I will never be good at PoE

"

1453R a écrit :

As Sarang said, this isn’t really the right approach.

Different builds in different places have different ways of dealing with threats. An Acro/Evasion character in Kintsugi using archery or Frost Blades can get away with, effectively, no armor at all because they mitigate damage through not taking it, and catching what few spikes do get through on Kintsugi’s ‘Recently’ reduction. There’s no plug-the-numbers formula for spitting out a good build every time, especially since ‘good build’ is as much if not more dependent on gear than it is tree and skills. There’s a few general points to consider, but frankly even those are more guidelines than rules.

The other thing is that a lot of your own personal rules are holding you back pretty sharply. You have one skill set-up you like to use – damage skill, CWDT set-up with curses, movement, and other. You hate any sort of RNG spikes, and you tend towards the same build layout with all your builds. You’re consistently using the same approach, and consistently having the same problem – lousy boss-killing. Might maybe be time to vary up the approach?

Try Ancestral Warchief in your next melee build. The Chief is boss as hell. Stuff the Chief in a 4-link with Melee Phys, Faster Attacks, and Conc. Effect (or preferably Bloodlust, if your main build Bleeds things), and it adds significant single-target DPS to your build without compromising your regular clearing at all. Drop the Chief on bosses, get extra melee damage for your own attacks and watch the Chief go bananas on the fat angry thing while you do whatever else it is you’re built to do.

EK is notoriously weak for single-target. Try splicing Bladefall into the build. Again, drop Bladefall > Conc. Effect > Controlled Destruction > Poison into a 4-link, pop Bladefall on bosses, then scoot away from reprisal and do it again.

Once more – bad damage is a huge ‘Less’ modifier to your defenses, because letting things live longer means they have a lot more time to pound their way through whatever you’re staying alive with. If your regular clearing skill is weak on bosses (hint: a lot of the best lawn-mowing skills are going to be weak on bosses), then snag a secondary supplement skill to help beat through the big guys.

As for your questions?


How much HP do people in general think a character needs? 8k?
Depends on how awesome you are, what your other defensive layers are, and what your build does. Melee/point-blank characters usually need more life than ranged characters because they get hit more, which also means they tend to benefit more from armor/flat damage reduction than ranged characters, which tend to benefit more from evasion/Dodge/avoidance since they take a lower overall frequency of hits.

if you have to have a benchmark – and as Sarang said, ‘benchmarks’ are not a great way to go about PoE builds – I’d suggest 4k as a minimum for ranged builds, with 5k as a minimum for melee/point-blank. Neither is a hard-and-fast rule. My own personal rule is “enough to avoid as many stuns as possible”, whilst remembering the points below.

How much life on the passive tree do you need to take to get there?
150% life on the tree is a good starting point. Less than that tends to require some clever defensive redundancies in your build to compensate; more than that tends to be a higher-level concern. Life is the one exception to the “don’t fill out clusters, just grab just enough points for the notable” rule. Every dinky little 5% Life point is something a lot of players feel is crucial, but filling out those dinky 5ers is something you generally get to in your eighties.

Random spitballing? Aim for 120% life by level 50-60, with a good plan to get more whenever you have the opportunity, and shoot for 150-200%. Again, the more time you spend within melee range of enemies, the more life you should be shooting for.


How much armour should a character have?

As much as you can reasonably get, if your build is an armor build. Armor gets better the more you invest in it, there’s no minimum “okay, you can stop now” breakpoint. The key word is ‘reasonable’. Don’t go ten nodes out of your way for a crappy threebie armor cluster, that’s hugely inefficient. If you have to path, try and path in such a way that you path by armor clusters and can snag them on the way. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to go more than two non-armor ‘road’ nodes to get to any given armor cluster you intend to grab.

Also: armor builds do not ‘settle’ for low armor pieces of gear. 400% armor rating applied to a 400-armor chestpiece is 1600 armor. 250% armor rating applied to a 1200-armor chestpiece is 3k armor. 250% armor rating in the tree is eminently doable; 400% is not. Armor builds DO NOT run Tabula Rasa – your chestpiece is your single most important piece of armor and needs to be at least 1k, if not ideally 1200 to 1500, if you want to make an honest stab at armor. Every other piece of gear you have should have armor on it as well. The way armor works, the higher your number is the better the armor works against a wider variety of attacks. Armor isn’t linear – 20k armor is much, much more than twice as effective as 10k armor.


How much armour on the passive tree should a character get?
Again – as much as you can reasonably grab. Designing a really good passive tree takes more than an hour. Planning your pathing to run by things you need without going so far out of your way that you lose too many points to skillgrimages takes experience and time.

How much life to armor do you need? (ratio)
There is no Golden Ratio. You get as much life and armor both as you can manage without compromising the rest of your build. Life and armor both are “more is always better” things. The key thing is to ensure you’re not sacrificing too much of your overall resources to life and armor. Remember – bad damage is a “Less” modifier to all your defensive layers, including life and armor.

