Merciless more like Senseless

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Cilicis wrote:

Could being a witch and not do any melee make it harder? On the weapons only the melee damage goes up with levels, magic damage from gear stays the same.

You need spell damage on weapons and gear to increase your spell damage; the basic weapon damage doesn't do anything for you.

The merciless barrier is what shocked me the most when I started playing PoE.
I ran into it on several occasions and it took me a while to figure out how this game actually works.

Do not lose motivation and keep going. There are many great builds and guides to be found around the forum and as you might have realized by now, the community can be quite decent as well. I was surprised of the friendly tone of all the replies. I expected at least 50% to be "lol noob" type of replies ;)

The most important thing to learn in PoE is, that you only need around 25% of your passive points for offense (if even 25% is required). Everything else needs to go into expanding the skill tree and building a solid defensive foundation for your build. (Prioritize defense!)

There are several different ways to build a good defense, Armor, Block, Evasion, Mind over Matter, Lightning Coil... etc. but for every build the first and most important thing are resistances. If you are playing on merciless and you do not have capped out resists, you will get crushed :-/

Please to do not falter and stay strong, push through the merciless barrier, read guides and improve your build. It takes some time, but will you succeed and realize how good this game really is. It just takes some time to get used to a game that is not a braindead-autopilot pilot like other Action RPGs (Diablo *cough*).

I started merciless act I with 400 hp 700 es zero/negative resistances, it was fun, would never do again. :D

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Cilicis wrote:

Monsters only need to hit you once and you're death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdAmkx8eAos

Yeah it can be brutal with your first character when you hit merc, especially Act 3 merc.

I think you'd be surprised what a little help from a more experienced buddy could do to improve your situation. You may want to consider joining a guild that prides itself in helping newer players.

Alternatively, reroll a new character and test different means of dealing with incoming damage. It may seem like quitting/giving up, but we've all done it. The more times you reroll, the more effectively you can test build theory after a free respec patch (yes, from time to time GGG will alter the passive tree and all of your toons get a free passive tree reset).

I have the max amount of toons (without buying more), and free respec patch is like xmas. I'll pick an attack/spell that I want to do, and test it 2-3 different ways, before I get it where I want it. Sometimes it fails no matter what I do, and I walk away with nothing more than a little knowledge of what not to do next time.

But you're on your first toon, so you have no such opportunity to test in this fashion.

This game is brutal on new players and can at times be trivial and boring for overgeared/high level players.

Enjoy the challenge would be my advice.

Is it right act 2 crossroads in Merciles there are specials that can not be harmed with magic? While everything else I hit did in 1-2 hits the special got no damage what so ever, finaly got enough souls for vaal skeletons en it died in a second. Bit further in a vaal dungeon again a special that didn't take any damage what so ever from magic. Skeletons, normal ones, didn't stand a change but were able to hurt it. in the brief milisecond they stayed a live.

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beefnuggy wrote:

Enjoy the challenge would be my advice.

10x +1's.

Path of Exile swings between extremely difficult and fairly easy, depending upon player skill / knowledge, the quality of your build, and the quality of your stash. The stage you're at (imo) is beginning the most enjoyable part of the game--the part where everything is new, ideas are exciting, and you slowly discover a lot of new goals to work towards.

What challenge, staying away from the monsters that are impervious to magic attacks. Average normal monsters die in 1 or 2 hits, specials take a bit more, I accept that, you hurt them a bit slower. But not being able to harm it all with magic.

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Cilicis wrote:

What challenge, staying away from the monsters that are impervious to magic attacks. Average normal monsters die in 1 or 2 hits, specials take a bit more, I accept that, you hurt them a bit slower. But not being able to harm it all with magic.

Now you're just imagining things. There are no mobs in this game with an immunity to elements (excluding Oak and some exiles with their very brief Immortal Calls). Some of them are more resistant than others but that's it.

Review your build (like others have said, post here or gameplay help if needed), learn the game better and you should have no problems with merciless after that. You are most likely making some huge mistakes with your skill tree which makes the game much harder than it's supposed to be.