Noob's guide to Path of Building
Hey all, I'm new to PoE universe and PoB but decided to dive into how PoB works to see how it all works since it gets pretty high praise. Following I'm just going to list some of the main functionalities that help me in very simple concrete ways when making decisions about gear/skills/passives. Namely:
- Is this a better piece of gear for me?
- Will node A net me more damage than node B in the passive tree?
This is just a compilation of things I've been learning and could help others that are brand new to the tool.
Edit: Sorry idk why the images are so damn big, can't seem to scale them down...
Official release reddit post (Big thank you and shoutout to devs!!)
First some FAQ to get out of the way:
- Can you increase the font size? No, from what I gather this is not easy to do and there are no active plans to do so. I know, the font can be tiny in res monitors (I read in a thread that someone uses the Windows magnifier tool).
- Can I auto import my character? Currently, no. GGG has to enable the character retrieval API for the devs to implement this.
- These skills calculations are off... Or this skill isn't working, what's up with that? Since this just released there are going to be bugs and some skills are just not implemented. You can tell if a skill interaction isn't working if it's highlighted in red when you hover over the skill. Example:
Character import
Ok so then... how do I set up my character? Manually. I know it's not ideal but not much we can do until GGG enables their API. Let's start with equipment.
- In PoE 2 hover over one of your items press Ctrl + C.
- In PoB navigate to "Items" tab on the upper left.
- Press Ctrl + V.
- Item should show up, click "Add to build".
- Add to relevant weapon slot
Next, gems. You cannot copy/paste these, you'll have to do add them by hand.
- Navigate to Skills.
- New socket group
- Pick actual skill gem from dropdown as in the first entry.
- Now, add the support gems by clicking and searching for all your support gems in the following rows.
- You'll see hovering over "Boneshatter" highlights the support gems it has in green.
- Set the right Gem level for your skill (Boneshatter), leave the support ones as 1, since they don't technically have a level.
- Now do this for all your gems :D (I know).
Now finally, passives!
- Navigate to tree
- Make sure you set the right class in the upper bar
- Start... copying over all your passives from in-game. Tooltip also suggests a great tip: Hold down either 1,2 or 3 when clicking attribute nodes to set them as Int, Str or Dex, respectively.
Ok jesus, we're done importing now. If, and this is a big if because of the possibility of bugs/non-functional skills, everything is working your in-game values should now match what PoB says. Double check and make sure. I had some discrepancies but then realized I had misattributed some Dex/Int nodes and had also taken a different path to a node...
So what can PoB do after all that setup? Before we go into that let's look at the left sidebar.
This window never goes away and is where all the important calculations are shown.
A really important part here is the "Main Skill" dropdown.
This is what PoB uses to calculate your damage. I'd set it to your main skill. You can add other skills to be calculated in the "Full DPS" calculation by greenlisting them in the skills menu (Ctrl + Right Click).
and now at the bottom of the left-side panel we see:
Ok now for real we are going to get some answers.
Is this gear better?
Say you find something in a map. You're unsure of how it's going to affect your build.
What we're going to do is Ctrl + C the item in game, then paste it in the equipment tab.
Right then and there it'll tell you the effects of replacing said item into the eligible slot:
Damn, 12k DPS loss, doesn't seem worth it.
What path in the tree will net me more damage?
For this we go "Tree".
Then at the bottom of the passive tree you open up the leftmost dropdown. Click "Manage trees".
Click "Copy" on your default tree. Give it a name. Now we just switch between those two trees and map out the different paths.
Once your done click on "Compare". You'll see the two paths:
Now, by hovering over the alternative tree in the dropdown you'll see the change in stats:
If that were it I'd end it right there but unfortunately PoE 2 is a complex game and requires complex solutions!
You're not always doing the same flat damage to any enemy. The current combat conditions are very important to determine your actual output. For example, my monk has this node:
So... is it taking that into account in the DPS? It does, if you tell it to! Enter the "Configuration" tab.
Following my example, I want to see what my damage is on full life enemies so:
As I toggle it I see on the left hand side that my damage increases a bunch, cool, it works.
