My first toon, Marauder lvl 57. stuck, need advice

I finally made it to Merciless but can't handle any rare mobs I run into. I keep dying and losing XP so I've just been trying to grind some lower levels for currency and XP. I'm starting to think that the only way to get good gear is to buy it but I don't even know what to buy and if I can even afford it. I really enjoy this game and want to see the end game content but I'm getting frustrated. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It took me a while, but I figure out how to link items so here is what I am using. I'm not sure how to link my passive tree.

GEAR:


PASSIVE TREE:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEACZYMXxQgGNcaPhrkHKcelCSbJScn7SkuMfs5DjwtPO89_EF0TP9QR1OlValYY11JXsBfP2ebaPJqBGqlcql2K3Z_dqx343uMfLh99X7ggIqExIVSiFqIj4zPl3mXtJtYnlegQq2Nrj6vbLc-xBXE9sauxtjPftlh3HPkUesJ7w7yL_ZI9039MP4K

Don't worry, this is perfectly normal. It happens to everyone starting out the game unless they are getting enormous amounts of help. Let me be blunt, and don't take this as an insult: your gear sucks, your socketing sucks, and your tree probably sucks too (to get a link to it, open the same pop-up you do to link gear and click the grey tab down the side between your inventory and the character list). Again, this is totally normal and nothing to be ashamed of, because the game is so complicated that this sort of floundering at level 50-60 happens to almost everyone on their first character. And merciless is well...merciless. You can't really get away with being this suboptimal any more.

Firstly, you need to fix up your gear. Mainly you need more physical damage on your weapon and more life and resists on everything else. By endgame, you'd ideally like at least 300 pDPS on a two-handed weapon and around 70 life per slot of other gear (on average, since they can get different max amounts). You'd also like to cap your resists. Of course you'd like to bump up your defensive stats (armour/evasion, not so much energy shield), but these are far less important. Obviously you can't get this immediately, but you can try to get closer. Trading is a good option, though not 100% necessary. Standard is flooded with very cheap gear. Do searches on poe.trade like this and you can find plenty of stuff that will be enormously helpful. Aim not to pay more than 1 chaos per piece at this stage - hopefully you can afford that. Alternatively, you can boost your self-found items with master crafting, using Haku and Elreon to add life and resists to otherwise good gear, and maybe Vagan to boost the DPS of a promising weapon (assuming you've been levelling them).

Secondly, you need to figure out what primary damaging skills you'd like to use. Pick one or two, because they need to be heavily supported to be effective and you don't have space to do that for more than one or two skills. Make sure they scale from the same stats - for example, don't try using one spell and one attack (builds that use both are possible, but they're very specialised and fairly complex). Then support the hell out of them. For a random melee skill, something like Multistrike/Melee Physical Damage/Added Fire Damage would be a generic 4-link that will do lots of work, but something else may be better depending on your choice (and this wouldn't work for a couple of skills, e.g. Cyclone).

Thirdly, you need some sort of sustain. For a physical attacker, the normal method of sustaining yourself is to get some life and mana leech on gear and/or from the tree, rather than using a gem. See if you can manage this (gloves and jewelry are the items that can roll leech). You should only need a very small amount of mana leech to keep yourself topped up indefinitely, but life leech might not be able to heal you at the maximum rate (20% of your max life per second) at this point, as your damage or leech percentage needs to be quite high for that to happen. That's okay though, it will still be a big help.

Fourthly, your tree might need some work, but we'll have to see once you post it.

I hope that's somewhat helpful. Let me know if you have more questions, or would like some gear to get you going (I have plenty of gear from characters I no longer use moldering on Standard, so I'd be happy to donate some to you).

Wow! Thank you for taking the time to post such an in-depth reply!

I have updated my original post with my passive tree.

I really like AOE skills. I'm currently mostly utilizing Sweep supported with Multistrike, Faster Attacks, and Life Gain on Hit. Also I like Static Strike. I suppose I should pick one AOE and one single target skill though.

Most of my gear has been chosen for the increased rarity buff in hopes of getting better gear. This hasn't worked out too well.

"

Divinorum1 wrote:

Most of my gear has been chosen for the increased rarity buff in hopes of getting better gear.

