This guide is for people who want a quick guide to playing POE without all the streamer double talk and misleading filler.
 
 
Some people will have you believe you can jump in and start playing without any knowledge of how to build a character in poe.
 
This is false. What will happen if you do that is being stuck with a weak character that cannot pass the main story and will get 1 shot by trash mobs. So have a look at the wiki or youtube for your first build to get an idea.
 
 

So you wanna be a hero kid..

Classes:
 
The main reason you pick one is the ascendancy skill tree which is unlocked in ACT3 by completing a trial. Please look up how to complete the trial on youtube or wiki. It will make your POE experience much easier.
 
For Example – If I wanted make a fire spell caster I can pick the class that has a fire spell caster related ascendancy skill tree, etc. There are 3 to select from for each class.
 
 
Skill Tree:
 
The other reason you pick your class. Depending on your class, you will start at a fixed place on the skill tree – Witch will start near intelligence nodes, Marauder (Barbarian) will start near strength nodes, Shadow (Assassin) will start near dexterity nodes and so on.
 
 
As you level up you will receive skill points to spend here. All the nodes are passive and are the main way you customise your build.
 
Here is where you will decide if your character is going to be a glass cannon or a tank or something in between.
 
You will need three things from the skill tree. Damage related to your chosen main skill gem, lifepool upgrades, and damage mitigation.
 
 
For a normal balanced build generally you want mostly damage, then some lifepool upgrades with a bit of damage mitigation.
 
You want to have this all fleshed out by level 65. Generally want around 5000+ lifepool to survive endgame stuff.
 
 
Life & ES:
 
There are two types of lifepools LIFE and ES (energy shield)
 
ES is a shield that acts exactly as life would, except that it gets depleted before life and it regenerates itself.
 
People normally decide on one or the other to min/max their builds. You can do both but its kinda not worth.
 
Damage mitigation is in the form of armour, evasion and block. There are two forms of damage in POE physical and spell.
 
Armour – lessons the harm from a physical hit. You upgrade this as a flat number by increasing the percentage of armour you have on the skill tree. Which is calculated from the armour on the gear you wear at any time.
 
 
Evasion – gives you a chance to completely dodge physical and ranged dmg. Spells are not mitigated. Upgraded the same way as armour.
 
 
Block & spell block – if you roll a successful block you take no dmg. You can find nodes that increase block % for either attack dmg or spell. normally caps at a max of 75% to block. You can raise the cap through various mechanics.
 
 
Gems – Two types: Skill & support.
 
Skill gems are the spells and skills you use in the game. You slot them into your armour to use them.
 
Support gems are boosters and buffs that you put into slots linked to your Skill gems.
 
Example – I have two slots in my chest piece, they are linked to each other, if I put a skill gem in there that can hit a target, and a support gem in the linked slot that says “chance to bleed on hit” instead of just hitting the target with the original skill gems skill, I will also roll to bleed the target I have hit with the skill gem skill. Support gems do nothing if it is not linked to a skill gem. Pretty simple stuff.
 
Gems do not stack. You shouldn’t have 5 linked “added fire dmg” support gems (you can but only one will work)
 
Support gems are a sort of minigame about min/maxing the correct combination to get the most effectiveness out of your skill gems. Some of them are not compatible with certain spells or skills and won’t do anything even when linked.
 
Gems haveattribute requirements to be able to slot them in your armour depending on their colour. You can scale your attributes through the skill tree, armour and items.
 
[green -dex] [red -strength] [blue -intelligence] these requirements increase as the gems lvl.
 
Gems lvl while you have them slotted in your armour as you gain experience from killing things.
 
Once a skill gem has reached enough exp tp gain a lvl you need to manually level them by clicking their plus button on-screen.
 
 
Normally you pick one skill gem that does damage. You try to link as many support gems to it as possible to get stronkest version of said skill gem. These are usually placed in the chest piece because you can have upto 6 linked slots on a chest piece
 
(1 skill gem & 5 linked support gems)
 
All other skills and support gems in the other pieces of armour are normally as follows. 1 movement skill (used to jump walls and generally move faster). 1 damage mitigation skill linked to “cast when damage taken” to automatically mitigate extra damage. And auras to buff your build/defences
 
 
Armour – generally you want to find pieces of armour that stack your chosen mitigation on the skill tree.
 
[Armour] or [evasion] armour or [ES] armour because the percentage and total mitigation you selected in the skill tree is calculated mainly from what you are wearing.
 
 
Elemental resistances and Chaos resistances.
 
There are 3 main types of dmg in POE – [physical] [elemental] and [chaos] (and [dmg over time] but shutup about that)
 
Once you get to act 6 you might wonder why trash mobs start 1 hitting you.
 
This is because you have now been permanently debuffed with negative elemental resistances.
 
Which means anything that touches you with elemental damage will most likely kill you.
 
 
“Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.” – Chris from GGG
 
 
The way you stop this from happening is by getting elemental resistance and chaos resistance.
 
You can do this by getting nodes on your skill tree, but dont. You need those points for other things.
 
The main way everyone does this is by getting elemental resistance on literally every armour piece until you have hit max resistances which is 75% (you can go above cap using various mechanics)
 
If you are struggling to find pieces in-game to cap resistances, you can trade for some on the poe trading site, just google “poe trade” its normally the first link. (try not to click on scams plz -_-)
 
The search options are pretty self explanatory but if you need help use youtube to figure it out.
 
Then when you’re at cap ele rez (as the cool kids say) you now think about maxing your chaos rez. (Or C-rez… dawg.)
 

 
Life flasks and Mana flasks
 
Useful during leveling and boss fights.
 
If you need to use them while doing anything else your build is bad.
 
people normally have 1 or 2 lifepool flasks and the rest go to boosting dmg or defence.
 
I personally hate using flasks all together and you dont really need them.
 
Only nerds who really want to min/max actually go hard on flasks.
 
 
Once you have done the main story you will start doing end game AKA mapping.
 
A portal device in your hideout used to jump into different high lvl area maps. This is where you will find out if you build is chud or chad.
 
 
When looking up youtube to find a build to get an idea – look for the tag “league starter” this generally means it wont cost in-game currency to achieve.
 
A lot of “low-budget” youtube builds still cost insane amounts of in-game currency and are straight up lies. LMAO.
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
This is all for Path of Exile Basic Gameplay & Overview hope you enjoy the post. If you believe we forget or we should update the post please let us know via comment, we will try our best to fix how fast is possible! Have a great day!