Cannot finish Story Mode. Not sure where I went wrong

Up until Act 9, I was pretty much playing on autopilot with this build. I had very little to worry about if my enemies were not rare or unique.
But once I hit act 9, pretty much every single thing is capable of 1-shotting or 2-shotting me, regardless of damage type. I don't understand where in my build I went wrong or why my damage reduction percentage keeps going down, even though my armor keeps going up.

you probably just dont have enough resists and life to make your defences matter.

fire/cold/lightning damage ignore armor completely, so you NEED to have good resistances or they will melt you.

"

Thror2k5 wrote:

you probably just dont have enough resists and life to make your defences matter.

fire/cold/lightning damage ignore armor completely, so you NEED to have good resistances or they will melt you.

Yeah I've noticed in most videos, I see characters with 6k+ hp and I'm just struggling to get past 1600. Like where is all this health coming from?
All my elemental resists are maxed, too.

EDIT: My character should be viewable in my profile now.

Life comes from 2 places - Gear (flat life), and Passives (%increased)

You fell into the noob trap of wearing uniques. Your belt it terrible. Your boots are awful. There are some niche builds that wear the belt for the item quantity, but you should not be.

Your neck AND praxis is too overkill for mana. pick one, swap the other for a rare with life.

Your gloves and helm have no life. Unless you NEED the int on your helm, change it for a rare with some life.

Your passive tree is, well, a bit all over the place. Consider taking more of the 5% life nodes by Constitution for starters.

So basically avoid anything that doesn't give you extra life is the meta?
I usually make my gear choices based on armor/evasion and whether or not it buffs my attributes and resists. I didn't think anything else was important because up until Act 6, it felt like nothing else mattered.
Feels very weird to me that uniques aren't the best jewellery, since that's how almost every other ARPG I've ever played works. Why are they considered bad in PoE?

As a newer player you'll need to get familiar with what I call "PoE Math".

What I mean by that is you have to learn more about the mechanics other than what you read for face value.

In this particular case - armor. The primary defense for mitigating physical damage also has horrible diminishing returns.

Armor can only prevent 1/10 of its value in damage - For every 1000 armor, you're only mitigating 100 damage.

When the deadliest hits are the massive spikes, armor does very little and primarily just softens the bows from otherwise much weaker hits.

As for uniques, even in a game as old as Diablo 2, some of the most valuable gearing was not unique but "rare" class, but given that there is so much junk that gets rolled in between its easier to look at uniques first.

Suffice it to say, take whatever experiences you've had in the past and know that while they can provide insight, be prepared to look at things with a fresh perspective. I myself was able to rely on old experience from D2 years ago to help me get started, but I still ended up having to learn a lot of nuances and intricacies.

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Sage009 wrote:

Yeah I've noticed in most videos, I see characters with 6k+ hp and I'm just struggling to get past 1600. Like where is all this health coming from?
All my elemental resists are maxed, too.

EDIT: My character should be viewable in my profile now.

1.
Your skilltree is, more or less, "damage only". You need some Orbs of Regret and should reskill a lot of your tree.
My advice: Take Heart of the Warrior (close to the starting area of you tree), Bravery (close to the Duelist, just beside the Master of the Arena skill you allready took), Golem's Blood (next to your Wildfire Jewel), Juggernaut and Barbarism (both on the left to the starting area) and the Life and Armour starting skill.

For example: https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/3.5.0/AAAABAEBAQHcBIcFLQYOCfYM9xQgFrsYkRkuGj4blyKvJ-0uUy_MMfsyTjJ-NZI26DhTOlI9_ECgRmlHfkrITUZQR1hjWK9fP2LsZU1nm26XbqpvO3Ttdud343gNeTl5aHrve4x7w37iggeE2YTvhmCKr4-ZkBGbWJ7NqW6playvrY218raKvJ-9Nr6nwBrAv8EEwYLEWMbYz37SIdNv1HzUj9i92WHaweRR6dXvDvIv8kHynPZI97n3vv4K_o8=?accountName=Sage009&characterName=Brabbo

The next skillpoints you get from lvl ups should be invested in defense as well (Life, Life Regeneration, Armour).

This is the skilltree of my Molten Strike Duelist for example:
https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQDAAHcAecFLQU8BWYOPBLhFCAUTRRxFHUYkRjbGjgaPhtGG_ohYCKvI_Yl3ycvKS4t0jB8MPgx-zJ-OFM6UjrYQKBEnka3R35IeEp9TZJTu1WpVvpXDVnzXhNfP2EhYVJko2VNZ6BoZWoBa9RvJ3KpdPF2rHbnd9d673y4fyt_44IHgpuElITZhO-GYId2i6aNfY25j2CQVZHOktCWbJe0mmqbLZ8-n6OiAKLqpBmkwqefqs2sqq7_sXy5HbvtvJ-9Nr6nw-bFU89-02_ZfNwy4J_jn-oY7FzvDu9O8azz3fcy-Ov8S_1u?accountName=Labarna&characterName=DivusFlamma

I use Oni-Goroshi weapon, and this jealous goddes does not allow a shield beside her, so there are some differences in our skilltrees. Maybe in some points you just have other preferences. But in general, I think my skilltree is a quite good example for a Molten Strike build. The Marauder and the Duelist area are so close together, that the chosen char doesn't matter really.


