Help with progressing/gearing into red tier maps.

Hey, I've been enjoying this league so far playing with my usual CI, dual dagger trickster build. However, this is the first time I've managed to stick around to get to higher tier maps, and I'm noticing some issues. To the point that I've been stuck at near 0% experience for level 87 for quite some time now. I'm half tempted to throw in the towel and just say that I would be better off trying to respec and gear for a life based build because of the ES nerfs, but I do like the aesthetic of energy shield builds and the chaos immunity of CI has been quite helpful and I'd like to keep it if possible.

My main issue seems to be that there's no possible way to manage a life leech rate to equal current mitigation against tough harbinger packs or certain bosses. Using Path of Building, it seems with the current life leech I've acquired from passives and gear will let me hit the leech cap already, so slotting more life leech in won't exactly help. However, as my passive tree shows, I've literally grabbed every major +ES node on the tree already, and the only way I can get more is by use of the Energy From Within jewel (which I'm growing more and more tempted to purchase from poe.trade). And the only way to increase the cap is by respeccing all the way down south to Vitality Void, which I'm not sure if that will be worthwile.

It short, does anyone have any thoughts on how I can make an Eva/ES dual strike CI build work, or is that just not possible with locking out vaal pact to ES users? Is it just a matter of needing a six linked, or replacing certain gear options? Should I swap out hatred for grace or arctic armor for example? Or should I focus on more damage and just try to fall back on my current 5.3k ES? I'm also exploring using Incandescent Heart, since I've got one that has 5 red colors and 1 green, and its stats (except for the mediocre es and life bonus) are quite nice for CI. Or should I focus more on just getting a 500-600 vaal regalia with five reds, or make due with only three reds?

Tbh I think your chances of playing CI on any character that can't stack almost all the ES nodes is next to zero, it works for essence drain characters as their scaling is limited so they end up taking jewel/ES nodes to kill points but on a dual wield trickster? you've got no chance

Basically if you switch to life you'll have to deal with chaos damage, but you'll gain VP which handles all of your leech/sustain issues.

Incandescent heart is fantastic really gives a sizeable bonus and covers your leech for you but I can't see how you can map with 5k on a close range melee CI character there are just too many holes. No armour/evade/dodge, very low block, no instant recovery its just not gonna work :(

Maybe somebody on the forums has a completely different idea but thats my take, i've tried to make ES work on a variety of characters but it just hasn't come together in any way, its ok as a buffer for hybrids and thats about it.

I've got 5.4k ES with my Incandescent Heart and just shy of 4,000 EVA (~24% chance to evade). Not much, so I'm not sure if its worth mentioning, but its been pretty decent because I use a stibnite flask of reflexes (so halving the accuracy of monsters and then getting ~180% more evade has been useful). 1400 Armor from the IH for ~10% hit reduction. Also probably not worth mentioning.

If I swap out Maligaro's Virtuosity it might net me easily up to 6k ES? But that would be quite a bit of damage loss. (Then again, BiS on Path of Building for me is Shaper's Touch, which gives more damage and another 200 ES from its additional scaling, but I don't want to buy items from a boss I haven't beaten at least once. Ruins part of the fun for me).

Your ES pool is simply low for red tier mapping. You have no physical damage mitigation (IH helps with ele mitigation).

Drop mind drinker, blood drinker passives. Get mana leech on equip/jewel.
Why didn´t take ES passives under Deep wisdom? There is 38% ES for 4 points only.
I would take Influence over 6% ES bcos it gives damage and ES (overall better numbers).

Use AW or protector to buff your damage and distract enemies (Totem deals nice damage even in 4 link)
(link with maim, melee damage on full life + conc effect or smth)

Equip:
You´re missing flat ES on equip. I would drop carnage heart bcos your leech will be capped anyway.
(Leech from IH is enough, WM and leech from Atziri flask helps too).

Do you have problems with stun? If yes take eye of chayula (best would be corrupted with +1 curse).
(there are other ways how to solve this such as enchant on boots, Leo crafts, valyrium ring)
No problem? Any good ES/dmg/res amulet
Get rings with flat ES and high INT if possible (with resist/dmg whatever). Maybe change gloves too.
For smth with Attack speed/dmg/ES/mana leech@.

Some jewels should be upgraded too.

You should be able to reach 6.5-7k+ ES without any problem (higher ES = higher leech/recharge/regen cap)

With Melding and Energy from within close to 8k (or more with great gear).

