Early Gearing Problems/Questions

Act 5 onward (not white or Magic/Rare mobs) have become a serious problem for me since the new non-difficulty story was implemented.

I tend to play Witch self-cast and can pack damage as good as it can get before A5, but for both of the classes, gear stats scale like crap and if I find a good Magic item that could help me survive Kitava without dying a bunch of times (1k/1k HP/ES and his stupid Elite mobs will crack me down to ~800/0ES on teleport hit) there's no way to upgrade it because Regals don't drop often before lvl 55-60...so I'll be stuck with bad-roll rare gear.

I'd figure people who've ran races or HC (that don't play Marauder) would have a good idea on how to make sure I can scale my ES and Damage beyond just grabbing core INT from leveling and the tiny crumbs nodes that the tree gives before lvl 50. Is it actually feasible to run Magic gear with only 2 Alt-rolled stats when you can't upgrade it?

It's not feasible to level as ES, under pretty much any circumstances. Most witch builds these days are life anyway, but if you want to go ES then you pretty much have to level just like a life build, and then respec heavily at around level 70.

If you do that, caster levelling is some of the easiest around because you don't really care much about how good your weapon is (since it doesn't determine the base damage of your skills). If you just wear random gear with life and elemental resistances you'll be fine. Don't need to craft anything, you'll get plenty from drops.

It's definitely possible to level as es early on, it's just not easy because you need to keep upgrading your gear to get more es. Use master crafting to make the process a bit less annoying. Also run discipline aura.

Nobody who plays races or hc will do this though since life is better and easier early on. It's ok to have es as well as life, but going just es is tricky. 1k life is very low for that fight BTW. And 2k total life+es is also low.

But if you really want to do it, then go for it! Maybe try using spirit offering if you went necro.

A few extra things to note:
-don't pick up magic items. Unless they are 4L or something. Use essences to get rolls you want on gear, or just identify rare drops and hope for the best.
- use a flame totem. It augments your damage, distracts enemies and still hits them while you are running. Or, use a decoy totem. You should always have a totem for Boss fights.

The sorts of folks who can make leveling-as-ES work are not the sorts of people who would post a thread asking why they can't make leveling as ES work, Dudebug. The fact that it can be done doesn't make it a great idea, and there's a definite skill floor for doing so. Especially after the Great ES Triple Whammy in 3.0.0.

Leet: Viperesque's right. Level as life, generally with a few handy leveling gear bits as you find/can acquire them. Goldrim is badass for giving you immense (for your level) resists right out the gate, Wanderlust saves your ass from life-ending Freezes and gives you speed, and a few other handy items here and there make themselves quite firmly felt early on. My leveling experience after any real time in a league basically boils down to: "Go kill Hillock, get into town, go to stash, equip Tabula/Goldrim/Wanderlust/Karui Ward/Redbeaks or Lifesprigs. Proceed to mapping, replacing weapons and other non-unique gear pieces as drops allow.

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1453R wrote:

The sorts of folks who can make leveling-as-ES work are not the sorts of people who would post a thread asking why they can't make leveling as ES work, Dudebug.

That's a pretty good point XD