Also, if you plan on doing PvP extensively you might want to consider class hitboxes as well. More details on all of this below!

• Aman
• Baraka
• Castanic
• Elin
• High Elf
• Human
• Popori
• Hitboxes
• Conclusion

Aman

• Kaiator’s Drums – Any aman of sufficient level can teleport at will to Kaiator, their home city. 1 hour cooldown.
• Last Aman Standing (active) – Your resistance to being knocked down or paralyzed increases by 70% for 30 seconds. Cooldown: 60 minutes.
• No Stranger to Pain (Passive) – Decreases damage taken by 10% when your HP is below 30%.
• Blood of Dragons (Passive) – Increases resistance to the effects that do Damage Over Time by 10.
• Prospector (Passive) – Increases the speed of gathering minerals.

Baraka

• Core’s Resonance – Any baraka of sufficient level can teleport at will to Allemantheia, the high elves’ city of knowledge and learning. 1 hour cooldown.
• Ancient Wellspring (Active) – Instantly restores all your HP using the magic of a bygone era. Cooldown 2 hours.
• Indefatigable (Passive) – Baraka are built sturdily, like their ancestors. Their stamina never falls below 20%, even if they die. Passive.
• Gather No Moss (Passive) – Increases resistance to restraint and movement debuffs by 10.
• Time-Lost Techniques (Passive) – Increases the speed of crafting magical weapons by 10%.

Castanic

• Kaiator’s Drums – Any castanic of sufficient level can teleport at will to Kaiator, with its great forges. 1 hour cooldown.
• Skirmish Running (Active) – Your speed increases by 35 for 3 minutes, but your resistance to stun is reduced by 20%. The effect ends if you stunned. Skill may be used during combat. Cooldown 30 minutes.
• Dirty Fighting (Passive) – Increases the critical value by 1% when attacking from behind.
• Weaponforging (Passive) – Increases the speed of crafting with metal weapons in 10%.
• Light Landing (Passive) – Decreases falling damage by 50%.

Elin

• Velik’s Horn – Any elin of sufficient level can teleport at will to Velika, the federation’s capital. 1 hour cooldown.
• Soothing Presence (Active) – Monsters do not make pre-emptive strikes, but your movement speed is reduced by 40% for 1 minute. The effect disappears immediately when you use a skill or item , or if you enter combat. Cooldown 60 minutes.
• Horizon Run (Active) – Your speed increases by 20 for 3 minutes. Cannot be used in combat. Cooldown 30 minutes.
• Botanist (Passive) – Increases the speed of plant collection.
• Friendly Current (Passive) – Your swim speed is increased by 50%.

High Elf

• Core’s Resonance – Any high elf of sufficient level can teleport at will to Allemantheia, their home city. 1 hour cooldown.
• Core Infusion (Active) – Elves can draw on their connection to the Core to completely refill their mana. 2 hour cooldown.
• Resilience of Mind (Passive) – When resurrected provides a MP regeneration buff.
• Coalescence (Passive) – Increases the speed of collecting essences by 15%.

Human

• Velik’s Horn – Any human of sufficient level can teleport at will to their home city, Velika. 1 hour cooldown.
• Deft Footwork (Active) – For 3 minutes, dramatically decrease the likelihood of being knocked down or paralyzed by another player by 50%. Cooldown 60 minutes.
• Indomitable Spirit (Passive) – When your HP is less than 30% receive 10% less damage from other players.
• Resilience of Body (Passive) – You heal continuously after resurrection.
• Nomadic Crafter (Passive) – Increases the speed of crafting light armor by 10%.

Popori

• Velik’s Horn – Any elin of sufficient level can teleport at will to Velika, the federation’s capital. 1 hour cooldown.
• Soothing Presence (Active) – Monsters do not make pre-emptive strikes, but your movement speed is reduced by 40% for 1 minute. The effect disappears immediately when you use a skill or item , or if you enter combat. Cooldown 60 minutes.
• Horizon Run (Active) – Your speed increases by 20 for 3 minutes. Cannot be used in combat. Cooldown 30 minutes.
• Botanist (Passive) – Increases the speed of plant collection.
• Friendly Current (Passive) – Your swim speed is increased by 50%.

Hitboxes

Other than racial traits you’ll probably be interested in hitboxes for each race as well. Hitboxes basically determine how easy you are to hit: physically smaller races have smaller hitboxes, and the other way around. You should also keep in mind that allies are affected by hitboxes as well: healing a race with a smaller hitbox is definitely harder.

Duo to hitboxes you might want to consider picking a particular race depending on your class. For example, as a healer you might want to pick a race with smaller hitbox such as Popori, so you are harder to target for enemies. If you’re playing a Lancer, you might want to go with the largest race so you can tank more easily.

There are some general rules concerning hitboxes: taller races obviously have larger hitboxes. Popori and Elin are the tiniest classes, with barely any difference in hitbox size. As it is evident from the above image, Baraka is the tallest race, closely followed by Amani. Castanics, Humans and High Elves are pretty much of the same size.

Males usually have larger hitboxes on every race, so below we’ll take a look at the differences of genders.

Female

The tallest female race is Amani, making them a great pick for Lancers class. Second tallest female race is High Elf, closely followed by Humans. Most players of these races opt out for Slayer, Berserker, Sorcerer and Mystic classes, both because of the hitbox size and racial traits. Also, not being the smallest race helps your healers target you, which is another benefit.

astanic females are even smaller and a common choice for Warrior, Sorcerer and Archer classes. They may be harder to hit but also much harder to heal, especially because constant movement is required, so be sure to pay attention when your healer tries to heal you.

Smallest race is the Elin, which at one point was so small it was nearly impossible to heal. For some reason though Elins are very popular amongst players so you’ll be seeing quite a few of them. Their racial abilities aren’t the best either, which makes it all that more surprising. Same as with Castanics, good awareness of your surroundings is advised so you can move into healing circles when necessary.

