As someone whose first real build was a Cyclone build, this looks dope.

@rorie: As a new player looking to hop in is there a story mode to play through where I can use the same character all the time, or is just the seasons with leader boards where you have to make a new character for each one? Also is there a wall where at some point you must follow a build guide to progress? I'll be playing primarily with my wife and I know she's not going to want to dig into all the systems, she just wants something like Diablo where she can run around, use cool skills, and get loot.

@blannir: There is a long story mode that you can play just fine with one persistent character. You will never need any sort of guide to just progress through that.

If you make a character in the current league and that league ends it will just be shunted over to the Standard league. You can continue to play that character as long as you like but if you are going to get started I would recommend waiting for a fresh start with the next league because they're way more fun.

Yeah, what he said! You can also join the discord: https://discord.gg/Ey3DTR

Honestly you should be able to get through the first five acts without following a guide; getting all the way through act 10 might be a bit trickier as it does get pretty tough later on, but at the lease you'll be able to outlevel the enemies as you go. You might want to at least look up some synergized skills from some of the popular builds and try to find the relevant gems; it can be easy to miss gems that work well together if you're just playing blind, since the gem merchants have dozens of gems and it can be a bit daunting to figure out what works together. Even parsing the build guides can be pretty difficult, though. But if you join the discord you can feel free to ask any questions there, or here in the forums! Things should start ramping up with the new season coming along.

I need to check PoE out again. I beat the game with some sloppy necro-build and got absolutely stomped doing maps. This might be the right time.

Yeah if you don't plan for the endgame as soon as you start things can get real tough real quick in maps. I need to hop back in myself - looking forward to it.

@rorie: @efesell: Thanks for the insight, my wife and I played a bunch on PS4 over the holiday weekend and had a really good time with it. Looking forward to the melee overhaul in the Legion patch as that and the intimidating UI were the only negatives that stuck out to me.