Path of Exile Ground Stomp Melee Marauder Build

Path of Exile Ground Stomp Melee Marauder Build by Morsexier

 

 Keystones

• Resolute Technique
• Blood Magic
• Unwavering Stance
• Iron Reflexes
• Inner Force (this last in the build)

Basics

Ground Slam is considered by many to be the staple melee attack. Which might be another way of saying that it is the one melee skill that is viable at every gear level, character level and skill level. Used in conjunction with a great single target attack like Glacial Hammer or Heavy Strike, in conjunction with Enduring cry,  you provide mob gathering and control for large packs, and very good Rare mob and Boss mob damage and control. Using Blood Magic in the passive tree, stacking life, armor and endurance charges provides you with great survivability to go with your incredible Area of Effect damage.

Build Strengths

• Early game and End game very durable
• Naturally high life, armor and endurance charges
• Incredible Area of Effect potential, with the ability to permanently stun mobs (discussed in Build and Tactics)
• Best and simplest melee to play
• Going Iron Reflexes allows a huge flexibility in the gear you can wear.

Build Weaknesses

• Using your single target attack, though high DPS, puts you in considerable risk. For example on Vaal with his overhead smash.
• Mid game can be very weak.
• With the amount of control via Stuns and general mob aggro control end game, it is easy to become complacent and get into a bad situation.
• Some of the worst nodes for effectiveness per point spent are +Phys% damage passives, yet you need a substantial amount to reach a threshold to stun all but bosses.
• If you run a more permanent stun build, you trade survivability for the ability to stun everything.

Normal

Normal with a marauder is always the same, regardless of the eventual skill and spec you intend to go, you pick up a mace and ground slam your way to victory. How appropriate then that your chosen way of life is to ground slam in maps, this is as good as time as any to work on your ground slam kiting ability. Your spec wants to look something like this by the time you are level 27, which is the level to use a Brass maul or a Geofri's Baptism if you are lucky. After you fleshed out a bit more of the Templar tree, with the option for Amplify, you should make you way down to blood magic. Be very, very careful at he end of Act 3 because the mobs in Lunaris Temple put up Vulnerability on your character (like the Crabs in Coves), which looks like a pair of red head phones hovering over your character. As tanky as you think you are, or even might be, this one curse can kill you before you know it. If you do not have a flask that removes curses play cautiously.
Some objectives of normal:

• High health on gear
• MS boots
• Work on the ground slam "micro". This means your ability to effectively kite and ground slam right after the animation is complete.

Cruel

Cruel is where you will begin to notice that mobs hit you much like the latter half of Act 3, but that your regen and life on hit or life leech begins to really compensate for it. Personally my objective for Cruel is to level in cruel ledge from 33 until 40. At 40 I would then go and do flooded depths and get the skill point. Your build should look something roughly like this with Blood Magic at that point. From this point progress as you feel comfortable, while trying to get your hands on a 4L armor\weapon (focus on armor since having a good weapon whatever the sockets is best). If you can manage to get a 4L, and chrome 1 green also try to trade for faster attacks. At this point you would use Ground Slam, Faster Attacks, Added Melee Physical and Life Leech or Life on Hit. You get Faster Attacks from the Hailrake quest in merciless, so do not be afraid to pay some currency for the gem since you can always trade yours later, and it is extremely helpful for all of Cruel to have Faster Attacks.

At the end of Normal act 3 and beginning of Cruel is when I start to curse when I have a free gem slot. I personally prefer Vulnerability (tougher to use as it requires Intellect), but Warlords Mark is just as good and can at times be an all around better curse. You also want to start running Grace along with your damage aura, either Anger or Wrath.

At this point I would farm fellshrine until level 47. Western is generally faster farming, but there you will notice your -20 to Chaos resistance and the chance to die is high. Feel free to try both and see what you suits you, most of the farming you do depends on your general comfort level and what you prefer. I would personally do Vaal at level 48, having gotten the skill points from Western and Shipyard Cave, with your spec looking like this. The reason I think you want to hit 48 is you get that last 12% node above Golem's Blood, which can be the difference between a desync on Vaal overhead smash death and living through it. If you have to make a choice between higher health, and resists, you want to go with health for the Vaal fight. Ideally you have 60 or more to all resists, but if you have a choice between gloves with 60 life or gloves with 20 lightning resist which leaves you at 50 Lightning but 1700 health, the health will be more beneficial and allow you to live through his attacks while keeping Enduring Cry stacks at max.

One major choice is whether to take the skill point in Cruel or to take the 12% added physical damage from Oak. If this is your first time playing Ground Slam, I recommend taking the 12% phys from helping Oak. Personally as I've come to understand the game more, I prefer to have more flexibility in my builds by having the skill point.
Objectives of Cruel:

• Obtain a 4L armor
• work on improving your obvious gear deficits (rings with no life, etc)
• Decide which curse you prefer.

Merciless

In Merciless you should have a very good grasp on the character and what it is capable of. At this point you should see what I suggest here, and be able to understand why I said what I said and decide for yourself how you want to progress. I personally view every single one of my characters as my baby, and I don't like to send my baby out to die when I could have just farmed X zone a little more to prevent that death. With that said, I generally farm Ledge to 59, Fellshrine to 64, City of Sarn to 69 and Docks to 73-75. My spec at 59 with flooded depths completed looks like this. At any point in Merciless feel free to pick up Elemental Adaptation, the +5% to your maximum elemental resists node.

