RoA Scion - Advice required

I build a RoA scion as follows:

Gear:


Passive skill tree:
Passive skill tree build

I deal 4,8k dps with RoA. The totem deals 1k dps. That's ok(?) so far, but I die way too often even though my resistances are 74/75/75. My physical damage reduction is ~20%.

Has someone any advice for me to either enhance survivability or damage?

How much life do you have?

Your RoA build looks very spread thin in my opinion. I'm actually running an RoA Scion as well, and from my experience, a solid RoA build needs to be very focused on certain areas (e.g. life-based, Blood Magic keystone or support gem).

Your gears look pretty good, but I recommend that you spec to Iron Reflexes since your physical damage reduction seems a bit low; evasion rating isn't very reliable since you can manually dodge a lot of things. I currently have Molten Shell, Enduring Cry, and Projectile Weakness linked to a Lv.5 Cast when Damage Taken trigger gem. It essentially allows for perma-endurance charges, more elemental resistance, and more armor during combat without me having to cast any of those extra defensive skills, and those keep me at a constant 65% physical damage reduction.

Here's my current passive skill build, and also my finalized build for later on:
Lv.79
Lv.90

Gear:


As you can see, I currently have my RoA setup on my chest piece while waiting for a stronger 6L bow (I only have those gems on my current bow to level them up). With a mediocre 234 DPS Thicket Bow, I deal 4.6k DPS with RoA, and I plan on adding Weapon Elemental Damage to it once I get a 6L.

The passive skill build I'm currently using (along with Alpha's Howl and Reduced Mana) also allows me to run 3 auras: Grace, Hatred, and Anger. Grace is the most important one with Iron Reflexes as all of it goes towards your armor rather than evasion. Hatred is a must-have for bows with high physical damage, along with Anger for a good DPS boost. If you decide to run 3 auras, Wrath can also be used instead of Anger, although I personally prefer Anger since I can max it out with all the STR I have in my build, and Anger mixed with high fire damage on gears becomes good synergy with the new Kaom's Heart.

Without any life mods on my jewels (and without a good life belt with elemental damage), I'm currently at 3.8k life with 173 life regen per second. Having skills on Blood Magic gems rather than using the keystone is also a better choice in my opinion as it allows you to run multiple auras through your mana, and your main skill becomes completely spammable without using Mana Leech or having to spec to Mana Regeneration nodes.

Lastly, the core concept of my current build came from Gankstaboo's RoA Life Ranger build, which I followed when I started playing Path of Exile, then decided to revamp a bit when the Scion came out because of its placement in the new passive skill tree.

Hope you get some ideas out of this wall of text, and good luck!

I greatly thank you for your answers.

Currently I have 2,9k life.

Until now, I discarded the option of using the BM gem since I was afraid of removing my life for use of skills.

Your passive skill tree seems way more efficient than mine! I'm heavily struggling with getting mana flowing constantly. I'm stuck to the clarity since my MF witch build. :/

As soon as Anger is leveled up to level ~15 I'll try to change things and reorganize my skill tree. Currently using Anger instead of Added Fire lowers my DPS.

Furthermore I'll read the build guide mentioned in your post for the getting the picture of a good ranger RoA build.

Again, I thank you very much for your help!

No problem!

If you do decide to re-spec to a more life-heavy build like mine, don't hesitate to use BM gem as long as it's combined with either Life Leech or Life Gain on Hit. Again, this also allows you to replace mana-related passives and mods for other favorable DPS/defensive ones.

An ideal 4L setup for RoA would be [Rain of Arrows > LL/LGoH > Blood Magic > Concentrated Effect], then add Faster Attacks with a 5L, then Weapon Elemental Damage (or Added Fire Damage, depending on your bias between physical/elemental damage) with a 6L.

Life Leech works better than Life Gain on Hit for that particular build because of the amount of damage RoA dishes out with Concentrated Effect, which also becomes your main single-target skill (I only use Frenzy for the charges at this point). This is unlike LA builds where each individual projectile's damage is dampened, albeit more widely spread out, by LMP and Chain, and is therefore better paired with Life Gain on Hit.