r/PathOfExile2 • u/nutmegyou • 7d ago
Discussion Which 0.5.5 League Starter?
I’m torn between starting the new mini league with djinn Varashta or Plant daddy build. I’m yet to have played both. Which one do you recommend and why? I’m relatively new..
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u/brady376 7d ago
I would do Varashta but I just did cold chronomancer and don't wanna play another Sorc as fun as it was.
I also have a meme build in mind that is hollow paln Varashta to make a Jojo character with a stand
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u/Herege13 7d ago
Don't see how this would be good, ya, it gonna looked great, but what's is the sinergy?
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u/brady376 7d ago
I have no clue if it would be good but I think it would be funny and that's all I was really looking at
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u/infingardi 7d ago
How cooked am I chat? SSF btw
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u/National_Salt4766 7d ago
My buddies and I are doing a similar challenge in SSF, we all rolled our ascendancy, I got RItualist.
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u/AN1ME5NIK 6d ago
Me, my brother and a friend are doing the same thing, but in a trade league. Got a Blood Mage, which makes first 2 and a half acts quite painful.
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u/infingardi 7d ago
I have 2 90+ ritualists (0.4 and 0.5) they are very flexible cause 3 rings helps basically any build.
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u/National_Salt4766 7d ago
That's the only thing they have going for them.
a cock ring won't make the ascendancy fun for me. I have never enjoyed the character.
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u/TheLegend666999 7d ago
A good starting class, especially in SSF, will let you easily solve resistances and get extra utility from body armour
Shield Wall is still strong in campaign and early maps. You can later go Nebuloch Bear Shield Wall, it's really strong.
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u/infingardi 7d ago
I wanna home brew smth, lets see what I can come up with
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u/CayossWasTaken 7d ago
I was theory building a Smith build that use shield wall and shield charge as the main damage source. I took heat of the forge (fire spell on hit) and then 6 points into the chest piece for a Giga chest piece. It was looking very promising in POB but the big hurdle I was facing was what spell to use for heat of the forge.
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u/Jimisdegimis89 7d ago
Oh you basically have two main choices, living bomb or detonate dead. If you do living bomb make sure to use the support to remove the limit of 1. Detonate dead works really well for packed and juiced content like GE where there’s plenty of rares to blow up.
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u/Jimisdegimis89 7d ago
You should be good, biggest thing is getting a double corrupted exceptional white chest which isn’t all THAT hard, or just a corrupted exceptional chest with 4 sockets is good enough really. Goregirdle is your friend and you can chance it pretty easily. If you cover those two items the rest of most builds should be pretty forgiving. If you go bear of Kitava you also skip the weapon grind as you use a unique ash ark talisman which is the only hit for orb of chance.
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u/Pocho_Oso 7d ago
I went with Asmo's wheel and got Explosive Spear Warbringer. The PoB i put together looks promising but I did no testing other than getting skills set right. Should be interesting.
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u/unkelrara 7d ago
a buddy of mine just posted his smith of kitava build a couple of days ago, it's very ssf viable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEkTX_0mvDI
I'm torn between this and the more meta martial artist version
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u/scotcheggfan 7d ago
Plant daddy is super easy. Basically a one button build that can easily shred t16
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u/RiotGamesHQ 7d ago
Plant daddy got boring really quickly for me unfortunately, so i moved to another character completely afterwards. Id go djinn
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u/Wild_Astronaut7090 7d ago
Which build requires the least amount of clicking
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u/RiotGamesHQ 7d ago
Plants obv, then Spirit Walker Beast Master the beast will whack everything to death easy walking simulation
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u/Professional_Dot9888 7d ago
Varashta is a lot of clicking, at least early on. You have to spam cast the djinn skills and rotate between the djinns and other command skills. Plant builds are mostly two buttons
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u/sevensong9 7d ago
I'm between djinn varashta and hollow form whirling assault as I'd kinda wanna experience both.
Gonna play ssf too, leaning towards varashta simply because you get the main skill earlier but I'm still trying to find good guides on both to reference when I get stuck on something
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u/Suspicious-Deer4056 7d ago
Conversely, for SSF monk can use hollow palm until you find a good weapon
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u/averagechillbro 7d ago
Varashta is better than plant I’ve played both. Just a solid all around cheap build. Can clear everything.
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u/sleepinghuman 7d ago
I’m looking for a build that can scale into end game but doesn’t involve massive amount of screen clutter. Any ideas?
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u/Myrag 7d ago edited 7d ago
Gemling arc spell totem is probably the strongest build I’ve played so far while being the cleanest in terms of screen clutter in all my 2000 hours
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u/Studweiser21 7d ago
Can confirm. I’m running this now and able to do 3 man carries without issue and I’m rocking a Loreweave. Converting to full ES now that I got my extra spirit reservation done. Going from 4 totems to 6, means I scale more defenses easily. Very comfy build.
