Path of Exile for beginners - EVERYTHING you need to know

LEVELING From level 1 to 12 we use Stormblast Mine and Orb of Storms, make sure you use Stormblast Mine while standing IN your Orb of Storms to make use of the extra procs. You can sell a Magic Wand with a Topaz Ring and an Alteration Orb to get a wand with flat lightning damage to spells. This is very nice for damage early on. The tier of flat damage depends on the rarity of the ring you use: - Normal Rarity = lvl 8 requirement - Magic Rarity = lvl 14 requirement - Rare Rarity = lvl 20 requirement From level 12 to 28 we use Lightning Trap, with crafted wands this should be plenty of damage. Make sure you use Bear Trap on single target. For leveling after lvl 28 we use 3 different cooldown traps for a while(Seismic + Lightning Spire + Flamethrower). You stack up all of these traps before a boss spawns to burst it down really fast, make sure you use a mana flask! You can setup these 3 traps in the same links, some examples would be: - Seismic - Lighting Spire - Flamethrower - Trap & Mine Damage - "Lighting Spire - Flamethrower - Trap & Mine Damage" as 3L and "Seismic - Trap & Mine - Advanced Traps" as your second 3L In general if you have to choose which trap to link up more go for Seismic Trap. You can switch to Exsanguinate traps at level 38(when you get Cluster Trap & Chain Support). One requirement is that you have the "Pyromaniac" Ascendancy passive though as Exsanguinate traps cost a lot of life early on. If you're really struggling you can run Vitality as well. If you want to switch to poison keep an eye out for weapons with the "% chance to poison" mod as this will make it easier to hit 100% chance to poison early on. Note that this mod cannot roll on wands. For twink gear specific to this build Deerstalker is a good option. You can put your Exsanguinate traps in there and use the extra link you get to link Trap & Mine Damage Support to it. DEFENSES To mitigate attacks on this build you want to stack evasion, get as much as possible on gear. For spells we stack Spell Suppression, a new mechanic in 3.16 that halves the damage you take from spells. Getting 100% of this will feel much better than getting 90% since it becomes reliable, you won't get randomly burst by spells anymore. Consider taking the Spell Suppression mastery that gives you 10% chance to suppress spells if you don't have 100% yet. We also use Ghost Dance combined with the "Life gained as ES" craft on chest to have a small layer of added defense. This build's weakest point is phys mitigation. You can deal with this by building physical damage taken as ele on chest and helmet and/or you can craft "+1 minimum Endurance Charges" on jewellery. POISON vs CRIT There's also an option to go crit trapper. This tends to get more damage endgame but is less flexible on the tree and requires more gear investment. Crit also has less reliable on-kill effects(it still gets them sometimes though), so your onslaught and life on kill uptime will be less consistent. DUAL-WIELD VS SHIELD Dual wielding is a very valid option for this build, the pros of going shield are that it's a good source of spell suppression, life and resists as well as the option to shield charge. Dual wielding will give you more damage at the cost of some defense. If you're going for this your options are dual wielding 2x Cold Iron Point or 1x Cold Iron Point and the weapon described in Alternative to Cold Iron Point for max damage. PLAYSTYLE When mapping you want to use your Exsanguinate traps mostly, and on certain tanky rares you can throw a seismic trap as well. On bosses you want to start by prestacking your Seismic Traps, but you want to be careful that your traps don't go off before you can damage the boss, this mostly comes with experience. Just before your stack goes off you want to press your Withering Step in range of the boss and press your Focus mod(if you have it) to cancel your Withering Step, then cast Despair. This combo ensures that you maximize the damage of your prestack. If your prestack didn't straight up kill the boss here's some tips for during bossfights: - If you have the Focus mod try to time it so that you can throw 3 or 4 Seismic Traps each time you use it - Keep Withering Stepping in range of the boss as much as possible to sustain wither stacks, be careful to watch your Flame Dash charges though! - Bosses with teleports tend to be annoying as they'll teleport out of your Seismic Trap(Catarina, Awakener, Maven etc.), remember that their teleport usually has a cooldown though, so use your Seismic Traps as soon after a teleport as possible! TREE DIFFERENCES + MASTERY CHOICES Early Game = generic, solid tree. Should work even with lategame gear Late Game (defensive) = very focussed on defenses. Something like this is what you'd probably go for in a Gauntlet. Late Game (offensive) = you trade in defenses for damage. This is still less damage than the cluster setup, but it doesn't require clusters which makes it cheaper. Late Game (cluster) = probably you endgame focus. Very solid damage while still having enough defenses for most content even on Hardcore. The itemlist contains an alternative large cluster jewel(8-passive chaos instead of physical) that allows you to drop 2 points in it and might be easier to get. Suppression Mastery: you could choose "Prevent +2% of Suppressed Spell Damage" here for more damage mitigation, or the "+10% if