Ruthless = Frustrating

Firstly I must say I enjoyed playing this on Normal and Chaos and felt that there was some progression to my character. Playing Ruthless just feels like a sensless grind.
I've searched the forums and have read some posts about Ruthless 'imbalance', but those are all from 2011...presumably this has changed?
I'm playing a level 49 duelist (Skill Tree:- http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQQABubJgQs-64ALgqSmDvSWERDitKESYO1SJEKdoCZLl5o0Pr9SNN9LPDeXCEQ6HNNjPvuZKkWXAXVM_zXZVHnnAFXOn01ZfOmhW9k2OGGKaihtj0ztd_K8rXrfWBB9C94zg76zrIZ9KbKG5oUPh7pRQYkb7dyJKhzbjakY_427lxKTM_O3mBGIc6J5BfOvZ_Pps_XWN7QoKfq01jvjueU_vb6DfOG_vYYCwAzcYcEqs9THQaqWyDkwAcoWDmfWKw-41saPnNfMo_nY2cav352gtuOYnJn1icPN9phOs_2pYj8= ) and am able, mostly, to deal with the mobs at lvl 45 without too many problems, except for the occasional sudden 'inexplicable' death and dying from poison/bleed reducing my health faster than a potion will fill it. Progress, however, is slow and, quite frankly feels boring. Item drops are well below anything I already have and have been throughout Ruthless. Any item I have found has increased one stat at the expense of another by minimal amounts. No "Wow!" factor at all. Bosses drop rubbish and more often than not, only whites (chamber of Souls). It feels like I should be further along, but the firetrap/kiting (running away) at this level is already tedious.
A slightly better item statistically will have crap sockets and Jewellers orbs and Orbs of Fusing, more often than not, mess up my gear.
Currently looking for life leech gear (5% leech on lvl 9 Warlord's mark is a joke, as is 4 life gain on kill on gloves) and trying to hit life nodes on skill tree.
Where am I going wrong? Is it just a bad build?
How can I link my char?

Some stats:-
dps - 343.6 (Main Hand total 145-245)
Chance to hit 90% - still misses lots!
Accuracy 1006
Life 1023 - (no shield)
Arm 1700
Evasion 234 - (Gone for armour only, as always die suddenly with evasion).

Some items:-

U was wrong in rolling phys melee damage character without twink gear. Here u can read all about melee problems. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/35153 .

Looks like you are only looking for rare items. Well at your level all i was looking was white item with sockets linked.

Your rings and amulet is really lacking (Look for perfect roll rings then make them rare). I don't know about your skill gems but seems like u lack sockets in boots gloves and helm. These are easy to get 4 linked ones white then upgrade them to 20% quality then put a orb of alchemy (easy to get too, Just read the recipe in the forum).

Skills gem u can put. Grace pretty good for the evasion it will give u. Hatred aura since you are going for physical damage hatred will give a big boost in dps. Cleave maybe link with life on hit gem. If you do not like cleave go for lightning strike.

Hope this helps. Since i have not played a duelist yet at high level, i wont know but the stuff i just said are really easy to change.

I recently started playing, and just maybe 15 minutes ago reached Ruthless; with my melee physical marauder; who is based on life regen. Planning for what I assume is going to be a difficult adventure, I found your thread. I must ask, what is your current resistance? I have 81% to all 3; and about 1700 armor. In fact, my stats are higher than yours in every area except for DPS; you have more than 2X my DPS. I am not trying to stroke my E-Peen here; most of my gear is blue items; I am just geared very defensively; and will take 5 hits to kill a monster.

I am not a duelist, I am a marauder; and that may be a huge difference. My suggestion is to swap out some of that +item find and DPS for a little more survival. As was suggest above, using a life on hit + Cleave gem can really save you; 15+ life per hit, hitting 5 guys in 1 swing.

Itemization right now appears to be your biggest problem. Sadly, high dps-low survival is a ranged only thing. If you want to play melee, you need to have good gear, and that gear needs to revolve around you taking hits. Hopefully this is balanced a little better in the future; before everyone is rolling demon hu- err, I mean... You know.