Male

Baraka don’t have a gender, but are obviously the tallest class. Baraka Priests are extremely popular, even though it doesn’t make much sense gameplay-wise. Even though their size would make them ideal for Lancer class, their racial skills don’t.

Aman are also quite large, often played by Lancers, Berserkers and Slayers. Considering their large size, they are easy to attack and heal. High Elf and Human males have negligible hitbox difference. Most Humans play Lancer, Berserker and Slayer classes, and most High Elves, play Priests, Archers, Warriors and Mystics. Basically, these races are good for any class, and their racial skills are quite decent as well.

Castanic males are slightly shorter than Humans; the horns aren’t a part of the hitbox. Lancers for example in most cases can’t Shield Block a corridor so you might not want to pick that class/race combo, but their racial skills are still quite effective despite your class preference.

The shortest males are of course the Popori, which are much like Elin also quite popular for any class, but suffer from the same downsides and upsides.

Conclusion

Personally I always prefer to play a race for their looks, completely disregarding any racial skills, passive bonuses, hitboxes and all that, and I would advise the same to every player. It is a fact that you can gain certain advantages if you choose a particular class & race combo, but it doesn’t mean you can’t successfully play what you like.

As you probably noticed, Humans have good PvP racials, making them great if you want to focus on fighting other players on a regular basis. High Elves might make good casters due to the mana regeneration racial ability, but do remember it’s on a 2 hour cooldown. Elin and Popori share the same racial abilities, and in my opinion they aren’t particularly useful for any play style. Castanics have Dirty Fighting, making them good picks for Warriors and Slayers. Amani are in my opinion really good for tanking, and Baraka second best.

But again, don’t let racial skills or your class preference get in the way of playing what you like.

Be sure to also read our post about Choosing Your Class

.

Contents:

• 1. Tips for New Players
  • List of Acronyms/Glossary
  • General Tips
  • Build Tips
  • Vendor & Economy Tips
  • Gameplay Tips
• 2. Game Mechanics
  • Difficulty Levels
  • Skills
  • Gems
  • Flasks
  • Classes
  • Attributes
  • Charges
  • Additional vs. Increased vs. More
  • Defenses
• 3. Links and Other Resources

1. Tips for New Players

List of Acronyms/Glossary

• Adds – Enemies that spawn during a boss encounter
• AoE – Area Of Effect
• BM – Blood Magic
• B/O – Buy Out
• CI – Chaos Inoculation
• C/O – Current Offer
• DOT – Damage Over Time
• DPS – Damage Per Second
• EA – Explosive Arrow
• EB – Eldritch Battery
• EK – Ethereal Knives
• ES – Energy Shield
• Eva – Evasion
• GCP – Gemcutter’s Prism
• GS – Ground Slam
• GM – Game Moderator – GMs can affect the game to resolve issues; synonymous with administrator
• GMP – Greater Multiple Projectiles
• IIQ – Increased Item Quantity
• IIR – Increased Item Rarity
• IR – Iron Reflexes
• LA – Lightning Arrow
• LMP – Lesser Multiple Projectiles
• LS – Lightning Strike
• Mob – “Mobile”, from old MUD games, but it means “Monster”
• Ninja – A player who takes drops that aren’t theirs (hard to determine in this game because of the loot timers)
• OBO – Or Best Offer
• Reroll – To make a new character or randomize the attributes/stats on an item (depending on context)
• RoE – Radius of Effect
• RT – Resolute Technique
• Toon – A character
• TP – Town portal
• WP – WayPoint
• WTB – Want To Buy
• WTS – Want To Sell
• WTT – Want To Trade

General Tips

• There are three acts and three difficulty types (normal, cruel, and merciless). Completing all three acts on one difficulty advances your character to the next difficulty. Each increase in difficulty and act makes the game noticeably more difficult. In Cruel your resistances are reduced by 20% and in Merciless your resistances are reduced by 60%. Note that this includes Chaos Resistance.
• If you die in hardcore your character will be moved to the regular (softcore) league and you can continue playing them there.
• AOE skills are very important for farming and killing large groups of mobs. (Almost) Every build should have an AOE skill worked in somewhere.
• You can use any gem as any class, so long as you meet the stat requirements.
• There are some reasons to not level up a skill gem – the mana cost of the upgraded skill may be prohibitive or you may not have the stats required to use the upgraded skill gem. If you don’t want to level up your gem, you can right click on the notification that it is ready to level up to hide it. You may later level the gem from your inventory screen.
• Two of the same type of support gem do not stack when linked together. However, you may link any number of different support gems.
• Dual wielding grants +10% more attack speed and a +15% block chance.
• There is a minimap. You can turn it on from the UI options menu. You can also turn on “items always visible” and “hold alt to pick up items” from here.
• To highlight items on the ground, hold down the ALT key. Alternatively, you can toggle the option of highlighting items on ground by pressing the Z key.
• There are no full respecs in this game. You can get respec points from quests and orbs of regret to “unspend” passive points, but in doing this you cannot break any dependencies. It is often better just to roll a new character if you need to make large changes.
• Instances reset between 8-15 minutes. Don’t loiter in town if you have a portal open, as it will disappear when the instance is reset.
• Control + Clicking on the entrance to an area allows you to reset an instance as you enter it.
• To link an item in chat hold control + alt and then click the item.

Build Tips

• When making new builds plan for about 80-85 skill points. You will reach this point around the time you complete Act III on Merciless and begin endgame content. No need to get all crazy with a 120 point build. By the time you have 80-85 points you’ll have a much better understanding of where the skill points should be going. Also, this keeps your head from exploding.
• Path of Exile can be unforgiving for those who neglect defenses (like elemental resistances). Sure you could make a full glass cannon build. But, would I advise that? Absolutely not.
• As a rule of thumb, try to get at least +100% life or energy shield from your passive skill tree into your build (To clarify, that is cumulative from +8%, etc., nodes. There are no gigantic +100% nodes.).
• You need elemental resistances. An easy way to build up resists is through rings. It’s a good idea to carry around different sets of resist rings and swap them out depending on the mobs you encounter.
• Keystones are major, large passives that lie on the outside of the passive skill web. They have the ability to completely change the way a character plays, and builds are usually planned around which keystones will be taken.
• Don’t know how to build your character? Check out the official path of exile forums and /r/pathofexilebuilds for ideas.

