What is Path of Exile and why you should play it.

https://www.pathofexile.com/

What is Path of Exile?​

It's a fantastic game developed by an indy company called "Grinding Gear Games". The play style is very reminiscent of the first two Diablo games. The story is that you are a prisoner, exiled with many other prisoners, from the main kingdom. You are sent to Wraeclast, a "prison island" where all exiles go, if they survive the boat trip. Wraeclast is a very dangerous and frightening island that is nothing short of entertaining for a game setting. Your goal is to survive and make a life for yourself on this new, hostile land.

Why should I play it?​

• Probably the best hack and slash game on the market right now.
• It is 100% FREE, and not pay to win. Everyone has a fair chance at everything. The only things you pay for are aesthetic upgrades, like devil horns or angel halos (these cosmetic addons are also really cool though, worth the money).
• VERY extensive classing system. Hybrid classing is encouraged, and very easy to make viable (for instance I chose the assassin class, but am a caster - I uniquely spec intellect and cast spells).

Heralded as being what Diablo 3 should have been!
​

The game is developed by Diablo 1 & 2 fans. We all know the first two games of the Diablo series were phenomenal, but the third was a huge disappointment. The story was clunky, there's no replayability, no PvP, and generally the whole game is a pointless grind. PoE has a ton of replayability in the class system alone (you could play the same class over and over and never have a similar play through). Not to mention the maps are COMPLETELY randomly generated every 15 minutes. You could play the game for half an hour on the same map and each visit will still be different.

Spells​

Something that really stands out from this game are the spells. You don't actually have a spellbook or a set of spells that you have/start with - all spells are in "gems" that you can socket into your items (all items have sockets). At first I was skeptical about this feature, but have grown to love it. Here are a few of its advantages:

• Pick and choose the spells you want, or save some for later: Basically if you find a spell gem you like, you can socket it in your items. If you don't want to use it anymore, you simply take it out and save it.
• Each gem levels independently of you: Each "spell" you have levels on its own, depending on how often you use it. With each spell level the skill gets stronger.
• You can trade spells with other players
• Supporting gems: You can also get support gems, which will add interesting new features to existing spells. For instance, if you have a frost bolt spell and you add a "fork" supporting gem, your frost bolt will now fork into 3 bolts instead of the original single bolt.

The skill tree​

The skill tree is sort of like how WoW talents worked back in TBC and vanilla.

• Each of the skill tree points are passive, they give you bonuses to skills and stats (e.g. "+5% Elemental Damage", or "+5 Strength")
• This makes for some really interesting builds. At the start (on your first awarded skill point), you can pick to specialize in one of 3 stats depending on your class: Intellect, Dexterity, and Strength. The path you take will affect the way you play the game. If you want some elements from two or even all stats specs though, you can do that since all sections of the skill tree intersect.
• Hybrid classing is encouraged: each class starts off at a certain point on the skill tree, but for a lot of builds you'll find that moving towards another class' skill area will give you better bonuses. For example, if you're looking to be a beefy caster, you may want to gather some life bonuses from the marauder skill bonuses.

Classes​

• Duelist: Basically a rapier-wielding, "quick" fighting swordsman
• Witch: Main caster class of the game, wields wands and casts powerful spells.
• Ranger: Also self explanatory, basically the non-magic ranged class of the game.
• Templar: Sort of like a paladin, but more of a focus on magic. Often referred to as a battle-mage, and sometimes a monk.
• Marauder: This is your melee, brutish, barbarian-style class.
• Shadow: This is your sneaky, assassin type class.

Still not convinced? Check out some of the following media​

Skill tree (often referred to as the skill forest! Look at all these options!)





Official beta trailer:


IGN overview of PoE:


Misc. screenshots:

 

Doesnt work for mac.

>_>

 

Downloading it now. Let's gooooo.

 

Looks fun, but I honestly don't have time for another game.

Maybe one day:c

 

Doesnt look too bad tbh

 

Won't lie, this looks pretty cool.

 

This looks good, gonna download it and give it a go.

 

Keep in mind it's still in open beta too, so the full game isn't even out yet. There's 3 acts though and some intense pvp that should keep you busy.

 

I've been playing it since it was publicly released, an absolutely fantastic game! Glad to see the game getting more popular!

 

Can't decide between this and RaiderZ LOL. Anybody wanna help me out hurr ?

 

This looks fucking badass. Thanks for the share.

 

It's worth playing, I've been playing it a bit and it's good. The skill tree system is quite amazing.

 

Why do you need to pick, PoE is free :S

 

I watched a review of this on youtube and it looks fairly decent. I have a question though, does it have different servers for different countries of the world or is it all in one server?

 

I'm so scarred by D3 it's going to take me a while to be able to play this even if it is far from the same game, but as it's free there isn't much excuse not to.

 

Looks pretty interesting, might give it a try.

 

Gonna check it out, looks cool.

 

what class is most op

 

Really hard to say considering that you can make a ton of different builds

 

There are a couple different servers, maybe three? There could be more though, I'm not positive.

This game was developed with the failures of d3 in mind. It plays much like diablo two, but better. Lots of end game content and such.

I might say ranger, maurader was pretty OP before the open beta, but its been nerfed.