i dont understand how to get high hp

can someone advise me on how to get high hp? i neverhad a character with more than 3500 health. i never had a character with 1 million dps. i dont understand how people are doing this. i can't even survive a map over tier 5 on any of my characters. so i ahve no idea how to use the atlas or what shaper even is or elder or elder items or anything. its making me want to give up on the game. i dont htink i have what it take sto be good at this.

I'd suggest to go to the classes/builds section of this forum. There is a subforum for every class with plenty of guide threads in them. You can open any one of them and I guarantee that they all talk about some damage and more then 3500 health unless they go for energy shield. You can just pick a simple well written detailed guide and follow it. All of them surely describe characters that have no problems on tier 6 maps with very simple items.

One simple advice for surviving tier 6 maps is this: forget the damage, go for health. Just take those nodes that say % increased maximum life. They help.

Also i don't think that many people have 1 million tooltip dps shown ingame. Those millions are what the theorycraft with all tricks included says. They are real, but its not like you move your mouse over your skill and see your dps in millions. Anyway, you better just take the health tree nodes and read those guides for the damage part.

I also struggle to get more than 3000 flat HP on a character. I don't have resources or time to farm for the gear I see on display.
But I got 2 golems and 2 totems. They tank for me.

I can boast about my damage (25 orbs x 21k hit x 2.5 penetration = 1.3M).
But maps don't exactly work that way.
Like my herald of storms barely hits for 10k, what is enough to kill trash in T10. What does matter against bosses is runspeed and penetration.
I got 40% runspeed and 150 penetration. In particular penetration does amazing things against stuff with 75% to 85% baked in resistance.

ya just go for build guides and prioritise life on gear once ur resists are capped.

Note that character level is a big part of it too, if u see someone with 7k life etc, theyre probably in the 90s somewhere. The amount of life u get per level is significant, often a char whos on their way to having 7k life at lvl95 might only have 3k-4k at lvl70 when they first get to maps.

when people say they have 1 million dps... they may well have that, but its unlikely their tooltip on their skill will say 1 million. Itll probably say something like 300,000. Through programs like path of building they can work out their total max dps when all their buffs are up, counting in the damage scaling from their curses, elemental penetration, flasks, debuffs etc etc.

I wouldnt get too worried about damage, as long as stuff is dying then its working, just try and focus on surviving the maps and building ur xp. Levels will give u power but if u keep dying ur losing ur xp.

100 strenght = 50 flat life :)

flat life on jewels/gear

175%+ increased life from the tree/jewels

at level 90+ :
6500-7000hp if you start as mara/duelist/scion
5000-6000hp others