Need help with a build for end-game

I've played PoE with several different characters. Two of them are over lvl 70 and have access to the map device. Now I'd like to try the end-game content - Shaper, Atziri and such. Also I prefer playing solo. With a party the game is too chaotic and I don't enjoy it.

My builds are fairly ok in the lowest tiers maps but are dying sometimes even there. Mercilles Malachai killed my lvl 82 Templar over 20 times. So I figured I need some new build. I'm nowhere near being rich so obviously I need something I can afford and since I don't know the prices I'll list a summary of what I have at the moment - you can judge what I can buy or craft with that (probably not much).

If you want you can rate my Templar and tell me how to improve him https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/enumag/characters. He has 8500 ES (> 9000 with Discipline), Chaos inoculation, uses Lightning Ball as primary skill (damage is low because 4-link only), has Vaal Discipline and Vaal Storm Call to help against rouge exiles and autocasts Enfeeble, Molten Shell and Tempest Shield with CWDT.

Now what I have available at the moment.

Currency:



Items:



Other:



Is there a way for me to get the gear needed for a character that can survive in end-game maps? If so what builds can I afford? I don't mind playing from the start with a new character.

Thanks for any help! Ask questions if I forgot to include anything important.

I made a Wings of Entropy Duelist using Lacerate fairly recently and that's pretty strong and fun in mid maps anyway.

For your Templar you could try Immortal Call instead of Molten Shell on CWDT.

Looking at the character, I see you've still got life flasks even though you said you are CI. Life flasks do nothing for ES. You've got some life on the tree that isn't helping either (Devotion node near Templar). Your gear also has some life on it, and if I were you I'd like to have more ES on gear. The shield is pretty sweet though.

Have you been able to kill anything with the Orb of Storms to trigger the Innervate? And does it do enough damage to stun anything? Tell me your secrets!

I'm not sure that the Increased Critical Strikes on the Vaal Storm Call is helping that much since you aren't scaling crit in the tree. I usually see Vaal Storm Call paired with Spell Echo.

Get boots with move speed! Then it will be easier to dodge attacks (and labyrinth traps). Use a move skill like Lightning Warp or Flame Dash, that should help a lot.

Immortal call for CWDT and Spell Echo for Vaal Storm Call are nice suggestions and I changed my Templar accorgingly. Nice suggestions for Ascendancy too, thanks!

Changed the flasks a bit as well. What do you think now? I'm not really a flask guy so I didn't pay attantion to them. Had a chaos resist flask there even though I'm inoculated, ups. :-D

The Devotion passive is fine. The bonus from it is changed into ES bonus by the jewel above it.

I know about the life on my gear is useless but the other bonuses are still better than everything else I found or crafted.

Orb of Storms is bit of an experiment which I only added recently. It's not leveled enough yet so it doesn't deal much damage. I'm not quite sure if it works - is there a way to tell that an enemy is shocked?? Stun is certainly not working yet at this level.

For one, get you some Ascendancy nodes, stat. You shouldn't be playing a base Templar at level 82; even the three 'normal' Ascendancy nodes, minus Uberlab, would be a huge power boost. For your particular build, Heirophant seems the way to go - Illuminated Devotion, Divine Guidance, and Sanctuary of Thought. That gets you a couple of very useful boosts in your helm (20% elemental penetration, very useful for a Vaal Storm Call set-up, and 20% AoE in the gloves, useful for embiggening Orb of Storms' support coverage) a whole g'danged lot of extra ES if you gear right and get a bunch of mana in the tree, and also heavily discounted skill costs.

The rest of it is mostly just optimizing what you've got. You've got a pretty good chest and a pretty good shield, which are the two most key pieces for a CI build. I'd look into 5L-ing your chest if you can't get an equivalent 5L for cheap-ish; just dump fusings on it until it works. 5L generally isn't too ridiculous, though it can feel that way sometimes. Redux your gem set-ups; your lightning golem is over-supported and your Vaal Storm Call is under-supported. I'd switch VSC into your (Heirophant'd) helm, with Echo, Controlled Destruction, and Lightning Pen. That'd be a nice way to take a big bite out of bosses. Ball Lightning itself can go BL > Echo > Controlled Destruction > Lightning Pen > Slower Projectiles. That gets you two 'More' modifiers, BL doesn't crit for junk anyways, and that 20% damage effectiveness really kills Added Lightning Damage as a support gem.

Orb of Storms is one of the best Curse On Hit skills in the game. Go Orb of Storms > CoH > Warlord's Mark > Blind (or Inc. AoE, and use a Stibnite flask for blinding, which is what I'd do) in Heirophant gloves and you hit practically the whole screen with Warlord lightning. You need Ghost Reaver to make the life leech work on your ES, but frankly Ghost Reaver is one of the key things that makes ES builds work in the first place, and mana leech means you can cut Clarity and get back a ton of mana to defend yourself with. Super-high ES counts (with Sanctuary of Thought you should be easily able to breach 10k ES even with the most budgetest of budget gear) means super-high leech percentages. That's what keeps you alive.