Vendor and Economy

• Control + Click quickly moves items between your inventory and a vendor/your stash.
• Shift + Click allows you to split stacks of items.
• Eternal Orbs, Exalted Orbs, Divine Orbs, Gem Cutters Prisms, and Chaos Orbs are the most valuable currencies. Your best bet is to hoard everything until you get a good understanding of values in this game.
• Pick up: all currency items, quality skill gems (hover over the gem, if it has a quality bonus, no matter how small, pick it up), unique items, items with three color links (a red, blue, and green socket linked together), superior-quality flasks, and any item with 5 or 6 links.
• White items can be insanely valuable. This is because some of the best items in the game can be crafted from a white item using the aforementioned currencies. Example: Find a white weapon with good sockets. Increase its quality by +20% using Blacksmith’s Whetstones, then use an Orb of Alchemy on the item to make it a rare with +20% quality!
• Superior items (items with bonus quality) can be hoarded and sold for Blacksmith Whetstones, Armorer Scraps and Glassblower Baubles. Any item with 20% quality can be vendored for a whetstone/scrap/bauble, and any combination of weapons/armor/flasks totaling 40% quality can be vendored for a whetstone/scrap/bauble, respectively
• Items with at least one of each color socket, all linked together, can be vendored for a Chromatic Orb.
• If you don’t have any resistance rings but really need some, you can vendor a skill gem and iron ring to get a resistance ring. Red skill gems give fire resistance rings, Blue skill gems give cold resistance rings, and Green skill gems give lightning resistance rings.
• You can vendor Orbs of Transmutation for four Scrolls of Wisdom each.
• Vendoring white items yields Scrolls of Wisdom, vendoring unidentified magical and rare items yields Transmutation Shards, and vendoring identified magical and rare items yields Alteration Shards.

Gameplay Tips

• Look out for Puncture. This is a skill enemies use that does five times more damage while you are moving. You are effected by puncture if you’re leaving a giant trail of blood behind you, and you HP is dropping like a rock.
• Look out for Viper Strike. This is a skill enemies use that does chaos damage over time to you, and it stacks. Four stacks can kill you very quickly. Run away and wait for the stacks to dissipate if your flasks and lifesteal can’t keep up with your HP loss.
• You don’t have to have an aura on your skill bar to keep it up. It only turns off if you enter town, you remove the gem, or you manually turn it off.
• Weapons/shields equipped in your secondary weapon/shield set (you can swap between two sets) can be used to level up skill gems, though you can’t cast them when those weapons aren’t equipped. You can swap between primary and secondary weapon sets with the “x” key, or from your inventory menu.

2. Game Mechanics

Difficulty Levels

• There are three difficulty levels: Normal, Cruel, and Merciless. You must complete Normal difficulty before you can move to Cruel, and you must complete Cruel before you can move to Merciless. The higher difficulties have death penalties, causing you to lose experience when you die. They are 0% for Normal (no penalty), 7.5% for Cruel and 15% for Merciless difficulty. This is a percentage of the experience needed to gain the next level, not your total experience.
• Losing experience in this way cannot cause you to drop down a level. For instance if you have 11% progress to your next level and die in merciless difficulty, your progress will be reset to 0%. There are also penalties to resistances in higher difficulty levels. In Cruel difficulty, there is a -20% penalty to player resistances, and this increases to -60% in Merciless.

Skills

• Skills currently come in two main varieties: spells, and attack skills. Any skill that uses your weapon damage counts as an attack skill, and everything else counts as a spell.
• Attack skills are dependent on your weapon, and so are affected by attack speed, accuracy, etc.. Bonus damage from rings and other gear is applied when using an attack skill.
• Spells do not draw their damage from your weapon in any way. They are affected by % cast speed, %fire/cold/lightning damage, %spell damage, and critical strikes. Integer damage bonuses on gear are not added to spells.
• Traps are very similar to spells, but are not affected by cast speed or spell damage mods. They are affected by % trap laying speed, and relevant damage mods. Integer damage bonuses on gear are not added to trap damage.
• The only exception to this is Town Portal, which is not affected by attack speed, cast speed, or anything else.

Gems

• Support gems only affects skills where it makes sense. For instance, skills that do not already do damage (such as Temporal Chains) will not benefit from Added Cold Damage. Skills that do not already have an area of effect will not benefit from Increased Area of Effect, etc.
• Gems get experience equal to 10% of the experience you earn.
• The number of gems you have equipped has no effect on the rate of XP gain. So having less gems equipped does not cause them to gain XP faster than if you had many gems equipped.
• Gems are not affected by the experience penalty when facing enemies below your level.
• Gems do not lose experience when you die.
• Gems can grant auras which need to be cast outside of town. Once cast, the mana pool is reduced by a certain amount for the aura and this shows up as “Mana Reserved”. This amount can be modified by items.
• When a gem is ready to level up, it shows up on the right side of the screen with a plus sign. Next to the plus sign are the new attributes of the gem. Before leveling the gem, mana pool of the player should be taken into consideration.

