Any thoughts on a decent summoner build?
I love summoner style game play!
We are! Iām not a huge fan of Plague, Inc., so I only ran through it once, but Iāve introduced my 7-year-old to Pandemic and he likes it quite a bit. We will be playing every variation of the game over the next few weeks.
@Baelnor , Iām a PoE novice who, with a friend, was going to use this Delirium challenge league to finally figure out PoE. Iāve only dabbled with PoE in the past, but my friend was interested in learning PoE this round, too.
I was leaning towards working with this build to see how things go, I appreciate the discussion in the ā3.10 Updatesā section of the recent patch notes for the Delirium league, and how it affects the build: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2642810
Iām hoping for something tanky, and forgiving. Iām not in a hurry to clear content. 
I have been wanting to try GeForce Now, and see how cloud gaming PC games on a Mac goes. So will probably test it with PoE this weekend.
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Iāve never played a summoner, but if you want a tanky, unconventional summoner (unconventional in that it only has one summon), my friend played this build in the last league. It seemed to have similar dps and better survivability than my vortex build that probably had 10x as much invested in gear.
what is like the easiest noob, aoe, starter build?
I play one league a year now, so Iām a bit out of the loop on what is good at the moment. Iād just check out a couple videos on Delirium starter builds from any of the big PoE streamers (Mathil, ZiggyD, LiftingNerdBro) And see if any of them catch your eye.
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I think this is the most popular summoner build https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2642810
I am going to try this.
I fired the game up a little on GeForce Now last night and it was really good. They are a customer of ours though (I work for Akamai) so itās probably my companyās technology that makes it good! 
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@kennfusion Oh, cool, thatās the one I linked earlier that Iām trying, glad to see you also independently arrived at the same build. 
I saw ds_lily was running a necro build so put her twitch stream up on the second monitor. Sheās doing a SSFHC (Solo Self-Found Hardcore) race type of deal. Sheās been up for 19 hours now, is in third place, Iām not young enough to even consider something like that! 
Sheās running a āslave driver specter necroā build, which must be forgiving since itās a hardcore so permadeath (well, moved out of the Hardcore league, anyway, upon death) and with SSF can only use items that she finds herself. She has a PoB pastebin of her build, https://pastebin.com/GQGynqTv
I did plug it into https://poe.technology/poebuddy/GQGynqTv and gave it a look
In other news to keep my mind occupied, Stellaris Federations DLC launched today which I will start playing now.
But damn, those Stellaris Trailers keep getting better and better. I REALLY like what they are going for there. Especially the 1-2-Combo below
1:
2:
But in overall impact the Stellaris: Apocalypse Story trailer is still the best imo:
I also really dig the the Stellaris OST. While it didnāt surpass the overall playtime of the Mass Effect Series playtime, it eclipsed the Borderlands OST and XCOM/Deus Ex OST recently and will probably even eclipse the Mass Effect OST. Given the countless hours I had that OST playing it seemed impossible 2 years ago, but wellā¦honestly its that good!
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Rocking the summoner build, Iām the worldās slowest ARPG player, I play a summoner like itās a turn-based party RPG, heh! 
Trying to stop myself from breaking all the urns down in the Crypt, itās a compulsion, but they donāt drop anything worth the time it takes to click them. I do like that with PoE you can reskin your summons. The default zombie skin is kinda gross, can get a mummy skin or the ācelestialā skin that Iām using out of the store. They are more specters than zombies, now, and itās easier for me to pick them out of the crowd. I figure it makes as much sense as a humanoid zombie being āresurrectedā from some non-humanoid mob that I killed, I figure itās more of a spirit summons from their corpse ā¦ 
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I tried PoE a little on PS4 and just couldnāt get in to it. I donāt know why, because I love ARPGs. It may be that I had just come off of a lot of Diablo season play. There were two things about it that struck me, though:
First, there didnāt seem to be any weight to your attacks. I donāt know how else to describe it, but I felt like I was swinging and their health was going down without and solid impact.
Second, cosmetic shops and skins really, really hurt these games, in my opinion. Half the reason I play ARPGs is to find sweet loot and make my character look cooler. In a way, it is like playing with paper dolls. Being in a world where this guy over here paid $10 to look the way he did and this guy over there is a whale who looks cool because of money not time/luck just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The fact that the towns are instanced makes this even worse because Iām always surrounded by pets, auras, skins, etc. that people are simply paying for.
OMG.
I had downloaded and tried PoE on the Xbox, I honestly donāt know how anyone does it. Iād rather poke myself with a sharp stick in the eye than use a controller for PoE.