How much chance to block should you get?
Are you a block build? If you’re running a 2H build, the usual answer is “none”. While any block chance is technically a plus, block isn’t reliable as a defensive layer until you get enough of it to…well, rely on. If you can only get ten or twenty percent block chance, then don’t bother with block nodes or anything but incidental gear-based block on stuff you were going to use anyways. If you can easily/reasonably get 40+% block chance, then the answer flips to “as much as you can reasonably manage”, up to the cap of 75% block chance.


How can you spec your tree to have the right amount of everything?
Blood, sweat, tears, copious research, trial and error, painful experience, and the (often post-character) understanding that you will end up with characters that just don’t work. Even high-end streamers, people for whom playing Path of Exile is literally their job, end up with A4M duds sometimes. You end up learning what builds tend to need versus what builds, or you as a player, tend to want.

For example: I am a complete and total movespeed ho. I want 60% faster movement whilst standing in my hideout, sans Quicksilver flasks or any other conditional movement. My really early builds would often path four or five nodes out of their way to grab things like Celerity, and do that more than once, because I wanted lightning feeties. This meant those builds often ended up with ten or fifteen or even twenty points spent in weird places that didn’t cover the character’s needs, and as a result they stunk hardcore. Few of them even made it past Cruel, and most ended up stripped and deleted.

Nowadays I grab movespeed where I can and as it makes sense, but I do not go more than a node or two out of my way to get it or forego more efficient pathing for the sake of running by a movespeed cluster I could otherwise grab. I still can’t resist the siren call of Avatar of the Hunt for most of my theorycrafted archery builds, but I’ve learned what those sorts of builds tend to need.

You need life. You need damage. If you’re running armor, evasion, or other defensive layers primarily in the tree, then you need those nodes. The more good builds you check out in the ‘copious research’ stage, the more you’ll see that the skeletons of most builds on a given class/build type tend to be pretty similar. That’s because those skeletons are what get you the nodes you need, with individual players fleshing out their Wants as they can.

There’s no magic “Get good at Path of Exile” formula. If you have a specific build you’re working on, you can post it here or (if you’re feeling brave) in the appropriate class subforum and see what people can do to help you with your tree, with gear suggestions, with gem set-ups, and the like. One of the most important things to remember, though?

If something just isn’t working, then don’t keep doing it.

When it comes to playstyle itself and not mechanics, I know I shoot myself in the foot by being overly simple but otherwise I'm not having fun playing, so I have to choose between a fun build that is not good and a better build which makes the game feel like work. Regardless of melee or ranged, I like facing things directly, if I have to cast curses, place totems, or use a cold skill to make my fire damage stronger with elemental equilibrium, I'm not having fun. It's one of the main reasons why I suck at PoE

Actually, having a hard time killing bosses is not at all my problem, It happened with the juggernaut build because I used the wrong skill (Lacerate), I wanted to try it out but I didn't manage to use it successfully. The problem I usually have is I get one shot by bosses, I don't have a problem with mobs, It doesn't take me forever to kill bosses, but in the end of Merciless and in end-game, I have too small of an error margin and I die very quickly before I have time to react. That's the problem I've always had and when I try making myself tanky, I end up very weak offensively and not a tank at all actually, as I previously said, I got 1-hit killed by Stage 3 Izaro in Merciless with my attempt at a tank, I wasn't trying to absorb all hits either, I'm just trying to give myself more time to survive, I did try to escape his attack but I was too slow and my "tank" got killed instantly at full life.

I learned to aim for notables, I have to admit it really disturbs me when a passive cluster is not "perfectly" filled but I do try to avoid taking too many small nodes

Don't worry, I don't think I take really poor decisions like this, as you said, it's my "values", my playstyle that limits me too much

Right, I try to compensate using tabula rasa with a high armor shield (2k armor) and take increased shield defences, at least 100% for 4k armor out of my shield PLUS using grace and iron reflexes. It's just that whenever I did ditch tabula rasa for a 2k armor and 4-link chest, my damage really became too low for my taste.

I don't feel that I keep doing something that is wrong, what I feel is that I don't know and understand how to get the right amount of everything, that when I die, I go "WHAT THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO, WHAT THE FUCK" that's pretty much why I ragequit, it's because I try my hardest to succeed and it's never enough

by the way, thanks a lot for the thorough response, I appreciate it

"

1453R a écrit :

There's a "Character" screen that shows you all the pertinent information of your character, such as resistance levels. Default keybind is 'C', I believe. Refer to it early and often. As for the points raised here...:

Resistances are capped* at 75, considered the default "Maximum" resistance. This means that no matter what your actual resistance score is, by default you can only ever apply 75% resistance to incoming elemental damage of the appropriate type. Modifiers to "maximum" elemental resistance, such as Rise of the Phoenix's +8 to max Fire Resistance, raises this 75-point cap. With Rise of the Phoenix and capped fire resistance, you would resist 83% of Fire damage, meaning 83% of incoming fire damage dealt to you is nullified. That is very significant.

