Why do I sometimes take massive damage out of nowhere?

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Question2 wrote:

Why do I sometimes take massive damage out of nowhere?

Ultimately, the answer to this question is: because you can log out instantly.

GGG have made a point of allowing instant logout, even via macros. They've also made a point of making it difficult to reach level 100, both in HC and SC. The logical conclusion of this is that the game has to regularly attempt to kill you instantly, otherwise you could just instalog out of every dangerous situation and easily reach level 100.

It's a feature, not a bug. Get used to it.

I think you got hit by the bleed ranged attack of the gladiator in Racecourse.
That guy can pack a punch especially if you have low life regen and even worse if it's a vulnerability map. He attacks when you fight the other guys, not always easy to see. One on one it's usually easy to avoid. This is my theory on why you died there. You can also look at recent video "layering defenses" (Engineering Eternity) and explains why layering defenses is a good idea and usually supported by your flask setup.

Spectral throw by any rogue exile or boss in the game seems to have high crit.

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Question2 wrote:

Torture chamber : I broke LOS with the pillar, and the boss stayed on the other side of the pillar. Ive noticed that the boss is scripted to do this...he doesnt blindly turn the corner to walk into melee range, he stays at range. Then shaper appeared behind me, so I had to move to dodge the energy balls. Then I was one shot by five totems surrounding me and preventing me from moving. I tried to cast lightning warp to get out obviously, but even in a 4L setup, I couldnt do it fast enough before 5 shock novas insta-gibbed me. Ive done this fight many times...the totems have never surrounded me before. Its always 1-2 totems that teleport near me (but not next to me) and I can move out of the way. The boss didnt even hit me after the lightning beam, it was shaper/totems that killed me.

In addition to the many other good answers:

Monster AI in PoE is mostly very bad. Monsters only target known enemy (usually player) locations. This makes them predictable and avoidable to a high degree. In your case here against the totems (especially if you dont have "rhythm awareness" for the totems) there is a simply counter to this kinda thing: Never move back to your previous locations. One variant of this is circling the boss. And it works very well against many of PoEs map bosses. Not all though. (And golems/totems/etc can be targeted too if you have any - which can be good or bad.)

If you switch to Shield Charge (with fortify + faster) as advised then moving around should be easier too. I would use some form of "shift lock" mechanism for that though - google "numlock trick PoE" or sth.

But theres nothing I can do when I get two shotted by ranged bosses that do 5k+ a hit from off-screen. Its just ridiculous. You cant even see what the boss is doing! Players should be allowed to run after the first hit, but they cant! Because they get stunned by a massive 5k hit and the boss hits them a second time before they can do anything.

Again, Uber Izaro lets you run when you take a 5k hit. Some map bosses dont. This is just bad design really.

I dont have access to many of the options you guys listed, apparently because im not playing some OP class. The witch tree doesnt let you get any decent amount of armor, evasion, block or spell dodge. The ES nodes are largely pointless because ES is bad which is why 99% of players stack life and ignore ES. Half the intelligence stat bonuses (bonus to ES) is irrelevant because ES is bad.

Im forced to stack 120+ points in dex to use cold penetration and other cold support gems. If I take off my gloves (which is giving me a large amount of dex), I cant use my gems. The evasion and accuracy boosts from the dex is irrelevant.

I bought a pair of shaper fingerless silk gloves earlier and used 27 shrieking essences of greed to try and get +life and increased projectile damage on it since my damage is a joke. All that money went down the drain, especially as I still need to craft dex on the gloves to keep using my cold gems.

I have spent countless hours on poe.trade running searches to try and find ways to upgrade my gear. Everything is either ridiculously overpriced, or the sellers have quit ages ago and never log on. Or they just dont exist.

I tried to find a weapon that would give me a 5% damage boost over what im using now. I spent at least half an hour in POB just using the "create an item" function to see what combination of prefixes/suffixes would give me a 5% or more damage increase.

http://poe.trade/search/itesihootaheni

Nothing.

If I lower the rolls to get search results, then I get weapons that dont give me a damage increase...in which case spending money on it is pointless.

I tried finding jewels that would get me a 5% damage increase. So, okay, POB shows that a jewel with 40% or more crit multiplier would work. Except those cost 10ex or more. And over the last few days, I have only seen two of those sellers online...and one is a troll listing costing 888 ex.

And everyone just keeps telling me to get the perfect lab enchant or the perfect rolls on an item like the market is flooded with sellers. But the league is a ghost town at this point...finding people to buy or sell maps is hard enough as it is. I have multiple shaped underground sea/river/mineral pools/estuary maps in my stash that will not sell, even when I am listing them for some of the cheapest prices around. And before I shaped those maps, everyone I asked told me those maps were really common and popular.