I would take the endurance charge from Oak as my bandit reward, and be sure to pick up the +1 Endurance charge talent and the .2% life regen per charge talent near the marauder start. This gives you 5 charges and 5% of your total life in regen (Golem's and Troll's Blood 3.0%, Templar 1.0% and Endurance Charges 1.0%). Killing Vaal in Merciless is easiest in a party, do not leap slam at any point on this encounter as you can be slammed at any time from the moment you jump until you land (effectively you are standing still). Be sure to keep Vaal cursed with Warlord's Mark (though always defer to party members who use Temporal Chains or Enfeeble, or use these if you find them).

Merciless Objectives:

• Begin the long arduous quest of obtaining a 5L.
• Try to find good deals on Maces. For example maces that have 15% Increased attack speed but only have 70% Increased Physical Damage can still be very effective weapons until you find better.
• Work on capping all of your resists.

Maps

 I would do low level maps until 78 or so, with a build that looks like this. From this point you want to fill out Inner Force, fill out some quality of life nodes (like Armor Master if you use those), decide if you want a 6th endurance node with the increased duration talent as well. Your strongest value in maps in a party is that you can effectively protect casters from mobs running at them with Ground slam and you can Knock back (Heavy Strike) or Freeze (Glacial Hammer) rares for more control.  Preemptively using a Granite flask on Magic packs and rare mobs is a very good habit to get into. The main difference between Ground Slam and other builds is that your life does not get any easier at level 90 compared to level 70. You have the same amount of control over large packs of normal and blue mobs at 70 as you will have at 90. You need to always be on your toes, and be ready to handle what the map throws at you because it is the pack that cannot be stunned, or a pack of Lesser Multiple projectile hasted archers that will kill you if you aren't prepared.

Gems

Weapon

• 

  • Ground Slam
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Melee Physical Damage
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Faster Attacks
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Life Leech
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Added Fire Damage
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Stun
  • Level 20
  • Quality

• 

  • Concentrated Effect
  • Level 20
  • Quality

• 

  • Increased Area of Effect
  • Level 20
  • Quality

Chest

• 

  • Heavy Strike
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Faster Attacks
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Added Fire Damage
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Melee Physical Damage
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Life Leech
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Stun
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Glacial Hammer
  • Level 20
  • Quality

Helm

You can cast your auras and then remove Reduced Mana Cost and replace it with leap slam as the auras stay as cast until you log or remove them.

• 

  • Wrath
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Anger
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Grace
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Reduced Mana
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Leap Slam
  • Level 20

Gloves

• 

  • Bear Trap
  • Level 16
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Culling Strike
  • Level 20
  • Primary
  • Quality

• 

  • Added Fire Damage
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Leap Slam
  • Level 20
  • Primary

Boots

• 

  • Faster Casting
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Enduring Cry
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Vulnerability
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Temporal Chains
  • Level 20
  • Primary

• 

  • Warlord's Mark
  • Level 20
  • Primary

Weapon Swap

In your weapon swap level which ever curse you aren't using, any gems you might want to eventually try, glacial for heavy strike etc.

Gems Not Available From Quests

One strength of this build is that every gem you need you eventually get with the exception of concentrated effect.

• 

  • Concentrated Effect
  • Level 20
  • Primary

Endgame Items

Prefix	Slot	Suffix
x% increased Physical Damage (Local) Adds x-y Physical Damage (Local)	Piledriver 40% increased Stun Duration on enemies	x% increased Attack Speed (Local) x% increased Enemy Stun Threshold +x to Strength +x Life gained for each enemy hit by your Attacks
x% increased Physical Damage (Local) Adds x-y Physical Damage (Local)	Karui Maul 20% increased Stun Duration on enemies	x% increased Attack Speed (Local) x% increased Enemy Stun Threshold +x to Strength +x Life gained for each enemy hit by your Attacks
+x to maximum Life x% increased Armour (Local) +x to Armour (Local)	Astral Plate +8-12% to all Elemental Resistances	+x% to Chaos Resistance +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance +x to Strength
+x to maximum Life	Annihilator Casque	+x% to Chaos Resistance +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance +x to Strength
+x to maximum Life x% increased Armour (Local) Adds x-y Physical Damage Adds x minimum Lightning Damage	Titan Gauntlets	x% increased Attack Speed +x% to Chaos Resistance +x to Dexterity +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance +x to Strength
x% increased Movement Speed +x to maximum Life x% increased Armour (Local)	Titan Greaves	+x% to Chaos Resistance +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance +x to Strength
+x to maximum Life x% of Physical Damage from Attacks Leeched back as Life x% increased Armour Adds x-y Physical Damage	Onyx Amulet +10-20 to all Attributes	+x% to Chaos Resistance +x% to all Elemental Resistances +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance
+x to maximum Life x% increased Elemental Damage with Weapons x% of Physical Attack Damage Leeched back as Life	Prismatic Ring +8-12% to all Elemental Resistances	+x% to Chaos Resistance +x% to all Elemental Resistances x% increased Attack Speed +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance
+x to maximum Life x additional Armour x% increased Flask Life recovery rate	Leather Belt +25-40 to maximum Life	+x% to Chaos Resistance +x% to Cold Resistance +x% to Fire Resistance +x% to Lightning Resistance x% increased Enemy Stun Threshold +x to Strength
Instant Recovery (Local)	Hallowed Life Flask	Dispels Frozen and Chilled (Local)
x% reduced Recovery Speed (Local) x% increased Amount Recovered (Local)	Hallowed Life Flask	x% increased Movement Speed during flask effect (Local) x% increased Armour during flask effect (Local)
x% increased Charge Recovery (Local)	Quicksilver Flask	x% increased Movement Speed during flask effect (Local)
+x Extra Charges (Local)	Granite Flask	x% increased Armour during flask effect (Local)
x% increased Charge Recovery (Local)	Granite Flask	Immunity to Curses during flask effect. Removes Curses on use (Local)

Items For Leveling

Uniques

Geofri's Baptism Unique Brass Maul (Level 27). If you acquire one you make your life until level 50 much easier. You would be hard pressed to find a better mace with a level 51 base.

