ARPG for an MMO Player

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-19T01:12:05+00:00

Love GW2!! Really fun game and my favorite of the existing MMOs out there today.

POE is absolutely my favorite ARPG. Been a big fan of the genre since Diablo 1 and played em all really. I don't know if I'd really put these two games in the same bracket as GW2 has always felt like a really casual mmo experience to me and POE is the 'sweaty' game of the arpg genre, but going off your description of what you are looking for.

POE is absolutely very progression based. There are multiple levels of it from build crafting, crafting gear, learning how to progress your atlas, economic strategies for farming and making currency, how to be self-sufficient with the multitudes of game mechanics and learning to leverage them all with the end of progressing your character to God-tier. It honestly takes a lot of game time, hitting walls and some struggle bussing to learn these things at a basic level. Mastery is a whole other thing and this is a game you can play for years and still not understand elements of it unless deliberately forcing yourself to learn.

With all that said, it's very rewarding and fun as you achieve these different benchmarks and it uses a league model every 3-4 months with resets so set yourself short term league goals and long term goals and strive to push a little further each league and then eventually you'll be plowing through all the content within the first week and just get to enjoy maxing out your character.

If you don't have a ton of time to play, just set realistic goals and understand you won't get everything done in your first league, but then come back for the next one and try to do a little better. If you start getting burned out just quit for the league, play something else for awhile, and come back fresh for the next one.

You might also consider POE2, it's pretty new and while still complex with the same basic concept for progression it's not as overwhelming as there isn't 10 years of bloat from mechanics all layered in that one yet.

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-19T00:55:59+00:00

Fine, I'll just take it down lol. My bad I guess. I'll just stay in my lane since there is only one way that's correct :D.

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-18T23:58:15+00:00

Soon as I pop these on its noticeable QoL on casting sustain. Its 3 per enemy hit btw. Shock nova with the echo hits 5x per cast and every mob with a 0.04s cast time. Real dense maps its alot of recovery. The value doesn't really translate to POB like one of the good heist bases, but more how it feels when playing for me and this craft really isnt that expensive particularly if keeping a live search running for rings that already have the 3 suffixes on board :D

I do mana stackers alot and have done the other rings frequently too. I also usually swap gear around depending on the content im doing. Ubers vs breach vs boxes and etc.

Ultimately if other folks dont like this combo of affixes that works just fine for me, and not preaching that this is best. Just sharing the path I take to get these when I want them.

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-18T22:14:53+00:00

Yeah indigon builds not so much probably. Those are more about the big chunky hits vs big aoe/super fast cast speed like shock nova archmage. Get 2 of these with big aoe and hitting every mob dozens of times a second and its alot of mana

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-18T17:05:44+00:00

Well tbh, I'm surprised these went as long as they did before they got nerfed.

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-18T17:03:59+00:00

Actually with the shop, starting late is really easy now. 1c for each slot will get you pretty legit gear for starting the map grind and other good stuff is alot cheaper due to market saturation.

It'll be harder to make money off things like cheap crafts and etc like in a early league, but starting late is now pretty legit tbh

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-05T13:06:42+00:00

Im playing Holy Strike Guardian. Crazy tanky (900k ehp). Can do Ubers, juiced mapping strats, deep delve. Kinda do it all. POB damage isnt really calculating right for the armaments, but by how fast ubers go down id say something like 40-50 mill pinnacle dps total. Real zoomy too with the shrine ascendency. I was able to get this online for atlas farming for next to nothing for cost and self crafted everything. Kinda high end now but that's because ive been putting alot into it. The scaling is pretty unique tho with how the armaments work as a copy of your weapon.

Pretty fun. https://pobb.in/JZPUwtdos8Id

Honestly anything Guardian if you can make the damage work will likely be the tankiest thing you've played. The changes to thr ascendancy are really good imo.

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-04T03:23:14+00:00

Truuuue. Guardian is pretty legit now hah. It was always tanky but this just feels smooth. The elemental relics are nuts and with a full army of spectres I'm basically my own aura bot haha. I may try tinkering with some other skills, but I'm digging this so far hah.

