Keep getting slam dunked to death (first build scrub)
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For my first build, my plan was to simply shoot and scoot with freezing pulse that has high DPS, at a cost of suitability. As a result it's came to bite my "ares". Please help me not die so often (113 deaths and still counting).
Passive tree: Equipment:
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Stats in Merciful
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My main problem is taking insane amounts of damage from a pack of mobs and 1 hits (I know armour is non existent). Generally been doing fine progressing through the game, and currently on Merciful act 4. The battle with dominus was fine, only died once when he was in second phase, but I spammed potions and dps to compensate my way through. My build also seems to struggle on tier 3 maps with the low life and ES pool. In the end, what gear should I upgrade and how should I restructure my tree to help me survive? Last bumped on Apr 24, 2017, 11:33:13 AM
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You've made, by absolute far and away, the single most common mistake every single new Path of Exile player makes, without fail.
Not anywhere remotely enough life/shield nodes, and not enough defensive stats on your equipment. Your tree gives you not even 50% increased energy shield and no life at all - the game is expecting the average life build (in mid-to-endgame mapping, mind, there's some give for sub-70 builds like this - but not much) to sit around 4.5-6k life, the average ES build to sit somewhere between 8-15k ES, and for hybrid builds with both life and shield to sit in the realm of 3-5k for each, depending on. You have less than 2k shield and barely over 1k life. That is indeed the deep red Instagib zone. You're also utilizing far fewer defensive layers than an optimized Experienced Player build. No dodge or significant block, no defensive curses, extremely limited blind, no significant leech. You have no mitigation, and no cushion of health or shield to absorb the unmitigated damage you're taking. I'm also seeing three supported attack skills in your link sets - Freezing Pulse, Vaal Ice Nova, and Vortex. Three 4L skills are not actually superior to one 5L skill and two utility link sets. Generally, pick one skill to focus on and set up the rest of your gems for utility and defense. Vortex can be useful for utility, it's a relatively common CWDT (Cast When Damage Taken, a very useful utility trigger gem for many builds) skill, and VIN is fun so hey, but you shouldn't devote more than one, maybe two, link sets to purely offensive skills. Get your main skill, a backup skill to cover a hole in the main skill if needed, then fill the rest of your links with defense, utility, movement, and the like. I can get into more detail later if you like, but the sad truth is that it'd be best for you to start over. On the plus side we'll be getting a freespec when 3.0.0 drops in a few months, so you can redo your whole tree at once then with more knowledge. Don't feel bad - Path of Exile has a learning curve best graphed as "Cinderblock punch to face". Literally everybody screws up their first character. Most of us screwed up our first half-dozen. A lot of us still screw up every other character we make. Learn and soldier on, good man. | |
" Thanks for your help! I knew it was bad...... just didn't know it was just that bad............ LMAO, R.I.P my little vegetable. I see where you're going with this, on increasing my survivability and stuff. But, how do I know how much I should invest into armour and evasion, as well as life and ES? Sorry to be a numb skull, but what do you mean here? " You have no mitigation, and no cushion of health or shield to absorb the unmitigated damage you're taking." Other than that, I'll try to round off my next build. Don't worry I'm not that bummed, I practically screw up everything I do, but that's somewhere to start! I probably still gonna continue on with this build and see how far I'd get, or even just to farm some shekels. Thanks alot! |
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" It's kind of complicated. ES builds usually can't afford to get much armour or evasion as well, because doing so comes at the expense of getting more ES (which is generally stronger anyway). For life builds, armour is not really worth taking unless you can stack the hell out of it and have a high life pool too (armour only protects against physical damage and is weaker the harder something hits you). Evasion is more reasonable to pick up small amounts of and also lets you use Acrobatics for some free dodge, which is nice. Might as well do that if you can. A lot of builds just rely on pure life/ES and mechanics to recover that rather than much in the way of secondary defenses though. " Mitigation refers to anything that reduces the amount of damage you take. Some of that is damage reduction, some of that is preventing you from getting hit (block/evasion/dodge). To get truly tanky you have to layer mitigation on top of a high life/ES pool. Or you can just leech through everything with Vaal Pact. Have you done something awesome with [url=http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Sire_of_Shards]Sire of Shards[/url]? PM me and tell me all about it!
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Hi, you keep dying bcos your build is glass-cannon without any defensive nodes. You should increase your life pool and other source of mitigation.