 

General Items

You want items with +Life, Resists and armor wherever you can find them. Of any of these stats, the first to be sacrificed should be armor. Don't be picky about the gear when you level, if you find an armor\energy shield hybrid helm with 70 life and other useful mods, it likely will serve you well until well into Merciless.  Understanding that you want to use currency to roll items occasionally while leveling, while trying to trade for good items to get you to end game will be the most effective use of your time and currency.

 

General Play

 In general your tactic is to keep your enduring cry at max stacks, try your best to not ever be touched by the mobs as you for all intents and purposes a ranged type of melee, and to stun them all to death. You want to be especially cognizant of mobs that have LMP or GMP since they can "shotgun" you and hit you with all their projectiles if you're close to them in melee range.

 

End game issues with melee

We have several weaknesses currently compared to a ranged or caster spec, but the two most notable for me are how tough it can be to target mobs with the current spell particle effects flying all over the screen and the fact that generally to do damage we need to be much closer on average compared to ranged classes. This means that our margin for error is significantly smaller. You can compensate for this by using Increased Area of Effect, and getting the area of effect passives in the Templar and Witch sections of the tree.

 

Alternate Spec

One spec that is a bit more complicated than the normal Ground Slam build is a build that tries to permanently stun everything, including bosses. Now that the Stun formula is subject to Diminishing Returns, the requirements to get to the point where you can permanently stun is incredibly high, hard to achieve, and will be difficult to play given that you sacrifice so much of your survivability to do it. Your spec is this.
Gear Requirements:

• You must have a belt with 15% reduced enemy stun threshold.
• You need a weapon with a huge damage roll, Marohi Erqi for example, or an incredibly good rare maul with reduced stun threshold.
• You require at a minimum a 5L so you can socket the stun gem into Ground Slam.
• You won't be running Blood magic because you need the damage aura Hatred to achieve the damage per hit to reach a point where you have a chance to stun.
• You need life leech and mana leech on your rings and amulets because you need the gem slot in your main links for a damage gem and not life leech.

The Stun reduction formula is :

To calculate whether a stun occurs :

stun_chance = 200 * damage / defender_effective_max_life

When calculating Stun with Stun Threshold Reduction of over 75%, the Stun Threshold Reduction is treated as being:

75 + ( Stun Threshold Reduction - 75) * 25 / ( Stun Threshold Reduction -50 )

This means that you need to do a significant amount of damage now to have a chance to stun bosses, and use the vulnerability curse as well to increase your chance. Should you achieve all of these goals, 15% reduction on mace and belt, a 5L, a mace with 475+ top end and IAS or a Marohi Erqi, you can give this a shot. How well it works depends on the formula, and the estimation of the bosses' health pool.

Difficult Map Mods

There are many map mods that are difficult for melee, and some that are specifically tough for Ground Slam. Foremost among them is anything that reduces your resists, and extra damage done by the mobs. Specific to Ground Slam is Cannot be Stunned, Physical Reflect. By the point you're doing maps you should have a very good understanding of what makes this class tick, and the rest is self explanatory. My general policy is that if I think the map sounds bad, it is bad and I won't do it. Why risk your character for what is likely 3 bad rare items.

 Build Source: http://www.exilepro.com/

Path of Exile Builds

PoE Class Builds

Duelist Builds
Path of Exile 2H Sweep Duelist Build
Path of Exile Dual Strike Duelist Build
Path of Exile Hardcore Race Duelist Build
Path of Exile Dual Wield Blood Rage Duelist Build
Path of Exile Duelist Bow Tank Build
Path of Exile Charge Duelist Build

Marauder Builds
Path of Exile Marauder Ground Slam Build
Path of Exile 1H Mace Hardcore Marauder Build
Path of Exile General Marauder Build Guide
Path of Exile Marauder 2H Leap Slam Build
Path of Exile Marauder 2H Axe Guide
Path of Exile Vaal Pact Marauder Build 
Path of Exile Bow Shock Marauder Build
Path of Exile Ultimate Hardcore Marauder Build
Path of Exile Unarmed Marauder Build 

Ranger Builds
Path of Exile Elemental Bow Ranger Build
Path of Exile Dual Physical Wand Ranger Build
Path of Exile General Ranger Build
Path of Exile Physical Ranger Build
Path of Exile CI Lightning Arrow Ranger Build
Path of Exile Beginner's Bow Ranger Build
Path of Exile Dual Wield Sword Ranger Build
Path of Exile Beginner's Bow Ranger Build

Shadow Builds
Path of Exile Crit Dagger Shadow Build
Path of Exile Coldfire Crit Caster Shadow Build
Path of Exile EB Ethereal Knives Shadow Build
Path of Exile EB Ethereal Knives Shadow Build #2
Path of Exile Cold Caster Shadow Build
Path of Exile Whirling Blades Shadow Build
Path of Exile Best Shadow Race Build

