Sunderella needs help

/edit ah fuck it i am wasting my time again -.-

Not just yours. Have a nice day.

Hey, thanks for your continued input!

Let me see in detail where I go wrong (I leave only the parts I'm unsure about):

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Orbaal wrote:

Here is what I see:
- 10k Armor if your flask is up. Thats not a lot

I know, but there is not much more I can grab, is there? All my gear has armour (through the boots kinda suck in that aspect), a lot of my life nodes have armour. How much more can I get without a huge investment? I could replace the skitterbots with determination. My feeling though is that detm is not worth the 50% reservation cost, especially if enemies take longer to kill without skitterbots. Or is that a misconception and detm is better than it looks on paper?

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Orbaal wrote:

- 3 Endu charges at best, if Immo Call didnt consume them...

I agree that endu charges just don't convince me, which is why I considered looking at beserk. On the other hand, I get them regularly because after creating some minions, I mostly leapslam around with stun+endu on stun to help my minions and keep the charges up. Of course, if I see a juicy rare, I try to grab him via DB.
So I'll probably have to decide between investing in more endu charges to make them worthwhile or dropping them for something better.

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Orbaal wrote:

- 360 life regen per sec is bad. Like really bad.
- No leech

I'll have to re-check that when I can play again, but it seemed to me that when I get hit, a few of my hits later I was always on full life again. So I discounted regen in all but the lab up to now. I'll be sure to check that again.

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Orbaal wrote:

- Blind with no evasion to back it up is worthless.

Good point. Also makes my smoke flask kinda superfluous. Gotta check which supports my totem (which I need for attack speed) and Vengeance can use to debuff the buggers in another way instead. If nothing comes to mind, I'll just add moarr damage, I guess.

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Orbaal wrote:

- Sand stance only affects attacks
- Sporeguards mitigation is only affecting nearby enemies

To be fair, most of my enemies are nearby, I love my leap slam :)
And as block is probably not going to make a significant improvement to a 2H hammer wielder without sacrificing too many skill points, I'll take what I can get. I wonder if I can somehow achieve elusive or dodge...

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Orbaal wrote:

- Cant tell what Pantheon you are using. Might add something to your overall defenses or not.

Projectile avoidance from Lunaris and I think less chance to bleed from the small power. Will go over the possibilities when I next play.

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Orbaal wrote:

Again: I dont want to start a fight. Im just trying to offer an explanation as to why you are dying more often than you should.

Didn't think you were, am grateful for the discussion. Just need to understand if there's more I can do without sacrificing the feel of the build (laying waste with a big hammer at ucap distance).

Like I said, no biggie if that's not possible without huge investment or changes. It's been a really fun character and even yellow maps can be rewarding.

Ah yes, I forgot molten shell. Had it in the beginning, but ran out of sockets.
Maybe it's time bring it back in, though it's again just a conditional buff.

Quick update, had a bit of time to play today:

Ditched enduring cry and redistributed the points needed for it to be instant to more life+armour. Socketed a molten shell instead.
Also added a jewel with life leech (had none, which I completely overlooked. Thought the slayer ascendancy gave me some).

Does feel a bit better, I'm doing fine in lower red maps if the mods are not too malicious. Won't make it to end-game, but had and continue to have fun, so the character is a success.

@Orbaal: Thank you for your help in this!

Summary at level 87:
- 6.5k life
- All resis capped, chaos almost capped
- Cannot be stunned, chilled, maimed or blinded
- Enemies are usually maimed by my totem and busy hitting my minions, so I'm pretty free to evade stuff manually
- Permanent fortify from cluster jewel
- Sand stance
- Endu charges and stunned enemies from my leap slam
- Explody corpses from jewel, so fewer porcupines and detonate dead problems
- Decent armour with MS and my flask up
- Some projectile avoidance from the pantheon.
- /E: Oh, and close enemies (which is where I usually am) deal less damage due to my chest's aura.

Guess that's as tanky as I can get without giving up the hammer, which is the reason this build came about.

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SisterBlister wrote:

@Orbaal: Thank you for your help in this!

Welcome! :)

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SisterBlister wrote:

Guess that's as tanky as I can get

Nope. This build could still be a lot more tanky.

You need to learn to identify weaknesses and how to fix those.
I want you to import your build to PoB, if you havent done so already.
Deactivate everything in the config tab and then check the calc tab.
Scroll all the way down to the EHP calc section and check "max hit taken" numbers. Thats your builds one-shot territory.

If you do that, you will realize that your EHP for phys dmg is way way lower than anything else.
Your build can take 30-38k chaos/ele dmg and survive. Not phys dmg though!
To make sure PoB does calculate armor values somewhat accurately, go back to the config tab, find the "enemy hit dmg" box and insert 10000. Notice the severe drop when it comes to phys dmg mitigation when you do that and check your calc tab again.
You will see that you can take about 10k phys dmg and thats it. Anything hitting you harder than that and you are dead.