I just re-speced to MOM, which gave me a nice survivability increase, but I still got one shotted by bloodline mobs that turn into pillars that spam lightning strike. I was dodging the casting circles, then something hit me, I went into the stunned animation, and before I could recover and move out of the casting circle, I got instantly gibbed by the lightning strikes from full hp. No other bloodline ability comes close in lethality. There was literally nothing I could do.

I spent more than 100c on maps today, ran them with +20% quality, 20% or more pack size and bloodlines (because people keep telling me bloodlines makes money). I didnt get a single t15 or higher map to drop so I'm heavily in the red.

I just dont know how im supposed to progress at this point. I guess I will make a thread for that.

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Question2 wrote:

Players should be allowed to run after the first hit

GGG disagrees with you on this point.

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Question2 wrote:

But theres nothing I can do when I get two shotted by ranged bosses that do 5k+ a hit from off-screen. Its just ridiculous. You cant even see what the boss is doing! Players should be allowed to run after the first hit, but they cant! Because they get stunned by a massive 5k hit and the boss hits them a second time before they can do anything.

I dont want to comment on whether it (the stun thing) is good or bad design. But the part about "cant do anything" is wrong: You should have some sort of stun protection and/or recovery. If you spam (instant) flasks then you will have your life back for the second hit. If you dont have instant flasks then its a build problem. And if you dont use them its a game play mistake.
About "cant see" in general: The game is designed so that part of player skill is being able to either predict off-screen bosses or to keep bosses on screen so that you can see the tells. And here I clearly agree that this part of game design is bad. But again: You can play around it.

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Question2 wrote:

Again, Uber Izaro lets you run when you take a 5k hit. Some map bosses dont. This is just bad design really.

These things are not black-white designed. What you say here may be true for your specific build. But other builds can have completely different problems without having your specific ones. For example evasion builds do usually not suffer from this "double hit attack" because they will evade the second hit if the first one went through.

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Question2 wrote:

I dont have access to many of the options you guys listed, apparently because im not playing some OP class. The witch tree doesnt let you get any decent amount of armor, evasion, block or spell dodge.

If you are unwilling to adjust then it will be difficult to improve. Any class can make a tree with (for example) layered defenses - especially if you include flasks and aura/s.

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Question2 wrote:

The ES nodes are largely pointless because ES is bad which is why 99% of players stack life and ignore ES.

Agree that ES is bad for you and you should not invest in it. (Its not always bad though.)

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Question2 wrote:

<snip gear/trade/price stuff>
And everyone just keeps telling me to get the perfect lab enchant or the perfect rolls on an item like the market is flooded with sellers.

Did you actually read this thread?

Lots have people (me included) gave OP solid advice. Sounds like you don’t want to have patience and learn. Can’t help that, man, sorry.

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Question2 wrote:

But theres nothing I can do when I get two shotted by ranged bosses that do 5k+ a hit from off-screen. Its just ridiculous. You cant even see what the boss is doing! Players should be allowed to run after the first hit, but they cant! Because they get stunned by a massive 5k hit and the boss hits them a second time before they can do anything.

Again, Uber Izaro lets you run when you take a 5k hit. Some map bosses dont. This is just bad design really.

You're not using Shield Charge instead of Lightning Warp => you got no Fortify => you receive more phys damage => you get stunned.

Your lightning res is not capped => you receive more lightning damage => stunned.

You have Practical Application right at the start of the Witch tree . Not using that => stunned.

You may try to fix some of that or continue to whine which seems to be your favorite way to pass the time.

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Question2 wrote:

I dont have access to many of the options you guys listed, apparently because im not playing some OP class. The witch tree doesnt let you get any decent amount of armor, evasion, block or spell dodge.

You are supposed to run something like Enfeeble or Stibnite flask or some other defensive trick. Your are not doing anything like that - rip.

It's also your choice BTW to self-cast a spell with no innate instance limit (like SRS, ED, Cremation) or very specific mechanics (like BV) on Elementalist. Like many other spells FP is a totem spell now - it should be obvious if you spend at least 1h investigating your options for 3.2. Some people would still do that for roleplay purposes or whatever, but in that case don't complain about damage/survivability, you made you choice.

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Question2 wrote:

Im forced to stack 120+ points in dex to use cold penetration and other cold support gems. If I take off my gloves (which is giving me a large amount of dex), I cant use my gems.

