Furthest I've been, Seeking Advice

Hello, long time off and on Path of exile player here (mostly off) who's been getting into the game a lot more as of recent times. My current Rampage lvl 76 Ice Spear shadow is the furthest I've been in any league and it's pretty damned fun to play as well.

My real question is, am I going the right direction for my level.

This question has a few different parts, starting with stats:

I'm sitting at about 3.6k ES, 75% all rests, 117% MF + 60 or so when I cull. My main skill is LMP --> Ice spear --> added cold --> Spell echo --> faster casting on a 5l and sits at about 12.2k dps as of where I'm at now. How are my stats? I think I'm over capped by about 10-20% on two of my resists, but am still playing with gear to get this optimal.

Gear:

aurseize for easier content, the later ones for slightly harder content.

Question 1) IS there anything i'm clearly deficient on here (Trying to be on track to go CI eventually here) or anything you'd advise definitely trading out to squeeze a bit more effectiveness out of an ice crit shadow?

EDIT 1 here: I"m poor... like 1 exalt extra sitting around for extra gear upgrades and that's it.

EDIT 2 here: I also have an all quality cwdt, encuring cry, immortal call set of gems, but am currently unable to equip them because I'm having a difficult time with finding 3 reds linked on an ES Item... though I may repurpose my aursieze for this if survivability becomes a huge problem.. as it is now everything's usually chain frozen.

Currently I'm farming my own 66-70 maps either solo, duo'd with a buddy, or in open public groups using my maps.

Question 2) Is this the optimal thing to do for xp? Should I be saving higher level maps and only running 66-68 ones now? or using them as I get them?

Question 3) LOOT --> I don't tend to get alot of GG drops while playing. If I were to try farming for these would I be better off on maps, farming piety merciless, or farming dom merciless (dom gives me pretty much no xp cas I tend to die at least once on him)

go on this website called poe.xyz.is and look for upgrades, you can probably find upgrades for all your gear for under exalts per piece.

Not a CI expert, but if you have 3.6k ES, and you have the points saved up for the nodes behind CI, you could make the switch now already. Chest looks a bit weak for CI, but linked stuff is costly, I know.

At 76, you still get decent enough XP when you run Piety. If you get a Lunaris 2 version where the waypoint is right next to the stairs down, you should be able to run her pretty quickly. I'd do that for the next two levels.

As for maps, well, some people have more luck than me, but personally I always had trouble maintaining a 73-75+ map pool, so I tend to milk maps as long as they give "OK" XP and I can run them fast. Speed matters when mapping, and obviously not dying. :) For reference, at 88, a level 71 map gives you 1% XP on average (bit less, but it's 10-12 71 maps per 10% at that level). That isn't so bad if you can run them in just a few minutes -- just so that you have a number.

My rule of thumb is that I only run maps with at (the very least) 30% IIQ, unless they have increased pack size, and I only run them blue unless it's an easy, straight forward map (Shipyard, Strand, etc.), which I'll alch and sometimes chisel. I also try not to tackle the next map bracket unless I have 15 maps for that bracket. I skip bosses that are tedious or dangerous, like Temple Piety with the -max resist mod. At your level, dying is still relatively painless, but if you want to level much higher, you need to be more mindful of surviving.

Just a few thoughts.

If you are going CI you might want to use Discipline as Aura. You can also get a cheap
, which would be a nice upgrade (but completley unnecessary). You also might want to try to swap your added cold dmg for an Cold Penetration Gem, which on paper will decrease your DPS but in combat will push your DPS more then Added Cold Damage.

Also your Skilltree would help.

If you want the most exp gain roll your higher level maps with more magic monsters or packsize. That's the fastest way to level period once you get to the 80's region.

If you want to go MF then the best option would to be making a new build all together that's optimized for wearing all the MF gear you can fit while maintaining some serious deeps. That said Dominus is the best place to farm for endgame gear, hes pretty easy for flame totem or even my own flameblaster that I've been working on; out of 200 runs I've died only once due to stun lock and I have only 3.3k HP.

Since you're crit if you want damage you can drop your gloves for Shadows and Dust, or Maligaro's Virtuosity which will give tons of crit multi. Divinarus would also be a good DPS upgrade.

Most of your gear is decent, but if you wanna go CI you will need a way better chest, they can get up to over 1000k ES you should aim for 700-800 at least. Your boots are pretty bad as well, I understand you want to go MF, but you can get unique boots that are way better for it but with no ES, I'd recommend choosing what you want to do before going forward, you will need really good (Or at least pretty decent) ES gear to run CI and you will NEED and eye of chayula unless you want to die to a stun lock every other map. You may want to consider running Discipline as well.

As I stated though if you want to do MF you're better off starting from scratch and following an MFing guide. Btw both routes are costly MF gear is expensive for the best pieces like Andvarius, and Divination Distillate. While a good 5linked ES chest is going to be just as much if not more.

Thank you for the input everyone. I actually switched to that dagger from a Divinarius as it was overall a tooltip DPS upgrade (crit chance is considerably higher [around 30%-40%] on the dagger, though spell damage is a bit lower). I still have access to my div though if someone could be so kind as to explain what makes it better than the linked dagger. I specially appreciated the tips on map use and also the input to go for a new ES chest. I think that's going to be my next major purchase, but I may have to save up a couple exalt so I can go for a 6l =D.

I'll work on getting the tree posted, but am at work and cant remember everything I did offhand. it's mostly all ES nodes or else cold damage/ spell damage /etc nodes.

Since Ice spear has a 7% base crit chance it already gets a massive amount of crit chance from either dagger. Divinarius Has about 30% more spell damage than yours. This means that you'll do more damage due to crit multi scaling. Also if your Divinarius has bad rolls consider using a divine on it because it can roll up to 100% increased critcal strike chance. Which is higher than yours.

By now you should have at least 300% crit multi if not, you might want to try and get some (Shadows and Dust/maligaro's Virtuosity are a non passive point way to do it through gear.) I also noticed you're not using Power charges, while not 100% necessary I'd recommend using it (Power Charge On Crit) over faster casting. Each power charge gives you 50% increased crit chance, and with the node above the power charge in the witch area you get 4% spell damage per charge as well.

Edit: You can access your characters trees through the website by clicking the characters picture at the top left. It'll bring up a menu with your gear between the characters on the left and the gear there are tabs that you can click, one with the current passive tree for your selected character. On that page just copy and paste the link it provides.

If memory serves me, I'm around the 460-470% crit multiplier level on ice spear. I really like the idea of doing power charge on hit, but kinda wanted a 6l first. So from what I'm getting from ya'll my 6l should be something along the lines of Ice Spear --> Crit multiplier --> Power charge on crit --> Spell Echo --> Cold Penetration --> LMP

Should try Cold Penetration instead of Faster Casting in that 5L. Else i think you are doing okay :)