You can take 3-4 times than this when it comes to chaos/ele dmg, but not phys dmg.
So thats your Achilles heel. Now that you´ve identified the problem, you need to find a solution - an unconditional solution. Something thats always up no matter what.


A solid choice for that is "%phys dmg taken as element", which can roll on chestpieces and helmets for a total of 25% phys dmg taken as element, if Im not mistaken.
75% of that ele dmg will be mitigated by your ele res and that means a passive mitigation of about 19% phys dmg. So basically 5 permanent endu charges - unconditionally.
This should bump your "max hit taken" for phys dmg to about 12-13k. Fortify should be worth another 2-3k, which you should have up almost all the time. If you also had 5 real endu charges, that would be worth another 2-3k phys mitigation plus 1% life regen, if you go for the "Stamina" endu charge on the tree (travel node).
In the end you´d end up with about 16k-19k "max hit taken" in the phys department.

Thats still a long way off compared to 30-40k mitigation you already have in all the other departments. So your defense is still imbalanced and phys dmg will still be the bane of your existence but you did improve that stat by 50-100% and thats not too shabby.


From there I would focus recovery. Regen and leech, leech being the far more important stat. Try to use Harvest to roll "%increased life recovery" on all jewels you have, try to get more life leech going etc.

This build is still suffering from teething issues and is nowhere near its maximum defensive capabilities - Hammer or no Hammer ;)
You can still push the limit quite a bit, if you are willing to utilize the tools available and also willing to put in the effort.
You´ll have a harder time though because you went for 2handed weapon making a block version very hard. Also you went for an Ascendancy thats not really helping out a lot in this department. Thats still not an excuse, there is still plenty room to grow.

Especially in the flask section. To me it looks like you are trying to improve the dmg your character is dealing and not your minions dmg. Why?
What is stopping you from using a Writhing Jar flask, so you can smash some worms to create a few minions whenever you need them, so you can simply "tag" mobs with DB and let the minions finish the job to create more minions?
You arent supposed to deal dmg yourself other than to create minions, which a flask can do for less investment, allowing you to put all points into minion dmg or survivability.

Speaking of minion dmg: You are running one minion life cluster jewel. Why?
Your minions can die, they dont need to survive and there is barely anything useful you can roll there.
Instead go for "Minion dmg while you have a Herald" cluster jewels. Which obviously means you need to run a Herald and there is only one option for this build: Herald of Purity.
Right now you cant fit it in. Part of the problem is Skitterbots being linked to Feeding Frenzy increasings its mana reservation. So thats a bad call and needs to be fixed. Another problem is the totem. Is it even doing anything useful other than providing speed and maiming? If not, then it can just be a 2 link and chill somewhere. Some goes for Vengeance. Whats it doing for you? Close to nothing Id guess, so why does it exist?
If you ditched that and reduced the totem to a 2l you would have room for all your auras and herald linked to an enlighten 3 in your chest.

Now you can run the herald cluster jewel with "Cult-Leader" and "Disciples" notables for a total of 50% minion dmg and 25% cooldown recovery for your sentinels (thats DB AND HoP sentinels), enabling them to perform their special abilities more often and you could have 2 of those jewels. Not to mention that HoP would increase your characters dmg as well - not that it matters but its still nice to have as an unintended byproduct.

This would allow you to clear faster, resulting in less dmg taken and thus increasing your survability as well.
But you´d have to let go some of your gem combos in order to replace those with more efficient ones.


You have reached the point in this game where efficiency trumps everything else and you have to decide what you are willing to sacrifice to get there or call it a day. Thats your call entirely :)
However, this build is still far from its peak performance and you could do better, if you wanted to.
At this point you have to question everything. Whats it doing for me? Are there better options? And if so, why arent you going for those options?


Enough rambling and wall of text for now ^^
This should give you some ideas what you could do

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Orbaal wrote:

quite a lot to consider

OK, so I gave the fabled PoB a shot. I actually hate third party tools, but maybe it's worth it for PoE.
It's a strange tool. I could import my character, but for some arcane reason I cannot select the main skill setup (DB). It shows me my hammer, it shows me all the other skill combinations, even those in the alternative weapon slots, but not DB. So I can't tell what PoB thinks my DPS might be.
There's also no mention of any "max hit taken" section on any of the pages.
And it doesn't show my cluster jewel tree. That's very bad, because I have really nice jewels set up.

But like I said, I deeply dislike such tools anyway. So I'll just check up on what you wrote using the "official" resources.

Phys dmg being my main weakness: Yeah, I figured that, as I have capped resis against the elements. I just thought that's also where PoE has the highest damage numbers to compensate. But you're totally right, I gotta improve that a bit.