Try to keep your flasks and fortify up (chance to evade should be over 50% without grace)
Think about using defensive curses enfeeble (good interaction with stibnite) / TC (better with enhance)
Bcos of no physical damage mitigation I would consider using arctic armour in combination with granite or basalt (limited number of flasks though ..).

On the other hand you can boost your effective crit chance by using diamond flask.

You will have hard time fighting even when you reach this but it should be doable with practice (just can´t face tank every kind of stuff anymore).

I was already thinking of picking up enfeeble, so thanks for the suggestion there. I may drop the curse on hit setup with blade vortex and cwdt to use immortal call and enfeeble together to make room for a totem to maim. As for the carnage heart, its a temporary thing I was trying out for its lightning resist (my usual amulet is a rare with flat damage, all attributes, and 15% increase ES).

I'm already keeping an eye out for better rings, and I'll work on replacing Maligaro's with gloves with decent damage and ES, thanks. And I'll try out Arctic Armor over Herald of Ash when I can fit it with Discipline and Hatred.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Maybe somebody on the forums has a completely different idea but thats my take, i've tried to make ES work on a variety of characters but it just hasn't come together in any way, its ok as a buffer for hybrids and thats about it.

ES is still great for tank builds - you can't get as high ES as you could in 2.6 though you can still get considerably more than life, but you can get higher ES/s recovery. (See the link in my .sig for one ES-CI example, based around regeneration and abusing recovery mechanics. Currently up to 13.4k ES at 92 and 6k+ ES/s recovered through regeneration and leeching in tough fights. There are others based around blocking. I assume people could take one of those builds and water down the tank aspect a bit in favour of more damage and still end up with something that can waltz through red maps with nary a problem except on the nastiest of bosses.)

That doesn't help the OP much, unfortunately, for while the Trickster is one of the best classes for regeneration ES builds due to its +70% recovery modifier (if killed dotted recently) and 250 base ES bonus, to make that really shine requires a lot less investment in damage nodes in order to gain a bunch of regeneration nodes and a nice ES buffer to absorb the occasional heavy hit and to scale regeneration (and leeching). I'd guess 8-9k ES, but I'm not an expert on melee-range builds other than tank builds.

As the OP has stated that he admirably enough doesn't want to use gear from bosses he hasn't killed yet, I cannot even recommend that he switch to using Shaper's Touch, or even better, Shaper's Touch and Geofri's Sanctuary and turning intelligence and dexterity into strength via Efficient Training and Inertia jewels or other such shenanigans, I'm stumped with regards to what he can do that will make a major difference and still maintain the essence of his current build.

I actually got lucky and picked up Geoffry's Sanctuary from a drop (its currently on my templar that I've been fooling around with for The Rippling Thoughts). Although I would need a hell of a lot more strength to make it work, and would be missing out on the effectively +6% elemental resistances from Incandescent Heart. I have however currently been using a Sorrow of the Divine flask to get Zealot's Oath and regeneration (as well as a bit extra damage) for now.

So far swapping out a gem for Might and Influence and replacing Melee Splash with Multistrike and Ruthlessness has helped quite a bit with my issues (I presume because I reach the life leech cap rate sooner, and lock down packs more often with stuns and freezes). However, I wouldn't mind seeing those ES tank builds, I've retooled the lazy paladin build so far for my templar character (planning on picking up Aegis Aurora with Geoffri's Sanctuary so far, although I was planning on picking up Repentance instead of Shaper's Touch to get life, es, and spell damage from a lot of strength). As well as for ideas for my shadow.

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Amorencinteroph wrote:

However, I wouldn't mind seeing those ES tank builds, I've retooled the lazy paladin build so far for my templar character (planning on picking up Aegis Aurora with Geoffri's Sanctuary so far, although I was planning on picking up Repentance instead of Shaper's Touch to get life, es, and spell damage from a lot of strength). As well as for ideas for my shadow.

To get the most out of Geofri's Sanctuary you need to pair it with Shaper's Touch. That way your strength gets a quadratic rather than linear relationship with ES, which makes strength beat intelligence hands down and makes stacking ludicrous amounts of strength the way to go. At which point you consider adding Iron Will to your main spell link (if spell build), and how about a Doon Cuebiyari too? And Alberon's Warpath?

That's what I did for my strong strength based regeneration(+leech) ES tank I mentioned. I go into detail about the game mechanics that makes it work: link to build


For a strong intelligence based block/regeneration ES tank, this one from the Templar forum is supposed to be decent (though with very low damage): link to build

(The thread writer uses legacy gear in his build guide so I'm unsure just how good it is with 3.0 equipment, but the thread appears to still be alive so it must have something going for it.)