Templar Builds
Path of Exile CI Totem Templar Build
Path of Exile Shield Shock Block Templar Build
Path of Exile EB Frost Templar Build
Path of Exile CI Zealot's Oath Templar Build
Path of Exile Mace/Shield LS Templar Build
Path of Exile Charge Templar Build
Path of Exile Dual Wield Elemental Templar Build
Path of Exile Summoner Templar Build
Path of Exile Ice AoE Templar Build 

Witch Builds
Path of Exile Hardcore Necromancer Witch Build
Path of Exile Fire Witch Summoning Guide
Path of Exile Pure Summoner Witch Build
Path of Exile Summoner Arc Witch Build
Path of Exile Fire Witch Build (14k DPS)
Path of Exile Hardcore Frost Witch Build
Path of Exile Pure Summoner Witch Build #2 
Path of Exile Solo Summoner Witch Build
Path of Exile Hardcore Necro Witch Build 

General PoE Guides
Path of Exile Act 3 Walkthrough
Path of Exile Easy Merveil Runs Guide
Path of Exile Mana Regeneration Guide
Path of Exile Crafting Resource Guide
Path of Exile Complete Skill Gem Quest Reward List
Path of Exile Beginner's Guide 

PvP Guides
Path of Exile Cold Witch PvP Guide
Path of Exile Dealing With Freeze in PvP

Path of Exile Complete Newbie Guide

Path of Exile Complte Newbie Guide by Pathofexileguides

Path of Exile does contain plenty of features we’ve seen in other Action RPG games, but many of them are slightly or entirely different. The passive skill tree for example is incredibly intimidating for new players, paired with flasks or skill gems or loot system it can be quite confusing and overwhelming for beginners. This fairly long guide written by Malice should help you get a quick grasp on some of the basic features and systems of Path of Exile so if you’re waiting for the game to download or patch I recommend you read it.

Main contents:

Skill gems & sockets
General gameplay tips
Skills
Classes
Items
Combat
Parties
Instances
Skill gems & sockets

Sooner or later you will get your hands on some skill gems.

Gems must be socketed in your gear to grant access to the skill.
A gem will only go into a socket of matching colour
Gems can be socketed and removed from sockets as much as you like. Right click a gem to remove it from a socket
Sockets appear randomly on items. The rarity of an item does not affect how many sockets it has.
Sockets can be linked. The links are shown as gold bars between the sockets. Support gems affect any skill gems in sockets that they are linked to.
Gems you have socketed in gear you are wearing will gain experience and level up, even if you are not using the skills they grant.
General gameplay tips

Flasks recharge slightly every time you kill an enemy. So don’t be afraid to use flasks that are full to keep your life and mana topped up – your flasks are only replenishing their charges when they aren’t already full.
Items with great stats might seem like the best choice at first, but don’t neglect sockets. As long as they are socketed, skill gems gain experience whether you are using the skills they grant or not, so keeping them socketed will mean they get more powerful sooner. A good socket arrangement on an item with mediocre stats is sometimes a better choice than a great item with bad sockets.
Spend some time looking at the passive skill web, it can appear daunting at first, but it will soon become familiar. Skill points can be refunded, but refund points are hard to come by, so choose wisely.
If you’re just starting out and are unsure how you wish to play your character, try to avoid specialising too heavily. For instance, stay away from skills that improve one handed weapon damage if you feel you might end up liking to swing a two-hander.
Skills

Skill Types

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 – 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 – 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 – 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 spells.
The only exception to this is Town Portal, which is not affected by attack speed, cast speed, or anything else.

Support 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.

Skill gem experience gain
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.
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: Dex/Int: 14 STR, 22 DEX, 22 INT
Life/mana per level

All classes begin with the same base stats, and gain the same amount per level:

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

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 regeneration rate of life gained from life leech is capped at 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, it is only the rate at which it regenerates that is capped – if you leech a large amount of life during a battle, you may find that the regeneration continues long after the battle is over. Similar to flasks, the regeneration from leech will stop if you reach maximum life. The same is true for mana leech, although the cap is 12.5% of maximum mana per second.

Items

Attribute requirements
Most gear has attribute requirements that must be met in order to equip the gear. These requirements come from the base item type and are unaffected by magical modifiers, quality, or number of sockets. A complete list of gear and attribute requirements can be found here.

Level requirements
Some items have a level requirement that must be met in order to equip the item. There are two factors that affect level requirements:

The level of the base item type. This is the level that the item starts appearing (and is separate from the itemlevel that affects which magical modifiers can spawn on it). See the item data link above for a list with all item levels. Some of the very low-level base items do not come with a level requirement.
The level of the magical modifiers. The level requirement for magical modifiers is equal to 80% of the level of the highest-level magical modifier on the item.
The highest level requirement of the two listed above is the one that appears on the item.
Drop rates

There is a penalty to the chance of currency items (scrolls, orbs, etc.) dropping in areas with a monster level more than two levels lower than your character level. For each additional level that you have compared to the area’s monster level+2, the chance of a currency item drop is reduced by 2.5%. So if you are level 30 in a level 20 area, you will see 20% less currency item drops on average:

2.5*(30-(20+2))=20

A level 30 character in a level 28 area will see no penalty. Currency item Drops are not increased or decreased in this way when fighting in areas above your level. For the purposes of this penalty, your level is never considered to be higher than 58. Therefore a level 70 character receives no penalty in a level 56 area.

