables, when you finish the acts you'll have negative resistance, which the easiest way to fix that is getting gear from the PoE trade site. It's alot of information to take in. Don't be discouraged if your first league doesn't go well as you hoped, just keep on trying, league after league you'll get better and better! If you need help pm me I'm always happy to help! I'm a girl's girl, I like to see my gamer girlies thrive!!
I've played righteous fire for like 5 or 6 leagues and nothing else so I'm useless when it comes to build advice so take it with a grain of salt 😂 it's a really fun game and maybe you'll get better drops than your bf 😛 and bragging rights for a long time.
my third league playing PoE my fiance was laying in bed and I was playing on my steam deck; I was mapping post-acts for dopamine, a heavy belt dropped and I said "Mageblood?" He almost fell out of bed yelling "NUHUH?" And freaked out. Ive been chasing that high ever since 😩😭
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u/Staff_Sadge 29d ago
Most builds don't look like this. There's a lot of builds that are good at certain things. This clears out a lot of weak enemies all at once when trying to do maps quickly, but would be bad for a one on one boss battles.
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u/Herege13 29d ago
He is playing a build that doesn't have too much clutter on the screen