"Cold taken as Fire" and "Lightning Taken as Fire" modifiers from an Avian Twins talisman, as well as "Physical taken as Cold/Lightning" modifiers on Taste of Hate and Lightning Coil, convert a portion of incoming damage of the first type into damage of the second type and applies that damage to the corresponding defense. Taste of Hate and Lightning Coil are considered so good because your Physical resistance (armor, endurance charges, so on) is almost always lower than your elemental resistances. Same with Avian Twins talismans - taking a chunk of cold or lightning damage against your 83% Fire resistance, rather than your 75% Cold/Lightning resistance, means more damage that doesn't get dealt to you.

Armor was specifically built to be good against multiple smaller hits and not so good against single big whacks. The smaller a given hit of damage is compared to your overall armor value, the greater overall percentage of that hit will be mitigated by your armor. Higher armor thusly allows you to deal with bigger singular damage spikes better, as well as mostly eliminating limp-wristed girly punches from white critters. Also another reason why Taste of Hate, Lightning Coil, and other such things are so helpful - they just straight-up mitigate a given percentage of physical damage regardless of the size of the individual hit, by shunting it into the straight mitigation of your elemental resistances instead of taking it on variable-performance armor.

Evasion is the practical opposite - designed to be better against infrequent heavy spikes of damage, as Evasion doesn't care about incoming damage totals, only incoming accuracy. I don't have a good enough grip on the entropy system to shorthand it here, but that's what The Wiki is for.

Straight physical mitigation, such as Endurance charges or Fortify, do the same thing as elemental resistances. They just whack off a percentage of the damage (ergo why Fortify is busted as hell). Percentage avoidance modifiers like Dodge or Block are an RNG dice roll (which is why nobody sane relies on just Dodge or Block).

The game is complex because its players wanted it to be complex. That very complexity is what appeals so strongly to a large percentage of PoE players. Most of us don't want the game to have an easy, precise 'solution', where hitting [X] benchmarks in [Y] defensive stats and [Z] offensive stats equals success. That defeats the whole purpose of coming up with awesome ways to turn Weaksauce into Winning.

Come on man, I know what the character screen is for god's sake and I know resists are capped at 75% (except for physical which is capped at 90%)

You misunderstood me completely, I meant, after going through damage conversion you need to manually calculate yourself how much resist you really have.

If you have 89% fire resist, and 81% cold and lightning and then you take 50% of cold or lightning as fire, then you don't have 81% resist anymore you have something more but you need to calculate it yourself

you don't need to explain to me mechanics I've myself mentioned, I know how they work, I already understood everything you explained in your post

I agree that the game being complex is a good thing, I do love theorycrafting but I figured that since my builds always fail at endgame, it's because it's too complicated somewhere for me but maybe it's really just because it's a arpg and so there's too much rng and grinding required

hell, I know converting physical damage taken to elemental is good but I actually never go my hands on a lightning coil, taste of hate or safell's frame to test it out, never got my hands on a kaom's heart, I wanted to try a bleed explosion gladiator but I feel it will be too weak with puncture and I haven't got my hands on a Atziri disfavor, HELL, I would never use tabula rasa if I could get a good 6-link armor, HELL, How can you get good gear and rich if you can't do endgame? YOU CAN'T

Coal, man?

If you keep saying "I know that's how it works, but that's not how I play PoE", then you're going to keep having trouble.

Multiple people have said multiple times that there is no magic formula. If you posted a specific build, people could help you optimize it, but first of all you have to actually post that specific build, and second of all you have to be willing to optimize it. You gotta be able to stretch some, man.

Elemental Equilibrium is actually super easy to use these days, for example. Orb of Storms is a wide-area skill that frequently pulses lightning damage - use it with a heavy-damage single-hit skill of another element, like Vortex or Flameblast, and Orb of Storms pretty much flat guarantees that the enemies you're hitting will have taken lightning damage by the time they take fire or cold, and so you deal a lot more damage. That's one of the driving combos behind my Vortex Elementalist, and why her listed '8k' DPS is no such bloody thing.

As for end-game gear? Most anyone should have ten or fifteen chaos from just natural drops and/or chaos recipes if they sink any real time into a league. Use that, follow the "ten chaos" gearing guides several streamers have put out there. Buy a white 5L chestpiece for a chaos or an alch or something, alt/aug it until you get a worthwhile life roll and something else useful, regal it for another mod that's hopefully good, then get the rest of your gear for a chaos a shot and mastercraft whatever holes are left. People bootstrap themselves up from nothing every single league - study how they do that if you're having budget problems.