I unlocked the Hideout, I love that we have personalized housing in PoE. I canāt help but think that if Blizzard had done microtransactions, instead of the failed and removed Real Money Auction House, to fund Diablo III development, that we could have had ongoing development in D3 and stuff like the Hideout. New Tristram as a base is so last decade. 
It will be interesting to see how Diablo IV implements their business model.
I agree that Iād prefer to only buy the box and not have microtransactions (and, with the cost now, are they really āmicroā? World of Tanks and World of Warships think nothing of $50+ for a new tank/ship), but, given that it funds development, then cosmetics seem like a good compromise, IMHO.
I enjoy summoner classes, so canāt speak to the other combat aspects. Blizzard and Wolcen have better graphics, IMHO, but find the PoE graphics to be great and love the ability to reskin my summons.
Towns are group content with characters mingling together, but my impression is that in PoE folks think of āwhalesā as helping fund development. I might not be plugged into the social media that looks down on RMT in PoE, but from what Iāve seen folks seem generally okay with cosmetics funding development.
With so much of the gameplay being instanced, I donāt find that my occasional trips to the towns aggravate me. I do enjoy the Hideout rather than the towns, anyway.
I also love that the devs (Grinding Gear Games) migrates their loot box items into the shop. I passed on the Polaris Mystery Box, will buy the White Dragon pet directly out of the store when it comes up for sale.
I bailed on D3 shortly after the first big Inferno nerf. These games are all about getting the loot, but the gear in D3 at the time was so boringā¦ It was 3 stats with just slightly bigger numbers as you progressed through the game. I switched over to PoE at that point and have never really gotten back into D3 since (I tried at the expansion, but it didnāt take).
I donāt really get it about looking cool though. Iāve collected a fair amount of cosmetics from league rewards over the years, and the only ones that mean much to me are the high challenge completion portals and pets. Otherwise I generally sport whatever my normal gear looks like, with the occasional weapon effect.
What really drives me in PoE is the constant minmaxing. Thereās a constant drive to improve your dps and survivability to the point where you can trivialize the high end content. And there are so many different things to do to accomplish this in the end game:
- Grind out one more level to pick up an important keystone or jewel socket in the skill tree
- 6 link your gear for a huge dps buff
- max level and quality all of your skill gems then get a good corrupt to raise them above max level
- craft the perfect piece of gear through the ever-increasing number of crafting tools
- Try your luck at getting the exact helm enchant for you build in the labyrinth
- Risk the destruction of your perfect gear for a 1 in 100 shot at a corruption that while is only a marginal increase, makes you gear even more perfect!
While thereās always something more I feel like I could do in a league, the game becomes so all-consuming that I make the healthy choice, grind out the league challenges and call it quits after a steady month and a half or so of playing. And that is why I try to restrict myself to only playing one league a year!
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Mutant Year Zero. Finally picked it up. Difficulty level, very hard you say? This is the intended experience, you say? Sign me up. No doubt I will be hopping mad soon.
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Dawn of Man ā pretty awesome survival/city builder. I may have hit a plateau with it, Iād love to find the next better thing in this genreā¦
Red Dead Redemption 2 ā Better than real life. Itās got its quirks, but it has been the ultimate secret garden for me recently. I still have quite a bit of story to go and Iām already sad to see the end coming, like flipping the pages of a great book.
Iām thinking of getting into Subnautica next, following in the emersive escapism themeā¦
As well as any online board games with you all, and figuring out what games to play with all my old friends who now suddenly have a lot of time on their hands in the face of social distancing for who knows how long.
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Oh, man, I love Subnautica!
Giving Assessins Creed Odyssee a try during its free weekend. Really like it, probably gonna buy it while it is on sale.
Let us know what you think. I always really wanted to like the series but something about the open world design kills my interest after a couple of hours. I love the idea of exploitable historic locales. Black Flag (I think that is what it was called) was neat.
Been taking advantage of mobile sales/new-ish releases and playing a bunch of stuff on the phone and iPad, notably:
VWLS: relatively simple word game thatās entertaining nonetheless. Given a category and a bunch of words with scrambled consonants and no vowels, solve each word.
Retro Bowl: If you ever wanted Tecmo Bowl with slightly more roster management and less play-calling ability, youāll love this game. Dev has done a great job of supporting the game and adding post-release features.
Prune and Cosmic Express: two puzzlers I didnāt pick up on release that Iāve finally gotten to and love. Pruneās tricky but relaxing, while Cosmic Express is a real brain-bender that reminds me a bit of Trainyard, one of the first iOS games I played extensively (that was unfortunately lost to the 32-bit Appocalypse).
Also Star Realmsāso much Star Realms. Got back into it about a month ago and havenāt stopped.
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