Please help me refine my off-meta build :)

Hi guys,

so basically what I want to ask of you is to help me refine my off-meta ignite arc build. I have a lot of currency to sink in it (like 200 ex), but I don't really want to go for mageblood/HH.

I'm at like 5+ mil dps, but I struggle with defenses. I'm at 89 % phys reduction (though pob shows 80 % with flasks for some strange reason), 75 % ele res, some block and decent life regen. I die a lot and I'm stuck with my progress :(

Looking forward to all good advices and tips.

Here's my POB: https://pastebin.com/aKauQxPJ

Thanks in advance :)

Your main issue is that your life pool is quite low, and you have basically no sustain other than some life regen (which is perhaps not as big of an issue). This is evidenced by your 'Effective Hit Pool' being less than your 'Effective Maximum Hit Taken' in PoB.

Since you have a Cinderswallow for mapping, and you can be quite mobile as an Ignite build while bossing, I imagine you are needing more Max Hit rather than sustain. I can make a couple suggestions.

First off, please take the two nodes out of Practical Application and put them somewhere else (perhaps Fire Walker to cap your fire res again). If you specced into them for the stun avoidance, it's better to solve the base issue (your low life pool).

Side note - how do you have 200ex and have never levelled a build past 93? I guess if you are a chronic enjoyer of builds with 4.5k life it could happen ...

It would be nice to get life on your chest but I understand that Ele Equilibrium is a massive damage boost for the build.

I would probably recommend replacing the amulet. Getting one with more damage and dex (+1/+1 fire, life, dexterity [can just be on the implicit]) would be a big boost. If you got some resistances on there as well, it would make it easier to get a better belt. I would be going for a stygian with max life and %max life, and you can get life recovery rate as well if you are missing the regen from the replaced amulet. Your rings are going to be hard to replace so I think that's it for the jewellery.

The Gull is probably a personal choice, but if you wanted you could easily replace it with a better helmet. A combination of the following mods would serve you well:

Defensive:
+Life
Physical Damage taken as X
Resistances (useful for supporting other gear changes)

Offensive:
Nearby Enemies have -9% to Fire Res

Getting more than just implicit Dex on the amulet or elsewhere allows you to get much better boots. Awakener orb and pray is probably the best bet. https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Sentinel/pWEZqYWS0

Weapon is nice. Probably hard to replace.

I'm not sure what I think about Glancing Blows without the 5% recover mod on shields. With Rumi's up your attack block is good but your spell block is not (and without Rumi's, 50% attack block with GB isn't really that impressive). Up to you whether to keep or change this. There is of course an opportunity cost to keeping it - if you drop it you would gain a flask slot and many nodes on the tree to invest in life or damage.

After all the gear changes, take a look at your tree and consider a couple things. If you want to be more tanky, you will have to sacrifice some damage. Allocate more life nodes and jewel sockets (you only have 3 jewel sockets?? that's criminal). You might be able to improve the pathing to be more efficient, and drop the nodes that the new pathing makes inefficient. Definitely consider cluster jewels - they provide a lot of efficient power.

Of course, a Mageblood would instantly make you super tanky (uber armour flask and res flasks), but I understand that you might just not want one.

Hopefully this is somewhat helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

What is killing you? Bosses? Packs of charged mobs? Degens?

Any significant defensive increases will require an investment and dropping damage nodes as Purple noted. You could go staff block (drop GB), or just deeper investment in life or add ES?

Otherwise there are the normal pathways: improved gear, more life/armour, get a source of lightning damage leeched as life (might have to drop deadly ailments for an alternative or leech will be too low to notice).

This is not a good tree since I spent 20 seconds, but note the dps, life and armour now when you go down the the tankier area of the tree, while losing some dps but probably not enough to notice. 4m vs 5m probably wont change a map at all, and a boss only a bit, but the life and armour will feel quite different.

https://pastebin.com/iQ8BaKZg

Two other things

1 - An overlooked strat for bosses is the stupid old decoy totem. Yes bosses will kill it in 1/2 hits but they have to move toward it, animation, move back to you. It is surprising how much that 1.5 seconds can do for you. It is not a worthwhile strat for mapping though obviously.

2 - You won't like this, but if you lose too much dps to become tanky you can switch to another skill for bossing: L21 Flameblast at stage 10 with your current gear/tree = 17.7 million dps if you get shaper of flames (assuming you proc EE with storm brand or something).

"

PurpleChakra wrote:

Your main issue is that your life pool is quite low, and you have basically no sustain other than some life regen (which is perhaps not as big of an issue). This is evidenced by your 'Effective Hit Pool' being less than your 'Effective Maximum Hit Taken' in PoB.