Nooby tips I use to keep my gear in shape:
-Pick up and sell all blues, and +quality items (with 40% combined at a time, to get armor scraps, or whetstones)
You can find any whites with good sockets and make an item for yourself that will get you through a few levels; if you dont have alchemy orbs; or they give you garbage.

"

Glorn2 wrote:

Nooby tips I use to keep my gear in shape:
-Pick up and sell all blues, and +quality items (with 40% combined at a time, to get armor scraps, or whetstones)

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Then trade your alteration orbs for jeweler's orbs with the shaman-girl in town for more chances to get your sockets satisfactory.

Thanks for the feedback folks!

I do check all the white items, those that have 3 or 4 sockets, I try to upgrade, but as I said before, I've never got an item that makes that much difference. The ONLY 5 socket item I've found so far in Ruthless is a White bow (and that only has 3 links. Chances are if I fuse it, it'll remove those, as usually happens.

The rings and amulets are not brilliant, but with the exception of the +item find, I need the INT for the gem levels (maybe I levelled them too high at the expense of other stats).

The (few) quality items I have found I usually sell straight away (not 40% combined so I guess I should store them), as I do with the blues.

I haven't done any trading and am working only with gems I have found. I've not seen either Grace or a Life on Hit gem yet!

"Jewellers orbs and Orbs of Fusing, more often than not, mess up my gear" - I've used ALL my Alt, trans, jewl, fuse etc. to no avail. It took 15! chromatics to get one blue socket on a 4 socketed item. etc. etc. etc.

I guess I'm just unlucky.

Maybe I'll work on defence gear some more.

I tried ranged characters, but have distorted fingers from the key set up ^^

Anyway, I don't want this to be a whine thread! GGG guys are doing a great job. I'll slog on for a bit and see how it goes. As I said before Normal and Chaos were fun, this isn't. Maybe my luck will turn!

Your gear is severely lacking for level 49. Im playing a Templar and was clearing Merc a1 at 45 because i kept up with my upgrades. Your shield for example, there is a TC of shield in late Ruthless that has 600 BASE armor. roll 20% into an alch and you are looking at anywhere from 700-900. this is just one example.

your build also feels rushed and chaotic. what are you trying to achieve? Do you want something that does lots of damage? Mitigates? Uses LoH or MoH? You took a mana keystone when (depending on the skill you use), it may have been a better choice to skip that whole side of the tree and go blood magic, not only saving you a lot of points, but allowing you to allocate them into something that benefits you.

Advice: Sit down with the skill tree and figure out your goal.

That gear and build doesn't look bad to me for Ruthless. EDIT: Though I would try to roll a +% Defences on shield and armor, in Ruthless I believe you can get near 600 armor or evasion. To give you an idea I have a nice Sharkskin Tunic that gives my melee ranger near 1000 Evasion with a few +% quality upgrades, and I had a 700+ Evasion shield for a whilm, now replaced with a 800-ish Armour shield. So basically I go for DR% through shield passives + high armor shield, and balance it with a high evasion chest armor. With pure armor I could probably reach 50% DR at level 61 in Merciless but atm I'm balancing ~35% DR and CTE (note that DR% drops on the character sheet at level 60, my armor and evasion numbers are ~1900 and 3100 respectively).

Melees get a little shaft. Look for elemental damage flat mods on rings, gloves, and weapon. Try to roll a dual ele dmg weapon. like 30-50 fire, 30-50 cold. Those two rings may help with stats. If you need INT try to get a high INT Lapis amulet with two INT mods, and then ditch the rings and use +ele dmg rings. It will make a big difference.

It seems the main weakness on your character is that you don't benefit much from support skills. Chance to Ignite on Cleave + Fire Dmg won't make much difference. Ele proliferaiton with Fire Trap is nice, I do it too, but it's not a big DPS change. Mostly fun when you have a tight group of skellies or zombies coming your way. Melee Physical Damage is nice but Weapon Elemental Damage will give you a lot more bang. Increased Duration on Fire Trap is of little use as you should be able to Cleave and wipe a group by the time the Fire Trap added DOT damage has played its part.

Didn't you get lots of Added Cold Damage green gems from quests? I did on my Ranger. Those are elemental damage.

