Help! Need more damage on my RF/Exsang Crucible build

Look, I tried something and it's OK. It's not that great. It's pretty tanky though however I need more damage. I don't know what to change to get more damage. Anyone have any suggestions? I think I can craft a better staff for sure. But everywhere else seems like i'm at it's best.

Mechanically it's weirdly fun. I can get liftap on every flame dash. Endurance charge bonus damage works with both RF and Exsang. Moves a bit slow but that's fine. I currently use the atlas node Packed with Energy and do rusted niko scarab every map to help me out. I can finish without but it helps enough.

PoE Build:
https://pobb.in/WAHEnOfcch19

I made everything I have. I tend to do that for builds. However, I'm now broke from trying to make that freaking ring that is only about average. My Life regen is about 2100 with flasks. 2000 Without.

As you mention, a better staff would help. I imagine one with +2 all spells, and either +3 physical or +3 fire, would be great. Helm enchant. You don't have any cluster jewels? They offer so much power for fire DoT builds. Maybe try to move your culling strike somewhere else, get a 6th link on exsang.

I don't know what the 6th gem should really be tbh. I did culling b/c it felt good when running through maps. I just need like 500k damage in the aggregate between RF and Exsang somewhere to get that gap of knocking out some of the tougher rares. I don't know what to swap around to get enough passives for clusters either. Like do I sacrifice life nodes? Or which DPS or utility nodes should I sacrifice for clusters? Helm enchant is a good point, I did a couple dozen runs without success and now I have a bunch of helms with unrelated enchants sitting around. A few more tries won't hurt.

Thanks though, I'll think about making a new staff. If I had one with like 100% fire damage with the same DoT mods then It may work out pretty well. It's such a pain to get that crucible node.

EDIT: Switched to combustion support with exsang instead of culling. Technically more total DPS, feels about the same with culling strike.

It seems a big part of the problem you face is that RF scales from 2 things: Life and levels. Your life is on the lower end for someone who would scale from life and your RF is really low level (spells peak scaling at L30).

Some things that may help:

1) Remove Bannerman from passive tree. You don't have a banner and it only helps auras that work on enemies (i.e. Pride), which you don't have any of. It is literally a dead point.

2) The NINE points that dip you into the Templar area are not worth it. Spend 4 of them on the Bloodless life wheel and bank the other 5 for your cluster jewel.

3) The jewel next to Eternal Youth is really strong. But you spend 3 points for that socket. If you go large cluster, you can slot that jewel there, so these 3 points can help too.

4) Your Watcher's Eye is bad (Penetration does nothing for DoT) and you are playing a dead aura (Anger) because of it. Your primary damage is Fire DoT from RF and Exsang. Anger does nothing for that because flat to spells only helps hit-based builds. I would instead run Skitterbots for damage. Dropping down like this also lowers the reservation efficiency you need, enough to drop the Arcane Capacitor wheel and its 12% mastery. Given the only thing you were getting was the mastery as the wheel doesn't help you in the least, that's four points for your cluster. This is not worth 4 points either way. If you wanted more reservation badly, I would go with a 3-passive small cluster for reservation when you get your large setup.

5) Vitality is a massive bump to your regen. Free up some sockets (i.e. Corrupting Fever isn't really helping you here) and put it on Arrogance. If you feel you have too much regen with that, the 4 points to the left of Warrior's Blood are a good removal for your cluster jewel.

6) The "8% increased damage for each aura/herald on you" mastery is a massive amount of damage for 1 point (pob says 7.4% for RF).

7) You don't seem to have a way to inflict exposure. If you get Master of Fire in your cluster setup, the 18% exposure in Elemental Mastery is good to get.


As to your weapon, the biggest issue is that you are using a Warstaff, not a Staff. Warstaves cannot roll the mods you need (and the Shaper influence is making things worse because it dilutes the mod pool with a pile of stuff you don't want). So, I would not do anything to your current staff. Instead, if you really like the Exsanguinate thing, I would aim to buy another staff that has that crucible mod (given your current tree has nothing else of help) and craft from that.

I made the changes you suggested but couldn't fit vitality cleanly, however, still about 2k life regen which is good enough. No Arrogance b/c I don't have the chaos res to support hard chaos hits. I easily added about 1mil+ DPS without even touching my staff at this point. The only downside is without the cast speed and AOE nodes that were in the templar area my Flamability curse has to be a little more on point on cast and it's delay of casting between Exsangs is a bit slow to get used to. Thanks again, i'll troubleshoot further in another level or 2 in addition to a new staff.

Finished result so far:

https://pobb.in/taqCNeKC6XlP

If you can find a way to give up a ring, play Profane Proxy on your left ring slot and slap Flammability there. This opens up a socket and makes your Flammability permanent (with way more AoE than you could normally get since your skitterbots now carry it) w/o the need to cast it.

By the way, Arrogance for Vitality will only take like 10% of your life in return for the regen you get (it takes a ton of mana reservation because mana pool is small but the flat it needs is tiny compared to your life pool). If you can fit the sockets, it's pretty much always a good trade in this scenario. It also allows you to take the reservation mastery that gives 1 max res if you reserved both life and mana.

I know the rings don't seem like much but it's a pretty huge DPS hit to automate flawability that way. However, I did try it out to see how it felt. I'm already DPS thirsty.

As for the vitality with arrogance, Hmmm. I'm experimenting. I'd have to get rid of the Dmg per Auro mastery and change to +1 all res which is good to be tanky, however, I'm pretty tanky from what I've been through. I think one more jewel socket (i.e. one more level) and I'll have a lot more damage and can experiement with a bit more tankiness. Thanks for that suggestion.

No matter what, I really appreciate the advice. I can make any melee build work well and cheap but this is my first time doing anything spell related in a long time and very first DoT build ever. So thanks for the help. This is an expensive 3 mil DPS DoT build but it's fun enough.

Glad to help. If you did do the max res mastery, I wouldn't give up the damage for it. I'd give up the 10% aura effect one because you're not getting much of anything out of that one with how few auras you use.

Not to spam but as soon as I typed out that I was pretty tanky, I died in delve to post death hot garbage spam. Maybe I'll review the arrogance and vitality. I have to find a way to fit both gems. I have some ideas. First death in a long while.