Flasks

• Flasks come in four main varieties: life flasks, mana flasks, hybrid flasks, and utility flasks.
• Life, Mana, and Hybrid flasks – These flasks cause you to regenerate life and/or mana when used. The amount recovered is shown on the flask as Life Recovery and Mana Recovery. The time it takes to recover the full amount is shown on the flask as Recovery Time. If you reach your maximum life and/or mana amount before the end of the recovery time, the flask effect will end prematurely. For example: You are at 100/300 life, and 150/200 mana. You use a hybrid flask that has 400 Life Recovery, 200 Mana Recovery, and Recovery Time of 8 seconds. After 2 seconds, you will be at 200/300 life, and 200/200 mana, and the mana recovery effects ends. The life recovery continues, and at 4 seconds, you have reached maximum life, and the life recovery effect also ends. *Flasks can have magic modifiers that provide bonuses while the flask effect is active, for example increased movement speed or resistances. These bonuses end when the life/mana recovery effect ends. *When multiple flasks are used at the same time, the effects are queued. The effect with the highest regeneration rate is always applied first. For example: You have two flasks, one that gives 500 life recovery over 10 seconds and has a 20% increased movement speed modifier, and a second that gives 500 life recovery of 5 seconds with no additional modifiers. You use the first flask and gain the movement speed while recovering life. After one second, you use the second flask. At this point the remaining 9 seconds from the first flask is queued, and the second flask begins its effect. Once the second flask has expired, the first flask resumes its effect for the remaining duration.
• Utility Flasks – These flasks give a temporary bonus for a set duration. Unlike the other flasks, the effects are not queued, each effect has its own timer that can overlap with other effects. The default effects of the flasks will not stack. For example: You have a magic Granite Flask with +25% movement speed, and a regular Granite Flask, both giving +4000 armour for 4 seconds. You drink the first flask, and one second later you drink the second second flask. The result will be that for the first four seconds you will have +4000 armour and +25% movement speed. At the four second mark the first flask ends, but the second flask still has 1 second left. So you will have +4000 armour (but not the movement speed) for another 1 second.
• Flask Charges – Drinking a flask consumes flask charges. Each flask shows how many charges are used per drink in its description, and each flask has a maximum number of charges it can hold. Whenever you or one of your minions kills an enemy, all of your flasks gain charges.
• By default regular monsters grant 1 charge each, magic (blue) monsters grant 3.5 charges each, and rare (yellow) monsters grant 6 charges each. So killing a rare monster causes all of your flasks to gain 6 charges.

Classes

The main difference between the classes is their stating location on the passive skill tree. Classes also start with different amounts of attributes at level 1:

• Marauder: 30 STR, 14 DEX, 14 INT
• Ranger: 14 STR, 30 DEX, 14 INT
• Witch: 14 STR, 14 DEX, 30 INT
• Duelist: 22 STR, 22 DEX, 14 INT
• Templar: 22 STR, 14 DEX, 22 INT
• Shadow: 14 STR, 22 DEX, 22 INT

Scion is the class added at the game’s release and starts in the middle of the passive skill tree.

Attributes

All classes begin with the same base life, mana, and evasion, and gain the same amount per level. These are still affected by the classes’ base stats. For example, a Marauder will start with 50+(30/2) = 65 life.

• 50 life, +6 per level
• 40 mana, +4 per level
• 50 evasion, +3 per level (including level 1)

Attributes are required to equip gear and skills. The three attributes also grant some passive bonuses:

• Strength grants +0.5 life and +0.2% melee physical damage per point
• Dexterity grants +2 accuracy and +0.2% evasion per point
• Intelligence grants +0.5 mana and +0.2% energy shield per point

Therefore the +10 attribute passive skills effectively grant:

• +10 Strength: +5 life, +2% melee physical damage
• +10 Dexterity: +20 accuracy, +2% evasion
• +10 Intelligence: +5 mana, +2% energy shield

Life and mana regeneration – All classes have a base mana regeneration rate of 105% of their maximum mana per minute. For example, a character with 100 maximum mana will regenerate 105 mana per minute, or 1.75 mana per second.

• “Increased Mana regeneration rate” modifiers modify the base rate. For example, 20% Increased Mana regeneration rate would result in 105 * 1.2 = 126% per minute.
• Characters do not begin with any life regeneration, but it is available from gear and passive skills.
• The rate at which you gain life from life leech is 20% of maximum life per second. If you have 1000 maximum life, and leech 600 life with a single attack, it will take three seconds for that life to be applied to your current life. You always get the full amount of life leeched, although it may take time to be applied – if you leech a large amount of life during a battle, you may find that the life gain continues long after the battle is over. Similar to flasks, the life gain from leech will end if you reach maximum life.
• The same is true for mana leech, although the rate is 12.5% of maximum mana per second.

Charges

Charges are glowing orbs that represent temporary buffs with different benefits:

• Endurance Charge (strength) – +5% Physical Damage reduction & +5% additional Elemental Resistances per Charge
• Frenzy Charge (dexterity) – +5% increased Attack Speed & +5% increased Cast Speed per Charge
• Power Charge (intelligence) – 50% increased Critical Strike Chance per Charge

Charges are accumulated by the use of certain skills and equipment, and last a short duration—nine seconds by default. Gaining a charge resets the duration of all accumulated charges. Each type of charge grants different bonuses. A charge bonus increases proportional to the number of accumulated charges of that type. By default, characters can have a maximum of three charges of each type active. This limit can be raised by certain passives and equipment.

Additional vs. Increased vs. More

When you are reading the Tool Tip of a node, pay attention to the percentages and the word that comes directly after it. It will determine how that percentage modifies your current stat. In short:

• Additional – adds directly to the base value.
• Increased/Decreased – an additive multiplicative increase in percentage.
• More/Less – a multiplicative increase in percentage.

What this means is that additive increases add directly to your current percentage. Whereas multiplicative increases, increase your current percentage multiplied by that amount.

There are two types of multiplicative modifiers. There are your increases, which are added together, then multiplied, and then there are your mores, which are all multiplied separately. For example, let’s give a character a bunch of additional damage effects from weapons:

a1, a2, a3, ... , aj.

He/She also has a bunch of passives that give you % increased damage. We will call these percentages:

i1, i2, i3, ... , ik.