I honestly think cleaning up the tree and reordering your gem sockets some, getting some Ghost Reaver/Warlord's Mark action in there, will help you a lot. Most of your gear's workable enough. Mebbe something like this, tree-wise: Heirophant Version. Sliced out a few less-impactful nodes, trimmed up some unnecessary life. If you have/can acquire an Energy From Within jewel you can convert the life nodes by the Witch start into ES; otherwise don't take them. Get flat mana and %max mana on gear/in the tree wherever you reasonably can for both MOM and Sanctuary of Thought; use Discipline but I'd otherwise keep reservations down to let Mind Over Matter do its job. if you go for Wrath to get more lightning damage, which you can, I'd slice out MOM, but that depends on whether you value offense over defense or vice-versa.

Either way. Hopefully that's a start, at least.

With a few tweaks here and there you should be able to handle higher content with your templar, so I wouldn't recommend starting a new character unless you actually want a new build.

One thing to note is that you actually don't need the uber trials in order to ascend with your character. You can do the labyrinth in normal mode (I'm not quite sure how this works for older characters in the standard league but I believe that you'll get 6 ascendency points by only completing the merciless labyrinth). That being said, ascending to Guardian would probably add a good chunk of defenses to your character, whereas the Hierophant would add some utility and the possibility to have 20% extra lightning penetration for one gem setup.

Now let's talk about your templar. First of all you probably shouldn't use 'Added Lightning Damage' in your 5 link setup. Ball Lightning has a 20% damage effectiveness, so only 20% of the damage is actually added to your spell. You could either use 'Faster Casting' or 'Controlled Destruction'. Slower Projectiles is also often used because the Lightning Balls then can zip the same enemy multiple times.

'Stun' won't do anything for your Orb of Storms, get rid of that. What you can do it linking Orb of Storms to Blind, Curse on Hit, Conductivity. That way Orb of Storms will not only blind, but also curse your enemies with conductivity.

As SunsetVista suggested Cast when Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Increased Duration is a good setup to prevent physical damage. Although it can be quite hard to have 3 linked red sockets on energy shield based gear - keep that in mind.

Change the added lightning damage gem in your Vaal Storm Call setup for Lightning Penetration. Or even better, put your Vaal Storm Call in a 4 link and use both gems. You can drop minion speed and minion elemental resistances for your lightning golem. Even minion life is debatable. I can imagine that your golem is dying on a regular basis right now, that's because he is only level 10. Once you level the gem you'll notice that you don't need the support gems.

A movement skill can also be pretty good to escape tricky situations. For that I recommend Lightning Warp linked to Faster Casting and Less Duration. Note that Less Duration is very important on this one.

Now to your gear. It seems that you have very little resistances on your gear pieces. Are your resistances capped at 75% in merciless (without flasks)? This is very important, not having your resistances capped at 75% is what get you killed in most cases.

@1453R Very nice suggestions for my Templar. I can see how this can work. Ghost Reaver/Warlord's Mark sounds VERY good and I'm looking forward to trying that. You missed the fact that I actually do have the Energy From Within jewel and that I'm using it to turn those life passives into ES bonus. But the location you pointed out is far better for this jewel. Anyway your suggestions are very nice! You showed me a direction which I can follow!

@kahzin Yes my resistances are capped without flasks even in the maps. In fact I have recently cut some of them from my gear because I had all the resistances over 100%. I was using Flame Golem until recently which had higher level and was still dying even with the support gems. Other suggestions are good and I'll use some of them. Thanks!

Now a question - with the CWDT + Immortal Call (+ Increased duration if I can get 3 red slots) how much should I level the CWDT gem? Immortal Call has a cooldown so there is no need to stick to level one. And I'll use Warlord's Mark so I'll have Endurance charges. Level 20 CWDT on the other hand might require too much damage before triggering. So where should I stop leveling CWDT?

EDIT: 3 red slots are actually easily achievable with lvl7 Vorici. It costs 120 chromatics which is not exactly cheap but I can afford it no problem.

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enumag wrote:

Now a question - with the CWDT + Immortal Call (+ Increased duration if I can get 3 red slots) how much should I level the CWDT gem? Immortal Call has a cooldown so there is no need to stick to level one. And I'll use Warlord's Mark so I'll have Endurance charges. Level 20 CWDT on the other hand might require too much damage before triggering. So where should I stop leveling CWDT?

I'd like to see answers to his CWDT question too.