Lightning Coil can be had for two chaos in Prophecy right now. If you've got a bit more swag to go around, Jeweller's Touch sealed prophecies go for 20c, which is the cheapest guaranteed-5L-for-uniques in all of Path of Exile, bar none. You could get a 5L Lightning Coil for 25c, then spend another ten or fifteen chaos on filling out all the resists and life you need. 40c could get you into a workable Lightning Coil gearset if you don't use a lot of resistance-eating uniques. If you don't have 40c? Work it up. Trade what currency you do have for chaos on The Currency Market, or hit up Dried Lake and farm rares for the chaos recipe. Alch rings, amulets, mebbe belts, and keep a tab of your storage specifically for storing rare items in bulk to frequently trade in for chaos. You'd be surprised how quickly you can build up 40c.

You can keep lamenting about how you get instagibbed by bosses and how none of us really understand, or you can try and do something about it.

Post a build. Give everybody here something to work with. Give them a budget - how much are you willing/able to spend to gear up whatever build you post? Give 'em a goal - yellow maps is a good goal to have for just hitting up the game hard enough to make some bucks. That covers Plateau, Gorge, Canyon, all the usual moneymaker maps. That should get you into the mid-eighties, which would be enough to go back and take a giant screw-you-too-buddy dump all over Malachai. Remember - you don't HAVE to beat Merciless Malachai to get into mapping.

There are solutions for your problems, Coal. You just need to be willing to try them.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

...

When it comes to playstyle itself and not mechanics, I know I shoot myself in the foot by being overly simple but otherwise I'm not having fun playing, so I have to choose between a fun build that is not good and a better build which makes the game feel like work. Regardless of melee or ranged, I like facing things directly, if I have to cast curses, place totems, or use a cold skill to make my fire damage stronger with elemental equilibrium, I'm not having fun. It's one of the main reasons why I suck at PoE

...

I think that you have a developed a false impression. Myself and most of the people I play with like very streamlined gameplay and builds as well. Nobody wants to hit 1000000 buttons!! The fun part of designing your character is making everything fit in a streamlined and engaging way. In my own builds, I will have generally 1, but at most 2 attacks. The secondary attack usually procs buffs like fortify and/or curse on hit, etc. depending on what I'm trying to do. I agree that manually cursing things is not fun! I generally either use curse on hit, or a blasphemy (this gem is not to be underestimated!). Things like elemental equilibrium can be used without multiple different skill activiations if you for instance setup a cast on crit build where your main attack has some say lightning damage added to it, and then you have the linked spells be one fire and one ice.

Some examples:

---
Example 1: Archer
Secondary attack: Frenzy, link a GMP (unless you have reach!), curse on hit, and a curse (or 2+ if you have the passive/items to allow this), some leech maybe, etc.
Primary attack: Lighting arrow, tornado shot, whatever + all the goodies

I usually use E for the secondary attack and the right mouse button for the main, and it is comfortable to alternate between them.

---
Example 2: Earthquaker
Secondary attack: Flicker Strike! to get you into position very fast. Add in fortify and multistrike (for fun!) and you are good to go. If you have links available also throw in curse on hit, vulnerability and melee splash. Better yet, get some corrupted vulnerability on hit gloves.
Primary attack: Earthquake + all the usual damage supports.

---
With any extra gem sockets available, people might throw in a totem, or a vaal skill, but these things are just extra goodies, and none of them are generally necessary to make a good build work. Recently I moved around some gems and was able to refit in a vaal haste in my mjolner-discharge character, but I mainly use it as if it were an extra quicksilver flask. Miscellaneous things like this can be avoided if they don't suite you.

"

1453R a écrit :

Coal, man?

If you keep saying "I know that's how it works, but that's not how I play PoE", then you're going to keep having trouble.

Multiple people have said multiple times that there is no magic formula. If you posted a specific build, people could help you optimize it, but first of all you have to actually post that specific build, and second of all you have to be willing to optimize it. You gotta be able to stretch some, man.

Elemental Equilibrium is actually super easy to use these days, for example. Orb of Storms is a wide-area skill that frequently pulses lightning damage - use it with a heavy-damage single-hit skill of another element, like Vortex or Flameblast, and Orb of Storms pretty much flat guarantees that the enemies you're hitting will have taken lightning damage by the time they take fire or cold, and so you deal a lot more damage. That's one of the driving combos behind my Vortex Elementalist, and why her listed '8k' DPS is no such bloody thing.

As for end-game gear? Most anyone should have ten or fifteen chaos from just natural drops and/or chaos recipes if they sink any real time into a league. Use that, follow the "ten chaos" gearing guides several streamers have put out there. Buy a white 5L chestpiece for a chaos or an alch or something, alt/aug it until you get a worthwhile life roll and something else useful, regal it for another mod that's hopefully good, then get the rest of your gear for a chaos a shot and mastercraft whatever holes are left. People bootstrap themselves up from nothing every single league - study how they do that if you're having budget problems.