So, "Phys dmg taken as element": Sounds really good. Gotta see what I can afford. I'll probably need something quite expensive, as both my helmet and my armour are pretty damn good, I think. On the armour, I'd really miss the ravenous horde the most (it's much too far away to path to), while helmets give only a small percentage of dmg conversion. Still, worth looking into, as the armour need not be 6L.

Increased life recovery on jewels: I have encountered almost no harvests, and have only managed to add 3 or 4 implicits to my jewels, mostly junk. So I'll try to replace one or two of them with jewels that have leech. Currently, 2 or 3 hits from my hammer or leap slam recover me to full life, but if I can get that to be faster, I'll feel more secure in crowded situations. Won't help against huge single hits, but that's what the mitigation ideas are for.

Moarrr damage: Always welcome. My league starter was a necro with an army, always staying back and just avoiding damage. T16s were no problem at all, even the vaal temple chaps died without ever endangering me. It got boring after a while, so I do want to keep doing my own damage. That is why I chose both "minion damage and minion attack speed affect you as well" nodes in the tree. And why I dropped the writhing jar I used to carry.

Herald of purity: Sounds great. Gotta see how I can juggle my skills+links, because I will certainly not break up the 6L in my armour. But I can easily sacrifice some supports for the totem and can do without vengeance. Maybe I'll merge my leap slam into the chest piece and use the gloves for HoP.
My current medium cluster jewel has "minions deal 10% increased damage" on its small nodes, but if I squeeze in HoP, I'll dig up the one with the herald implicits and try to roll nice notables on it.

I'm still sore about not getting the int necessary to run a nice carrion golem. Maybe I need to sacrifice my "Tribal fury" to free up some points for +30 int nodes. It might also allow me to path to the fortify effect cluster. Dropping half of my own DB damage might not be as bad as it sounds because I really only need huge damage on bosses. Or does the extra strike allow me to hit the boss twice? Doesn't sound like it from the description.

Ah, if I connect my tree with the str node just below "Sanctity", I can unspec 3 nodes in the minion life cluster. A small step in the right direction.

Gotta work quite a bit today, but maybe I'll get round to playing later on. Will let you know how I fared :)

Stay sane and have fun!
SB

Hmm I guess you installed the old PoB and I should have mentioned you´ll need the community fork:
https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding
So get rid of the old one and install the fork instead.


Like it or not - dont care :)
Knowledge is king in this game. If you dont know what you are doing the game is gonna slap you across the face.

So the real decision you have to make is to determine whats worse:
Using a tool you might not like or getting slapped over and over again - possibly giving up on a build that could be fine, if only you knew how to fix it.

Cant have it all


/Edit:
Dont overestimate the +2 minion stuff on your helmet. Its doing far less than you think it does. I stopped looking for helmets like that long time ago and consider them lvl-items or noob traps at this point. As long as we arent talking about 7-9 link helmets obviously.

Keep in mind: The helmet could also roll "nearby enemies take x% increased phys dmg" and that would boost your and your minions dmg far more than +2 minions ever could.

Ah, community fork. Will try that, thanks.

Got the mean golem and HoP. Did shuffle my passives around a bit and ran two T12s. Feels quite a bit better.
Bought a different talisman to allow me more freedom regarding the rest of my gear (dex and resis), so I can now look for other gear like life rings.

Haven't tried out the new helmet yet, but it caps my chaos res, has a bit more life and a little phys taken as element.
Will start pushing meaner maps and see how it goes.

Tried the community fork. I must be missing something, because only the large cluster jewel shows up for me, not the other 2. At least all skill setups show up now. Still no "max hit taken". Ah well.

As to my latest changes: The extra damage was so much cheaper and easier to get than an extra bit of tankiness. And it makes the game play a lot more smooth. Looks like the prejudice is not unfounded: In PoE, offense is by far the best defense.

And ranged offense is orders of magnitude better than ucap offense: I ran into some monsters with a kind of lightning tendrils in a vaal side area. They simply deleted me, twice, before I could even close the distance to them. No "damn, that hurt, chug a pot and run at them from the side", just "brzap! Dead", in a pretty wide area so I could not avoid it. Very annoying.

I guess this build and play style simply won't go to the end game maps. OK, I get it. So I'll look around for another melee build which can be planned from the ground up, rather than around a non-GG weapon.

Am thinking staff, because they offer block and my large cluster jewel is something I want to make more use of. It is crazy good: Fortify, explodey monsters and a generic damage notable for staff or mace.
Any suggestions? Staff sounds like marauder or templar. Do you know of a cool build basis where the char can join the action rather than let totems or minions do all the heavy lifting?

/Oh, I see it says staff, mace or scepter, not necessarily 2H mace or scepter. Ooh, a bad-ass 1H mace and shield might also be fun.