There are two modifiers that affect drop rates in the game, increased item rarity, and increased item quantity. There are three potential sources of these modifiers:

the player (skills, passives, gear etc.)
monsters (such as bosses and champions)
party bonuses
Modifiers from the player stack additively with each other, and are subject to diminishing returns. Modifiers from the party bonus and monsters stack additively with each other, and are not subject to diminishing returns. The total player bonus stacks multiplicatively with the total party & monster bonus.

Increased Item Rarity
Increased Item Rarity % modifiers increase the chances of an item being magic, rare, or unique. For example with a total of +100% increased item rarity, you’d get twice as many magic items, twice as many rares and twice as many uniques from normal enemies. This modifier has no effect on the number or type of currency items, scrolls, or gems that drop. When in a party, only the modifier from the player who lands the killing blow on an enemy is counted. If one of your minions gets a kill, the minion’s IIR is added to yours and the total is used. Magic, rare, and unique monsters have an Increased item rarity modifier for drops.

Increased Item Quantity
This modifier increases the average number of items that drop from monsters and chests. It does not affect the type, quality, or rarity of item dropped, only the chance that something will drop. There is no cap on the usefulness of this modifier, as monsters can drop more than one item at a time. The base chance for an item to drop from a normal monster is 16%. This varies between monster types, and special monsters have higher drop chances. When in a party, each player in the party after the first gives the equivalent of +50% item quantity modifier on drops.

Quality
All weapons, armour, flasks and gems can randomly receive between +1% and +20% quality. This value can be increased by Whetstones, Armour Shards, Flask Quality Upgrades, and Gem Quality Upgrades, but is capped at 20%. The effect of quality depends on the item:

On weapons, increased physical damage
On armour, increased Armour rating, Evasion, Energy Shield, and Shield Block Chance
On flasks, increased life and mana recovery
On gems, the bonus is specific to each gem. For instance, Frenzy gets increased damage, while Cleave gets increased attack speed.
On maps, increases the item quantity bonus from monsters in the map area.
Modifiers

Modifiers are split up in to two main groups, prefixes and suffixes. A magic item can have only one prefix and one suffix, never two prefixes or two suffixes. Rare items can have up to six modifiers, it is unknown if there is a limit on how many of these can be prefixes/suffixes. A randomly generated rare item (from a drop or Orb of Alchemy) receives between four and six modifiers randomly, with the following odds:

1/12 chance of 6 mods
4/12 chance of 5 mods
7/12 chance of 4 mods
All modifiers have a level associated with them, and will only appear on items whos item level is greater than or equal to the modifier’s level. Lists of available magical modifiers are available in the item data section. The “Culling Strike” modifier (found on some unique items) causes monsters to die if you strike them down to 10% or less life.

Modifier Stacking
In general, integer modifiers are applied before percentages. Percentage modifiers using the words “% increased” or “% reduced” stack additively with one another, while “% more” and “% less” modifiers stack multiplicatively. When dealing with weapons, some modifiers that are listed on the weapon itself are applied first, before mods from other pieces of equipment, skills, and so on. This includes anything affecting physical damage, such as increased physical damage, added physical damage, quality etc., and also attack speed, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, and accuracy. It does not include elemental damage mods.

Similarly, when dealing with armour, evasion, and energy shield on armour, any modifiers affecting those stats that are listed on the piece of armour are applied first. This includes quality and any other mods directly affecting armour, evasion, or energy shield amount. It does not include mods affecting the energy shield recharge delay or regeneration rate, only the amount of energy shield.

Imagine I have 100 life, and two passive skills that increase total life by 15%. The total bonus will be 30%, resulting in 130 life. Now imagine I am wearing boots that give +40 life, and have a passive skill that grants +20 life. The integer bonuses are applied first, giving me 160 life, then the percentage bonuses are applied to that subtotal, for a final total of 208 life.

Quality behaves differently on armour and flasks than on weapons. On armour and flasks, it stacks multiplicatively with other modifiers on that piece of equipment. Quality on weapons stacks additively with other % modifiers on the weapon.

Sockets
There are three types of sockets:

Strength (red)
Dexterity (green)
Intelligence (blue)
Sockets appear randomly on most equipable items. Higher level items can appear with more sockets than lower level items of the same type. The maximum amount of sockets that can appear on an item also varies by the type of item:

Two handed weapons and body armour can have up to 6 sockets
Wands, shields, and one handed weapons can have a maximum of 3 sockets
Everything else can have a maximum of 4 sockets
One exception to this is the starting weapon that appears on the beach at the start of the game. Its item level is 1 but it always has one socket of each colour.

Items are more likely to receive sockets that match their attribute requirements. So an item requiring only dexterity is more likely to have green sockets than red or blue sockets.
You can only put a blue (intelligence) gem in a blue socket, red gem in a red socket, etc.
Sockets can be linked. The links are shown as gold bars between the sockets. Support gems affect any skill gems in sockets that they are linked to.
Additionally, two skill gems of the same type can be used in separate socket groups, resulting in more than one usable version of that skill. Skill Gems are only affected by support gems in the same socket group. For example, imagine a piece of armour with 5 sockets. The first two sockets are linked in one group, and the remaining three sockets are linked in a separate group. If you put Cleave and Faster Attacks in the first group, and Cleave, Added Fire Damage, and Added Cold Damage in the second group, you would have two different versions of cleave available – one cleave skill that attacks faster, and another cleave that does bonus fire and cold damage. Small letters appear over the skill icons for each support gem you have attached to that skill. This allows you to differentiate between the different versions if you have more than one of the same skill gem equipped.

