I will never be good at PoE

I took a break in the middle of Perandus, I wasn't expecting to come back but since I'm really bored I "tried" playing PoE again and this games kicks my ass so brutally, it's not even funny...

So, during Perandus I played a "Trypanon Cyclone" Inquisitor Templar, I ignored armor and went with as much life as I could get, one of the piece of gear I was using was "Abyssus" and that item makes you take increased physical damage. At the end of merciless, I couldn't survive bosses (playing non-hardcore, so got through by coming back). In end game, the map "Poorjoy's Asylum" kicked my ass so bad, it's what made me quit PoE.

So I tried this build again in Standard, taking off from where I left, except I tried to get armor in the form of converted evasion and forwent using "Abyssus". Still got my ass kicked by "Merciless Stage 2 Izaro" in.

Rage quit that build and so decided to try the new "Lacerate" skill with a "tank". Going for high survivability while being ranged. I used a Juggernaut Marauder, more specifically using the updated 2.3 version of "Unrelenting". It was a disaster, I was "too" tanky and my damage was awful, around 4.5k dps. (6-link) Now here's where the game flips the middle finger at me, despite being almost invincible and killing things really slowly, when I get to "Merciless Stage 3 Izaro" he 1-hit kills me with his leap slam. I had 4k health and 70% estimated physical resist, Fortify and endurance charges weren't active since I did not get the chance to hit or be hit prior to dying.

I don't know how people reach around 10k life or energy shield, I'm able to reach 40k damage with certain builds but they are glass cannon. In general, I really don't understand how some players have the power they do but then again, I have some idea because because I forgo using certain mechanics I really hate but that are viable and popular, like critical strikes.

No matter what build I make, towards the end of Merciless and in end-game, I always get wrecked

So yeah, I want to play PoE but the game itself won't let me, I have no idea what to do except copy paste successful builds but I don't want to because I hate their gameplay and the mechanics they use.

You don't have to copy paste but you need to be aware what build choices make those builds successful and why. So you can incorporate them into your build in a way that fits your own playstyle. It's a learning process.

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Zed_ wrote:

You don't have to copy paste but you need to be aware what build choices make those builds successful and why. So you can incorporate them into your build in a way that fits your own playstyle. It's a learning process.

I guess I should study successful build more but whenever I see something I don't want to use, I don't incorporate it and I guess it's those things to make them successful

I've been playing since 2012, no matter how much I try I never really succeed

"

Entropic_Fire wrote:

Sorry but no matter what defenses you build in a 4k hp character never qualifies as a tank.

My solo self found slayer had that much hp by act 4 cruel.

Right, so I do you do it?

I try to get life on every piece of gear, at least +70 and aim for 170%+ in the passive tree

If I aim to get more life nodes, I end up having really poor DPS

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So that anyone willing to help can get I better idea, I'll try to list what my playstyle is

absolutes

-If melee, I almost always go "resolute technique" because I don't want to miss.
-I made a Trypanon build because it's as 100% crit chance, otherwise investing in crit chance is a big turn off, I also made it so I could ignore resistances completely
-I always aim to go for physical damage because elemental damage is highly resisted and so requires to use of curse stacking to lower resistances, and enemies can be immune to curses, I also dislike manual curse casting and Blasphemy is not very worth it's cons.

same playstyle regardless of enemy

-I don't switch to a crowd control skill for mobs and then single target for boss, I just try to use something to will work well in all situations

easy on the mind and easy to control

-I avoid situational temporary effects that require timing, a good example is "immortal call", it requires endurances charges which have a short lifetime and it as itself a very short duration, so it needs to be used precisely
-the only exception is flasks and I use them as a "panic button", when I lose a lot of health I mash all 5 keys at the same time, I find having to know what specific flask to use at what time too hard to do
-I avoid Vaal skills too since they also require very precise use
-I always go towards "blood magic" because I don't want to pay attention to mana levels and/or use mana flasks, I though several times to use mana as life with "Mind Over matter" while having both life and mana leech but I've never actually made a build

-I do "study" unique items to try and come up with builds but the way usually "professionals" use certain abilities is not the way I would think of using them

my setups usually consists of only this
-1 attack skill
-1 movement skill
-portal gem
-cast when damage taken spell that curse enemies on hit
-auras
-trigger skills if melee

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Some of the statements you make regarding your style or approach is very telling as to why you haven't tasted success.