Also Drop Determination (look for the actual DR% gain it's probably very small) and use something like Hatred or the other Fire/Lightning added damage auras. Trust me in Ruthless if you have ~ 35% DR and 30% CTE, it's more than enough, and the weakness is not there. It's more about your DPS, if you take too long ti kill things you take more damage. With a good ele damage weapon + support skills my Ranger was cleaving through big packs of enemies in Ruthless, and still somewhat effective in Merciless. A Life Gain On Hit works great with Cleave because you gain from several hits, and/or Double Strike.

Also Viper Strike, didn't you get it as a quest reward? The DOT is a big help on high HP enemies like golems and bears. Drop a Fire Trap, stack poison with Viper Strike than finish with other melee skills.

Culling Strike is nice but is mostly utility and I would use it with Flicker or Shield Charge to finish the high HP enemies.

With that said on my melee Ranger I am also using Lightning Strike + Pierce and Added Cold which is makes up for my lack of DPS. Merciless and Chaos would be frustrating without it.

Thank you Def46 for a brilliant response. Exactly what I was looking for and has given me something to aim for.

I will repeat, I continually try to roll better gear, but as yet have had no luck. At this level orbs seem to drop far less than at lower levels and porting to town every 5 minutes to exchange a bagful of blues for a few shards becomes tedious. An example: I forget the name, I only ever had one drop, but the orb that adds a stat to a yellow item, added 2 - 4 cold damage! Which in ruthless I thought was pretty pathetic. Resocketing (for me) usually goes 3 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 4? And as mentioned before 15 chromatics to get a blue socket. Maybe the item is less likely to have a blue, not being a witch item, I don't know.

Both last two posts mention 600-800 shields. I have seen nothing this high so far in Ruthless, up to Chamber of Souls (including whites). I think I read somewhere on the forums that if you are 4 levels above the area level the drops are not so good? Perhaps this is the problem?

Your advice on the gems is great, and I'll be trying that (and better armour after farming for orbs on a lower level char). In my opinion (I might be mistaken) but which combinations work well and which don't are not so easily worked out, as I don't think most are reflected in your stats. Of course some are more obvious than others in use, but more often than not it just seems like guess work.

I kept Determination (5% DR increase), as I kill most mobs in 2 hits, but can only take 3 or 4 myself (cleave plus warlord's has saved my skin many times - until I find some life leech).

Again thanks for the response, very helpful and many things to try!

Thanks also to Vook, although (no offense intended) it's a little like:
"Have you done your homework?"
"No, I don't understand the problem."
"Then go and do your homework!"
(When I used to do it some 40 years ago ^^)

The mana keystone (2 nodes, not a branch) is temporary and allows me to run an aura (almost a 1/3 of the pool), while still leaving enough mana to allow for using a skill more than twice. Accuracy and attack speed on the rest of that branch seem important to me. I already miss enough, without these I'm sure it'd be worse. And without the speed it just feels laborious. Otherwise you are quite right, it is a bit chaotic. Or rather, I've started two or three trees, without completing the end nodes and this is my mistake. However, I do know what I'm aiming for, at the bottom life regen and at the top the life nodes and again further left of these the 8% life nodes. I had also intended to try Blood Magic, at which point I'll drop the 2 mana nodes. However, as already stated, in my current situation it would be foolish to take Blood Magic until I've sorted out some armour and found some regen on hit, that'll be the time to take it.

While it's fine to say "your gear is severely lacking for level 49" I must say I don't just leave good stuff lying around ;-) I haven't FOUND anything better nor been able to craft anything better. Perhaps it's my bad luck. The same type of items drop every time. I have noticed that on entering new zones (every two or three levels) several items of a new types will drop along with the old. I will also say that I haven't done much farming as such i.e. repeating areas (apart from deaths and not having waypoints) and usually clear everything in an area. One or two areas will give me a level that usually puts me far above the monster level I'm on. If, as I suspect, the drops are pretty much useless when 4 or more levels above the monsters then farming seems pointless. Am I wrong on this?

For the most part, you don't want to use a few crafting orbs here and there hoping for gear improvements. You save up huge quantities of them, and then try to make one great item at a time. Each individual orb is, in many cases, just as likely to make an item worse as better, but if you keep rolling an item till you get what you want, then you can end up with really amazing endgame gear.

Also, is the item display bugging out, or do you have a bunch of random support gems not linked to anything?