My survivability is starting to lag behind monster damage output

So I got lucky on a different character and had a Voll's Baptism drop, and I figured I'd use the closed beta to gain an understanding of the game. I rolled a 2-hand mace Marauder and I've been loading up on as much HP and HP regen as I can. I've been facerolling most of the way through the game. I haven't actually died in combat yet (died once because I was being dumb and afked in a combat zone but that doesn't count :P), but I think I will soon.

Now, I've hit Ruthless Act 2 and I often come very close to dying. I feel like I won't really gain much in the way of survivability without getting some really lucky drops, and even then I don't think I'll gain enough that I'll be able to survive on the next difficulty.

This is my build:


I don't know how to link all of my gear, but I've got around 50 Fire, 60 Cold, and 50 Lightning resist. I usually am not too worried about those unless they're in large volume, and that's fine. However, I'm just starting to take massive damage from rare monsters that melee or do Chaos damage. I don't feel like I can really afford to gain much armor or life because of the socket links and resists on my current gear. I have a chest piece in my stash that has significantly more armor than my current piece, but I don't feel like it offers enough health and armor to offset how much more elemental damage I'll be taking.

Is it normal that at this point in the game I take so much damage, or am I just doing something horribly wrong?

As flab stated, use enduring cry, decoy totem, temp chains and stuff, but more importantly get rid of the 5 points wasted on the Executioner cluster. You can put them in a much much better use. Grab the other diamond skin, head for IR and grace aura afterwards.

Your skill build is pretty basic, for a GS mara there isn't much wiggle room. "but more importantly get rid of the 5 points wasted on the Executioner cluster." Defiantly do this, pick up armour master as it's a nice move speed boost and keep moving over to the right to get Iron Reflexes. Start leveling Grace aura now and with iron reflexes that will be a nice boost to your armour. As for blood magic, it is a really nice convenience passive but it really hurts your effective life and for the endgame is a huge burden as you can't use the really good auras. I would keep it until you get a good mana leech piece and then ditch it asap.

For skill use a decoy totem can go a long way and if you are really struggling keep endurance charges up using endurance cry, it is kinda annoying to do but it will really help.

Other than skills and passives you just need HP, HPHPHPHPHPHPHP on a GS mara. A higher HP pool will help both life regen and life steal. Try to pick up a flask that has "instant recovery on low life." It gives you the hp when you need it most instantly and will save you more than you think.

Edit: Make sure you help oak every time to get the +45 hp, +45 hp is way more than you will get from any passive.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I had tried to mess with Enduring Cry a bit last night and took out those executioner points to do it. It's definitely a pain to keep running. I'm going to head for Iron Reflexes next. I had those points in executioner to head for the %HP up and right from there, but maybe having more armor from IR/Grace will help more.

If I take the Leather and Steel cluster with Iron Reflexes, do I essentially "double dip" with any evasion rating I have, and end up getting the percentage boosts for it being evasion rating, and then for being armor?

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Ihasabucket wrote:

If I take the Leather and Steel cluster with Iron Reflexes, do I essentially "double dip" with any evasion rating I have, and end up getting the percentage boosts for it being evasion rating, and then for being armor?

I'm somewhat hazy on how it works, but I somewhat remember the devs nerfing it in some respect earlier.

Basically though, just get IR. You should aim for about 5-6k armor, 4k+ HP and maxing out your leech.

Also, think about using Warlords Mark, for help sustaining the Endurance Charges, and leech in general, in addition to enduring cry.

Ah... I hope HP on gear starts scaling massively soon. I only have about 1200 HP right now at level 49 and a laughable amount of armor. After I get IR I should have around 2k with grace on.

Unfortunately, I had already selected the skill point rewards from the bandit lord quest up to Ruthless.

Too bad you took the skill points instead of helping Oak for the HP. For any char that stacks life the bonus HP adds huge amounts. I always help Oak on life based chars.

My high life chars usually have the following amounts of life by the end of act 2 helping Oak (and a healthy amount of +life from gear):

Cruel: 1.2 - 1.3k
Ruthless: 1.6 - 1.8k
Merciless: 2.7 - 3k


Iron Reflexes + Grace is crazy good too. As Grace levels up it generally keeps your char sheet DR constant if your gear remains unchanged. You definitely want 1 defense node cluster to get at least some bonus. Endurance charges can be annoying, but they can help a lot- remember too that you get +5 all resist per charge as well.

Zakaluka does a pretty good analysis of armor scaling in this thread if you're interested:
www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/53290

It seems like any mara problem can be fixed by More DPS. After a couple of decent but not great weapons through normal and act 1 cruel, I snagged a super good weapon and laughed through the next 3 acts, finally starting to see it peter out in act 2 of ruthless. Enemies like Brutus were no issue because they might hit me for 2/3 my life but only get off one or two hits before I killed them with heavy strikes.

Now I'm progressing in merciless but somewhat slowly because even whites in the ledge take 3-4 sweeps and I can't instantly burst down crowds to reduce incoming dps to a manageable level. I have another weapon that's 2.5x the damage waiting for me at 58, so if I can hold on that long I'm sure things will be smooth again.