Increased rarity is good, but ONLY if you can still kill stuff efficiently and not die in the process. Dead men find no gear. As mentioned above, you absolutely need to get a decent amount of life and resists(ideally these should be capped at all times). You might want to look in the marauder forum(or whatever other classes you're interested in) and look at the guides for the most popular builds on there. Even if you don't follow them exactly, at least get an idea of how they work and what kinds of stats you should be aiming for.

Sorry for the delayed reply, hope you read this.

"

Divinorum1 wrote:

I have updated my original post with my passive tree.

Okay. This is far from the worst newbie tree I've seen, but you do need to start thinking in terms of point efficiency. The best nodes on the tree are the notable passives (the slightly larger ones with the fancier border and a unique name) and keystones (the enormous ones that do crazy stuff and usually have a drawback). Your aim should usually be to get all the keystones your build requires, and then as many notables as possible, because they simply give you more bang for your buck. That means that you should almost never take a non-notable passive unless it is a requirement to get to a notable or keystone. There are exceptions where you just want to get as much of the stat as yoy possibly can (life and crit chance are the common examples of this), or where a non-notable is actually pretty damn efficient (a few damage nodes fit this bill), but it's a very good rule of thumb to follow. That means that when thhere is a 'wheel' of nodes with a notable on the other side, you generally don't want to take the whole thing. Just take the better (not necessarily shorter) path to the notable and forget the rest. You also have a couple of wasted nodes where your tree as a whole has gone round in a circle, but I'm writing this from memory (currently phoneposting so can't really look at your tree), so I can't tell you exactly where they are right now. Will do so later.

Also, get Resolute Technique. Crit sucks unless you invest heavily in it (for attacks at least, spells are a bit different), and RT means you can forget about accuracy forever, which saves a LOT of points and frees up your gearing.

"

I really like AOE skills. I'm currently mostly utilizing Sweep supported with Multistrike, Faster Attacks, and Life Gain on Hit. Also I like Static Strike. I suppose I should pick one AOE and one single target skill though.

Faster Attacks is not the best for melee phys builds. There are too many other good choices. Most builds use it only as a 6th link, if at all. I would definitely try to swap it for Melee Physical Damage. With a bit of luck you eventually won't need Life Gain on Hit, but it's certainly fine for now.

You don't necessarily need to pick one AoE and one single target skill. Most builds stick to one skill for both purposes, since you only get access to two 5/6Ls if you have a two-handed weapon. But yes, if you are going to use two skills, one for AoE and one for boss killing would be the way to go.

As a side note, you might like to try Ground Slam if you haven't already. It's another melee skill with very good AoE, although the weapon requirement can be a bit of a pain.

"

Most of my gear has been chosen for the increased rarity buff in hopes of getting better gear. This hasn't worked out too well.

Above poster nailed this. I would steer clear of IIR and IIQ for now, the best way to get drops is to clear faster. MFing is only a good option after you've run out of good ways to increase clear speed.

this is a build i just made quickly that might help you to understand what kind of patting u should pick if you decide to pick static strike for example.



Choosed armour and endurance charges for you because is the most basic thing you can get as a new player.

Thank you everyone for your advice. I've been working on my gear and respecing my passives a little. I've been experimenting while farming The Ledge on Merciful (got a couple levels in the process). I've gotten a few pieces of gear from there. Nothing special but an improvement and they'll have to do for now.



I was also able to trade for . I tried to trade for more items but I found it difficult to get replies from PMs and whispers so I had to settle for found & crafted gear.

The skills I am concentrating on are Sweep for AOE and Infernal Blow for single target. I also just started using with Warlords Mark for endurance charges.

I've used all my respec points up but may trade for more Orbs of Regret as I go. Mana is an issue but flasks take care of it.

The tree looks better but keep in mind ( I'm still learning - which if fun for me ) what nodes to pick up then drop after a bit for a better damage or life+ something else to be more "optimal". I did see that you have 2 10 strength nodes at the start that could be respected into the templar life/mana regen and or the Axe damage notable depending on what you need.

Edit: Go to the "farming" areas that are lower than your char with IIR rings and amy and build some "wealth" to buy regrets or better gear. Sell trans for scrolls and ID rares for alts .... or find what works for you. You might get on a good roll and find some useful equipment...