You also have a few gems/items/etc that give you a certain % more damage. We’ll call these:

m1, m2, m3, ... , ml. 

They all multiply together in the following way:

(Base damage + a1 + a2 + a3 + ... + aj) * (1 + i1 + i2 + i3 + ... + ik) * (1 + m1) * (1 + m2) * (1 + m3) * ... * (1 + ml).

So there is additional, which is added directly to the base value, there is increased, which is an additive multiplier, and then there is more, which is just a regular multiplier.

Defenses

There are a wide variety of defenses in the game, and it is important that you learn what they are and how they work if you want to survive. They are:

• Life
• Energy Shield
• Armor
• Evasion
• Block
• Elemental Resistances
• Chaos Resistance
• Dodge

Life – Run out of this and you die. Your character begins at level 1 with 50 base health, and gains 4 health for each level thereafter and 1 health for every two strength you have. Your other defenses mitigate the impact enemy attacks have on your life pool. More is better, unless you focus on…

Energy Shield – ES works similarly to life, only you don’t get any bonus ES per level, you get it from gear. You cannot replenish it through flasks, and instead it regenerates itself after a short period during which you are not hit. Every 5 points of intelligence increase your maximum ES pool by 1%. Characters that choose to focus this exclusively end up taking the Chaos Inoculation keystone. Some notes: Chaos damage goes directly through ES to your health pool (which is why Chaos Inoculation is so useful), and having any ES at all confers a 50% chance to resist being stunned.

Armor – Armor provides damage reduction from physical attacks. It reduces incoming physical damage by a percentage according to the following formula:

Reduction = Armor / (Armor + 12 * Damage)

So, attacks that do more damage penetrate your armor better. It is capped at a 90% reduction. Armor is excellent for tanking large groups of weak mobs, but is somewhat lackluster against enemies that hit very hard.

Evasion – This is your chance to simply avoid being hit by physical attacks. It rolls against your attacker’s accuracy like so:

Evasion Chance = 1 - Attacker's Accuracy / ( Attacker's Accuracy + ( Defender's Evasion / 4 ) ^( 0.8 ) )

Evasion also reduces the odds that you will be hit by a critical attack, since your opponent must succeed on a second attack roll as a critical-hit check. Technically, PoE doesn’t use an RNG to determine when you do/don’t get hit with Eva, but they have a weird system in place that gives the same results as an RNG with a little more reliability for the end-user (this is buried somewhere in the Mechanics Thread, I’ll find it later). High Eva is great, but focusing only on Eva can be very dangerous as you will be 1-shot by more powerful enemies later in the game. It is capped at a 90% chance to evade.

Block – If you have a shield or are dual wielding, you will block a certain percentage of incoming enemy physical attacks. Against all physical attacks, if the attack hits you get to roll against your block chance. If you succeed, the attack is mitigated. If the attack would have stunned you had it hit, you go through a 350 millisecond block animation, otherwise the damage is just mitigated with no effects. Block chance is capped at 75%.

Elemental Resistances – Comes in three flavors – Fire, Cold and Lightning. Up until now, there has been no mention of spells. Spells (usually) do elemental damage, hit automatically, and generally can’t be blocked or dodged. However, their damage is reduced by whatever percentage your resistances are. If you have 50% resistance to that element, then you take half damage from that attack. Elemental resistances are capped at 75% without certain skills.

Chaos Resistance – Works like elemental resistances, except it’s much harder to get. Chaos damage always does DOT and bypasses ES. Chaos Inoculation provides immunity to Chaos damage.

Dodge – A special defense that only characters with the Acrobatics keystone can get. It provides an additional chance to negate attacks and even spells. It is calculated independently of Eva.

3. Links and Other Resources

• Even more tips and good explanation of controls
• List of Acronyms
• Common questions and their answers
• In-depth Mechanics of PoE
• Path of Exile Wiki
• Quest Reward List
• Accuracy Table
• Mods Compendium Thread
• Direct Link to the Mods Compendium
• Crafting Guide
• Worth Exalting?
• Life Leech vs. Life Gain On Hit calcuator
• Path of Exile currency exchange rates
• Monster Levels per Area and Difficulty

Source: Reddit

If you have any resources of your own to add to our list post them in the comments below.

Torwars

1. Why pick a Sith Warrior?
2. Sith Warrior as a character
3. Species
4. Appearance
5. Primary stats
6. Armors
7. Let’s talk Rage
8. Skill rotation
9. Starting world: Korriban
10. Leveling guide
11. Summary

Why Pick a Sith Warrior?

The Sith Warrior has a number of cool things going for it. Among them:

1. Force Charge enables the Sith Warrior to leap across a rather vast distance and attack his foes. It is also, quite possibly, the coolest and most utilitarian ability in the game.
2. No matter which advanced class you choose, you’re pretty durable.
3. At level 10, you get one of the best companions in the game – Vette. She’s cute, she’s snarky, and aside from dishing out some serious DPS, she’s the kind of girl you’ll want to take home to mom.

The Sith Warrior as a Character:

As a general rule of thumb, Sith Warriors are very melee oriented with very few ranged abilities. However, they’re generally very durable, very good at straight up melee combat, and quite anxious to kick the butts of all those goody two-shoes Jedi. When a Warrior gets to level 10, he quickly learns that there are two sides to this coin: the heavily armored Juggernaut, and the damage dealing Marauder. Choose wisely.

The Juggernaut Advanced Class gets heavy armor, and wields a single lightsaber. Any build that goes deep into the Immortal skill tree can be a very effective heavy duty tank. They have numerous damage mitigating abilities but, generally speaking, their DPS isn’t great.

There are, however, DPS variants of the Jug (those that ignore the Immortal tree, and instead go heavily into the Vengeance and Rage skill trees) that sacrifice some defense in exchange for offense.