Take your time to play around with this tab. Not all interactions work but it should be mostly there.
A small note: one of my abilities damage depends on distance to enemy. In the editor 10 units = 1 meter. For me my damage maxes out at 7 meters so I want to input 70 (this tripped me up because I put 7 and didn't see anything change and assumed it was bugged).
This post is already long enough so I won't dive into the "Calcs" menu, but it's very cool
Exploring those tables gives you a much better breakdown of how damage gets added, converted, gained, etc. I love the damage breakdown popup that tells you where the damage is coming from and even the source!
Anyways, this got way bigger than anticipated, hopefully someone finds it useful. These are just all the things I wished I knew. And yes I know there's tutorials online but found most a bit outdated and not PoE2 related.
Final note: you can compare gear from the trade website. Go to Items, click on "Trade for these items", copy paste the search URL for the piece of gear you want to compare, paste it into the right slot in PoB and click "Price item" and it'll fetch those items for you in the dropdown to compare. Important: To let PoB hit the trade site API you have to provide it with your "POESESSID". It's a cookie on the site. Use a chrome extension that lets you read cookies easily and copy/paste it into PoB.
Cheers!
Comments
The only thing that has got me a bit annoyed is that my EDPS does not equal the dps that is displayed on my “Ice Bite” in game. It’s actually quite a bit lower than it. In game my dps on ice bite is about 370k dps, on POB it’s approximately 320k… 😞
You’re a legend dude, thanks.
A lot of dps calculations are currently not correct in PoB. There are a ton of new/reworked mechanics in poe 2 and currently pob2 is a barely functional port from the first game. The idea is it should be mostly fully functional by the time of full game release. However, it is and will be a universal means for sharing builds along with leveling/progression milestones going forward so it’s a good idea to get accustomed to it.
You probably will come across builds people share that look too good to be true. That could be because they have insanely expensive gear you can never hope to find, or just have some configuration settings that are literally unattainable. Just be aware.
A lot of people know a lot better than me, but for people just exploring PoB for the first time: You can use PoB for checking damage and whatnot, but a lot of the accuracy of the actual dps numbers depend on a lot of variable that you need to set manually.
Mob level, buffs end debuffs, even having power/frenzy/endurance chargers you have to set manually under 'configuration'. It matters a lot for your actual dps numbers, and it can cause your numbers to differ ingame and in PoB. That, and as another person posted, apparently it is still just a PoE1 port, so not all mechanics are correct. You can of course, still use it for relative comparissons.
I'm mostly waiting for the import function and for more clever people to give me the right settings.
This is very helpful for someone who's new to POE, like me!
Thank you, and have my upvote 😁
This is awesome, thanks for the write up. Any chance you could break down how to add jewels into the passive tree?
For POESESSID on Firefox (may work for other browsers);
Go to the trade website
Press F12 to open the Firefox devtools
Click on "Storage"
Expand "Cookies"
Your POESESSID value should now be available for you to see and copy in the devtools window
How do you assign weapon set points in POB?
I love Math of Exile 2!
anyone knows how to choose what to calculate Detonate dead from?
Going to check this out. Alot. Thank you
Hey, Thanks for the guide.
I see on your trees that you've setup Skill Sets, do you know how to switch from one set to the other to compare their effect on the skills ? I cant seem to find how to.
Cheers !
Noob question: One thing that bothers me a lot in the game is that you can’t quantify the cast on shock damage. I tried to use the app to get this info but couldn’t find how to make it show how much damage the lightning conduit does when casted of shock. Is there a way?
Any tips on how to run it. I can’t seem to get it to open on my machine.
Appreciate the write up, thanks
Last time I imported everything and missed about 100STR on my Titan but I will try again
How do we use controllers to copy and upload?
How to run it on Mac
Thank you very much. There's lot of things I couldn't figure by myself and videos are shit
Yeah, thanks for putting this together. Much appreciated
Did anyone know how to include stuff like skills shotgunning and skills that empower other skills.