Since you have a Cinderswallow for mapping, and you can be quite mobile as an Ignite build while bossing, I imagine you are needing more Max Hit rather than sustain. I can make a couple suggestions.

First off, please take the two nodes out of Practical Application and put them somewhere else (perhaps Fire Walker to cap your fire res again). If you specced into them for the stun avoidance, it's better to solve the base issue (your low life pool).

I will consider that, yeah. It's just a matter of if I have enough dex :D

"

PurpleChakra wrote:

Side note - how do you have 200ex and have never levelled a build past 93? I guess if you are a chronic enjoyer of builds with 4.5k life it could happen ...

Well, I have played PoE for a VERY long time, but with long breaks and always going for off-meta builds. This is the first time I ever got so far with my character and luckily I looted a mageblood and sold it.

"

PurpleChakra wrote:

It would be nice to get life on your chest but I understand that Ele Equilibrium is a massive damage boost for the build.

Yeah, it's like 50 % dps loss if I unallocate EE. The only other option would be to go for a Heist scepter with EE + a shield, but the staff I have is so good I'm not sure how to switch.

"

PurpleChakra wrote:

I would probably recommend replacing the amulet. Getting one with more damage and dex (+1/+1 fire, life, dexterity [can just be on the implicit]) would be a big boost. If you got some resistances on there as well, it would make it easier to get a better belt. I would be going for a stygian with max life and %max life, and you can get life recovery rate as well if you are missing the regen from the replaced amulet. Your rings are going to be hard to replace so I think that's it for the jewellery.

Yeah, this is something I should consider. It's just that I need a lot of dex without it. But yeah. About the rings - I used to play without Stormfire and without Forbidden jewels, so I only had 4 ascendancy notables and completely skipped Golems and went for Shaper of Flames, so I always ignited. That opened a ring slot and 2 jewel slots on the tree, but at the cost of losing quite a lot of buffs from my golems.

"

PurpleChakra wrote:

The Gull is probably a personal choice, but if you wanted you could easily replace it with a better helmet. A combination of the following mods would serve you well:

Yeah, it has to go. I bought it because I couldnt find a good helmet with Arc enchant but it sucks ass. I hate clicking on those shrines.

"

PurpleChakra wrote:

Defensive:
+Life
Physical Damage taken as X
Resistances (useful for supporting other gear changes)

Offensive:
Nearby Enemies have -9% to Fire Res

Getting more than just implicit Dex on the amulet or elsewhere allows you to get much better boots. Awakener orb and pray is probably the best bet. https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Sentinel/pWEZqYWS0

Weapon is nice. Probably hard to replace.

I'm not sure what I think about Glancing Blows without the 5% recover mod on shields. With Rumi's up your attack block is good but your spell block is not (and without Rumi's, 50% attack block with GB isn't really that impressive). Up to you whether to keep or change this. There is of course an opportunity cost to keeping it - if you drop it you would gain a flask slot and many nodes on the tree to invest in life or damage.

After all the gear changes, take a look at your tree and consider a couple things. If you want to be more tanky, you will have to sacrifice some damage. Allocate more life nodes and jewel sockets (you only have 3 jewel sockets?? that's criminal). You might be able to improve the pathing to be more efficient, and drop the nodes that the new pathing makes inefficient. Definitely consider cluster jewels - they provide a lot of efficient power.

Of course, a Mageblood would instantly make you super tanky (uber armour flask and res flasks), but I understand that you might just not want one.

Hopefully this is somewhat helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

I will definitely think about your suggestions. Some guy in-game also suggested I should think about spell suppression, but for now I'm not even sure how to build around it. But thanks once again :)

"

trixxar wrote:

What is killing you? Bosses? Packs of charged mobs? Degens?

Well, I die on bosses but not because of my defenses, rather my lack of skill.

Degen isn't that much of a problem now since I have a lot of regen.

What frustrates me the most are one-shots from mobs. I literally got 1-shot by that dog spitting fire during Chimera interphase. Map had 0 damage modifiers!

I also get one-shot by those Lightning Mirages and shotgunned in like 0.1 second by Eater of Worlds mobs that shoot these lightning tentacles or whatever. For some time I used to play with Metamorph tree with 150 % more hp and 30 % more dmg and I wouldn't die to them anywhere near close as many times as I die to some random mobs.

"

trixxar wrote:

Any significant defensive increases will require an investment and dropping damage nodes as Purple noted. You could go staff block (drop GB), or just deeper investment in life or add ES?

