New to POE and Stuck at Act 4 [Duelist]

Hi, before a week ago I had never really played an MMORPG besides Skyrim. My friend told me to download POE and I was instantly hooked. One of my characters I am really starting to struggle. I was perfectly fine before the last couple of areas of Stage 3. Now in Stage 4 I continue to die repeatedly. Here are my two main problems:

I can barely clear the monsters leading up to the Boss. I am neither tanky nor can one shot. Then when I get to the boss I just die repeatedly until I am able to finally kill the boss.

I cannot kill any of the syndicates. I did accidentally mess up the board by trying to get as many alliances as possible. Now that I understand that this is not what you're supposed to do I rarely can beat 4 syndicates bosses and when I do I never get the option to erase all syndicate truces.

In the mines, I lasted 30 seconds and didn't even make it to the first depth.

In the first trials labyrinth, I died at the second of five stages.

I really don't know what my issue is. Many of the guides I find are late game guides since they assume you can get past level 40. I was trying to follow this guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2102029. My main issue is that Dual Strike barely does any damage compared to some of my other abilities. Molten Strike does more AOE and Double Strike does more single target. Vigilant Strike also does more single target and gives a fortification buff. What am I missing here? He said he ran Dual Strike all the way until level 80. Are my pots wrong?

Thanks for any help. I think you should be able to see my profile from this post for my current build. I'm sorry this is such a noob question but I am very new to the game.

Make you profile visible. "Privacy settings" and uncheck "hide all" and/or "Hide characters". Then people will be able to see your character to know what you've got going on.


By act 3-4 you should be running a four link for your main skill, whatever that skill is, and have some supporting skills.


Most people that struggle and die a lot either have too little life or most likely not enough resistance. The Syndicate members have been a bit rough for most of us and received a bit of a nerf in a patch this evening but may still be difficult. Dying to act bosses is maybe something more fundamental (probably resist).

Attack based builds rely heavily upon the weapon you are using. As such, it's possible you may be needing to upgrade your weapon. It's hard to say... make your profile visible and folks can pick it apart a bit and show you where the holes are at.

I've updated my profile settings. Hopefully, it works now.

Yeah, your resists a little low for act 3-4. You really want to get those up around 75%. At the end of act 5, all characters lose 30% resistance making your resistance -30% and you still want to be at least 75% on all three elements.

The thing with life is that you need it on gear and the tree both at the same time. Almost all gear - except a few unique items - has flat resist. Most of the nodes on the tree give percent increased life. They scale each other.
You've picked up some life on the tree and that's good.

You just need to replace some gear pieces so that they all have at least one resist and some life. On rings, you'll probably want to target something that has two resists and a life roll or two life rolls and a resist... like Coral rings or one of the rings that has resist at the top with life and a resist.

A good way to kind of gauge how old your gear is would be to hold down [ALT] and hover over an item. If the item level is maybe 15 levels lower than your character level, you should maybe start watching for an item to replace what you have in that slot. In a perfect world, we'd all be running around in item level 84 gear but brother I'm here to tell ya, it gets harder, lol.


During the questing, story line portion of the game, I always just swap in anything that has more life than what I'm wearing and try to get my resists kinda close to where yours are at the moment... BUT, I'm a little more familiar with the bottlenecks and requirements. You'll want to keep a close eye on your resists and at max level content consider 120ish% on all three to be a realistic and expected goal. 75 in late game will be fine but in mapping situations or questing situations where curses are being applied to you that 75 becomes something way smaller real quick. 120 prevents curses from destroying you but isn't realistic for leveling.


As for the skill tree. It looks like you accidentally picked up a two hand node. Drop that node. Pick up the mana leech node, so that you can do away with your mana pots.

Don't pick up any more crit on the tree until close to the end of act 10. Either after act 10 or maybe right before, probably after but those are awesome crit nodes. Crit is great but kinda wasted without good weapons and jewelry.

Also, wait until end game to get the weapon specific nodes that say "sword" or "Dagger" or "Axe" because those nodes will only work with that type of weapon and you'll ideally change weapons several times while leveling. In this case "end game" may be a little earlier because you can equip something like this at level 60:
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Betrayal/eRPbcL

Hope this helps. GL out there. Plenty of folks will give advice on this forum. I ask questions here often myself.

Well even 2,5 years after starting PoE career, I still think of myself as a noob. Not total as for beginning, but still there are so many thngs to hear and learn every day for new.
So let me say, it is normal, that we all had our first caracters (plural) done mostly sad and bad.

People coming from the other game all do same, I did so too, mistakes like thinking it is unique it must be special it must be good.
Or with skills like having multiple different skills all doing the same, while having no cast when damage taken setup or any movement combination, curse setup or auras running.
To explain PoE in one thread is utopia. So you followed a guide for dmg and missed the defense layer.
I try to make a long story short, what is needed like
must have skill combo for movement, there are many different skills and you only need one, like leap or cyclone or flame dash.
It is good idea to have this combo with blood magic, so no mana is need to flee when it is getting hard or suicidal is near. With fortify also in movement combo it is even better.
Then there are auras like vitality or anger or herold of ash, that could help your damage making bigger or more life regeneration.
We all have a cwdt setup like cast when damage taken level1- imortal call level 3 and increase duration lev20. You could even bind a curse to it like enfeeble level5, so when you take a damage the skills will trigger and make your defense better.
Curses could also be used by blasphemy, but this will take some mana permanetly.
Try to look at other profiles and passive trees to find out why we use it. And Poe wiki is your friend number one.

Thanks for the replies guys! These all help a lot and I'll look at my tree and items tomorrow. Definitely some very big issues.


A separate question I guess I can ask here, are two-handed weapons just garbage? I can't find a single build for a two-handed marauder? I may just have to switch my build if not.

2handers would need some love to make them viable for late endgame.

But tbh: You wont get there anyways as a beginner. Not mocking you or anything, PoE is just a little complex ;)



If you like the playstyle, stick to it and enjoy it.
Dont even bother with endgame stuff just yet.

As Orbaal told, you will not garanteed end in highest endgame.

Even with good advise and guides how to make your tree, what stats to have at the items or what kind of item class and skills exactly like the guide is telling you, all this will not make it for sure that you will get to Tier16 maps and beat the highest, biggest and most badass bosses.
There are also a lot of mechanics how to act at what boss fight to have a chance to survive, you will have to find out, read about or learn by failing.
I am still missing some of the endgame parts.
To compare it, in the other game you level to 70, then grind the items use the skills and beat the griftboss. Okay this does not mean you will beat this GR Boss at GR150 but you will end by seeing the endgame on a smaller level.
Not in PoE. To get to the highest endgame is hard and will take time, a lot of it. That is why some friends went back to the other game, because they are used to see it all and then when they came here and played some time, they are sad, because even by doing it "alright" they just did not make it.
There was a thread some time ago asking what IQ is needed to play the game, let me say, it must be much higher than in the other game.
And it helps to accept. you are just a beginner.