In contrast to the heavily armored Jug, there is the Marauder Advanced Class. The Marauder dual-wields lightsabers, and trades off heavy armor (he can only wear medium) for some impressive mobility, stealth, and melee DPS. The Marauder has got a number of tricks up his sleeve, enabling him to get his groove on with with some over the top hand to hand combat.

Be sure to take a look at this guide which should further elucidate the two Advanced Classes.

Species:

The bottom line is, it just doesn’t matter what species you choose. There is no statistical difference or advantage and the differences are only cosmetic. Each species does get a unique ability all their own, but these are essentially species-specific emotes, and have no effect on game play whatsoever. So, feel free to make that uber-sexy Zabrak that you’ve always fantasized about, because you’re going to be staring at her butt for a very long time.

Appearance:

Like choosing your species, appearance choices are entirely cosmetic. Choose whatever appearance you want. In this regard, the galaxy is your oyster.

There are two small exceptions to this rule, for all you super leet min-maxers out there. If you are a hardcore PVP player, you may want to choose the teeny-weeny body size because of the so-called “ghetto stealth” factor. It’s simply a little bit harder for an enemy player to click on wee little you during PvP combat because you’re so teeny. While most players don’t think this is a big deal, for some, this is the .001% advantage they’ve been looking for.

The flip side is if you’re playing a tanking Jug, picking one of the two bigger body sizes can be a good idea. In some fights, where everyone is getting knocked around and confusion reigns, it may be a bit easier for your healer to find your beefy butt in the midst of the fray. Again, you’ve got to be the judge if this is significant to you.

Primary Stats:

Strength and endurance are your primary stats. Strength affects virtually all of your abilities as a Warrior. Want more melee damage? Get more strength. Want your Force powers to be more effective? Get more strength. Want your shields to absorb more damage? Get more strength. While it’s not entirely intuitive, the idea is that strength will affect every one of your abilities far more than cunning, aim, or anything else will, ever. In fact, you could pile on all kinds of other stats, and a small amount of strength would still outperform them all combined.

Endurance increases your hit points. Want to be tougher? It’s pretty simple: find and wear the gear with lots of endurance.

From level one through level fifty, you’re simply much better served if you focus on strength and stamina than anything else (unless, of course, you want to end up as Bantha fodder). If you want more offensive power, go for strength. Want to be able to suck up more damage, go for endurance.

Armor:

Whether you’re a Maurauder or Juggernaut, armor is the thing that keeps your butt from being knocked into the next galaxy. Common sense will tell you that if two pieces of gear are statistically equal, go for the piece that gives you the most armor. Very simply, mo’ armor = mo’ better.

For Jugs, Soresu Form increases your armor by sixty – yes I said sixty – percent. Think about this for a second: bracers with 100 armor on them instantly become the equivalent of 160 armor bracers. When you consider every piece of heavy armor that a Jug is wearing, this is suddenly statistically significant. This multiplier is a huge factor, so armor becomes equally important as Strength and Endurance for tanking Jugs.

Let’s talk Rage:

The other classes in SWTOR generally start off with a full bar of force or a full clip of ammo, but not us Warriors. We have zero Rage when out of combat. We start out empty and have to fill up our unique little love tank in order to, well, tank (or to DPS, but that wasn’t all cool and catchy right there).

Thus, Warriors have a back and forth kind of mechanic going on. We use some abilities to generate Rage and other abilities that expend it. This requires a certain amount of attention on the part of a Warrior, and it’s one of the things that makes Warriors both different and interesting compared to other classes.

Skill Rotation:

Whenever possible start combat with Force Charge. Not only do you look bad ass, but it does some pretty good out-the-door damage. It also generates 3 Rage. This should be followed by an Assault (which generates 2 Rage) or two if you’re feeling plucky. One can never have too much Rage. After this, you can begin to alternate Rage building skills (which are generally low damage) with Rage expending skills (which are much higher damage).

At very low levels, your skill rotation should be:

Force Charge > Assault > Vicious Slash > Assault (then repeat as needed)

As you progress toward level 10:

Force Charge > Ravage > Assault(x2) > Smash > Assault > Force Scream > Assault > Vicious Slash (then repeat from the first Assault in the rotation)

While over-simplified, this rotation gives you the basic idea. Force Charge gets you into combat, builds a bit of Rage, and immobilizes the target. Ravage (on a long 30 second cooldown) will probably take that target out. Taking out a target at the start of a fight, even a weak one, minimizes the damage you receive and gives you an edge.

Next comes a sequence of Assaults (doing a little damage but building more Rage) mixed in with Smashes (AOE damage for fighting groups, with a nice little stun thrown in), Force Screams (single target DPS with a stun), and Vicious Slashes (high single target DPS).

The whole point is that a Warrior needs to 1) take out a weak target early, and 2) keep generating enough Rage to utilize his/her higher DPS and AOE skills every time those skills come off their cooldowns. (Master this, and you’re going to be a god among your fellow MMO gamers.)

Even Simpler:

There are some Warriors that like to keep things as simple as possible. Their “rotation” goes something like this:

Force Charge >Ravage > Assault (x4) > Smash > Force Scream > Vicious Slash (then repeat from the first Assault)

The advantage to this simple rotation is just that: it’s simple. In fact, it’s nearly mindless. The disadvantage is that the Warrior isn’t maximizing his stuns and interrupts, or optimizing his cooldowns. However, it’s really hard to screw this up.

Starting World – Korriban:

At first glance, Korriban looks like a bunch of angry Egyptians strolled over and furiously puked on this desert planet. The place is dry, hot, and sand gets all up in your naughty bits. There’s nothing but temples and tombs (seriously, how many ancient tombs could the Sith really need?) full of ravenous sand worms that want nothing to do but spit on you with their acid-laced drool. Even your Twi’lek companion says that the Sith Academy is the scariest school she’s ever been to. That being said, Korriban really sets the tone: you’re a Sith, and the Sith aren’t a snugly, cozy people. You’ll have a lot of fun killing everything that moves, and the views of the Empire ships cruising in the atmosphere are awe-inspiring.