boots/chest/helmet have evasion" if you need it to reach 100%. Another option is to just leave it empty. Trap Mastery: the only real choice besides Skitterbot reservation here is the Trigger Area of Effect. You can pick this before Uber Lab if you feel like not all your traps are triggering. Traps cannot be damaged could be an option in niche cases like certain bossfights, but remember traps are immune for 2 seconds by default now. Flask Mastery: this one is up to you, just pick what you feel like you like, or don't pick up anything if you're starved for points. Duration Mastery: this is one of the more droppable ones, the only real choice is the 10% more duration though. So it's 10% duration or nothing. Chaos Mastery: Wither is always your first choice here. If you go for 2 chaos clusters you could go for the Chaos Res -> Chaos Dot Mult mastery for some extra damage, but only if you have enough chaos res for it to matter. GETTING 100% CHANCE TO POISON There's multiple ways to get 100% chance to poison, I'll list your options here and you can choose what you use based on the economy or what you have in SSF. Herald of Agony + all the nodes on the tree amount to 85% chance to poison, so you want to get 15% extra, if you don't take Toxic Strikes you'll need 30% extra: 1. Divergent Herald of Agony gives 20% chance to poison, using a Prime Regrading Lens on a normal Herald of Agony gives you a 2/3rd chance to get this so it's very farmable even in SSF if you don't mind Heist. 2. Coated Shrapnel gives a 25% chance to poison as well as a little flat phys based on where you place it 3. Before you have a Cold Iron Point you can use a dagger with the chance to poison/poison damage suffix, this gives you at least 20% chance to poison. Also take a look at the Alternative to Cold Iron Point section of the notes for another strat 4. Normal jewels can roll 5% chance to poison(with some poison duration as well) ALT QUALITY GEMS These are by no means required, just options you can look out for: - Divergent Herald of Agony: gives you 20% chance to poison - Anomolous Withering Step: gives you extra wither stacks - Divergent Skitterbots: some extra chill and shock effect - Divergent Advanced Traps Support: might bring you to the next breakpoint for Seismic Trap pulses POSSIBLE ANNOINTS - Force Shaper = highest raw dps - Dirty Techniques = your dps ramps up fastest - Expeditious Munitions = faster pulses & trigger AoE, which is nice before Uber Lab. Also quite cheap - Entrench = 10% spell suppression for cheap - Sanctuary = 12% all elemental resistances for cheap - Discipline and Training = a lot of life - Combat Stamina = some life and regen for relatively cheap SEISMIC PULSE THRESHOLDS(ADVANCED) One way to optimize damage on Seismic Trap is to make sure you get as many pulses as possible. There's 2 ways to do this: getting more duration and getting more trap throwing speed. Duration is useful on bosses that stand still a lot and in Maven invitations, while throwing speed gets you DPS faster. But duration gives you more pulses easier than throwing speed does. Because of the way Seismic Trap waves use rounding ingame, it's hard to calculate a specific throwing speed and duration threshold you need to hit. Just throw 1 trap in your hideout and count the amount of pulses you see. Some ways to get more pulses: - Seismic Trap duration enchant - Trap throwing speed craft on weapon, amulet and belt. - Trap throwing speed on jewels - Advanced Traps Support levels Occasionally throw a Seismic Trap in your hideout and see if you're close to getting an additional pulse. Going from 8 to 9 pulses is 12.5% more damage on bosses that stand still and it might only be a single jewel away. ALTERNATIVE TO COLD IRON POINT(ADVANCED) Cold Iron Point is technically not the highest DPS weapon for this build, this is a guide to deterministically craft a better weapon. Be aware though that this is only slightly(about 10%) better single target, it's worse clear and a lot more expensive: COST: ~6-7ex 1. Get an ilvl 82+ Hunter Sword(Tiger Hook is the only one with a useful implicit) 2. Alteration roll for the T1 dot mult suffix, alternatively you can go for the T1 chance to poison suffix if you need the poison chance, but dot mult is more damage 3. Regal without augmenting first 4. Ideally you have a 2-mod rare now with your desired mod and a random trash mod 5. Annull off the trash mod(s), if you fail scour and start over at step 2 6. Craft: "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers" and "Cannot roll Attack Modifiers" (Cost: 3ex) 7. Use Leo or Bestiary Hunter Slam(or if you're lazy: use an exalt), this slams guaranteed either +1 socketed gems or % chaos damage over time. If you got +1 socketed gems, do step 7 again.(Cost: 1-2ex) 8. If you got only % chaos damage over time you can choose: the only other remotely useful prefix you could get is +1 socketed gems, so you could just slam again. You can also just leave it though since +1 socketed gems is not that amazing. 9. Remove crafted modifiers 10. Craft: "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers", "+(18-20)% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier" and "Gain (7-8)% of Physical Damage as Extra Chaos Damage" (Cost: 2ex) 11. You're now done, if you have +1 socketed gems on the weapon I'd recommend putting your auras in there or if you have Anomolous Withering Step you can put that and an Enhance support gem in there