What League Mechanic/Map should I farm as a melee build?

I've gotten to maps for the first time and I've gotten a decent build going https://pobb.in/0XXlKivrya_x (I know my gear is bad), and I'm trying to complete this build https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/boneshatter-juggernaut. I've kind of been having an inconsistent time with melee as sometimes I can just tank attacks and dish out damage, and other times I get annihilated way too quickly and have to severely limit my dps by dodging around. While I could certainly use more health, the biggest challenge I've found is just being able to use melee consistently. It's pretty good on bosses and great against a lot of mobs, but fails when it comes to being able to handle a lot of map modifiers (where the inconsistency stems from). My initial plan was to get to level 80-85 and do logbooks since they seemed pretty fun, but idk. What would you recommend running for a melee character?

Hey there,

Before deciding what to farm, there's a few VERY cheap fixes you can do to make your guy much more effective:

1) The "15% life if your chest piece has no life mods" mastery is doing nothing for you. That's because your chest piece's crappy regeneration suffix counts as a life mod. Switch this to the +50 flat life mastery instead.

2) For said chest piece, I would bench a prefix on it. %Armour is nice since you are stacking armour.

3) Throw 20 armourer scraps on all of your pieces (chest, hat, glove, boot) if you have it.

4) Throw 20 whetstones on the weapon for free damage.

5) Sorrow of the Divine does absolutely nothing for you. Unique is not always better. Get rid of this and use a more useful flask.

6) Molten Shell is terrible for Boneshatter because you are basically shredding your own protection while you attack. Switch to Immortal Call if you want a guard skill. Alternatively, you can take Call to Arms keystone and use Enduring Cry.

7) Concentrated Effect and Close Combat are pretty weak for their cost. If you have some chromes, recolor it some. You want Impale support (Green) and Ruthless in the last 2.

The issue with Boneshatter is that you need a lot of mitigation and life to absorb a ton of hits so your damage can ramp up. You have VERY low life and your armour while decent is not great, especially for Boneshatter. If you want to have more reliable damage and greatly reduce the frequency of randomly dying, I would prioritize getting a pile of life on the tree (and on your gear) before pushing for damage.


Once you get that sorted, I would recommend farming Harvest.

Thank you so much for going through my build, I had no idea about half of those issues, though it makes a lot of sense. Harvest also makes a lot of sense since its not very dependent on modifiers. Thx for the help :)

Sure thing, good luck!