Otherwise there are the normal pathways: improved gear, more life/armour, get a source of lightning damage leeched as life (might have to drop deadly ailments for an alternative or leech will be too low to notice).

I don't think leech does anything here, since my hits do literally nothing and I'm afraid I cannot leech off of ignites.

"

trixxar wrote:

This is not a good tree since I spent 20 seconds, but note the dps, life and armour now when you go down the the tankier area of the tree, while losing some dps but probably not enough to notice. 4m vs 5m probably wont change a map at all, and a boss only a bit, but the life and armour will feel quite different.

https://pastebin.com/iQ8BaKZg

Two other things

1 - An overlooked strat for bosses is the stupid old decoy totem. Yes bosses will kill it in 1/2 hits but they have to move toward it, animation, move back to you. It is surprising how much that 1.5 seconds can do for you. It is not a worthwhile strat for mapping though obviously.

2 - You won't like this, but if you lose too much dps to become tanky you can switch to another skill for bossing: L21 Flameblast at stage 10 with your current gear/tree = 17.7 million dps if you get shaper of flames (assuming you proc EE with storm brand or something).

1. I don't really thing I need decoy totem at this point, but I will consider it for some tougher boss fights if I ever do them lol.
2. Yeah, I don't really like the idea of using other skills.

But thanks for your input, I will definitely consider it while making changes.

Lucky drop abuser :p Fair enough.

I really think that getting a +50 dex roll on a jade amulet would do wonders.

Spell suppression you can get on gear and a little on tree. Helm, gloves and boots can get a fair amount on the suffixes, but since you're top side of tree it might be hard to get the rest of the way to 100%.

"

Nattana wrote:

What frustrates me the most are one-shots from mobs. I literally got 1-shot by that dog spitting fire during Chimera interphase. Map had 0 damage modifiers!.

Don't feel too bad about that one. Avatar of the Hellion spits ground-targeted projectiles with an AoE, meaning they can shotgun, and since it's a high-level unique monster, getting hit by two projectiles is pretty much an instant rip if you don't block them.

That mana flask looks pretty useless since most of your mana is reserved, so the flask effect will end before you get hardly any mana out of it. If you need the mana, get an Enduring flask. If not, I suggest a Jade flask, since you're lacking in evasion.

I assume you took Glancing Blows to have more uptime on the Steelwood Stance armor buff? That seems reasonable enough.

You really need to get your chaos resistance up to at least zero. This isn't 2017 anymore, going around with -46% chaos resistance is Not Okay. Also, your fire resistance is technically capped, but there are so many exposure-inflicting Archnemesis rares going around that you really need to be at least 10% overcapped on your elemental resists, even if you're not running ele weakness maps.

"

ekaye wrote:

Don't feel too bad about that one. Avatar of the Hellion spits ground-targeted projectiles with an AoE, meaning they can shotgun, and since it's a high-level unique monster, getting hit by two projectiles is pretty much an instant rip if you don't block them.

That mana flask looks pretty useless since most of your mana is reserved, so the flask effect will end before you get hardly any mana out of it. If you need the mana, get an Enduring flask. If not, I suggest a Jade flask, since you're lacking in evasion.

I assume you took Glancing Blows to have more uptime on the Steelwood Stance armor buff? That seems reasonable enough.

You really need to get your chaos resistance up to at least zero. This isn't 2017 anymore, going around with -46% chaos resistance is Not Okay. Also, your fire resistance is technically capped, but there are so many exposure-inflicting Archnemesis rares going around that you really need to be at least 10% overcapped on your elemental resists, even if you're not running ele weakness maps.

Hmm, that actually sounds very reasonable. Never counted in possible exposures on me and indeed I've been running around with barely capped res.

About chaos res - yeah, I should somehow fix that too, but I'm not sure how yet :D

"

Nattana wrote:

About chaos res - yeah, I should somehow fix that too, but I'm not sure how yet :D

The reductive answer is with suffixes on your rares. I know it's hard to get them without sacrificing resists, but it's entirely possible, especially once you swap out The Gull for a rare helm. For reference, have a look at my character PiscaTotems, a homebrew budget build that still manages 30% overcapped ele resists, 7% chaos res, 100% spell suppression, curse, freeze, and shock immunity, 80% reduced chill effect, almost 30k armor and 8k evasion, and I still manage about 3.5M Shaper DPS. I bought all my gear except for the eldritch implicits, and the most I paid for any of the rares is I think 70c for the boots, so someone with a 200ex budget should certainly be able to manage.