Can't do the things I enjoy. Always Dying. Please help

I really want to thank you for your advises but I don't see much improvements. I still die very fast and regulary, often times instantly and I usually do not even know what had happened. I always have to play extremely careful and I really start to hate it.

Second worst are maps with ground effect. The ES isn't regenerating what is managable most times, but sometimes there are effects "hidden" under the normal ones that kill me in under a second. What can I do against this?

My current stats are:

7,2k es + vaal discipline
17k armor without flasks (72% phy reduction), (20k with molten / 31,5k with flasks)
Resi: 75/78/76/56
Block attack damage: 68%
Block spell damage: 75%

Defensive gems:

Determination, Discipline, Defiance Banner, Tempest Shield
Molten Shell on Left Click
(Enfeeable on Bane)
Flame Dash

Offensive:

Malevolance, Clarity
(Bane: Despair, Punishment)
Spell-Totem with either Wither or Contagion
Bane/ED


My damage is still bad. I often can't kill rares in time inside alva-incursions that hold keys for example. I don't know what I can or shall do. I invest in gear but nothing gets better. I remain squishy and weak.
Looking at my entry post now: Nothing has actually changed and I feel like I am close to the point where I do not ever want to log back into the game... Where is my mistake?

You're having trouble for the following reasons:

1) Glancing Blows sucks if you do not have a method of recovery on block.

2) As I explained in my first reply to you (which you apparently ignored so I have no idea why I'm responding again), you are trying to be too many things at once. You are stretching out your tree over great distances. What this means is you are spending the bulk of your points on travel nodes, which leaves very little for actual power both offensive and defensive. I referenced my Bane Occultist character for you to look at because I wanted you to see what a compact tree can do. There are generally 2 kinds of builds that need a stretched out tree--stat stackers and aura stackers. You are neither of these.

If you are wondering why your damage sucks, look at your tree. How much damage do you actually have? Pretty much nill because you wasted all your points traveling all over the place. If you want Bane/ED to have damage you need cluster jewels and ideally 2 sets of them. You cannot fit that into this tree because the points are spent traveling all over.

1. If you need help with a build, share your PoB.

2. You have Level 2 Empower in your 6 link. This is giving you 12% more DPS. A level 20 cruelty gem would give you 40% more DPS, or 30% more than empower level 2. A level 21 Essence Drain is a no brainer upgrade too.

Without ticking anything or setting up your PoB properly, switching from Empower 2 + Essence Drain 20/20 to Cruelty 20/0 and Essence Drain results in your DPS increasing from 226k to 307k.

I have spent 2 minutes looking at your build, one which I have not played, and we have already found 36% more DPS.

3. No eldritch implicits on any of your gear. Helmet could be replaced by Crown of the Inward Eye.

4. No anoint on amulet.

5. You still have barely any regen or recovery. You are not block capped. You need to understand what glancing blows does. Sure you have some damage mitigation which is great, but where is your recovery / regen? Regen and recovery are very important when everything is hitting you.

You could take the chaos leeched as ES mastery, you could get high life regen roll on gear (which converts to ES with zealot's oath), ES regen mastery, bench craft ES regen on belt, ES regen watcher's eye (meh, only if there is a second mod), cluster notables (mentioned earlier in the thread), recover ES on block, etc.

I just don't think you are cut out for an LL or CI build. Maybe just stick to life based for now and revisit these builds when you have a better understanding of the game.

you can 100% do bane without cluster jewels.

im still playing diesa_bane in tier 16 maps, with no issues. i had to swap my rare neck off for Ashes, but thats a reservation issue (thanks patch 3.19!!!), not a 'im dying/zdps' issue

but yes, OPs tree is all over the place. i would *never* consider glancing blows without Aegis or a % es on block shield.

this is with flasks up vs ilvl 83 map enemies (non boss):

"

TemjinGold wrote:

You're having trouble for the following reasons:

1) Glancing Blows sucks if you do not have a method of recovery on block.

2) As I explained in my first reply to you (which you apparently ignored so I have no idea why I'm responding again), you are trying to be too many things at once. You are stretching out your tree over great distances. What this means is you are spending the bulk of your points on travel nodes, which leaves very little for actual power both offensive and defensive. I referenced my Bane Occultist character for you to look at because I wanted you to see what a compact tree can do. There are generally 2 kinds of builds that need a stretched out tree--stat stackers and aura stackers. You are neither of these.

If you are wondering why your damage sucks, look at your tree. How much damage do you actually have? Pretty much nill because you wasted all your points traveling all over the place. If you want Bane/ED to have damage you need cluster jewels and ideally 2 sets of them. You cannot fit that into this tree because the points are spent traveling all over.

I thought I even followed most of your points to be true :/

I think I didn't really understand what you mean, especially about Glancing, but I think, I do now: The build was made to work with Aegis when it was still obtainable for normal players...

Does this mean I should drop all points invested in block (and armour, too?) or can I get a cheap option for this like "5% Es on Block"?

