Feeling like I am hitting a wall

Rogue
1

Good day!

As the title says. I am around level 57 and I feel like i am hitting a wall in game in terms of damage and damage mitigation.

My main skill is Detonating arrow (est. 6k dps.
I use shurikens for damage mitigation and smoke bomb to get more damage (8.7k with Detonating arrow).

I am pretty much in crafted gear trying to max out Physical, Elemental, Lightining damages as well as critical multiplier. Using Longbow and Idol setup to support these damage types (not fully, but trying)

On passives I focus on Elemental Arrows (4), Assassin Quiver (4), Storm Fletcher (5) and Concentration (4).

I know the dodge button and I use Decoy to avoid damage.

Not sure what else to do. I feel like i still can push trough the areas, but they are not as easy as before. and I die way more frequently. I just got to the Crystal Mines (Lvl 55). And I think I havent crafted any new equipment for past 5-10 levels.

fwiw. Im an offline character.

Edit: Link to build - https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Q9818aZA

2

For one, you say you are trying to max out “Physical, Elemental, Lightining damages”. This is probably one of your problems, you should focus on either Physical OR Lightning, not both.

You might also want to post your build so ppl can look at it to make suggestions on where you can improve. At least one way you can do this is by importing your character to lastepochtools.com and then posting that build here.

2 Likes
3

Hi, this is the build

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Q9818aZA

4

Ok, at a quick glance at your gear: ALL of your damage affixes with the exception of Cold on your bow is "% increased, and you’re not using Cold so that’s out of the picture. You need to be using almost exclusively Added (+X Damage) at this point. You will need to do that until you have enough that the “Increased” gives you enough to make a difference. For example, if you have 10 Phys dmg, the giving your self 10% Increased only gives you an extra 1 Phys dmg. If you instead give yourself only +2, you’re already ahead.

Pick up some new gear, either from a drop or bought from the vendor, and craft it in your forge to help you out.

As I stated earlier, decide whether you want to go physical or elemental and go dedicated in that direction. If you go elemental, then it’s much better to focus on only one element, lightning in your case.

I know others will have more input on your skills and passives, and they’re better at it than I so I’ll leave that to them. You will probably hear from them soon on here.

1 Like
5

Try to put a couple of points into Sharpshooter (Marksman passive) asap.
With 10 stacks, which are very easy to reach during combat, you will get a massive 250% increased bow dmg source helping you out with dmg early on. Also Snipers Gambit (passive) for alot of additional flat dmg that will get converted into your base lightning dmg from Detonating Arrow.

Having Silver Shrouds as a marksman is one of your best survivability. You can get it on Smoke Bomb and on a marksman passive (1 point into Arrow Storm, 1 point into Covering Fire)
Put 4 points in Ethereal Blades (Shurikens) for the 100% pierce otherwise you will lose your armour bonus when the shurikens hit a target.
If you have mana problems you could swap Acid Flask with Puncture or Flurry to generate mana back (even more with Sapping Strikes passive in Rogue tree). Therefore you have more dmg uptime with Detonating Arrow, because as i can see you only have 9 mana regen.
With Fire and Steel (passive) you can generate Elemental Arrows back quicker (with Puncture or Flurry) so that every Detonating Arrow shot has more flat dmg + %increased elemental dmg from that passive.

In the Detonating Arrow tree Suckerpunch Arrow will greatly boost your single target dmg. I would also go with either lighting tendrils (Arcing Blast) for extra clear or investing more points into Well Crafted for more explosion area.
AoE dmg is really important on marksman to clear alot of trash mobs before they reach you, otherwise you will shoot constantly to kill every single mob and that takes too much time.

Also Dreadthorn Bow is your best non unique choice for dmg. I would try to craft hybrid crit/attack speed, flat lightning dmg, chill and shock chance ontop of it. On your quiver i can highly recommend to get a bit of blind and slow chance. Blind will make enemies not able to crit anymore.

2 Likes
6

In this game you need to mix damage types. Flat Damage, +% damage, Multiplicative damage, crit damage (which is a mult on top of the other multies.) and don’t forget your armor shred and the appropriate defense penetrations.

7

oh, thanks for the tips. I adjusted my build slightly based on the suggestions you and @Travoas gave. I feel somewhat more than an NPC now. But still finding the right equipment is hard, A lot of gambling with changing affixes.

I now was able to kill Majasa.

I think I will re-start with a new char in the Cycle, and try out some other classes. just to see whats out there, before chasing monoliths

2 Likes
8

Playing Marksman is a thankless challenge.

You face all the problems of other classes in one place.

Do you want difficulty with mana? You have it. Do you want difficulty with damage? You have it too. Do you want difficulty with survival? This is the best place.

If you compare Marksman to other classes, it is currently the weakest and most annoying.

9

Funny you mention that. I asked Mike on yesterday’s stream what was his favorite underperforming mastery and if it was going to get some love and he answered Marksman and said it was indeed going to get some love.

10

Well, that’s good news.

I’ve seen someone on the forum mention that Mike was surprised that bow builds are so rarely used.

No surprise there, since those builds are total crap.

11

Your gear is very low, there’s massive amounts upwards left.

Remember one major thing: A single T5 affix has more power then 2 T3 Affixes.

See the ‘Barrage’ Node on the detonating Arrow? It’ll blow your mind in how good it is, the best possible defensive measure to take as it causes hits to cause direct damage rather then waiting until the arrows explode.

Obviously the nodes below the starting area won’t work well anymore, hence I recommend going into Lightning tendrils instead, they’re extremely good since they cause a lot of damage, penetrate resistances and also shock.

Next up, focus only on elemental damage, lightning to be specific with Detonaticn arrow. That’s the biggest aspect of damage and hence also survivability.

Next up: Flat damage on your bow is the most important thing. You’re lightning damage, not cold damage, hence go flat Lightning damage there.

Next up, Idols: Your right idol on the bottom (the small one) does nothing for your built, you could also leave it empty and it would do the same. The lightning one above is ok. Generally search for as many ‘Stout Lagonian Idols’ with flat and percentile health, 660 health is rather low, you can have fantastic defenses but if your base number doesn’t suffice even removing 75% damage won’t save you after all.
The others as well, try to find idols with 2 affixes which are good for your build, the majority has 1 and the other is a dead one.

As for one affix you need to direly look out for: Hybrid armour+critical strike reduction. Bringing this to 100% will half your damage you take through crits. In Last Epoch the range of damage enemies can do is nonsensical (a balance issue) between the upper and lower end. Together with doubling damage for a crit this can cause one-shots even with good characters in end-game through bad luck.

Next up, passive points:
You’re lightning, focus on that. Bleed stacks are useless to you (base tree), also try to reduce the points to 20 there until you have basically everything in the advanced trees handled. Especially the more bow damage multi with the extra explosion range from Detonating Arrow in the Marksman tree is massive for you.
Also take a look on the first half of the other mastery trees, you can put points in there. Bladedancer has ‘Shroud of Dusk’ which is a very strong defensive measure, heavily recommended.

12

I don’t realy like the skills that much either tbh. Multishot is fine in theory but everything else feels not that awesome to me.

13

Sadly also a dps downgrade since most dmg comes from mana stacking or arming time. You need the dmg to comfortably clear 200-300+ corruption.

Not worth it anymore since tendrils cant hit the same target from the explosion + you already recommend barrage for clear.

If you wanna play DA, go explosive trap proc. Self cast is currently not worth to play and Multishot/HoA/Blast Rain easily outscales DA.

1 Like