2.
Your main skill is Molten Strike, wich is a very good skill. But the main damage is from the projectiles, so addittional melee damage (wich only increases the initial hit itself) is more or less useless. So Ruthless support isn't good, take something else instead.

3.
You should be strong enough to do the second labyrinth with Lvl 71. You get 2 more ascendency points there, so this should be your main goal now.

4.
On the long term, the Point Blank notable (bottom right of the tree) is very good for Molten Strike. Most of the projectiles of this skill hit in close range, so you get a (up to) 50% more damage multiplicator. You need 5 skillpoints to go there.

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Sage009 wrote:

So basically avoid anything that doesn't give you extra life is the meta?

Sort of.
Life is just one affix, you ideally want "life + a lot of other useful stats" on your items. But life is a necessity on all your items except maybe 1-2 (if their other stats are really good).

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Feels very weird to me that uniques aren't the best jewellery, since that's how almost every other ARPG I've ever played works. Why are they considered bad in PoE?

Uniques in PoE usually fall into 3 categories:

a) "pretty good generic item for its level"
Examples:
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Scaeva
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Wanderlust
Nice DpS on the sword, but you will want to replace it with something better later on.
Nice 20% movespeed on the boots, you can equip them at lvl 1. But a rare with life+resists+movespeed is just better.

b) "they have a desirable stat you cannot otherwise get"
Examples:
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shavronne%27s_Wrappings
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Haemophilia
Shavs lets you reserve your life pool with blood magic, as chaos damage no longer penetrates your shield.
The gloves let bleeding enemies explode, something you can build around for pretty funny screen explosions.

c) "they have a unique stat, but it is not really desirable"
Example:
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Marylene%27s_Fallacy
Massive crit multiplier, but less crits, this leads to a negative DpS increase for pretty much every crit build.


Never in PoE is a unique great just because it has the status of being a "unique". They are not "better" items, they are "different" items.

No matter what build you play, 90% of uniques are not really useful to you, and of the remaining 10%, 9% are easily outclassed by a well rolled rare item.

"

Labarna wrote:

For example: https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/3.5.0/AAAABAEBAQHcBIcFLQYOCfYM9xQgFrsYkRkuGj4blyKvJ-0uUy_MMfsyTjJ-NZI26DhTOlI9_ECgRmlHfkrITUZQR1hjWK9fP2LsZU1nm26XbqpvO3Ttdud343gNeTl5aHrve4x7w37iggeE2YTvhmCKr4-ZkBGbWJ7NqW6playvrY218raKvJ-9Nr6nwBrAv8EEwYLEWMbYz37SIdNv1HzUj9i92WHaweRR6dXvDvIv8kHynPZI97n3vv4K_o8=?accountName=Sage009&characterName=Brabbo

I like this tree, and can definitely see how it would improve my current character.
I didn't think armor would be so useless, so I was stacking damage while moving towards life leech hoping that my leeching from all the projectiles I was tossing would sustain me to make up for whatever armor I was lacking.
My biggest gripe with the passive tree is that there's almost no +chaos resists anywhere, so it reduces my gear choices since I need to start dropping good gear (Or at least, gear that I thought was good) for gear that gives me chaos resists.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

a) "pretty good generic item for its level"
Examples:
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Scaeva
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Wanderlust
Nice DpS on the sword, but you will want to replace it with something better later on.
Nice 20% movespeed on the boots, you can equip them at lvl 1. But a rare with life+resists+movespeed is just better.

Speaking of swords, I've been using my current sword since Act 6 because absolutely no weapons have dropped since then with higher base damage and accuracy. I don't know what to do next weapon-wise, because every single alternative feels like a downgrade.

There are 2 ways to get a melee weapon strong enough for endgame:

1.
You could go for Oni-Goroshi sword, like I did. You can farm that specific weapon by beating Hillock (only enemy who can drop it). Make a new char for that, defeat Hillock and then do NOT go to Lioneye's Watch, as you can't return to the first area after that. Instead save and go again. It's boring to farm that sword and takes around 3-4 hours, but it's an easy way to get a weapon strong enough for endgame.

The damage of this weapon is enormous and it's guaranteed 6-linked for even more damage output, but you would have to relocate your skilltree completly, because you can't use a shield anymore.

2.
Trade with other players and buy the weapon you need.