Lightning Coil can be had for two chaos in Prophecy right now. If you've got a bit more swag to go around, Jeweller's Touch sealed prophecies go for 20c, which is the cheapest guaranteed-5L-for-uniques in all of Path of Exile, bar none. You could get a 5L Lightning Coil for 25c, then spend another ten or fifteen chaos on filling out all the resists and life you need. 40c could get you into a workable Lightning Coil gearset if you don't use a lot of resistance-eating uniques. If you don't have 40c? Work it up. Trade what currency you do have for chaos on The Currency Market, or hit up Dried Lake and farm rares for the chaos recipe. Alch rings, amulets, mebbe belts, and keep a tab of your storage specifically for storing rare items in bulk to frequently trade in for chaos. You'd be surprised how quickly you can build up 40c.

You can keep lamenting about how you get instagibbed by bosses and how none of us really understand, or you can try and do something about it.

Post a build. Give everybody here something to work with. Give them a budget - how much are you willing/able to spend to gear up whatever build you post? Give 'em a goal - yellow maps is a good goal to have for just hitting up the game hard enough to make some bucks. That covers Plateau, Gorge, Canyon, all the usual moneymaker maps. That should get you into the mid-eighties, which would be enough to go back and take a giant screw-you-too-buddy dump all over Malachai. Remember - you don't HAVE to beat Merciless Malachai to get into mapping.

There are solutions for your problems, Coal. You just need to be willing to try them.

I'm thinking about a build right now, I'll post the planned skill tree and gear in a little while

I didn't imply "no one understands me", I know it's my fault, I'm tired of trying by myself and so that's why I made this thread, to get some help, again, I'll post the build I'm thinking about, I'll try and make some sacrifices

I'll try prophecy, so it will be a fresh start, also because my stash in standard is in such disarray I just don't feel like sorting all of it and buying new tabs

again thanks for the help 1453R, PoE just makes me lose my patience sometimes, even when I'm just talking and not even playing it

.

(the theory crafting is not finished but I'm tired and I feel like playing the game, so just tell me if the passive tree is okay so I can start the character please)

Ok, I want to make a Hierophant Templar that will have 100% reduced mana cost by using sanctuary of thought and reduced mana cost passives, I'll also use mana as life with mind over matter and divine guidance

because the templar doesn't have neutral physical damage passives, I won't be using ethereal knives and will substitute for incinerate, I'll try to achieve that same spread with greater multiple projectiles and have long range with faster projectiles

I remember testing a long time ago life and mana leech with incinerate and it was a poor combo, so I'll have to only rely on regen for both

now because incinerate is elemental, it's a problem, so I will need to reduce enemy fire resistances with fire penetration.

I don't want to but I'll have to use elemental equilibrium, I'll use freezing pulse + curse on hit + elemental weakness + flammability for heavy fire penetration

I normally would use tabula rasa + a shield to get my defences from a shield, however, I'll try and do without it and even aim to get a kaom's heart eventually. That means I'll either use incinerate in a 4-link helm or a 6-link staff, because a 6-link staff is expensive and won't allow me to use a shield, I'll go for a helm, which will have 20% elemental piercing with illuminated devotion, however I might not even be able to get it since it will require to beat the merciless labyrinth.

I'm afraid I'll be very weak by being limited to a 4-link

I have no idea how much armor vs life I should get, so... here's the passive tree:


gear I'll aim to get:

clear mind (Cobalt Jewel)
kaom's heart (Glorious Plate)
Doedre's Damning (Paua Ring)

didnt read everything, but enfeeble aura + lightning coil is my standard setup for everything.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

(the theory crafting is not finished but I'm tired and I feel like playing the game, so just tell me if the passive tree is okay so I can start the character please)

First of all: you’re already defeating yourself with the entire attitude of this project. “I don’t want to use this but…”, “I’m afraid I’ll be very weak but…”, “I might not even be able to get…”, “Just tell me if this works so I can go…”

Throw those statements out right away. You should be excited for a new build. You should be “I can’t wait to try this!” If you’re looking at your new build as “this is going to be such a chore, but I suppose…”, then it’s not the build you want to run.

Second of all, going over the conceptual breakdown some:

"

Coal48 a écrit :

Ok, I want to make a Hierophant Templar that will have 100% reduced mana cost by using sanctuary of thought and reduced mana cost passives, I'll also use mana as life with mind over matter and divine guidance

Workable, but incomplete. You get into what else you need later though, so it’s not a big deal. These are the kinds of statements you need to be making, though.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

because the templar doesn't have neutral physical damage passives, I won't be using ethereal knives and will substitute for incinerate, I'll try to achieve that same spread with greater multiple projectiles and have long range with faster projectiles

Incinerate’s a good skill, and supporting it with GMP and FP is generally a worthwhile set-up.