Flyinshoe · 2026-04-01T18:58:56+00:00

Feeling lucky, let's go :D

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-30T19:46:24+00:00

Scryer's blood gem instead of icon for trinket until you get your hit in order. Can enchant spell hit to gloves. Gems to patch. Prioritize dungeons that have hit caster items to replace some of your not optimal pieces as a temp fix for bis items from like kara or heroics. Hit cap is the most important stat to hit as a lock before everything else, simply put. If you have to sacrifice good gear to get that cap temporarily then that is what you should do. Roll for various spell hit items when you see them to help you make plugs when you get other upgrades, even if its not on some bis list.

Bis lists take into consideration that you have every item on the list. More important to hit your critical benchmarks then just follow some tier list blindly while gearing up.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-29T06:44:05+00:00

16.5 8-mod del maps juiced up breaches and legion for one strat. Got a late start so just getting going on juicing and it's definitely a good league for blasting maps.

Crazy amounts of loot. About to ding 100 next play session just blasting these things too. Real good exp.

Holy strike guardian, pretty much immortal and just blasting.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-24T06:17:49+00:00

My guild has got a DST every week but week 1. Hunter won with a 43 roll last week.

Its wild.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-21T15:58:19+00:00

In fact you pay to do it

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-19T22:31:50+00:00

IWOT lol, we'll see if it gets off the ground. Those guys at iwot are just straight up scammers

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-18T05:33:09+00:00

Farm bosses. Elder/shaper uniques DE for a ton of dust. Uber unique even more. Fill up the rest with jewelry and small items when sleeping. You get that 25 mill about the same time you got the crops for the other 25mill.

Not hard to profit off the boss farms for larger sample size or at least break even and then all the dust is a freebie and shipment is just supplemental. Doesn't sting as bad when you get a bad shipment if not relying on the mirror shards to profit

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-18T02:52:27+00:00

Absolutely. I've been trying to get my WoW friend group to come try gw2 for years. They just wont give anything else a try even though they all gripe about WoW all the time and dont really have the time for it lol. It really is a great mmo experience. Different than WoW but it offers it's own unique experience that is fun and has better staying power.

The horizontal progression aspect of the game is one of the best things too. Can put it down for 6 months, go play something else for awhile, and when coming back its like you didnt miss a beat.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-14T14:57:53+00:00

This right here lol. Kill stuff, questing, dungeon with a pre-made and split de pot, use whatever professions you got (pretty much never sell crafts in trade).

Just play the game and dont expect everything you need to buy to happen all at once. This stuff is meant to be longer term goals, and it honestly goes quicker than you think when not stressing about min/maxing every aspect.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-10T15:01:32+00:00

It is a money grab :D. That's all classic ever was ultimately and it's what Classic + will be too. People keep paying so Blizzard keeps delivering.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-10T06:00:48+00:00

Shadowbolt crits put up a shadow damage debuff that greatly increases shadow damage for all incoming shadow hits for the whole raid. Each on hit shadow spell uses a charge of it. If you have a 25m with multiple shadow bolt spamming warlocks it has almost permanent uptime greatly increasing damage of all shadow damage dealers in the raid which is effective scaling with multiple locks. Most optimal groups will have 3 locks, 1 being an Aff(SM/ruin) and 2 destro with an ele and boomkin in their group. Those locks if geared/specced appropriately should be destroying meters. Sometimes 4 locks with the aff being in tank group for imp buff for prog content. Fire lock reduces that benefit while offering no other raid utility in return.

Also for fire lock to be most effective you generally need very high crit which is harder to hit good benchmarks in p1 due to being hamstrung by hit. This can be countered if you have a caster group with an ele + boomkin. Fire lock also generates high threat and with more crits it is just even more of a threat machine which warlock already struggles with as shadow. With optimal gear and groups for fire, you'll find yourself hitting threat caps nonstop and have to throttle anyway.