Item level
Each item has a level associated with it that is equal to the monster level of the area it dropped in. The monster level is shown on the map overlay. Rare and unique monsters have +2 to their level, and will yield items with an itemlevel two levels higher than other monsters in the same area. You can check an item’s level by picking it up on the cursor and typing /itemlevel in the chat box. This item level determines which modifiers it can receive, and how many sockets it can receive.

Vendor Item levels
Items obtained from vendors can have an item level up to character level + 1, but will not exceed the following maximums:

Normal Act 1: 16
Normal Act 2: 25
Cruel Act 1: 31
Cruel Act 2: 35
Ruthless Act 1: 43
Ruthless Act 2: 48
Merciless Act 1: 50
Merciless Act 2: 50
Item level needed for number of sockets (research ongoing)

1 socket : 1
2 sockets: 1
3 sockets: 15
4 sockets: 28
5 sockets: 35
6 sockets: 50 (lowest seen so far)
Combat

Level scaling

1. Effect of level on PvP Damage

Level itself does not affect any combat calculations outside of PvP. Damage in PvP is scaled based on level as follows:

damage multiplier = 1/(1+(attacker_level/8))

For example a level 30 character will have their PvP damage reduced by 79%, while a level 60 character will have their damage reduced by 88%.

2. Effect of level on experience

Level also affects the amount of XP you gain from killing enemies. There are two penalties that are applied, one when in a party, and another based on the relative level of the player and monsters. Both of these are applied at the same time if you are both in a party, and too far above or below the monster level.

The multiplier for XP while in a party is players share (Level+10)^2.71 divided by the total of all players shares. For example, if a level 10 player was partied with a level 30 player:

Level 10 player’s share: (10+10)^2.71 = 3355
Level 30 player’s share: (30+10)^2.71 = 21957
Total Shares: 3356 + 21957 = 25313
Level 10 player would receive: 3355/25313 = 0.132 = 13.2% of the XP
Level 30 player would receive: 21957/25313 = 0.867 = 86.7% of the XP
The player also suffers a penalty to XP if they are too far above or below the monster’s level. There is a safe level range where no penalty is applied, which is equal to three, plus one for every sixteen complete player levels. Any additional level difference in excess of this safe range is called the Effective Difference.

The formula then applied is:

((PlayerLevel +5)^1.5) / ((PlayerLevel+5+(EffectiveDifference^2.5))^1.5)

So a level 24 character has a safe band of 3+1=4 levels. So from Monster level 20 to 28, there is an effective level difference of 0. At Monster Levels 19 and 29, the Effective level difference is 1. The Effective Difference matters in either direction. Here are graphs of the experience multiplier by monster level and by effective level.

3. Effect of level on currency item drops

See the drop rates section above for details on how level affects currency item drops.

Dual wielding

Dual wielding grants a +10% attack speed bonus, and a 15% chance to block. The attack speed bonus is applied multiplicatively with other attack speed modifiers. The default attack and certain other skills will alternate between each weapon, striking with each hand in turn. Some skills (such as Cleave and Dual Strike) attack with both weapons at once, while others only use the main-hand weapon.

Hit & damage calculation order of effects
There are a number of steps involved in deciding whether an attack hits or not and how much damage is done:

1. Avoiding the hit:

At this stage there is a chance to evade attacks (accuracy vs evasion)
Any chance to dodge from acrobatics or phase acrobatics is also checked here
2. Avoiding the damage:

Blocking is checked
3. Mitigating the damage:

Physical damage reduction and resitances are applied
4. Taking the damage:

Non-chaos damage is removed from energy shield until it’s depleted.
Any remaining damage (including all chaos) is removed from life.
Stuns

Whenever a player or monster takes damage, there is a chance they will be stunned. A stun interrupts whatever that creature was doing while a brief animation is played. The default length of stuns is 350ms. The duration of stuns can be altered by reduced block and stun recovery, increased stun duration, and similar modifiers.

The formula used for determining whether or not a stun occurs is:

stun_chance = 200 * damage / defender_effective_max_life

Where defender_effective_max_life is the maximum life of the creature being hit. Increases to monster life from a party of more than one player do not affect defender_effective_max_life. For a player with Chaos Inoculation, their defender_effective_max_life is whatever their max life would be if they did not have Chaos Inoculation. Reduced stun threshold modifiers reduce the value of defender_effective_max_life.

For example, 25% stun threshold reduction means you treat their maximum life as only 75% as much as it actually is, meaning you stun them easier. If the stun chance would be less than or equal to 25%, it’s ignored, so you need to deal more than 12.5% of effective maximum life to have a chance to stun.

Accuracy
Accuracy is compared to enemy evasion when determining if an attack hits or misses. The complete formula is below:

chance to hit = attacker_accuracy / ( attacker_accuracy + ((defender_evasion/4)^0.8))

Chance to hit can never be lower than 5%, nor higher than 95%.

Evasion
Evading an attack prevents all damage and other harmful effects from the attack. Only attacks and attack skills can be evaded. Spells cannot be evaded.

Blocking
Blocking an attack prevents all damage and other harmful effects from the attack. Usually, only attacks and attack skills can be blocked, but there are some passive skills that allow you to block spells. Chance to block is capped at 75%. When an attack is blocked, the game first calculates if the attack would have caused a stun were it not blocked. If it would have caused a stun, the blocking animation is played, stunning you briefly. If it would not have caused a stun, then you get a “free” block with no animation. Faster Block and Stun Recovery and Increased Block Recovery modifiers reduce the length of the blocking animation.

