Never made it past lvl 89 in 2+ years

Hey, guess this is me asking for some advice. Played PO for a good while and love this game. But like the title says, literally never made it 90 with any character in all of my playtime. I do my best to craft some builds, and follow others guides from time to time. But its never seemed to work. No matter how hard I try, I just die and lose hours worth of XP and never make it to 90 lol.

Seems sad I bet but its the truth. I work full time, have like 4-5-6 hours maybe after work, not every day. And it seems to me that even 1 death is erasing so much xp that i cannot make it up by the time i have to get to bed, and thats just assuming maybe 1 death. maybe 2-3, then its just hopeless.

I have killed atziri on my cyclone, can kill uber lab with pretty much any character ive made ( they seem to have nerfed it lately though) but still never made it past 90.

So basically I just craft builds with a max of lvl 87-89 in mind, and thats how i roll.

So...someone pity me and give some advice :P

What are you dying to? What level maps? Any bosses?

I'll assume you're res capped and have an okay life pool.

In order to play red-tier Maps comfortably, you either need to stack decent layers of defence, or use a bypassing mechanic (namely, Vaal Pact + stun immunity + high damage). I usually tend to stack decent layers of defence.

There are two threats you need to worry about: one-shots and enemy DPS. Forumers tend to exaggerate the dangers of one-shots greatly. Against enemy DPS, you have several tools at your disposal: Evasion, Block, Dodge. Armour is only effective against one-shots when stacked really high, but works wonders against enemy physical hit DPS at medium amounts.

On your melee characters, make sure you always have Fortify up.

Enfeeble is a pretty good curse for reducing enemy damage.

Stibnite Flask is a quick and easy way to inflict Blind on your enemies, which means that unless you Can't Evade enemy attacks (basically, only Unwavering Stance - Iron Reflexes does not hinder you here), you'll have double the eHP against enemy Attack DPS.

Enduring Cry is a quick and easy way to get some defence against Physical damage.

Make sure you have a good source of Recovery as well as defence against enemy damage; Leech is the easiest way to do this (Vitality Void cluster near Duelist) but Regeneration can work too, or in tandem with Leech. Nowadays, shields can come with Life recovery on block; that could help too.

Focus on just clearing easy/safe maps (any T9-T11) and avoid battling bosses. Yes its rather dull but it'll get you there in no time.

If you feel like having heart attack even on yellow maps, then your build just doesn't make it, every build has its limits.

Tbh, I recognize what you're saying. I've been playing actively for 6 months now, and always stop at lvl 90, because going 90+ is really too much of a hassle.

To get to lvl 90 just do what DreadLordAvatar said: use T9-T11 maps. Avoid hard bosses, like Excavation and Torture Chamber. You could skip all bosses, just to be sure, but then you really miss out on map drops.

This strategy is slow, but at least gets me to lvl 90 with most of my chars. After that, I have the feeling that all the defense stacking in the world - even with 6K+ life - is not preventing me from dying in tier 12+ maps. I do tier 15 maps, even a guardian sometimes, but I WIIL die and never reach 91... so be it.

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DreadLordAvatar wrote:

Focus on just clearing easy/safe maps (any T9-T11) and avoid battling bosses. Yes its rather dull but it'll get you there in no time.

That is how I got my highest level character up to 91. It was mainly running T9 and T10. Back then I had literally never once seen a T12 or higher drop even once. Never bought maps back then either.

Usually I stop playing characters around level 85 to 88 or so. Not because of xp penalties from death, but because I just find it very boring to play the same build for long periods of time. I usually level 4 or 5 characters in a league instead of getting one to the 90s.

The one I got to 91 was a magic find build. I found that made it a lot easier to want to keep playing it up to higher level than I usually play.

In Harbinger I had my highest ever dps build at 1.2 million + 101% defuff to fire and ran T12 to T15 maps without any problem. But I still didn't level it up to the 90s because boredom set in as usual and I leveled a few more builds instead.

I got to 91 once... it was in Legacy and that league lasted for-ev-er.

Go on the trade sites, get yourself 10 The Beachhead, T15, Harbinger Map. Run them 6 person rota, play defensive, keep up with the group, have pots for bleeding etc, those 10 will get u to 92+. If ur low 80's, atm you'd need to bring up ur Level 68 Inquisitor to at least that for that to happen. Or buy the maps and save them for when the rollover happens. Then try to get some 6 person rota's going.

Alternatively if you dont want to play harbinger atm. Buy 20-30 Poorjoy's Asylum, get a rota going 6 person. Make sure you can move fast and have the proper flasks. Use the appropriate Cartographer's Sextant on the map and maps around it, you can make your life easier if you block some other maps around those maps with other Cartographer's Sextant's but that's more work and you need currency. Those ran with a avg group should take you about 90-120 seconds per map, at 89 you'll get about 15 ish percent from 1 rota or 6 runs on the map. Side note, that rota isn't about picking up items, so unless a mirror drops or something super crazy. Leave it and keep going, if you fall behind in a fast one, you'll never catch up.

Whatever you do, dont run regular tier maps. Dog shit slow leveling.

If you're still struggling, add my sc account https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Bab4Yaga
When harbinger finishes, I can help you get into mid 90's in a few hours.

Here's an example of the xp gain when you run it slow.
https://youtu.be/XRflRSIlSLg?t=8m12s

That's when the run starts, that's a lvl 88. Look at the xp at the start and forward it to the end of the rota to see the experience there. Trust me dont waste your time running low tier maps if it's levels you want. Horribly inefficient.

Just clear safer maps...even the best streamers barely run higher then T12/T13 when they shoot for 100. Sometimes they will go higher but most of the time they keep the Tier low and just chain them fast.