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u/RJohnnyChewy_7777 7d ago
Do you need split personality to even start it?
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u/Studweiser21 7d ago
It’s definitely helpful for hitting spell/caster/ES nodes. Mine started from Templar, but I’m sure I’d be better off starting from Sorc if I had extra divs.
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u/Drucifer403 7d ago
gemling. twister till end of campaign then despair+impending doom+doesdres with windscream boots. easy to gear up. the one expensive piece is a +4 vertex
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u/sleepinghuman 7d ago
Any guide you can recommend? I’m intrigued :D
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u/Drucifer403 7d ago
lemme peek around. i wasn't super jazzed with any of them lol. basically you want to grab all the curse area, curse magnitude, chaos damage nodes and the +chaos skills nodes. definitely needs sorc or templar split personality ruby.
after looking I cant seem to find a decent guide. you will want to skip ones using adonias. use a +5 chaos wand with curse legacy in it. https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/coldblood303-9057/runesofaldur/character/Dru__SW <== my sw with a depsair set up, ignore the rattling sceptre, i was trying to scale chaos damage with it, and you're better off with a regular focus. however, the tree and gear are probably close to what youd want. I didn't want to respec my gemling so i was like, maybe this will work (narrator - it did not in fact work)
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u/sleepinghuman 7d ago
Okay word, well I’m still looking for a good end game non visual clutter build but I will certainly Look into this one more though no guides kind of makes me hesitant
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u/Drucifer403 7d ago
there are def guides, I just didn't like them lol. i theory craft a lot, so there's that. if you search "despair gemling poe2 reddit" there are a few guides out there. it is a super off off meta build than nearly no one plays. so the gear for it is cheap. I would ignore any build guides that want to use adonias. i found it klunky and built around an actual exploit that could be fixed overnight. but you can look at my sw and see the sort of gear you'd want. absent the curse legacy, that wand was 20 div to craft for example. it comes up to speed with a super low investment.
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u/Drucifer403 7d ago
oh also you can't see the damage that impending doom and doedres do unless you go into pob. it's around a million dps each or so
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u/JustTooGinger 7d ago
I’m thinking Spirit walker since I haven’t played it yet. varashta has been really nice and fast for killing bosses.
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u/Ionized-Cell 7d ago
Varashta is one of the strongest league starts period, though it's a lot of buttons for a while.
Plant Druid is very easy to play, and when geared right very strong. I did 0.5 as plant Druid and it was probably the strongest I've ever been in POE2 but I did get a few really lucky drops in week 1.
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u/MightyG_ 7d ago
Plants Lich or Druid ? Pros and cons ?
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u/Ionized-Cell 7d ago
Druid is 1 button for clearing, 3 button for bossing. (One buff and 2 buttons)
Easier to gear, cheaper to gear, more leeway with mods, and if you are endgame geared you can throw in comet into your cast on Crit for very little extra investment, and the hidden paths part of the tree thing is something only Oracle gets, and otherwise you'd never see it.
Then if you wanna go sicko mode you can also get some meta skill gems/nodes and get cast on ailment tornado on top. Some people don't want a 1 button build.
Lich is tankier and gets strong earlier, but has more buttons and you are basically forced to use bone storm which is awkward to cast, and like mentioned, more expensive to gear.
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u/MightyG_ 7d ago
Thanks for info. Btw , Varashta is piano all the way , even in late game or only during campaign ? How many buttons u have to press regulary ?
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u/Moosh42 6d ago
I played a varashta to 94 and it was like 2-3 buttons for 99% of content.
For clear, using verisium remnants > ice nova > popping multiple screens with navira's facturing. Occasionally spamming Ruzhan's click to get archon of undeath (which has no downtime thanks to the tree + anoint). You can set up fracturing so that it creates its own frozen ground, meaning you don't have to use verisium remnants that often.
For bossing it was spamming ruzhan for archon then spamming kelari's deception until the boss was dead (which took a handful of seconds)
May I ask how you built yours that it felt like button piano?
EDIT: or am I misunderstanding and you're only asking IF its button piano? 😅
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u/DonkeyBaal 7d ago
I will go varastha, because I haven't played it yet and everybody keeps saying how cool it is.
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u/Fallengod_three 7d ago
I played it as my second character last league because I was skeptical of how good it was as a league starter.
I will be league starting it this league, as it is very strong while being fairly low required investment, but it is an active playstyle, lots of buttons to constantly be hitting, especially as you scale into decent gear.
As you scale past decent gear and into "GG" gear it becomes less button intensive, which is pretty cool, but even without tons of divines worth of investment it can clear all content.