Edit: Switched to a cheap "5% recover" shield in exchange of 500 es and I feel absolutely no change.

"

BrettLee wrote:

1. If you need help with a build, share your PoB.

2. You have Level 2 Empower in your 6 link. This is giving you 12% more DPS. A level 20 cruelty gem would give you 40% more DPS, or 30% more than empower level 2. A level 21 Essence Drain is a no brainer upgrade too.

Without ticking anything or setting up your PoB properly, switching from Empower 2 + Essence Drain 20/20 to Cruelty 20/0 and Essence Drain results in your DPS increasing from 226k to 307k.

I have spent 2 minutes looking at your build, one which I have not played, and we have already found 36% more DPS.

3. No eldritch implicits on any of your gear. Helmet could be replaced by Crown of the Inward Eye.

4. No anoint on amulet.

5. You still have barely any regen or recovery. You are not block capped. You need to understand what glancing blows does. Sure you have some damage mitigation which is great, but where is your recovery / regen? Regen and recovery are very important when everything is hitting you.

You could take the chaos leeched as ES mastery, you could get high life regen roll on gear (which converts to ES with zealot's oath), ES regen mastery, bench craft ES regen on belt, ES regen watcher's eye (meh, only if there is a second mod), cluster notables (mentioned earlier in the thread), recover ES on block, etc.

I just don't think you are cut out for an LL or CI build. Maybe just stick to life based for now and revisit these builds when you have a better understanding of the game.

This is my current tree and build: https://pastebin.com/Ug0nn7LL

I will switch the empower when I can play again and try to corrupt my ED gem. When I changed my amulet into a talisman I didn't know yet that Anointment exist.
I will get the helm, too. That should give enough armour that I do not need it on the shield anymore!?

And you are right: I didn't truly understand what the build tries to archieve which I followed. I used an earlier version when I could play last time (legion league) and there it worked extremely well for me, so I picked it again now thinking I would still know mostly what to do. But it isn't the same game anymore, I guess, I already found out in the acts. Having every defence you can think of was about improving and growing your strength and not mandatory at this time.
I played it with regen, ed-regen and wicked ward but I cann see that this is a keynote barely picked nowadays, so I thought full ES is nothing someone would do today.


About only bane: I really like doing bosses and the single target dps of bane is just too low compared to ed. Legion league I dropped bane even completly to play with contagion but ED/contagion seems that it got gutted at some point... but have to say the biggest problem when I tried it two weeks ago was, that I was dead before I could apply both dots and when it didn't really spread. (used area of effect gem)

And thank you very much once again for your advices. I think I tried to stay as close as possible to the guide I used and so keeped a few things thinking they would be okay, but I know better know :S

If you really want to try bane, I suggest you follow a better guide. Find subtractem on youtube and check out his guide for it. He's the bane guy.

This is my curent build: https://pastebin.com/veNZdc9y

You said some of my notables are more or less useless: Can you tell me which Points are not worth it?

You cleaned up quite a bit which is good. Here's more you can do.

1) The Safeguard wheel is doing very little for you because you are way overcapped on spell block and res. The mastery looks strong on paper but it is costing you SIX points to get (which means you are getting less than 1% dps per point). If you want the recover ES on block that badly (50 is practically nothing to be honest), I would get out of those points, pick up Faith and Steel w/o annoint, then annoint Safeguard. But I don't recommend this.

2) What you really want to do is annoint Charisma and pick up a shield that also has 30% reservation efficiency for socketed gems (try to find it with that AND recover ES on block). I'd probably even try to grab reservation efficiency enchant on the hat if you can. Reason for all this is that you currently cannot fit in Discipline (a huge amount of ES for you) and you don't have Vitality (which is awesome regen given you have Zealot Oath). This will more than double your ES regen (I would also take the 2% ES regen mastery for even more).

There's a lot you can do to tune up your gear too but these are a good start (i.e. why are you using a life flask?).

Thank you very much! The life flask was for the frozen immunity (and that you can passively get life flask charges), but I got it from the pantheon now and it is something i need to replace, I just don't know yet what would be useful there since all unique flasks look kind of useless for me

I already use discipline. pob had Hatred activated (corruption on the ring, i do not use it)

I have invested the free 6 points into melding (4) with a "energy from within" jewel (switch the jewel there to one in the cluster-tree), and the two other points in the cluster for unholy grace. (for some reason the points are already taken in the pob tree)

charisma looks really great, but will i need it? i bought vitality and the shield and can activate everything. (163 mana) does this mean i can sell my level 4 enlighten? in this case i would have enough currency for aegis aurora. (but wouldn't i need enlighten again than?)

with the shield change, spell block is now only 58%. is this a problem?

Updated pob: https://pastebin.com/vXTF5QtP

Edit: Tried the changes now a bit and i really found myself start to enjoy the game once again. Thank you soo much!!!

aegis is incredible, and even with 50/50 block (no glancing) i feel completely invincible.

glad you found an upgrade path and are enjoying your character again