Act 3 cruel VERY challenging. Am I doing something wrong?

Hello Folks!

I played PoE since the CB, but not fulltime or anything.
So far I had 1 character lvl 53 and a lot of little ones.

the 53 was a witch that I played with friends up to act 3 cruel. I did good damage but had just 500 life and energy-shield, so act 3 solo - without my friends - was just a brick wall.

I started my second "real" character, a ranger this time. I ignored almost all offense nodes, just went on armour, life and resist.

/edit : I arrived in act 3 yesterday.

guess what... I still am pretty dead in seconds, when a horde is coming at me.

don't get me wrong, I CAN do it when I am careful... but how should this turn out in merciless??? How are HC-characters able to clear normal and cruel without dying?

I have 1600 life, 50-60 resistance on everything (but chaos...) and 240dps.

my lifereg is quite high, with a totem about 120 / second and I use grace to have almost 5000 armour now (evasion to armour node enabled). I play with blood magic.

problem is :

I wanted to farm the docks now, to get equipment (I guess that is my weak point, almost everything is lvl 20-30, except for one 40 item). but docks are 2 lvl below me and if I stand in the cold breath for 1 second I am as good as dead.

any tipps what I should improve? Am I doing something wrong? Is it "ok" to farm the docks up to lvl 60? But I guess drops will be pretty shitty then...

thanks :)


/edit :

DO NOT GET ME WRONG! I love the challenge :) I am just asking myself if going on full defense and life is the only way to play PoE ^^

Act III Cruel is pretty much the first real test that a new player faces when playing PoE. Act III Merc is a cold hard facial smash-down.

For us to give you any real help, you need to link your build, and all of your gear. If neither obviously suck, sometimes the answer is to just level past the content a bit (and level up your gems, people often underestimate how important leveled gems are).

240 DPS sounds pretty weak for A3 Cruel, BTW.

"

Is it "ok" to farm the docks up to lvl 60?

You can do whatever you want, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it. By level 60 you should be getting into Act 3 Merciless, and "item farming" Cruel is just going to get you lots more sub-par low-level gear.

Post your current build and let us help you fix it. If your only problem right now is Docks and Voidbearers (pst, they do fire, not cold), slap on some Arctic Armor and you should be good. Since your resists aren't capped, I'd consider having some resist flasks handy (for things like the dogs).

Edit: Also also, Act 3 can be harsh, but if you can scrape through it, Act 1 Merciless should be easier (just in terms of monster types you face). Join a pub group and get your ass carried through the quests if you have to. :p

if you play your Ranger as an archer, I have several tips from my experience (my Ranger is in Merciless right now).

Chaos resistance penalty is vicious. even more so in Merciless. but taking the Arrow Dodging keystone helps a lot. main chaos dealers are ranged (except Alira's forest goons) - and with a high enough evasion rating, they will almost never hit you.

your elemental resistances are quite low as well.
Cruel and especially Merciless are a capped-resists check.
so since I assume you have no option to get an immediate boost from gear, or an immediate tree node you can take - use the resistance flasks whenever something gets dangerously close to you.
also, using Decoy Totems - or in an optimal case Ranged/Spell Totems - helps draw stuff's attention so you can pick them off from safe distance.
and Bear Traps stop things trying to charge you.

lastly, Voidbearers (docks dogs) deal fire damage not cold. don't let the blue animation fool you.
use fire resist flasks or Arctic Armour to counter it.

good luck, and happy hunting :)

Uh, ranger is not a build. I assume you are using some bow, but who knows. Please say what skill are you using.

Act3 cruel is actually harder than act1 merci. You may want to partywagon Piety and come back when you have better gear and level.

Also I find you still have low HP and resis (by now they should be 75%, except chaos).
Also I had a character with those 240dps in act3 normal and abandoned it. You probably are taking too much time and taking damage from mobs that should be dead already.

Arctic Armour does not work with Blood Magic :)

I have to go out of the house for 1-2 hours, I will then edit my posting with my build and items (how do I do the second?)

thanks :)

To link your items, put the text cursor in the window while editing. Click your portrait. Click on each item in your inventory. Hit the "X" at the upper right corner of your portrait. You will see a variety of linkItem codes inserted into the edit window.

There is no feedback while doing the item clicking. Just keep clicking all of them. Or try just one to see what I mean.

For more specific help please link your current build.

I'm currently running a level 53 Dualist archer build in Cruel Battlefront and have a Sniper bow and with level 14 Puncture/ 13 extra elemental/ 13 added lightning + other gear buffs I get 472.2 DPS. I also have a 14 Poison Arrow/ 13 Fork/ 11 Faster Attacks combo that has 329.9 DPS (414 DPS if I remove Fork) so your DPS is way low for Cruel Sarn difficulty. I have 1218 life.

One thing I have found with all my solo playing is that you absolutely need a spell totem that you can deploy in a mob to get some/most of them to go after it and not have them all attacking me. For me I have a 12 Spell Totem/ 12 Fireballs/ 11 LMP so it shoots 3 fireballs for 73-109 DPS for up to 25 secs. Without a totem of some kind (even a decoy totem would be better than nothing) I'm pretty much going to be dieing frequently. With the Fireball totem I can get it deployed and that takes most of the heat off of me so I can kite easily and kill most monsters with none to little damage. When I get to a mini-boss I can lob in my 3 level 14 firetraps for an additional 375 DPS each to take them out. Also cursing a mini-boss will weaken its attacks to lessen the damage so an Enfeeble or other curse is very useful.

Also with a ranger type build you can never underestimate the need for speed so find boots with as much added speed as you can get.

I hope some of this helps.

1600 life is too low on act 3 cruel...my witch had 4K ES (a bit overkill but it's definitely not that hard to get 2500-3K life at that point).

LOL if that is challenge for you act 3 mercailles will be hell !