My Dead Horse

I finally figured out how to link. I can not get over the response on this thread of people helping and can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I have relocated some passives since yesterday:

Current Passives:

I removed Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics Node and snagged Iron Reflexes to hopefully mitigate damage a little better instead of relying on evasion. I think with my current gear that put me around 38% mitigation. Thought it would be better but maybe after some upgrades. All struggles aside, the response from everyone here has been reinvigorating.

Thanks again and happy hump day to the rest of you slaving away at work.

Edit Note: Noticed after linking my gear, the sockets are embarrassing. I'm aware a lot of it doesn't make sense, I mostly have gems on there I am interested in and trying to keep leveled. I still really only use dual strike/viper strike and an aura. Any gemming suggestions just as welcome, though I don't have a huge selection stashed away yet.

Now we're getting somewhere.

First, your weapons look okay. In fact, your equipment isnt that bad overall. It looks like you've got decent stats and resists.

You are right about the links and gem setup.

Viper strike and Dual Strike need to be linked to life leech. Try substituting Life Leech for Endu Charge on Stun in your dual strike 4-link. You'll need to level that life leech gem up a bit. DS does a lot of physical damage and the life leech should significantly improve your survivability. Given your other stats, I think those endurance charges are not helping you that much.

If you can get a CWdT gem, set up a 4-link with CwDT - Enduring Cry - Immortal Call - Increased Duration. Be sure you know how to level these gems - leave CwDT at level 1, level the EC and IC to as high as they can while still activating, and level the duration gem as high as it will go. This will help survivability.

I dont see a curse anywhere. Get a curse to up your damage - possibly Vulnerability. But consider Warlords Mark as well.

Try those changes and see how it works. My guess is you have enough damage but have survivability problems - these changes should help.

Oh man, that makes complete sense and now I feel dumberer. Had no idea there was a life leech gem, that sounds amazing. I just found the enduring cry one, and put it on grasping for survivability. Have not seen IC or Leech yet and I do have a stash of curses, so i'll try one of those out. I honestly only use viper as an in-and-out attack for mobs I hate like the blood boiling one or whatever. Just tag them with it a few times and run around all nimbly bimbly like. I have read about the leveling (not leveling) gems when it comes to cwdt and what not, makes sense. I'll just have to find them.

I think the leech itself will make a huge difference. When I engage a large amount of mobs, even if they are just white skellies... they either explode in a mess of bones and desync while being quite satisfying, or they all hit me at once and it gets sketchy fast while I wait for my health pot to leisurely refill my hp.

Looks like I've got some farming to do. Thanks again man. Excited.

Glad it helps. Life leech will make a very noticeable difference, I think.

You can get build-enabling gems as quest rewards. I am self found myself and often have to roll an alt just to get a gem I need.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Life_Leech_(support_gem)

Act 1 cruel quest reward for several classes.

CwDT is harder to get (look it up on the wiki) but be sure you get one when you can. May be worth it to break down and buy one. Cast when stunned is a fair sibstitute. You'll be amazed when you get set up how much it helps.

You can get life leech from jewellery too.

The thing about life leech is that it's mostly based on physical damage. Your viper strike is doing chaos damage. Great for mobs with energy shield, but less damage than your dual strike. Try using the DS with Life leech first. The gem will still work on VS but not as well. And jewelry with LL won't help VS at all.

Not sure why you put culling strike on viper strike. Culling works 'on hit', and the viper strike's main dmg is dot which isn't a 'hit', so doesn't trigger culling. Worse, culling slows down your hits, so you get maximum chaos charges slower.

Multistrike works better with VS since it increases the number of hits. One atk and you get 3 charges. Maybe move that gem from your dual strike set up, and replace with a melee physical dmg.

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Nemmerle wrote:

The thing about life leech is that it's mostly based on physical damage. Your viper strike is doing chaos damage. Great for mobs with energy shield, but less damage than your dual strike. Try using the DS with Life leech first. The gem will still work on VS but not as well. And jewelry with LL won't help VS at all.

Life (and Mana) leech GEM works for any kind of dmg. Chaos isn't the problem, it's the DOT that is. Leech depends on 'on hit' to trigger, DOT doesn't do anything for leeching.

Leech from gear though is dependent on physical dmg.

Thanks guys, I wasn't relying on any of that viper set up anyway. Just for weird situations where I could not tank the mob. As of last night I have removed it altogether as is. I got my first 5L chest last night and now have:

Dual strike > Multistrike > Melee Splash > Life leech > Mana leech

The new additions of a few pieces of gear screwed with my sockets so that is the only real solid setup I have now. I also do not have the mana for two auras so I have Grace for "trying" and Wrath for farming. I have one other piece that is decently colored and linked and was trying to figure out a good 4L 'Cast When Damage Taken' combination. I tried:

CWDT > Enduring Cry > Immortal Call > Molten Shell

As Nemerle suggested earlier in the thread, it seemingly was awesome. It went off all the time, but then I realized it was not giving me EC charges and therefore I never had more than a flash second of IC. Molten shell is nice, but...I can't tell if it is as helpful as I think considering keeping the gems level around 35 for the low level cwdt. Any suggestions to a good cwdt welcome.

These were my additions by the way. It still feels like I may by a long way off from having a solid character to try maps for the first time, just falling short on farming for myself. The only saving grace was meeting someone yesterday that shopped for me. They found things on poe.xyz, asked me for the necessary chaos and purchased for me. Seeing how fast he was making it happen, I need to figure that site out I guess. He seemed helpful and I only ended up spending 10 Chaos. Not understanding currency yet, I do not think I was ripped off. The orbs would've just sat in my stash anyway.

10c is a small investment if it helped. Get the LL gem leveled and see how that helps.

The IC consumes your endurance charges of course. As you say it's not as effective with one. Now that you have the cwdt set up you might link back you end charge on melee stun - this will augment your IC and make you tackier.

Molten strike is often a good choice for cwdt - but usually requires it be leveled high to be effective. People using it are often using two cwdt set ups on different armor pieces. In the mean time try substituting frost wall for molten strike - you may get more mileage. Ultimately you want a high level increased duration in that slot.

Are you low on chrome orbs? I presume you are picking up three color linked items whenever you see them and vendoring. It's unusual to bee too short of them by merciless.