How are people and minions surviving?

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grimlock9999 wrote:


So yes, defensive curses are close to useless, so I'd be better off getting my 4K life/ES to 5K - 8K instead of buffing curse effectiveness.
However, I've experienced the same with full life regen Juggernauts, maxing ele resists, full spell dodge, dodge, evade and max block, and just pure stacking life. There appears to be no defensive system that can compete with this games overtuned sections.


Your mistake was most likely that you just put one of those into your build. High dodge with 5k HP will die. 10k ES with no other defenses will die. High phys mitigation juggs with 75/75/75/-60 chaos res will die.

Defenses layers consist of HP, mitigation, avoidance and sustain. A good defense incorporates all of those. Not every build can go equally heavy on each of them, some tend more towards HP stacking, some are more into avoidance, others have high mitigation but at the end of the day any good defensive setup will need a decent amount of all of those in some form.

Also keep in mind that this game has 5 damage types. Phys, Fire, Lightning, Cold and Chaos. There is no point having 90 all res if you have 0 phys mitigation and -60 chaos resists. You will just keep dying. It's all about balance really.

And while this sounds tough to get, it really isn't. Damage is expensive, defenses for the most part aren't. You can get a lot of them from gems, your ascendancy and your tree. There is no expensive gear required for the most part.

From what i can see, your level 94 witch in standard is on a good way, you have 9k hp against phys, 41k against elements and 6k against chaos. Chaos aside those are "ok" stats, get some extra chaos res and maybe a basalt flask and you should be fine on that one. You won't be able to tanky every hit in the game but there isn't much that actually oneshots a build with this level of defense.

If you still end up dying a lot despite that you may have to work on your playstyle. You always want to keep moving, standing there and twiddling your thumbs while Baran mines, Hunter Snakes, on death effects and the like happen all around you will get you killed sooner or later. As a Summoner you have the freedom to move all the time while your minions do damage, make use of it.
Last edited by Baharoth15 on Feb 25, 2021, 4:49:02 PM
Thanks for the genuine help y'all.

@Nubatack

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You seem to like minions, yes? Maybe follow a build guide for a minion setup you like and make it good. Understand how it works, what kind of stats are good to get on your gear. Learn what kind of things every build should have, like utility flasks, elemental ailment avoidance/removal, how much life/es is a good amount, how to setup your defense in a meaningful way. Once you do that you could start experimenting with your own builds and adjusting things to your liking


I do like minions, mostly because I try to avoid targeting anything or pressing a lot of buttons (so if flasks are now 'essential' in this game for yellow maps, I'm doomed!)
I also read a lot of forum posts/guides because I like the theoretical interactions of this game far more than the grinding or just buying OP gear with raw stats. Hence most guides (more than 1-2 Ex budget) are no good to me, but I do read them, and notice a lot of your comments are insightful. In fact the reason I chose the off meta occultist was a tribute to wrecker of days, who writes a lot about buffing temporal chains. I know full well that defensive curses have been nerfed, nerfed again, then made irrelevant due to terrain effects corpse explosions, etc.
In the past, I've written a lot of guides to what I think are creative builds (enjoyed theory- crafting them anyhow) some are:
Juggernaut - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2332595
Scion - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2784733
Raider - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2960120
One was even a meta build in it's day - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2114607

All are cheap, and have versatile defences, and can do yellow maps at least, even though I don't always bother grinding to that point.

@ everyone - I don't mind about doing all content, I just know that previously I could get close to everything before it killed me, now, I'm really curious about this off screen and around corner projectile spolsions of death. I encounter these a fair bit, so I cannot be alone - surely even those who are buying 40 ex gear are finding the same situations. This has nothing to do with my playstyle, which is certainly lazy and uses no flasks - as the wall of death from 3 screens away has no relation to kiting or telegraphed mechanics. I'm an experienced player, and never used to find these things, so assume it's some new content?



Do you have a video or screenshot or something of those "offscreen explosions"? Because i have honestly no idea what you mean. I guess if your minions wander off from you and kill stuff offscreen, and this stuff happens to be porcs for example that could be something, but in that case it would be because you let them run ahead so far. Normally you need to activate monsters by getting close to them before they can attack you, they will keep attacking if you go offscreen after activating them. But getting attacked by monsters you've not encountered before from off screen should be impossible.
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Do you have a video or screenshot or something of those "offscreen explosions"? Because i have honestly no idea what you mean. I guess if your minions wander off from you and kill stuff offscreen, and this stuff happens to be porcs for example that could be something, but in that case it would be because you let them run ahead so far. Normally you need to activate monsters by getting close to them before they can attack you, they will keep attacking if you go offscreen after activating them. But getting attacked by monsters you've not encountered before from off screen should be impossible.


Sorry, no videos. Sometimes it is a wall of projectiles, and I can hide behind a wall to survive, but cannot get close to hover the mouse over anything. Sometimes it is AOE that goes through walls, and I might be able to mash flasks and run away, but cannot walk through this constant AOE of death (there is no downtime to time a way through).

It is similar to the batch of rare totems in Kaoms dream/kaoms stronghold, which do activate and start attacking you before they are visible, or legion encounters where you kill 3 screens worth of things, then they activate, and while killing the first screen again the third screen hits you with a wall of death from way off your current screen, or rogue exiles with ranged attacks and spells (in fact this is the strongest possibility as to what they are), or the vaal bosses in vaal side areas that wind up and AOE wreck the place well before you get within sight of them.
Also possible you are dying to dangerous map mods, especially in combination.