Specifically my character is standing in mana tempest using bone storm (with power charges) for bosses and I have no clue how to include that
Wow. I saw some posts about what a good tool this is, but I had no idea that it did all of this. It's really hard to figure out some of this stuff without testing, and testing can be expensive. This is excellent to save time and currency.
I do have an infernalist Witch and for the love of god cant figure out where to put my "Ascension points" in the tree..... everything else been pretty self explanatory but this drives me crazy :P
Any tips?
I have a question about "Items" tab and stat weights.
On the items section you can "trade for these items" button and find better gear. PoB will generate stat weights and you can search on the sum total which is great. I just can't tell what the sum of my current equipped item is. E,G is the sum of a chest peice is 500, what is the sum of what im wearing now?
how do you actually activate spirit gems, like scavenged plating? I mean its checked as "enabled" but i dont know how to make it actually apply 10 stacks of scavenged plating or other stuff like charge infusion to my build
Saving this. Cheers!
POB does not represent correctly: mana, ES, life total, mana regen AND dps... (using stormweaver) - It's close but inaccurate
Triple checked ALL: skill tree point allocations, jewels, items imported with copy paste, ascendancy etc.
Soo... it's useless atm.
Nice effort, still.. maybe do not release something broken.
Thank you. Great Guide and I decided to download it only because of your post and it saved my ass. Made me realize I forgot the 10% Lightning Res in Act 2 Cruel :D
Cheers.
Lovely post, dont have time rn to read all but I spent like 10 minutes searching for a total number of my elemental pen. Is this somewhere?
This is a great post, thanks for writing this up. A couple other things I think might help new people a lot
F1 is a hotkey that will open the PoE2 wiki for whatever you're hovering over (Tree nodes, ascendancy, uniques, item bases, gems too except support gems which I will fix for the next update)
If you're not hovering over anything, F1 will open up the help tab that shows you relevant information for the tab you are currently in.
At the very top of the list is all the hotkeys in PoB, some of them are very useful so I'd highly recommend having a quick look
Ctrl +F works on the tree, configs and calcs page so use it when you're looking for something
We'll be having plenty of updates over the coming weeks so make sure to download the latest update as there will be many bug fixes and handling for new DPS calculations
making pob2 QoL as shit as the first one. pob completly uselesss to use on a 4k monitor
how do i add jewel values to the passive tree? Normal jewels, not those fancy ones. Copy paste doesn't seem to work.
I'm new to PoE but I have no intention to use this let alone learn how it works.
Appreciate the time taken to teach those that do though. I just think an external tool to optimise a build kinda defeats the purpose.
Are Save and Save As not working for anyone else? Keep getting 'Make sure the save folder exists and is writable' error. If I check the default path it shows the default path has both / and \ in the file directory location. I've tried to update this in the Options (lower left button) by directly copying my directory file location from windows File Explorer , but I get an error when I update the file directory saying Settings.xml doesn't exist. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
doesn't the "font size" (ui scaling) follow the windows dpi/scaling settings?
This is crazy good. Makes me want to sell the console and get a PC just for this tool. Thank you for creating this.
I did CTRL+C an item in-game but I can't paste it on PoB. What am I missing? All the relevant slots are grayed out.
Fantastic post, will definitely be saving to come back to.
WHEN CONSOLE :(
I cant get the DPS of Siege Cascade display the same value as in-game. My guess is that ammunition type skills arent well managed yet ?
I am very confused. POB seems to show POE1? Ctrl V doesnt seem to do anything. When I installed this, I had POB already and was given option to override files, which i did.
how do u add jewels to the tree?
Can you please continue or make part2
This is so helpful thank you!
How can I switch an attribute without moving back all the way on the tree?
My Evasion is wrong, I am playing monk and i think its not calculating with the extra evasion from the es helmet when u picked the node on the tree
This shit is so wildly complex looking and time-consuming, I think I’ll just focus on playing the game and making my own build.
The big problem with PoB is that it works on less computers than PoE does.
This is what I imagine doing taxes is for Americans
like, what in the everloving fuck
You can copy and paste jewels too 💯
I might just be able to focus enough to read this later. Commenting so it's easier to find lol