Your primary quest on Korriban involves becoming accepted as a Sith Lord’s apprentice. Be advised, both your main quest and the side quests are basically a tutorial in how to be truly ruthless and evil….oftentimes making you, the player, feel VERY bad about the choices you are forced to make. Truly, the Dark Side will have it’s way with you on Korriban.

Leveling Guide:

Although this guide is really only designed to help you get a great start as a Sith Warrior, all these principles will help guide you all the way to level fifty.

1. Follow your main story quest. It’s not like you have a choice anyway in how many people you actually put to death, so you might as well enjoy it.
2. Pick up every possible side quest along the way and complete them. These side quests give you a lot of bang (and experience, equipment, and credits) for the buck….no matter how many sand worms or lost zealots you have to slay with your powers of evil.
3. As you’re attempting to follow rules one and two, kill every single living thing along the way. On your way back, after you’re quest objective is complete, kill every single thing that has respawned.

Follow the above guidelines, and you’ll be at level 10 in no time. Heck, keep playing according to the above principles, and you’ll be at the level cap in no time. This collection of beginner leveling tips should also come in handy.

In Summary:

We hope you’ve enjoyed this guide; it’s intended to get you off to a great start as a Sith Warrior. Instead of having you fumbling around with your class like Helen Keller (was that mean? C’mon, folks, we’re Sith, mean is our middle name) we hope we’ve been able to answer a lot of common questions from your very first day as a Sith Warrior.

Truly, we hope you find these fundamentals helpful. Of course, we’re happy if these get you to level 10, where you pick your advanced class and go out to kick the galaxy’s arse. We’d be even happier, to be frank, if these basic skills continued to help you thrive on your evil, bloodthirsty adventures as a Warrior for another 40 levels after that.

Leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, mechanics and more… You can find it all in this guide specifically written for Sith Warrior players!

The Jedi Consular, the Sage and the Shadow all use different variations of the same system. With this, it would greatly depend on which advanced class specifically you were referring to get understand it correctly. In this case alone, BioWare has me sold on each advanced class being a different class since these mechanics operate very differently. Let’s take a look at them one at a time.

Force

The Jedi Consular seems to run on a basic Energy system called Force. The system works like this, your character has a base Force pool which is capped at 100 (not 100% confirmed on this). Some skills require Force in order to be cast and as you cast them it will deplete the Force pool, which starts at full. To counteract this, the Consular has a static regeneration rate of Force which is currently unknown.

For an example of this someone can look at the World of Warcraft Rogue or any of the Warhammer classes as they all operate on a form of Energy system. With this base in place you then move on to your Advanced Class and this is where things get tricky. Each AC comes with a passive skill which greatly effects how this class resource is controlled. Let’s take a look at the Sage first.

Jedi Sage

Let us start with the skill that defines the difference between a base Consular and the Sage.

Let us take this skill apart piece by piece. First is the increase in your maximum Force pool by 400. That is a tremendous increase over what a base Consular has. This increase is great at illustrating that the Sage will not only revolve around a very steady skill usage, but that these skills will all be Force intensive. Many people have compared this system to a Mana system but it should be noted that this is a point where it is nothing like Mana. A Sage will have a fixed Force pool which is not augmented by stats. If their Force system acted like mana then the size of the Force pool would be effected by stats as well.

The second part however is where it is very much akin to mana and not energy. Typically all energy systems have a static regeneration rate. This allows the developers to balance their skill usage to ensure that they cannot “frontload” their DPS, or if they do, they will then be energy starved and unable to act in as powerful a fashion. However, we see here that like a mana system, the Consular will be able to stack Presence in order to increase their Force regeneration. This is a very big deal.

Ask any experienced raid healer, resource management is often one of the most important elements to being successful. We now know that resource management for this healer is all about spacing out skill usage in order to maintain a steady amount of Force. What I like about this system for a healer is that any healer knows the pain of being in a raid and going OOM (out of mana) and basically just staring at their monitor as their fellow guildmates die. With an Energy system, a player can still bottom out their resource pool, and that will still not be a good thing to do. However, now they will still be able to provide some healing, even if it is at a handicapped speed.

Jedi Shadow

The Jedi Shadow also takes the base system and expands on it a bit, although they do it by going in a much different direction.

As you can see the Jedi Shadow stays much more true to the traditional energy system. A small energy pool that is dictated by proper skill usage and energy management. Everything revolves around pace since the important part of your resource is its regeneration, not its base value. Not to call out World of Warcraft but I cannot help but associate the “rogue” playstyle of the Shadow directly to the Rogue from WoW, the similarities are simply too great. Anyone who has played a WoW Rogue or any Energy based melee class previously should feel very comfortable in the Shadows shoes.

As you can now see the variation in resources between the two advanced classes is much greater than any of us originally suspected, especially mine. I can see why there was such confusion on how the resources actually worked for this class and it took a bit of research to get answers to my own questions. One word of caution. I did reference skills that have appeared in previous builds of the game which dictated a large part of my analysis in this article. Remember, any of this is subject to change so take it with a grain of salt.

Leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, combat, talent trees, mechanics and more… You can find it all in this guide specifically written for Jedi Consular players!

Jedi Consular provide a myriad of roles including DPS, Crowd Control, Healing, and even Tanking. They not only have offensive abilities, but defensive abilities as well. They can be a utility class or fill a main role in a party. Like the Jedi Knight, they command a Corellian Defender-Class Light Corvette.

Playable species for the Jedi Consular class are Human, Miraluka, Mirilian, and Twi’lek. The advanced classes are Jedi Sage (ranged damage and crowd control or healing) and Jedi Shadow (tanking or melee burst DPS). The latter use two lightsabers, while the Sage uses one.

Leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, combat, talent trees, mechanics and more… You can find it all in this guide specifically written for Jedi Consular players!

