Please help with my Scion -- Physical Damage & Spectral Throw

So I just hit level 85 and I'm not happy with my Scion. I struggle to survive most map bosses and I still haven't been able to kill Dominus. I'd like to continue playing a physical based spectral throw Scion as I really enjoy the skill, however, my DPS output and survivability leaves a lot to be desired IMO. Leveling has gotten very difficult (due to the constant deaths and exp loss) and I die frequently doing 74/75 maps. I'm stuck.

My hope by posting this is for advice on my skill tree, my gear, and to mainly just answer the question: Do I frequently die because I'm just bad at playing the game, or did I make major mistakes in gearing and assigning my skill points. I have done my best to read up on my class/skill and I've checked out most of the Scion Spectral Throw guides and read them countless times. I tried to learn something from each of them when creating my own build and gearing my character. Maybe I should have just followed a build to the T from one of the guides?

My Build: I didn't help any bandits, so I the above is how I spent my 105 Skill Points. My plan over the next five levels is currently to take the 6% life node above Blood Siphon, and just below that to take the 10% One Hand Physical Damage node near Slight of Hand. Then I would take the three nodes near the beginning of my tree to get to Studious Combatant.


My Stats & DPS:


My Gear: I sold off all my Templar and Ranger (both geared poorly to begin with - both outperformed my Scion with worse gear) gear plus spent way too many hours flipping stuff in trade chat to get the gear I have now. I got 4ex in my stash or thereabouts and that's about it to work with. I'm clueless on what I should work towards for upgrades. I luckboxed into the 6L Daresso's while playing my Ranger and I built my Scion character around it. In my head I figured the extra 10% dodge from the chest/boots and 15% spell dodge from the boots - would all pair nicely with Acrobatics/PA/Ondlar's Guile. Suggestions on what to do? My thoughts are to maybe try and flip the 6L and my current weapon for a better weapon and get a 5L rare chest, then I could maybe switch out my helmet or gloves for a Maligaro's Gloves or a Rat's Nest? I'm lost on where to start.



Gem Setup + Auras: I currently run a 6L ST w/ Three Auras. I would like some advice on maybe switching up my Auras or the links I use with ST. With the three Auras I use I have 112 mana and at 22 per cast I don't have mana problems with ST since I have the 2% mana leech node. Should I use a different curse maybe Assassins Mark? Then use Crit Gems instead of Faster Proj and Added Fire Dmg?


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Thanks for taking the time to read through my post and help me with my Scion. I just can't help but feel with all the time I invested in this character only 6.7K DPS and still not being able to beat Dominus and with the frequent deaths while leveling... I'm just frustrated. Any advice would be appreciated!

I assume you're going phys crit ST.
Looks like you picked 3-4 guides about ST (buzzsaw, coc, phys crit) mixed together and made your build.

Few points:
Daggers outperforms swords in terms of crit: a crappy dagger is better than a mid-range sword for crit.
Phys crit sword ST is really bad because the lack of crit nodes (ST is a projectile). You can, however, go with crit sword melee.