Armor / Damage Reduction
Damage Reduction reduces physical damage taken. Elemental damage and damage-over-time are not affected. The amount of damage reduction depends on the defender’s armour total, and the attacker’s attack damage:

reduction = armor / (armor + 12*damage)

The amount of reduction is capped, it cannot be more than 95%.

The fact that damage reduction scales with the amount of damage means it is difficult to know exactly how much damage is being reduced. An easy to remember rule of thumb is that to achieve 50% damage reduction, you will need an armour rating equal to twelve times that of the damage being dealt. For example, to achieve 50% damage reduction against a 100 damage hit, you’ll need 1200 armour.

Here are two graphical representations of the armor formula:

Effect of X Armour on Damage
Effect of Armour on X Damage

Energy Shield
As long as you have greater than 0 Energy Shield, you have a 50% chance to avoid stun. Energy Shield acts as an additional hit point pool on top of life. If you have any Energy Shield remaining when you take damage, the damage is subtracted from the Energy Shield first. Damage is only applied to life once all Energy Shield is depleted. The exception to this is Chaos Damage, which ignores Energy Shield.

Energy Shield will recharge if you do not take any damage for a certain period of time. The default delay is 6 seconds. This time can be reduced with reduced energy shield delay modifiers from passive skills and gear. The formula for the recharge delay is:

100 / ( 100 + reduction )

So 100% reduction is halving the delay, not removing it entirely.

Critical Strikes

Whenever you use a skill or attack, you have a chance to deal a Critical Strike. Critical Strikes are rolled on a per-action basis, not per-monster. So each time you use a skill, the Critical Strike roll is made once and only once. If you roll a Critical Strike, you will deal Critical damage to all enemies hit by the skill.

Critical Strikes do more damage than normal, based on your Critical Strike Damage Multiplier. All characters have a base Critical Strike multiplier of 150%, meaning a critical strike does 150% of normal damage. This multiplier can be increased with various skills and modifiers on items. For instance, with a multiplier of 250%, if you deal a Critical Strike with attack that normally does 100 damage, you will instead deal 250 damage.

The chance to deal a critical strike is taken from the weapon used to perform an attack or attack skill, and in the case of spells, each spell has it’s own critical strike chance, which is listed in the skill gem’s description.
This value can be increased by increased critical strike chance modifiers from spells and gear. For example, if you are using a weapon with 5% chance to crit, and you have 50% increased critical strike chance, you will have a 7.5% chance to score a critical strike.

Critical chance can not be less than 5% nor more than 95%. Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage Multiplier are calculated separately for each spell and weapon attack. All weapons and damage-dealing spells have a base Critical Strike chance listed on them. This only affects your chance to critical for attacks made with that weapon or spell. For instance the critical strike chance on a wand does not affect your chance to critical with a spell.

Damage Types
There are currently 5 main types of damage, they are Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos. Fire, Cold, and Lightning are collectively known as Elemental Damage. Damage reduction from armour only affects physical damage. Each of the elemental damage types has it’s own resistance value (eg “Fire resistance”) which is viewable in the character sheet. Resistances reduce damage taken, and are capped at 75%.

Fire damage
If you land a critical strike with an attack or spell that deals fire damage, the enemy begins Burning. Burning causes damage over time. Humanoids, Monkeys and Sea Witches will flee while burning.
Burning lasts 4 seconds, and the amount of damage over time is 1/3 of the fire damage dealt per second. So a total of 4/3 of the original damage, over 4 seconds.

Cold damage
Hitting an enemy with cold damage can cause the enemy to be Chilled. Critical hits with cold damage can also cause the target to be Frozen. Chilled enemies move, attack, and cast 30% slower, while frozen enemies cannot do anything except drink flasks.

Lightning damage
If you land a critical strike with an attack or spell that deals lightning damage, the enemy becomes Shocked. This can be stacked up to three times on one target. In this state, monsters or players take 40% additional damage per instance of Shock. Shock stacks additively with itself, for a maximum of 120% with a stack of three. The damage multiplier itself applies multiplicatively with your final damage, since it it increasing the damage the enemy takes, rather than the damage you deal.

Chaos Damage
Chaos damage ignores energy shield, reducing life directly.

Burning, Chilled, Frozen, and Shocked are collectively known as Status Ailments. The duration of the chilled, frozen, and shocked statuses is related to the amount of cold/lightning damage dealt.
If the duration based on the damage would be less that 300ms, it’s ignored entirely.

Charges
Some skills grant Endurance (strength), Frenzy (dexterity), or Power (intelligence) charges. Each charge lasts a short duration before it disappears. Gaining a charge resets the duration of all accumulated charges.

Endurance charges are related to the strength attribute and grant +5% physical damage reduction, and +5% to elemental resistances (fire, cold, and lightning) per charge. The physical damage reduction stacks with the damage reduction from armour, so that they are both applied at the same time. For example, if a monster deals 100 damage, and you have 10% DR from two endurance charges, and enough armour to prevent 30 of the 100 damage, the incoming damage would be reduced by 40.
Frenzy charges are related to the dexterity attribute and grant +5% attack speed and +5% cast speed per charge.

Power charges are related to the intelligence attribute and grant +50% critical strike chance per charge.

By default characters can have a maximum number of 3 active charges of each type at one time. This maximum can be increased by certain passive skills.