Now we have a basis for your build – an Incinerate Heirophant going for reduced mana costs and MoM-style defenses. This is the sort of thesis statement you should be looking for in a build. This tells you what you’re doing, and that will in turn let you know what you need and what ends up as a want.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

I remember testing a long time ago life and mana leech with incinerate and it was a poor combo, so I'll have to only rely on regen for both

If you’re looking to eliminate the mana cost for Incinerate, then Mana Leech is basically only there to restore mana you’ve lost from enemy attacks due to Divine Guidance and Mind Over Matter. Now, to be fair, you’re taking 40% of incoming damage against your mana – having both life and mana leech basically amounts to “double life leeched” and would actually be very good for sustainability, but linking both the Life and Mana leech gems to Incinerate would be bad, yes. Between LL, ML, GMP, and FP, that’s too many gems used for supporting effects and not damage. We’ll get into that more later. For now, however, just follow along and try to see where the logic is here. This is how one goes about refining a thesis statement/early concept into a proper theorycraft build.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

now because incinerate is elemental, it's a problem, so I will need to reduce enemy fire resistances with fire penetration.

I don't want to but I'll have to use elemental equilibrium, I'll use freezing pulse + curse on hit + elemental weakness + flammability for heavy fire penetration

Aaaand here we have our first misstep. It’s not a bad one, but it’s a misstep regardless.

Incinerate generates a huge number of hits, and Elemental Equilibrium resets its resistance modifiers on each hit. You cannot effectively use EE with Incinerate. What this means is mostly that you shouldn’t try. You’re way overdoing it on resistance piercing – you don’t need Heirophant’s 20% pierce AND Fire Pen AND Flammability AND Elemental Weakness AND Elemental Equilibrium. That is far too much resistance penetration, and it eats a lot of your build’s resources that you could otherwise sink into better defenses or supporting options. 20% pierce from Illuminated Devotion and either Fire Penetration OR Flammability would be sufficient, while leaving you room to do other stuff.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

I normally would use tabula rasa + a shield to get my defences from a shield, however, I'll try and do without it and even aim to get a kaom's heart eventually. That means I'll either use incinerate in a 4-link helm or a 6-link staff, because a 6-link staff is expensive and won't allow me to use a shield, I'll go for a helm, which will have 20% elemental piercing with illuminated devotion, however I might not even be able to get it since it will require to beat the merciless labyrinth.

I'm afraid I'll be very weak by being limited to a 4-link

See, the cool thing about Heirophant is that you’re not using a 4-link. You’re turning all of your normal 4-link slots into 5-links, which is one of the main reasons why a lot of players get Illuminated Devotion first, with their Normal difficult Asc. points. Kaom’s Heart fits quite well with a Heirophant build because of this – you’re not really missing those chest sockets nearly as much as you otherwise might, and it is nearly unparalleled for survivability. Plus it even boosts your fire damage, to boot! It is, however, expensive. You’ll want a backup plan for use until you get to Kaom’s Heart. Your backup plan is as follows: “any armor-based chest with at least 80 effective life and 1k or more armor”. Since your end goal is Kaom’s Heart, you don’t really care if this has any links on it or not, which means you can get such a chest for next to nothing currency-wise.

Anyways. Now we’re into skill set-ups. I’ll let you know what I recommend, and will explain why each choice is made. Hopefully it’ll make sense and give you some more insight into how to work through your own ideas in the future.

Helm: Incinerate > GMP/Faster Projectiles > Controlled Destruction > Elemental Focus
If you’re relying on Heirophant Illuminated Devotion effects to bolster your skills, you need to be ruthless with your actual supports. You only get three support gems for your skill – it gets a ‘free’ support with Illuminated Devotion, but that puts no less pressure on your actual supports. The key thing with Incinerate is that it can’t crit, at all, unless you go for Shenanigans. This isn’t a Shenanigans build, so no crits for Incinerate means you never (naturally) get elemental status effects out of it. That means Elemental Focus is a free ‘More’ damage modifier for you, since its drawback is something your build is already eating. Controlled Destruction, same way – 100% reduced chance of 0% is still 0%.

GMP is better for clearing, Faster Projectiles is better for single-target. If you had a legit 5L I’d go for both, but sadly we do not, so GMP is taken to better hose down packs. I’d keep a Faster Projectiles in your off swap to level it and switch it in for tough boss fights, though.

Gloves: Orb of Storms > Curse on Hit > Warlord’s Mark > Flammability/Enfeeble
Orb of Storms is one of the best curse-on-hit skills in the game, especially with a big fat AoE boost from Illuminated Devotion. The OoS AoE itself pulses lightning, while the chain-lightning bolts OoS generates can reach far beyong its immediate area and curse enemies completely off-screen sometimes. It sorta feels like playing Blasphemy except without having to give up all your mana reservation.