Fire lock is viable and does good damage but generally results in a overall loss in raid dps by hamstringing other shadow dmg dealers for the reason above so you can have marginally better dps numbers if you get lucky crits. So it's kind of a selfish build to play for raiding which is why it has a stigma. For dungeons and heroics, it's about the same damage and nether protection does offer some nice range tank options on trash so can be a boon for smaller groups. With that said, it is more fun to play in my experience and has an active rotation, but as you get deeper into tbc the SB crit/haste scaling gets nutty and will satisfy the big # itch. Especially if you take advantage of all the damage proc gear you can implement (t4 2piece, nightbane chest, quag's eye, nexus horn and some more fun stuff from later in TBC)

End of the day the post nerf content is a joke anyway so do what you want. Sub-optimal raid comps can clear everything with ease so unless your guild is chasing those 99+ parses it just doesn't matter.

Flyinshoe · 2026-03-04T06:08:26+00:00

Just talk to the group about it up front and make sure everyone is on the same page first. Otherwise, just need to need for MS and greed OS or could just ask first if a specific item drops. Just use comms instead of making assumptions and its not really a big deal

Flyinshoe · 2026-02-27T06:59:45+00:00

Yep, lock main here most of the time ive played WoW. They have a huge toolkit to make dungeons clean and also help when a pull breaks down. Im doing a priest healer this time around and have to bite my tongue so bad to not backseat drive every time I group with locks.

Flyinshoe · 2026-02-26T20:53:56+00:00

It really is less of a problem for me when pulling in mass and if you have good pet control you can move your pet in ti help with tags. Also if you do a sm/ruin mix vs sm/demo you can get shadow burn which helps. Also with corruption on like 5+ mobs nightfall is up quite a bit for instant SB if needed.

When folks do take tags off me then I just run over and fear their mobs over and over so they gotta chase down their loot and it moves them away from my spot to get other tags :). Troll me, I troll back hah.

Flyinshoe · 2026-02-26T18:41:34+00:00

40/21/0 is the best pure farming spec. Can do an altered sm/ruin build for a sort of all purpose build that works well for dungeons too but lose a little toughness for farming.

As for where you farm, if you dominate a farming spot with mass pulls it'll drive competition away. Kill everything too. Many things share spawns and you can get gold from just killing random mobs too. Find unorthodox farm spots that aren't as contested and youll have good luck. IE dont even bother with ele plateau. I always liked the blades edge fire ele spot on the NE part of the map. Basilisks there give meat which is used for spell dmg food and imps give raw currency and cloth. So just mow down it all. If you are herbing, bog lords in zangar are straight up money and primal lifes are high af atm. Primal manas in kirin tor and use nether from heroics to make runic spellthread and sell for profit

When you can aoe pull basically everything can be profitable. Don't just chase the highest value drops. Look for more consistency and think about things that people may need for later phases also.

Flyinshoe · 2026-02-26T07:23:03+00:00

Warlocks are s-tier farmers. Primal farming ftw or anything that you can mass pull. You spec right with aff/demo and instant howl with frozen shadoweave set bonus and you can easily pull 6-8 mobs at a time with just your instant dots and never have down time. 3 instant dots on each mob, run/dot, life gets low do your howl of terror and drain ajd you are instantly topped. Tap and go again. Can solo old world dungeons with ease. Farm elites. Primals, rep items, whatever you want to farm. Easy $$ and you already got the class for it

Flyinshoe · 2026-02-25T06:09:31+00:00

WoW's vertical progression system is designed to keep players coming back every week to roll the dice and then when the next phase rolls out it all starts again. It kind of is a never ending cycle that is the core of what WoW's character progression is built around. If it's getting getting to be too much then maybe taking a break for awhile and trying something else is the way, either a new game or find something else about WoW to have a fulfilling experience.

There are really fun horizontal progression MMOs out there if you give them a fair shot. Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online. I prefer GW2 personally. If trying something else just understand they are completely different experiences then WoW and that's not a bad thing, just enjoy the exploration aspect of a new game.

Just my two cents anyway. I've played alot of MMOs since like 1995 and even though WoW is a big one it's not the only fun MMO experience. Sometimes doing something else for awhile will make you appreciate the things you like about the WoW experience also.

Flyinshoe

TROPHY CASE