Parties
The maximum party size is 6 players. In order to play with your friends, you’ll first need to finish the first zone called Twilight Strand (takes about 5 minutes). To group up with random players use the message board in towns, or open the social window (“S” hotkey) and click the “Public Parties” tab.

Monsters in party
Monsters gain 50% extra life for each additional party member after the first. For example, against a party of 3 players, monsters have double life. The original life amount is used for the purposes of determining the length of stuns and status ailments from elemental damage – this means monsters will not be harder to stun/ignite/etc. when fighting in a party.

Loot in party
Each player in a party after the first gives the equivalent of +50% item quantity modifier on drops. So a party of three will see twice as many drops as a lone character. Increased Item Rarity & Quantity modifiers are only counted from the player who lands the killing blow.

Experience in groups
For a description on how experience is shared between players, see the level scaling section above. Only party members actually in the instance count toward getting XP. If one member is in town he gets no XP. Experience is only shared with other players who are near you (roughly two screens). Monsters are still made harder by players elsewhere on the level. Being in a dungeon with a party member grants you a 30% experience bonus. Monsters give +50% base XP for every party member after the first.

Flasks in groups
Only the character landing the killing blow on an enemy will gain flask charges. The same is true for all +life and +mana gained “when you deal a killing blow” modifiers. Flasks have a +75% charge recovery bonus for each party member after the first.

Instances
All areas in Path of Exile are instanced. When you enter an area, a new instance is created. Once you leave the area, the instance will remain in its current state for 15 minutes – if 15 minutes passes with no players entering the instance, it will be closed. Entering the same area again will create a new instance with a new randomly generated map. Areas without side areas attached (any area with two or less exits) has a shorter timer, and will only last 8 minutes while empty.

Instances you create are private, and cannot be entered by other players unless they join your party. However, once a player has entered an instance, that instance remains associated with the player even if they leave the party. So it is possible to share an instance with non-party members in some circumstances. The exception to this is towns, which are always public, and cut-throat leagues, where all instances are public – meaning anyone can enter your instances at any time.

Some areas have waypoints. Once activated (by clicking on the waypoint), waypoints allow you to travel instantly to any other waypoint you have activated. Ctrl-clicking on a waypoint destination in the waypoint menu, or an area transition will bring up the instance management screen. This screen lists all available instances of the area you ctrl-clicked on, and the time remaining until they are closed. It also allows you to create new instances, and enter existing ones.

Using the instance management screen you can have more than once instance of the same area open at one time, and choose which available instance you want to enter.

Path of Exile Builds

PoE Class Builds

Duelist Builds
Path of Exile 2H Sweep Duelist Build
Path of Exile Dual Strike Duelist Build
Path of Exile Hardcore Race Duelist Build
Path of Exile Dual Wield Blood Rage Duelist Build
Path of Exile Duelist Bow Tank Build
Path of Exile Charge Duelist Build

Marauder Builds
Path of Exile Marauder Ground Slam Build
Path of Exile 1H Mace Hardcore Marauder Build
Path of Exile General Marauder Build Guide
Path of Exile Marauder 2H Leap Slam Build
Path of Exile Marauder 2H Axe Guide
Path of Exile Vaal Pact Marauder Build 
Path of Exile Bow Shock Marauder Build
Path of Exile Ultimate Hardcore Marauder Build
Path of Exile Unarmed Marauder Build 

Ranger Builds
Path of Exile Elemental Bow Ranger Build
Path of Exile Dual Physical Wand Ranger Build
Path of Exile General Ranger Build
Path of Exile Physical Ranger Build
Path of Exile CI Lightning Arrow Ranger Build
Path of Exile Beginner's Bow Ranger Build
Path of Exile Dual Wield Sword Ranger Build
Path of Exile Beginner's Bow Ranger Build

Shadow Builds
Path of Exile Crit Dagger Shadow Build
Path of Exile Coldfire Crit Caster Shadow Build
Path of Exile EB Ethereal Knives Shadow Build
Path of Exile EB Ethereal Knives Shadow Build #2
Path of Exile Cold Caster Shadow Build
Path of Exile Whirling Blades Shadow Build
Path of Exile Best Shadow Race Build

Templar Builds
Path of Exile CI Totem Templar Build
Path of Exile Shield Shock Block Templar Build
Path of Exile EB Frost Templar Build
Path of Exile CI Zealot's Oath Templar Build
Path of Exile Mace/Shield LS Templar Build
Path of Exile Charge Templar Build
Path of Exile Dual Wield Elemental Templar Build
Path of Exile Summoner Templar Build
Path of Exile Ice AoE Templar Build 

Witch Builds
Path of Exile Hardcore Necromancer Witch Build
Path of Exile Fire Witch Summoning Guide
Path of Exile Pure Summoner Witch Build
Path of Exile Summoner Arc Witch Build
Path of Exile Fire Witch Build (14k DPS)
Path of Exile Hardcore Frost Witch Build
Path of Exile Pure Summoner Witch Build #2 
Path of Exile Solo Summoner Witch Build
Path of Exile Hardcore Necro Witch Build 

General PoE Guides
Path of Exile Act 3 Walkthrough
Path of Exile Easy Merveil Runs Guide
Path of Exile Mana Regeneration Guide
Path of Exile Crafting Resource Guide
Path of Exile Complete Skill Gem Quest Reward List
Path of Exile Beginner's Guide 

PvP Guides
Path of Exile Cold Witch PvP Guide
Path of Exile Dealing With Freeze in PvP