My first league experience was a roller coaster

I leveled 2 LV 100 and 1 lvl98 char
Maw of Mischief elementalist
Splitting Steel Trickster
Elemental hit of the spectrum Deadeye

I started with Maw of Mischief Elemetalist took me like 4-5 days to clear all the acts. I was doing all the side content (vaal areas, etc.), and I was doing all the act maps with lantern mods and killing all the mobs in the maps lol. I started my first T1 map, and the first mob I faced was a rare monster with movement speed buff from somewhere, idk, and I couldn't kill it. My first map mob, and I couldn't kill it, just smacked me to death chasing me. I felt so bad. I bought the Maw of Mischief Helmet for 5C and Farmed Act Maps for the XP so that I could equip the Maw of Mischief Helmet (LVL73) and switch to that version of the build instead of Wave of Conviction. I think I skipped some nodes in the skill tree for the wave of conviction build, so it didn't feel that great, but Maw of Mischief felt very good. One click boom felt very satisfying.

https://poe.ninja/pob/1Ak2
This above build got me to T13's.

I upgraded some gear, and the next two weeks I got to the shaper, elder, and maven fights but couldn't beat them. I got voidstone carries instead from the trade chat and skipped the fights.

The next two weeks I had some IRL stuff to take care of, so no POE.

I got back with some gear upgrades I was able to clear shaper and elder fights (not the maven) and later I started farming maps. Until then, I was only doing maps to get the guardian map drops, and essences didn't use any scarabs and so didn't have many essences. My maps took forever as well because of essences.

I joined a guild, and the guild member suggested that I do shrine farming for the exp, so I did that for two days and leveled my char from 96-100.

After that, I wanted to do T17's, so I tried one, but I miserably failed, so I started farming maps for currency. I had ~30 divs saved at this point. I bought some scarabs. I started with adversaries, monster lineage, 2 div scarabs, defiled cathedral chisel alch 75+ quant maps. farmed for like 2 weeks and also did a few beast farms in T1 maps and managed to get a mageblood, made some skill tree changes, and tried T17 again but still failed. I wanted to farm a little bit fast, so I switched to strongboxes with 2 div, ambush scarab, hidden compartments, chisel alch and vaal orb 88+ quant and this felt really great, like I was getting so much currency. I farmed like 1000D in the next two weeks. I upgraded to a 90 res 100 supp build. I finished a couple of T17's and UberSirus (used all portals), but it was still not optimal.

I felt like my build was too squishy. I tried left tree and right tree and spent like ~500D till now for this build for two variations (75 and 90 res build).

I didn't know what to do with currency; I was lurking in the global chat all along my run, and some people were gambling with a house of mirror cards. Being a degn, I want to try it too. I bought 5 cards for 800D, turned into 11 cards, didn't stop, and poofed everything. :/

My current version of the build for farming T16's 120+ quant maps (cannot do avoid ailments mod) I am just using this for a few maps, which I cannot do with my 2nd char. Still, a very good build for T16's takes like 4-5mins/map strongbox.
https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/vjr322/witchbeginner?type=exp&i=0&search=name%3Dwitchbe

I took a three-day break, and all I was thinking was what to play next. So I got back and looked around for a tanky build and came across a blade trap trickster. My guildmate was playing SS Trickster, and I asked him about it and checked his poe and the build didn't seem that expensive.

I didn't have much curency, so I farmed a few days, and I crafted some cluster jewels, adorned jewels, bought adorned(135%) nimis and Atziri's reflection, and crafted body and boots from graveyard took a lot of time, so I bought the helm and gloves instead and switched to trickster after.

As I was levelling, it felt very different, like I was not dying that much and was levelling very fast. I levelled this char to 100 in around three days and started farming T16 120+ quant maps to see which mods it could not do. Reflect Physical was the only one and I cannot use leap slam if map contains ele reflect. I farmed a little bit more T16 defiled cathedral maps, got some more upgrades, and moved to T17's. It was so much better than the first one. I was able to do ziggurat maps in like 6-7 mins did that for like the next 250–270 maps and felt that rolling the maps took way too much time. I just chisel vaal orb and run my 120+ T16 maps it was so chill compared to T17's.

I went back to T16 maps and watched other farming guides on YouTube in the background. Running T16's are pretty chill compared to T17's. Did some delve, betryal, beyond, temple, proper essence, harbinger, harvest, few T17 curation, rituals, and uber farm. I was surprised by the delve farm, which honestly had very low cost and lots of profit. Some dry streaks for sure but there are lot of good streaks as well. I don't know a lot of the mechanics still, but the farm felt very good, curation idk, others felt meh. The only ones I didn't fully dive into were Sanctum and Heist. I did a few of them, but I never did a lot of them.

Current version of this build: (cannot do reflect physical) spent close to ~1000D
T16's:
https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/vjr322/shdwNcro?type=exp&i=0&search=name%3Dshdwn
T17's
https://pobb.in/GK3vqniycCO4

I came across a fubgun video of him farming like a couple mirrors in a day with LA Deadeye, so I wanted to try that ascendancy. Bought the gear levelled it to 88, dropped it, felt squishy, and sold all the gear. After a week, I wanted to try it again, so I bought the gear again, levelled to 98 did some T16's and T17's, dropped it again, and sold the gear felt too squishy lol.

I made some profit along the way during my second char crafted some extra cluster jewels, synth jewels, boots, body armour. Sitting on 1700D and around ~1000D worth of items not counting char gear and idk what to do lol. Maybe gamba part 2? I want to try mana stacker hierophant but that radiant faith flame, flesh, simplex/greatwolf pff. No wonder my exarch invitations were selling so fast.

The things that would have been better if someone told me before my first char would be: skip all the league content in the acts; atlas rush to a specific map that you want to farm rather than completing all the maps from one tier and moving to the next tier; better to keep different characters for mapping and bossing; learn some basic crafting instead of paying some heavy prices on gear; no div card gamba, never, I mean never ever ever.

Any suggestions for a tanky league starter for the next patch are always welcome.

Currently looking into some guides on Cheiftan RF, some pathfinder, some hexblast variants. CoC DD seems to be good as well; someone mentioned that MTX is needed for desecrate. Is it so?

I would say desc mtx is needed for cocdd.

think they added dynamic culling to it but some people say that didn't help fps.

When it comes to tanky league starters, RF is always a good pick.
I only play SSF, but RF never let me down. Jugg is very tanky and now it’s Chieftain.
Pohx has always the right RF build guide for you🔥

Nice post, I wish you all the best in the game in the future, btw Im in POE "roller coaster" since 2012 (my head is already spinning):)