Starting Abilities

Trainable Abilities

Don’t forget to also check out abilities that are available to class specializations: Jedi Sage and Jedi Shadow.

Read more about Jedi Consular (including leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, combat, talent trees, mechanics and more…)

As an Operative the Imperial Agent uses close range tactics such as a “shiv” ability to eliminate their targets. They also use stealth abilities to hide their presence on the battlefield and position themselves for attack. They are also able to heal their allies utilizing advanced medical technologies making the Agent a vital colleague on the battlefield. Snipers uses long range rifles and cover to eliminate their targets.

Imperial Agents also have the ability to call in Orbital Bombardment strikes: attacks from orbiting satellites that do significant damage in an area of effect. Also to assist them in the field the Imperial Agent has a variety of tools at their disposal to get the job done, the first of which is their X-70B Phantom Class Prototype Starship, and the other is their Rattataki companion.

Like the Smuggler class counterpart, the Imperial Agent can use cover to increase his damage resistance while attacking. Some of the attacks are also only usable when in cover. When the cover is not available Imperial Agent can also deploy an energy shield for additional protection.

Players who choose the Imperial Agent will be able to play them as either Human or Chiss species. Their companions are Kaliyo Djannis and SCORPIO.

Be sure to browse around the site for more detailed information on advanced classes, abilities, gameplay and more.

Recommended reading: Full Imperial Agent Guide

In addition to the abilities listed below there are more which are specific to the two specializations.

Starting Abilities

Trainable Abilities

—

Leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, combat, talent trees, mechanics and more… You can find it ALL in this guide specifically written for Bounty Hunter players!

Jetpacks are also a common mainstay of a Bounty Hunters equipment due to its ability to get them into places generally inaccessible and out of the thick of fighting. Some Bounty Hunters also prefer the aerial combat option given to them by their jetpack.

The Bounty Hunter provides another unique mechanic in play style due to the need to “vent heat” thereby replenishing your action bar immediately should you become “overheated” in combat. While their action points do regenerate, this buildup, if not managed, can effectively shut down combat abilities in or out of combat.

The counterpart to the Bounty Hunter class is the Trooper. Bounty Hunters’ starting planet is Hutta, and the available species are Human and Rattataki. Available companions are Blizz. Mako, Skadge and 2V-R8. The two advanced classes are Powertech (tanks) and Mercenary (ranged DPS or healing). You can read more about the specializations in the advanced classes article.

Read more about Bounty Hunter class (including leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, combat, talent trees, mechanics and more…)

There are two game mechanics designed to create the framework of what your player can do. The first thing to address is how fast a player can perform a task: how often a player can attack with their Lightsaber. This mechanic is called a Global Cooldown timer. It is currently set to 1.5 seconds. When you hit the button to attack with your lightsaber, you have to wait 1.5 seconds before you can attack again. This is to prevent your character from firing off abilities as fast as you could mash the keyboard.

Players with faster computers and faster internet would have an advantage, and the goal of an MMO is to create a fair and balanced playing field. So the next resource system is designed to throttle how much of a particular ability you can perform. Your character will have many different abilities; some attacks will do a little damage and other attacks will do a lot of damage. Why would a player not just repeatedly use the attack that does the most damage? Well that would be pretty boring if you chose a single attack and performed that attack over and over. Game developers want players to use many different attacks and abilities based on the environment and situation. So the resource system is a way to throttle which abilities you choose to use. Let’s look at the resource system the Sith Warrior uses.

Rage

The Sith Warrior uses the Rage system. In the Rage system some attacks generate rage and other attacks cost rage. Your character starts with 0 Rage and must use an ability that gives the player Rage points that they can spend to perform more powerful attacks. This addresses the issue where a player cannot continue to use the most powerful attack over and over, they will run out of this resource we call Rage.

Let’s use some specific Sith Warrior abilities. The Sith Warrior can perform an attack called “Assault” which gives the player 2 Rage points and does a small amount of damage. The Sith Warrior can also perform “Impale” which does a great deal of damage but it costs 8 Rage points to use. So if a player wants to use the Impale ability, they must use the Assault attack 4 times which gives them 8 Rage points before they can Impale. The Impale costs 8 Rage points which sends the player back to 0 Rage points. The player will then need to Assault 4 times to attack with another Impale.

It will look like this, with your Rage points in parenthesis: Assault (2) -> Assault (4) -> Assault (6) -> Assault (8) -> Impale (0)

Tips

Capping

“Capping” is the term used to describe filling your resource bar. In our case, we can only store up to 12 rage points. If we have 12 rage points, and use the Assault ability, we will still only have 12 rage points after the attack. We cannot go over 10 rage points (unless there is an ability that increases your resource limit).

Dumping

“Dumping” is the term used to describe using your resource, or rage in this case. If you Assault 4 times to generate 8 rage points, you “dump” the rage by attacking with an Impale which uses up all 8 points of rage. Your rage has been dumped.

Don’t Cap Your Rage

One of the most important tips I tell players over and over is don’t let your resource cap, whatever the resource is. The damage potential of your rage generating attacks is more then just the amount of damage they do.

Example:

Let’s make up some numbers for this example. Each Assault does 40 damage. Each Impale does 100 damage. You can’t Impale without the 4 Assaults, so the value of assault is 40 damage + (Impale Damage/4). So the value of Assault is actually 60 damage in our little scenario. If you cap your Rage however, you are wasting the rage generating portion of the attack because you can’t generate any more rage. The value of Assault is only 40 and you just lost potential DPS. If your next attack is going to exceed your resource limit, dump the resource first. For Sith Warriors, this means if your next rage generating attack/ability is going to exceed 10 rage, dump some rage prior to using the rage generating attack. There would be exceptions to this rule; for example if it was a killing blow and you needed to maintain your level of rage for your next target.

Leveling, advanced classes, quest guides, spell rotations, combat, talent trees, mechanics and more… You can find it all in this guide specifically written for Sith Warrior players!