Right, so I decided to give this smoke cloud thing in Path of Exile a go the other day. Been playing my usual build for ages, felt like watching paint dry, you know? Needed something different to look at, if nothing else.
Getting Started
First thing, I had to figure out what it actually involved. Scrolled through some forums, watched a couple of videos – not the super polished guides, more like random gameplay clips. Looked flashy, lots of shadowy, smoky effects popping off everywhere. Looked cool, gotta admit. Seemed like it might actually hide my character well enough to not die instantly for once.
So, I started digging through my stash. Needed specific gems, naturally. Had a couple, but the main ones? Nope. Had to do some trading. Man, I hate trading sometimes. Sat in my hideout for like an hour, spamming messages, getting ignored, the usual dance. Finally got the bits I needed. Cost me more Chaos Orbs than I wanted, but hey, gotta try new stuff.
The Actual Attempt
Leveled the gems up a bit in my off-hand slots while running some easy maps. Then came the respec. Always feels like pulling teeth, refunding points, clicking through the passive tree. Got it set up, more or less like I saw online.
Jumped into a low-tier map to test it out. And yeah, the smoke effect was there. Big clouds, looked pretty neat. Felt like some kind of ninja… for about five seconds.
Here’s the thing though…
- Visibility? Terrible. Not for the monsters, for me. I couldn’t see ground effects half the time.
- Damage? Felt… okay? Not amazing, not terrible. Just kinda… meh.
- Survival? Died just as much. Maybe more, ’cause I couldn’t see that bearer thing exploding in the smoke.
It just didn’t click. It looked cool, sure, but playing it felt clumsy. It reminded me of this time years ago I bought this fancy-looking espresso machine. All chrome, lots of buttons. Looked amazing on the counter. Made absolutely rubbish coffee. Took forever to clean too. Ended up giving it away. This smoke cloud thing felt a bit like that – all style, not much substance for the effort involved.
Final Thoughts
So yeah, I switched back. Maybe I did it wrong, maybe my gear wasn’t good enough, who knows. PoE’s like that, isn’t it? A million moving parts. Sometimes you try something new and it’s great, other times it’s just a load of smoke and mirrors, literally in this case. Wasted some currency, wasted some time, but I guess I scratched that itch. Back to the old reliable build for now. Less flashy, but at least I can see what’s killing me.