Warlord’s Mark does tons of work for you in this build. You leech both life and mana, and since you take damage against both life and mana, again – you’re basically doubling your ‘Life’ leech totals with dual leeching like this. You also get endurance charges, which stiffens up your physical mitigation. Secondary curse can be either Flammability, if you want to retain more resistance penetration, or Enfeeble for even more delicious defensive awesomeness. Both are blue gems – level both and use each where you think they’d help the most.

Boots: Cast When Damage Taken > Immortal Call > Arctic Breath > GMP
This ‘wastes’ the Illuminated Devotion life leech from your boots, but that’s unfortunately common with Heirophant. Relatively few builds get good use from both the elemental penetration and the leech. Oh well. C’est la vie. Since you have endurance charges anyways in this build, Immortal Call gets workable duration even without an Inc. Duration gem. Since you dislike Vaal skills, we don’t do the standard CWDT >IC >Inc.D. > Vaal Haste set-up (which would actually be really bitchin’ on an Incinerate build). Instead, we do Arctic Breath > GMP, which covers the area in chilled ground so enemies are slowed down, giving you time to react appropriately.

Main Hand: Leap Slam > Faster Attacks > Fortify
Use a scepter with spell damage or Fire damage rolls and you can still get Leap Slam going. Good map traversal, good mobility, great at navigating the Labyrinth, and Fortify gives more defense. Pretty standard, but standard for a reason.

Off Hand: Summon Stone Golem > Minion Life | (Something)
A stone golem with minion life in the shield is a meat(?) shield, some extra health regen for you, and otherwise mostly a luxury. You have the skill slots. Use them for whatever ends up floating your boat.

*********

Anyways. That’s the basic skill set-up I’d start with. The thing to remember is that your Tree and your Skills are things you develop concurrently. You get an idea of what your skills are (like this), then go to the tree and see what you can do to support those skills. Then see what else you can easily get on your tree, and go back to tweak your skills to better fit that. The more often you go through that tree > skills > tree > skills… cycle, the better your eventual build is.

Example:

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Coal48 a écrit :

I have no idea how much armor vs life I should get, so... here's the passive tree:

Spoiler

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAUCAE8E-d1DyIuMKyZYba79W6DAmgOaZDPsLqdVCap1KnwO2fxxYmjywGbwH3xLr2yt8aIAtoaWdAthGF3tIMaugpvE9q4-PC0MX5o7r6cn7XKpffVnm4Nfg8wcp-08HM4GDqyqVankUbc-U6XVpitQ1HxZ85e0m1j-Coha5CINzQn2GjhyD2oBMfvyRdi9XsCgQhps_lSQVXGFf-M1kp2uNuknL3rmXz_-j6cIA3UkqmP9Gj72SMEEFCDa3evukSsWb0bX8i98uIzPxFhVte8OmuCFMhzcWHfjaikuPfyezUWduJOPGl8EWGOnMFNSKPqfy5itga-40No6sQU64aZXTeNQRw==

For one, when you take bandits into account, this is a level 90 skill tree. That’s…ambitious, if doable. I generally find that planning for level 80, or possibly even 75, is a better idea if you’re shaky on a new build or working on a budget start-up for a new league. You’re also taking a number of nodes that don’t quite match your chosen skills, or which aren’t very high-return stuff and can safely be lost in exchange for more impactful nodes. You’re taking a lot of spell damage and elemental damage all over the place that you don’t really need. It’s easy to get plenty of damage scaling in your gear – some of the other things you’re foregoing in your tree are harder to get, and this build is intending to lean more defensive than offensive as it is. Try this:

www.poeurl.com/IJH

Still level 87 in total, so still more ambitious for a newer character than I like, but:

-4 of those levels are jewel slots you can forego until/unless you need them. One slot for a Clear Mind jewel is all you really need, which means the build is otherwise perfectly functional at a noticeably easier to hit 84.

-You can trade your Doedre’s Damning for an Elreon ring, due to pathing up to Whispers of Doom. Depending on your final mana costs, one good Elreon ring can replace a lot of Reduced Mana Cost in the tree. Incinerate, at level 20, costs 9 mana base. GMP > Controlled Destruction > Elemental Focus is a 1.65 * 1.3 * 1.3 mana multipler, ending up at basically 25.1 mana (another benefit of Illuminated Devotion builds – since all your skills are 4-links, all your skills are cheap!). If you can get a -8 skill cost Elreon ring, you need less than 70% mana cost reduction in the tree to get to 0 mana cost for Incinerate, which is the important thing to get to 0 mana cost on. Even a -6 or -7 require only 75% reduced mana cost in the tree. That would let you spec out of a couple of your smaller reduced-mana nodes and save a few points in the tree – my version is at ~80% reduced mana cost, which should be functional with any random -5 skill cost Elreon ring you can aug/regal/mastercraft for basically free.