Your reasoning for some of your logic is either biased, lacking in game knowledge, or flawed.

"

Entropic_Fire wrote:

^do you have a tree and gear I can look at with that build in mind?

which build are you referring to?

as I said, that's my setup for builds in general

In case you're talking about the Trypanon Inquisitor (since I did mention it) here's some info for both the original I used in Perandus and the one I quickly put back together (stash is in disarray, not everything is there)

passive tree

Perandus (Goal)



Current, evasion as armor version (respec)



gear

Perandus



Current, evasion as armor version (respec)



Gems

"

Some of the statements you make regarding your style or approach is very telling as to why you haven't tasted success.

Like, your reasoning for some of your logic is either biased, lacking in game knowledge, or flawed.

I'm gonna go with biased, for example I know crit is good, I just don't like my damage having rng, I don't like how it feels gameplay wise

same reason I don't invest in block chance with shields or evasion

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Good defenses in Path of Exile are almost always layered defenses.

High life is good, but by itself it ablates away like paper in a bonfire.

High armor is good, but without enough life to back it up the reduced damage enemies deal is still enough to quickly eat through your limited health.

Defensive curses, Dodge, Block, all of them are the same way - if they're the only defense you bank on, then when you hit something that bypasses that defense, or hit a dense enough concentration of stuff, you end up wrecked.

As one example: my league-start Vortex Elementalist has roughly 4.7k life (with a 700-point or so incidental ES count) at level 84 (I don’t have any idea how so many people so easily break 7k, 8k life either, but north of 4k is relatively straightforward), but her life is protected by both Mind over Matter and a Cloak of Flame redirecting incoming damage to her mana pool (essentially 30% increased life) and redirecting physical damage to her Fire resist (and the Elementalist’s 8% Paragon of Calamity reduction) rather than her nonexistent armor/phys mitigation.

She (and every other character I run these days bar none) uses a Stibnite flask; the blinding cloud from a Stibnite flask reduces enemies’ accuracy to 50% or less even on characters with zero evasion, which is huge. Most players would also use a Basalt flask on top of that, which is another flat 20% physical mitigation, and the pro guys with money would use a Taste of Hate to redirect another 20% of physical damage to a beefed-up Cold resistance. That Witchementalist also uses Curse on Hit with her Orb of Storms, with one of her curses being Enfeeble. Enfeeble reduces enemy accuracy and damage both, augmenting the Stibnite flask, stretching out her somewhat paltry 4.7k HP more, and reducing the damage burden on all of her other defensive layers.

Plus, most everything within eyesight of Trogdora is cursed, blinded, Conflux’d, Chilled, and dead before they get much of a chance to swing. DPS is its own defense – instagibbing packs before they can do much more than spawn means they get less chance to hammer you. And against enemies like Izaro, simply not being there is a valid defense. Most of Izaro’s attacks have monster wind-ups to go with their monster damage – if you have a fast movement skill or simply quick feeties or a Quicksilver flask, you can get out of the way and not take the hit at all. This method of not-taking-the-hit is often considered the best way to deal with Izaro – very few people just stand there and facetank him, it takes one mother of an expensive build to do that.

Even with all of that, Trogdora would be considered a pretty squishy build by some. No Fortify, no Endurance charges, not much ES. The principle, however, remains the same – building half a dozen moderate defenses into your build is a much stronger approach than banking on one really hefty defense, all defenses are magnified by getting more life, and having exceptionally crappy damage compromises your defenses by giving enemies more time to pound their way through them.

Try BlasFeeble with a Stibnite flask in your armored builds. If you can get a quality Experimenter’s Stibnite of Craving, that’d be nearly eight seconds of 0.4% mana leech on your defensive blindy flask you can drop on every fight, which would also help solve your mana issues and get you away from using Blood Magic, which is something you should only really be doing with 5k or more life totals. Probably 6k or more, if you’re running your whole build off of Blood Magic. Ideally your leech would be on your gear/tree, a’course, but getting it on a long-duration flask is a decent enough quick patch.

After that? Well, learn and experiment. I went through over a dozen junk characters before I got to what most of the yakkalopes around here would call ‘moderately okay’. Every new character you build learns from the last – ideally, every new character you run should be Your Best One Yet.

PoE is just that kind of game, really.