There are undoubtedly also Aegis Aurora tank builds for 3.0 hiding out in class subforums somewhere. There always are.

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Pi2rEpsilon wrote:

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Maybe somebody on the forums has a completely different idea but thats my take, i've tried to make ES work on a variety of characters but it just hasn't come together in any way, its ok as a buffer for hybrids and thats about it.

ES is still great for tank builds - you can't get as high ES as you could in 2.6 though you can still get considerably more than life, but you can get higher ES/s recovery. (See the link in my .sig for one ES-CI example, based around regeneration and abusing recovery mechanics. Currently up to 13.4k ES at 92 and 6k+ ES/s recovered through regeneration and leeching in tough fights. There are others based around blocking. I assume people could take one of those builds and water down the tank aspect a bit in favour of more damage and still end up with something that can waltz through red maps with nary a problem except on the nastiest of bosses.)

Thanks for the link I checked out your build looks pretty sweet, I did the str stacking last league on a baron necro and really enjoyed the massive amount of ES you can get with 1k+ str geofris and shaper's gloves but I can't help but think that it still suggests ES is pretty gimped.

It already feels wrong that stacking strength is the way to high ES but its also using geofris as a crutch item to replace the 1k ES chests of old, i mean on your build your getting what 950 ~ ES from the chest a perfect roll vaal regalia gets like 600 now :/ it kinda feels like a cheese.

(gonna take a look RQ ^^, why does your neck have a custom mod of 2% regen 50% recovery?) great str stacking tree though I made a similar one as a jugg blighter lol but he was life based.

So yeah i'm getting off point you've made a high ES character but its not really an avenue that you can explore in other ways. Still I really like the look of your build I might do this one next league so thanks for the link it really looks my style!

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Thanks for the link I checked out your build looks pretty sweet, I did the str stacking last league on a baron necro and really enjoyed the massive amount of ES you can get with 1k+ str geofris and shaper's gloves but I can't help but think that it still suggests ES is pretty gimped.

Let's just say that the first version of the 3.0 guide, before my temper cooled down, said something like "GGG tried to murder high ES builds, but they failed!" :p

I am not happy about the state of ES in general either, just amused at how by using a bunch of uniques and new Pantheon options I could turn the tables at least partially and get more damage and recovery than traditional ES regeneration tank builds like my old pre-3.0 incinerate flametank and Dy'Ness firestormer.

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It already feels wrong that stacking strength is the way to high ES but its also using geofris as a crutch item to replace the 1k ES chests of old, i mean on your build your getting what 950 ~ ES from the chest a perfect roll vaal regalia gets like 600 now :/ it kinda feels like a cheese.

238 maximum ES (with 20q), and 528 maximum ES from strength, so 766 maximum ES vs perfect roll vaal of 689 (163 with +100 and +142% from maxed ES%, +ES, +ES/life prefixes, and 20q) if you want to look at it that way.

But you shouldn't. That base ES is not just from chest, making that an invalid comparison in isolation.

That base ES is from the chest and all the strength you pick up in the tree and via other items, every choice of which has the opportunity cost of not picking something else. It relies on using 18% increased strength Alberon boots with negligible ES on the item as well compared to rare ES boots, it relies on using gear with a lot of suffixes devoted to strength rather than resistances, it depends on this being a build stacking strength over nearly everything else, which also means using Shaper's Touch which also have low base ES compared to ES rares etc. etc.

So, no. It is a splendid example of how multiple uniques working together in a build tailored to them can provide a result that is better than the individual parts would suggest - and that's one of the things many strong POE builds have in common. :)

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(gonna take a look RQ ^^, why does your neck have a custom mod of 2% regen 50% recovery?) great str stacking tree though I made a similar one as a jugg blighter lol but he was life based.

The two custom mods on the amulet in the Path of the Building links are to simulate the relevant Pantheon bonuses of Arakali and Tokuhama until such time as POB starts supporting the Pantheon.

It isn't a perfect simulation. Arakali provides +50% recovery, not recovery rate, but it is a better representation in POB of what the build does than it would be ignoring the Pantheon bonuses.

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So yeah i'm getting off point you've made a high ES character but its not really an avenue that you can explore in other ways.

Oh, absolutely. Strength based ES is very much a one-trick pony. While it can be used for a variety of builds, it is still only a corner of the ES universe and requires a substantial amount of the skill tree and at least two uniques devoted to it to make it really work, severely limiting its general applicability.

I'd expect to see it more used in 3.0 for the hybrid life/ES builds for which Geofri's Sanctuary was originally intended, but it was fun seeing just how well it worked out for a pure ES build.