What should I be doing during the epilogue?

Greetings, I am in need of some help. I am unsure of what I should be doing now that I have reached the epilogue, I've been doing low tier maps here and there but I also noticed that my cold fire and lightning resistances are not very good at all and I do happen to have quite a lot of uniques equipped. From what I have heard from other players is that having a lot of unique items equipped isn't very good at all, if anything, I should be wearing mostly rare gear and my weapon of choice can be a unique or perhaps I am misunderstanding something, I don't quite get why having a lot of unique items isn't very good. I do know that with most unique items that there are usually some draw backs or at least diminishing returns, I have a belt that is supposed to increase my resistances by 45%, yet my character sheet doesn't show that, so that's another thing I am confused about, and also what the best way is to level up further, from my understanding it seems like mostly maps and the atlas, but I also want to farm for currency as well as other items. I do have quite a lot of unique items in my stash as well as skill gems, I'm not sure if I should be hoarding them or not, I am also unsure of what is valuable and what isn't as far as uniques go. I do know that poe.trade is a good source for finding certain items and poeninja is another tool that can help determine how much something is worth, I just don't really know what I SHOULD be doing now. I still have yet to get my ascendancy as well. If anyone could guide me in the right direction or I guess kind of coach me to better understand some of these confusing aspects of the game, it would definitely help me out, thank you.

The reason having too many uniques can be bad is the game expects certain stat minimums for you to have a chance of surviving. Uniques do not usually cover these.

For example, you want 75% of all elemental resistances. Some uniques give good elemental resistance, most don't. So you need to fill in the gaps with rares. (also you might not be seeing the 45% resistances from that one unique since you have an inherent -60% all resistances from killing kitava in the story mode. Everyone does; it's unavoidable. So you need an effective +135% total resistance for all the elements except chaos)

Life is another one; uniques often don't have any life or have a small amount, so you need to get enough life from other gear.


Finally if you continue having trouble in maps, I might suggest starting a new character. You've learned a bunch about the game from your first one, and you have lots of gear in your stash (presumably) to help you along, so you can do even better with the next one. Experiment with some new attack or spell or class.

Okay that explains everything I needed to know lol. Thank you very much :p it does seem like I should try out another attack on a different character haha. I do have some currency so, perhaps I can purchase some rares and see where that puts me as far as getting 75% resists for cold fire lightning, it's definitely fixable, and thank you for explaining how the uniques work in this game :p I feel spoiled by Diablo 3 because you get soooo many legendary items that it's kind of become normal for me to see them drop and when I play Path Of Exile, it throws me off, again, thank you very much :D

the rule of thumb is that you want enough resists to get you to 75% in all but chaos (chaos is less important and you worry about that later), and then as high life roll as possible on every slot except your weapon. you can skim out on one of 2 slots if the other pieces are good enough, and wearing a unique or 2 that has a purpose in the build may be not a bad idea. typically uniques serve as either build enabling by providing some unique mechanic, or as a pure dps item with no defensive stats.

sometimes full unique builds can be viable, such as very squishy elemental bow builds, just stacking as much cheap dmg from uniques as possible, but in 99% of the cases, you wanna prioritize good rares in every slot.

Bulk, in general a lot of newer players feel bad once they get to maps.

The key is really just slowly keep going to build your map base, keep doing higher ones, keep getting better gear.

Capping resists is goal 1, then decent life base (4,000 is absolute min for life based unless you have some interesting defensive mechanics), then start pushing dps without dropping defenses.

I have quit a LOT of characters at maps, and I can tell you build matters a lot, but part of it is pushing past that feeling and seeing if you can make your character succeed.

Uniques are generally bad unless they give you some specific effect your are planning around.

If you change characters from private to public, you could get more helpful tips too (and in this forum, no one will will likely mess with you, they are helpful).

How do I make the characters public? :o

I got it lol. My bad xD