Yet you casually skipped Alacrity in the passive tree. Here are your options:

1) continue to whine

or

1) unspect that useless +10 Int node in the Templar area
2) spec into Alacrity
3) swap your Apocalypse Bliss jewel to something like this

Adds 1 to 18 Lightning Damage to Spells
+44 to maximum Life
+8 to Strength and Dexterity

It's 10c here http://poe.trade/search/hakiwonorohana

4) you've just got additional 100 life an 18.5% more damage (540k from 455k), also Dex is not an issue anymore
5) replace your gloves with something better

What solution do you like more?

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Question2 wrote:

I tried to find a weapon that would give me a 5% damage boost over what im using now. I spent at least half an hour in POB just using the "create an item" function to see what combination of prefixes/suffixes would give me a 5% or more damage increase.

http://poe.trade/search/itesihootaheni

Nothing.

If I lower the rolls to get search results, then I get weapons that dont give me a damage increase...in which case spending money on it is pointless.

Or you can buy this for 4c - same damage figures you have now http://poe.trade/search/ahiturukoekamo

Doryani's Catalyst
Vaal Sceptre
=======================
32% increased Elemental Damage
Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 20 Elemental Proliferation
Adds 68 to 147 Physical Damage
11% increased Attack Speed
10% increased Cast Speed
39% increased Global Critical Strike Chance
0.2% of Elemental Damage Leeched as Life

You can now use Shield Charge with Fortify. I'm sure there are even better options but I can't be bothered anymore.

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Question2 wrote:

I tried finding jewels that would get me a 5% damage increase. So, okay, POB shows that a jewel with 40% or more crit multiplier would work. Except those cost 10ex or more. And over the last few days, I have only seen two of those sellers online...and one is a troll listing costing 888 ex.

Look at that 10c jewel above. Now look closely at its lightning roll, remember that you have crits and then read Mechanics section here https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shock. Now read the Beacon of Ruin description slowly line by line. Here, saved 888 ex for you - also 18.5% instead of 5%.

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Question2 wrote:

I just re-speced to MOM, which gave me a nice survivability increase, but I still got one shotted by bloodline mobs that turn into pillars that spam lightning strike. I was dodging the casting circles, then something hit me, I went into the stunned animation, and before I could recover and move out of the casting circle, I got instantly gibbed by the lightning strikes from full hp. No other bloodline ability comes close in lethality. There was literally nothing I could do.

So everyone can but you can't. Okay. Now what?

next league try playing a melee build tbh, its much easier to get a handle on.

Caster defences are in a bit of a mess atm, they can work but to do it well takes some gear and knowledge that is probably out of your reach for the moment. The defence meta for castrers is pretty badly developed atm, theres a lot of people doing a lot of random things and most of them are shit, many people are surviving via skill, heavy gear or simply just not surviving well at all and eating the deaths.

You can do evasion + es with a cold build for example, you build from witch to shadow, and maybe even dip down into the ranger tree a little. You get a lot of proj damage, crit, ele/cold damage around there, lots of evasion on the life nodes, maybe some evasion + es nodes, run grace, you can end up with 15-20k evasion, run hybrid es+ev gear. You rly want to know what gear u want and be looking for it from early league when theres a lot of stuff on the market.



thats an example of a rly good evasion + es caster chest, it might look potentially expensive but it cost me like 10 chaos then i linked it myself. The gul is a pretty good hat for these sort of builds...



its often quite cheap at points. The char I was playing with these things had about 5,500 life + 6,500 es + over 20k evasion, I believe it was a trickster maybe? I forget tbh. Youre not gonna reach those totals just with temp league gear but if you know what ur doing for sure u can end up with an 8k combined hp pool and 15k+ evasion, doing it as an occultist witch is a really strong pick for a class.

Theres defence options for caster builds like this but making it all come together is fairly hard cause its largely undocumented, virtually no ones doing it so no ones picking up the rare item bases or crafting masses of stuff, it involves understanding the gameplay of it with stacking es recharge buffs, knowing when to dip out of combat, potion use etc. Youre better off just going melee, stacking melee defences which are easy, getting leech, facetanking content rly confidently. Stuff like max block gladiator, go crit reave with a sword or resolute technique sunder with a 1h axe, ppl mass craft that sort of gear, theres a million guides, its all rly obvious and straight forward. Just do that sort of stuff till youre more in tune with how everything works and you can see a way to pull off making effective tanky cold casters that are not simply glass cannon mathil type builds that survive because the ppl playing them know all the encounters and outskill the death traps.