-You get 226% increased armor rating, 8.9% passive life regeneration, and 210% increased life. You also get 0.2% extra passive regeneration for every Endurance charge you get, and between bandit reward and passive nodes you’re up to 6 max endurance charges. That’s 24% straight physical mitigation and another 1.2% regeneration when your endurance charges are maxed out, on top of Fortify offa Leap Slam when applicable. If you can’t break 8k life with 210% life in the tree and a Kaom’s heart, you ain’t trying.

-You get Elemental Overload! Since Incinerate can’t crit anyways but Orb of Storms is actually really good at consistent-but-small crits, Elemental Overload removes the crit multiplier you don’t use/care about at all and instead gives you eight seconds of flat 40% ‘More’ elemental damage for your can’t-crit-anyways Incinerate. That’s going to be a very big damage boost for the build, and helps make up for the ‘weakness’ of an Illuminated Devotion 4-link.

-You skip Unwavering Stance, as it hurts this build more than helps it. With 210% health and a Kaom’s Heart, stuns are pretty much a nonfactor – nothing is going to stun you outside of big fat uberbosses that don’t attack fast enough to take advantage of stuns anyways. That saves you a lot of points in the tree, and also means you can use a Stibnite Flask again. Remember – Unwavering Stance removes your ability to evade altogether, which means even blinded enemies hit you 100% of the time. A solid Stibnite flask is a much bigger boost to your tank-ness than Unwavering Stance.

-Order of Ascendancy Acquisition: get Divine Guidance in Normal, Sanctuary of Thought in Cruel, and Illuminated Devotion in Merciless. Normally I always want to go for ID in Normal, but your particular build is strongly predicated on free-casting Incinerate and you can only do that with Sanctuary of Thought. You really shouldn’t need the extra oomph in your skills from ID until Merciless anyways.

As for Conviction of Power? Don’t sweat it. If you ever clear endgame Lab, fantastic, but you don’t really need those power charges and you’ve got plenty of endurance charge generation already. You don’t need Endgame Lab points at all for this build, they’re a luxury you can easily skip. All the power charges do for you is make it somewhat easier for Orb of Storms to fuel your Elemental Overload. Frankly, if I were running it I’d go for Pursuit of Faith instead for more damage and cast speed, with a Decoy Totem somewhere for extra defensive awesomeness. Heh, you don’t do totems though, so Conviction works well enough.

"

Coal48 a écrit :

gear I'll aim to get:

clear mind (Cobalt Jewel)
kaom's heart (Glorious Plate)
Doedre's Damning (Paua Ring)

You should generally have a loose plan for your build’s entire gearset, or at least a plan for what mods to target. Certain builds (like this one) are less critical that way since most of your gear will be “whatever I need at this point” rares. Nevertheless, identify what your build needs and go for it.

This particular build is basically an armor build, though you’ll end up with some amount of energy shield anyways due to your Heirophant nodes. Focus on armor or armor/ES bases, trying very hard to get at least 1k armor on both your chest and your shield. I wouldn’t go below 800 armor, and even then only if the chest/shield is otherwise seriously baller. Until you get a Kaom’s Heart, of course.

Outside of the things everybody needs on their gear (life, enough resists to cap your elemental resistances, enough Strength/Dex/Int to use all your gems), you need +Maximum Mana since your mana pool is also a life pool. Mana Regeneration on gear is also really good for you for much the same reason. Getting +[X]% Spell damage, +[X]% Fire damage, +[X]% Elemental damage (NOT “Elemental Damage with Weapons”, that’s for attacks only!), or flat elemental damage added to spells on your weapon would all be great for offense. Unfortunately armor/ES shields can’t roll spell mods, but I wouldn’t use a spell shield on this build. Losing the armor from a high-armor shield compromises physical defense too much.

Shoot for the standard stuff (Life, resistances, what stats are necessary, movement speed for boots), mana, mana regen, and whatever spell damage you can find here or there. Since you don’t need crit, accuracy, or any really baroque requirements, the build should be pretty dirt cheap to gear up except for the Kaom’s Heart.

Hopefully that helps you not only get a good build rolling, but see some of the thought processes that go into building a good build in the first place. Provided this build is actually good – I’ve got a really good feeling about it, and would in fact give it a spin myself if I weren’t already trying to level a new Assassin here in the evening of Prophecy league.

Lemme know if there’s anything you’re curious about. Heh, honestly kinda fun playing build doctor like this.

This is getting rather long and useless.
The question in this case is simple. You can not use Abyssus + Tabula Rasa being melee and expect to survive confrontations with bosses if you're not good at avoiding attacks. That is all...