For example, extra projectiles with minus resistance and extra phys as element, or with crit and vulnerability, or even various two-mod combos can be really nasty.

Those combos don't come up very often, but if you are suddenly dying in a particular map, look to the map mods.

Curse mods you can use a flask, but a lot of those mods are not curses.

Good luck
Might not be related, but I stopped allocating the beyond atlas passives because I found that it was too hectic for my casual playstyle.

Multiple projectiles mods every now and then is fine. But with beyond, it's like arrrghh!! - too stressful for my taste. >_<
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Might not be related, but I stopped allocating the beyond atlas passives because I found that it was too hectic for my casual playstyle.

Multiple projectiles mods every now and then is fine. But with beyond, it's like arrrghh!! - too stressful for my taste. >_<


This might be it. I often run maps with unknown mods, because they are usually way below my level, so if minions rush ahead and spawn a beyond monster, it would explain a lot.
Is that a poison summoner? oh man i have not seen one of those in years. I did not even think they were viable at all.

Is that the build you are referring too in this thread?
Last edited by Saltychipmunk on Feb 26, 2021, 10:52:30 AM
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Is that a poison summoner? oh man i have not seen one of those in years. I did not even think they were viable at all.

Is that the build you are referring too in this thread?


Yes, and it has some fun parts. Nice and cheap at least.
I wrote a bit about it here:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3034485

But decided to swap to skeleton archers. DPS, AOE, playstyle are decent. Curses as defenses are not, and as noted, minions often cannot even be summoned in order to do damage in order to make use of the life leech.

Hence, if you decide to try to play it, you'll probably need to get rid of heretics veil, enfeeble and punishment, use no curse effect nodes and just stack raw stats instead for you and minions - throw currency at an elder bone helmet.

For me, it's sad that the endgame has no room for creativity, and is now just a permanent stat check.
Hey buddy,

I was just taking a look at your build while sipping coffee and thought about how I would approach your build concept and here is my take:
https://pastebin.com/4YYeVtqd

tl;dr:
- 5x dmg (from 18k Sirus dps per SRS to 162k Sirus dps per skellie warrior)
- 700-800 extra hp
- taunt as defensive layer
- immortal minions
- ranged playstyle
- way faster dmg rampup


I tried to stick to your idea as closely as I could and just changing minor things with sometimes major impact.

- Swapped SRS out and Vaal Skellies in. Skellies are pure phys allowing for a much easier poison scaling, their added dmg effective is way higher and thats how you already scale a lot so why not abuse it and also because From Dusk and Skeletal Atrophy.
The idea is to pump out skellies faster so they can stack as many poison as possible which is also why I linked melee splash for mapping and melee phys for bossing. Splash allows them to hit everything in radius, poisoning everything in radius rather than just 1 mob. Multistrike is going to help to hit more often, stack poison and wither faster and reduce the rampup significantly.
- Vaal Skellie! Nuff said :)
Having the option to casually spawn another 36 minions stacking poison will help killing bosses way faster.
- Blessed Rebirth to gain a 4s immortality for the skellies and skellie archers so they actually stand a chance dealing dmg no matter what.
- Life from Death to heal minions in battle when other minions are dying. Thats not going to help the skellies a lot. They will have to rely on Blessed Rebirth and will eventually die anyways. But thats a good thing, because it will keep the golem and spectres alive.
- Ditched Heretic Veil to allow a ranged playstyle and replaced it with Devouring Diadem to gain less mana reserved and EB which then also enables and synergizes well with MoM
- Added Skitterbots to shock and chill. Shock obviously increases the dmg but so does chill because debuffs like poison/wither will linger longer and also slows down even more. Should feel good combined with temp chains.
- Automated cursing with Arcanist Brand allowing easy ranged cursing and maximizing mobility. Dont underestimate mobility as a defensive layer, especially for builds like this. Bane might work too, you might want to check out which one you like better.
- I ditched the Stone Golem in favor of Vitality to heal everyone around
- Annointed Ravonous Horde to ditch everything in that area. Something had to go to enable the cluster jewels and those are carrying this build hard. So I decided to sacrifice the eastern section of your tree.
- Feeding Frenzy (!) for the Carrion Golem. He can die all the time, thats fine. Hes is just a living dps buff you want to have active. Why didnt you run Feeding Frenzy? This is a must have for all minion builds. You want the extra move speed for minions as well as attack speed. And its basically free.
- Stacked more minion accuracy. Your minion hit chance was 87% and is now 100%. Thats crucial to stack poison as well as withering touches via Skeletal Atrophy.
- Stacked double dmg for minions while on full life, which they will be for at least 4s thx to Blessed Rebirth.
- Stacked jewels wherever possible to gain some life and dps, but more importantly to stack taunt and/or blind on hit not wither tho, doesnt work for this build.


It is possible to make this work. Its most likely not going to be great for super lategame but should be good enough to clear red maps. However I cant see a way to make it work without cluster jewels nor sticking to the blasphemy idea forcing you into melee range while not being able to tank hits.

Cheers mate
Last edited by Orbaal on Feb 27, 2021, 9:40:31 AM

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