I´ve improved your tree a bit to be more defensive (without too many changes). I see you got also mind over matter passive which gives you 30% extra mitigation through your mana pool (you need unreserved mana /for auras/ which should be more than 30% of your life pool) upgraded tree: After that you should invest next passives into life nodes (Purity of flesh, Quick recovery and another next to your path) You should also upgrade your items: check http://poe.trade/ Stats needed: glove - 60+ total resists/ 60+life body armour - 5 links (connected sockets) + 80+life + 60+ resists (looking for energy shield or evasion/energy shield armour for getting right colour to socket gems) + nice bonus is extra energy shield rings - 60+ total resists/ life+mana Belt - 30+ strength 90+ life + 60+ resists Check stats (strength, dex) you might need for your gems to wear. You should also have atleast 75+ resists in merciless (except chaos which is harder to get, but some extra chaos resist would be cool to have) You can get pretty nice rare items for a few chaoses (don ´t spend too much on your first char). I can´t see your flask setup (private profile) but I guess you got some mistakes there too Check good cold witch build to get inspiration there: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1774022 Last edited by Rakiii on Apr 19, 2017, 5:34:35 AM
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One relatively easy fix that might get you a little further in this build is a Stibnite flask, if you're not already using one. The smoke cloud a Stibnite flask drops Blinds enemies in it; Blind is an extremely powerful defense against attack-based damage (mind blown, ryte?) that can potentially double or better your effective health against critter DPS. It's less useful (though not without value) against bosses and it's not a 100% fool-proof failsafe, but it's something.
I'd recommend checking the Witch subforum and looking for life-based build threads tagged with things like "CHEAP", "BEGINNER", and other such tags. Ignore posted DPS numbers, and ignore any 'Low-Life' or 'CI/Chaos Inoculation' builds. Those are much more expensive, and also more intricate and difficult to make work, and are not recommended for beginners. Even if you don't decide to play the builds you check out, simply studying them and trying to figure out what they do, how they tick, see why and where they work, will help you get a grip on the game more quickly. Also check out new player guides posted up in various spots. There's a great whacking shitload of minutiae PoE players need to know before they can successfully Git Gud; the New Player guides are damn near required reading in this game. Last edited by 1453R on Apr 19, 2017, 11:19:45 AM
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Thanks for all your guys input, I'm gonna start another build with Scion and try to improve on my previous one despite being a witch
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I am also playing my first character and have had a lot of trouble fighting bosses without dying. After reading this thread, I spent a small amount of regrets and was able to change my passives around to boost my life from 1200 to 2000 HP. Much easier now. Thanks!
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Another thing. MoM won't work until your ES is down to zero. I tried it, saw how it works, will save it for some non-ES based chars.
What you might want to do is, download the Path of Building app (totally not advertising, been using for a few months, it's awesome and it doesn't take you 5 days to levela char only to see it's crap). Import your character, save it, then copy it and reset your tree. Then go mainly for defensive nodes for first 60-70 skillpoints, then turn to offensive, you'll see just how much you can improve it without wasting unnecessary stress from dying too much. I've made same mistake on my Arc witch (1st char), went full offensive mode, great dps, a bit crap single-target, but that's Arc for you. I had 3.3k ES as a bloody CI and I was stuck at T6 maps, couldn't pass over to T7, even though I could clear everything until boss in a blink of an eye. I think I have like 10 characters now, only 2 are leveled properly, one of them is alright, and my Forst Blades PF is crap now at T8+ maps, not enough damage (even though dps is great, it's all Atk.Speed), so I can't make ONE decent character yet :D For witches what I noticed is Life-based builds are susually summoners, and any other witch uses LL or CI (I personally like CI, 'cause no exalts to buy Shav's lol), and with your low life pool chaos dmg in T9+ will kill you faster than you can react, been there done that. Judging from you last reply, you have around 3.5k-4k effective life pool. Be aware of volatiles, they HURT in T6+. Hell, my Lv90 char with 7.7k ES was nearly 1shot in Coves (T9) by a random volatile. Uh, lack of sleep, can't concentrate, sorry. Yea, it would be easier for you to reroll a character, try same idea but different tree, like I said, Path of Building helps A LOT while planning. If you want to carry on this characeter, get proper ES shield, something with decent Life roll and 250-350 ES shouldn't be more than couple of chaos. Get spell damage on wand, you're all into cast speed. Or even better, get Elemental Overload if you have something to proc a crit every 8 seconds. I'l stop before I stop making sense, if I even made any, I know smart people on here will fix my post and I will learn something new too :) | |
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PoE Planner
Also a useful tool. Not nearly as in-depth as Path of Building or some of the other offline builders, but easy to use and you can cheat and run it at work if you've got the kind of job that doesn't crack down on 'Weird' URLs. Not that I've ever spent half a slow workday fiddling in PoE Planner or anything...>_> Anyways. you can absolutely do a life-based non-Summoner Witch, though it's a bit trickier to do since the northern hemisphere of the tree gets crap for life nodes. An easier plan is probably hybrid life/ES, aim for ~4k for each. Depending on how you set up your build, hybrid works just fine for a majority of the game's content. It can be a bit fiddly to get proper recovery for both life and ES, but it's certainly doable. Occultist's ES regen on kill can be a fantastic booster for general mapping as well. Heh, I was once sigged as having said "Vile Bastion is basically immunity to death while mapping if you have enough ES to be an ES build." Kill a pack of twenty critters, regenerate 10% ES per second for the next four seconds - plenty of time to get your ES back up and also move on to the next pack of critters. Add (Ghost Reaver) Leech on top of that for ES recovery during boss fights, target 5k shield as a good mark to hit, and you should be good. |
