How to know what killed me?

Zrevnur, many thanks for taking the time to explain, and the suggestions.

The build I'm following has plenty more life in the tree later, I'll try to move there earlier. And it has no good explanation of Iron Reflexes - just says don't take if you don't have Armor/Eva gear, but otherwise (i.e. you do have some Eva), do take it. Armor is %-scaled a lot in this build, so maybe that was the reasoning in stacking as high as possible. I'll move out of it, feels not worth 3 points indeed.

For reference, the build is https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1806321.

Interesting character build.

Passive Tree


From what I can see, you also aren't capped on resistances. This is particularly dangerous in later game content.

I somewhat understand why you're using The Brass Dome, but I'm not a fan of it. I'd rather go for something like a Belly of the Beast or a nice Rare with Life and Res instead.

Gloves aren't bad. A bit higher Life would be nice though. Something similar to this (not the best example, but eh.)

Wish mine had Aspd instead of Armor or Life Regen :l

Boots can do for an upgrade too. A bit higher Life would suffice.
Same with Belt and your Iron Ring. The WED rolls are very nice and all, but surviving is a priority (you can play Glass Cannon style of course).

I notice that you're stacking a lot of armor. The value of Armor in POE is kind of an illusion. I won't get into too much details, but basically you need a TON of armor for you to really feel any difference, and even so, super strong hits will still crush through it. It'll protect you against smaller attacks though, but so will killing the mob before they attack you. For larger hits, just avoid them.

Try these for your gem setups:


As to finding out what killed you.

Experience is the only way to tell. There are many times where I go splat out of the blue, so all I do (if I'm stumped on what killed me) is take a look at the screen, find out the enemies, the mods, the map mods, then lump it all together. I've been playing this game for a long time so usually I can accurately guess what killed me. I memorized the visual effects of most mods, especially Ele and Physical Reflect, as those are usually my banes.

So yeah, just gotta keep playing and learning.

Thanks!

Mana is fine as long as I damage things, with that 1 leech node from Duelist's tree. If I jump a lot with Leap and don't leech anything, it could drain I think (haven't tried in a long time), hence the blood magic - health regens faster than continually using Leap.

Related to that is the mana pool though - painfully small, I can't even re-summon my golem without removing one aura first. And I'm already invested into two +30 Int nodes and one of my jewels adds another +14. I wish I could go out of those nodes and spend the points elsewhere. The build guide suggests one +30 Int node will be needed to max out Flammability.

I'm capped on elemental resists - 76(83) / 75(94) / 75(75) - some of it is coming from jewels, maybe that made it less visible if you see it as under cap. Chaos res at -42.

I'll be stacking more life everywhere as suggested and taking some of your tree and gem setup cues (and earlier suggestions). I've changed now to Life Leech, Immortal, Warchief, Warlord's Mark (but going back to Flammability later). I managed to skilfully spec myself out of Vaal Haste due to Dex deficiency (taken +30 Dex away some time ago - oops). This build sucks for Int and Dex in general and the gear doesn't add anything back.

I really like the idea of Belly of the Beast, buying one now to try. On the hunt to replace all other gear as well (and jewels).

Btw - this build is not that squishy, at this stage at least, maybe just vulnerable to certain mods that I underestimate and don't yet see as something I should be wary of or not run at all (as has been pointed out by FCK42). I'm probably too careless as well engaging some mobs, but that's where the fun is right, running around killing things fast. I quite enjoy it overall, was just frustrated with lack of readily available explanation when I do die (applies to other chars as well of course).

Anyway, my original question is answered - no other in-game tools available to do post-mortems or access some numbers, beyond what I already do and will learn by more exposure. A pity, but not a deal breaker for me. Funny that I only now started noticing the difference between yellow and orange rares, after someone pointed it out, so there's definitely room to get better at not dying.