I'm stuck in this game at lvl 80. Need advice on how to move forward

Hello. I took a long break from PoE and now I want to play again! But I forgot how everything works....

I want to finish my ranger, but I am stuck at lvl 80. If I go to easy areas I don't get any EXP, but do I go to more difficult areas, I get one shotted and always get bashed back to 0 exp...

I believe I need to upgrade my gear setup to something a bit more survivable. My damage is OK (i think), but I die way too easy.

Problem is... after watching 30 minutes of build guide on youtube, I still don't know where to start. It seems like crafting is what I need to be doing. But after watching another 30 minutes of crafting in 3.20 guide video, I still don't know where to start. I can't figure out which of my equipped items are the lowest hanging fruit and would be easiest to upgrade for something better...

I'm in desperate need of direct advice in this jungle of possibilities.

Here is my ranger: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/rpuls/characters

I was going for a deadeye tornado few years ago when I started it, and it seems like that build is still somewhat decent, so probably it would make sense to stick to that build.

If someone could point out which items slot would be easy for me to get something better than what I already have, and the exact steps on how to get it (noob friendly steps please 😅)

I will just list some materials I have in stash, so you get an idea of what I have enough of to craft:

180 transmute
140 alteration
100 augmentation
60 jewelers
50 chromatic
50 chance
30 alchemy
60 whitestone
10 chaos
9 sourcing
3 regret
7 vaal
7 blessed

Any other advice on how to get back in the game and move forward would be very much appreciated 🙏

Your character tab is private and can't be viewed by others.

For more specific advice you need to make your profile public. Generally, for normal mapping, you'll want to have 4k life, elemental resis at 75% or higher, chaos at least at 0% and ~70% evasion chance and 100% spell suppression on a dead eye. With this you shouldn't be dying much unless you overdo it with map mods. To get there, leaving aside your weapon, kick out everything that doesn't have at least one or 2 of those stats. Especially life and resists should be on every piece other than your weapon.

Oh bummer! Didn't know it was hidden.. Thanks for pointing that out. It's publicly available now :)

There's a bunch of major issues I see:

1) You are specced into Elemental Damage and Elemental Damage w/ Attacks support but you have very little ele damage and your bow is physical only. You need to pick one of the two and go fully that way. If you want to do ele damage, you need a bow with high flat ele damage and you also want Trinity Support (instead of Faster Attacks). If you want Physical instead, you want Brutality and the like.

2) You have a ton of uniques on, some of which are terrible. This is a very common rookie mistake.

3) You have no auras. A lot of offense and defense comes from auras. Grace if you are going for evasion or Determination for armour is huge for survivability.

Alright, so I could improve damage a lot by chosing a bow that has high elemental, rather than physical. Where or how can I get/find/craft such bow?

Also, would you mind elaborate on which of my uniques are garbage, and giove an example of what to replace it with? I'm still too rookie to know what to do, I mean, I understand what you are saying I just don't know where/how I can get something better. And It's a bit intimidating with all the stats, it's somewhat complicated for a beginner ^^

Thank you!

Do you have any essences? If not, I would spec essence nodes in atlas tree and farm a bunch of those. Get them up to at least Shrieking (you can upgrade smaller essences to larger ones 3:1). You want the ones for either flat cold, fire, or lightning damage.

Once you have a bunch, get a bow with a high fractured flat elemental damage like these (that yellow stat is fractured, meaning it won't change no matter what you do to the bow when crafting):

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Standard/ZEqLQe7hQ

(If you can afford more, change the search number I put higher, if it's too expensive lower it).

When picking the bow, try to get one with high attacks per second (not counting any mods that may modify it). Generally you want 1.40 attacks or better.

Scour the bow with a scouring orb, then use whetstones to 20%. Use an alchemy to make it rare. Now throw essences that are NOT that element (so the ones in that search are fractured cold, so you would use fire or lightning ones). If you have very few essences, throw until you get either a high tier of the remaining element or an empty prefix. Then craft the missing element if open prefix or craft like attack speed or something if you got all 3 elements.

For the remaining gear, all you are looking for is high life and resistances for now.

🙏🙏
Awesome, thanks a lot, this is really helpful! This will keep me busy for a while. After this I will look for gear with life and res. :)

1. get rid of tabula. you can buy 6link for 5chaos orbs and it will have many stats

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rpuls wrote:

🙏🙏
Awesome, thanks a lot, this is really helpful! This will keep me busy for a while. After this I will look for gear with life and res. :)

Sure thing!

I made one mistake I wanted to point out: After 20% the base bow, you need a REGAL orb to make it rare, not alchemy (brain fart, forgot a fractured item scours to magic, not blank). You don't seem to have one right now so if you don't find a regal, there is a recipe that guarantees some: Vendor a full set of items (1 2H weapon or 2 1H weapons or 1H + shield / hat, body armour, amulet, 2 rings, gloves, boots, belt). If they are all at least level 75 and unidentified rares, you will get 2 regal orbs back from vendor (note the same recipe with at least 1 item that is between level 60-74 will return 2 chaos orbs instead if you need money to buy stuff).