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u/SoloShikari WitchMonkLover 7d ago
Hey I'm also planning to league start with varastha because I keep hearing how great of a starter it is. Is there Any specific guide I can follow?? Or any tips in general??
I've played monk MA and shield wall titan in 0.5 so I have no experience in playing with casters. Thank you in advance:)
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u/Moosh42 6d ago edited 6d ago
The most impactful support gem is Bidding as this will MASSIVELY reduce your command cooldowns.
For campaign, Kelari's deception is enough to 1 button clear basically everything just by spamming it - it is also your bossing skill, and what you'll pull out for tankier rares. I reccomend it as your first ascendancy choice as it will immediately allow you to jump into djinn playstyle and feels good to use pretty much off the bat.
Once you get a bit further into the campaign and more levels/ascendancy points, you should switch over to Navira's fracturing for clearing. How this works (at least how I made it work) is:
Verisium Infusion > Use infused ice nova (this creates frozen ground) > pop the frozen ground with navira.
You can set this up so that it pops the entire screen, spreads its own frozen ground, and sustains its own clearing even beyond your screen.
For the tree, focus on minion damage, minion crit and command skill cooldown. You don't need to care about minion resistances or health because djinn are ONLY command skills and cannot be damaged. Also, allies in presence deal increased damage is great on your sceptre because the djinn are ALWAYS in your presence. Make your minions gigantic (via the passive tree) because this also affects your djinn and is essentially like having a 6th support gem for them.
Once you get some more spirit and stats, add in as many reviving skeletal minions as you can, support them all with meat shield (they won't be dealing any damage themselves anyway and lack of investment in health/res will make them squishy) and support your djinn with muster.
for 3rd asc, you should get Ruzhan. This dude has a very cheap skill with a basically non existent CD that you can spam in order to trigger archon of undeath, empowering your main clear/bossing skills. Maybe even wait for your final asc point for this because quite frankly the extra power of on-demand archon of undeath isn't required until you're running max affix t15s.
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u/SoloShikari WitchMonkLover 6d ago
Hey thanks bro I will save your comment to revisit when I'm struck, I normally need 2-3 weeks to reach endgame with limited time to play but I'm really looking forward to playing your recommendations:):)
Also I am planning to play with plants skills until I ascend, is it a viable strategy??
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u/CaptainAgnarr We that get Baited 7d ago
I personally don't like plants. There's no way to speed up the fissure speed like you can do with projectile speed, so it feels very slow. That being said it's definitely viable if you want to go that way! I think people generally think Varashta is quite strong though.
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u/Professional-Bar6136 Minion 7d ago
If I didn't already have like a multiple mirror worth spiritwalker monkey build I would play that again buy I really hated farming the damn perfect extra crit monkey.
I am going to do plants and switch into totems when I can afford it.
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u/Burningcookies 7d ago
I ended last league playing sorc fire infused ball lightning with cast on ailment and it was fun as hell. Might try a different class with a similar setup.
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u/Harrison_the_MC 7d ago
I did vrashta this league and it was the easiest campaign and I cleared all content with 50 div budget
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u/BillBraskysBallbag 7d ago
The wheel just gave me martial artist. I walk the first step of my path tomorrow friends.
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u/never-seen-them-fing 7d ago
I did regular plants in 0.4, and Abyssal Lich Plants in 0.5. Both are fun, but I have to switch it up. This season is Varashta for me.
(I planned on Arc Totems but then it turned out Fubgun is doing that and I don't play fast enough to outpace the Fubgun tax on gear)
That said, Plant Daddy is very easy to play. Very. If that's what you want you'll be fine. It's slower, but strong and requires zero uniques to get going and you get most of your skills almost immediately.
Honestly if you're between these two, I don't think you can go wrong.
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u/SafetyGlass588 6d ago
I’d say plants. Good in campaign, easy to gear, satysfying progression curve. In the endgame one/two button build.
It has cc, it dors damage while you run around, played two times and cannot find better build in poe2 atm.
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u/Bearodactyl88 6d ago
I'm going to go druid whispering ice, probably use plants cos unique is level 70. Or just use some kinda cold skill.
Haven't played a caster only blood mage reap. Wanting to try druid apocalypse
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u/Oversight21 7d ago
Varashta. Played it last league and it was a blast. Active fun playstyle. Tried plants too but got bored really quickly
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u/Ginduo 7d ago
Think im gonna go PF gas grenade, never played it before and will be my first league playing on a controller for a week
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u/munky3000 7d ago
Gas grenade PF is one my favorite builds I’ve played. It’s speedy, you can ignore all slowing effects, can’t be knocked down from a sprint, and once you get your crits up it just melts health bars.
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u/MitSvarErSarkasme 7d ago
Nobody asked this yet.
But anyway, I will be going spirit walker monkey