Can anyone give any advice/suggestion for how to proceed? Was blowing through normal monos pretty easy and was just doing the minimum amount to get to empowered so I could get better drops/XP/favor etc… However, now that I’m at empowered I have somewhat hit a wall. My dmg still seems OK but my survivability is god awful. My health just depletes way too fast and I’m dying a lot which means I don’t get rewards which isn’t going to help me gear up.
Do I actually have to go back to regular monos and grind more levels? I haven’t done any dungeons so is that a better way to gear up? Should I just keep bashing my head against the empowered wall until I get more levels? I’m not sure how to proceed.
For reference I’m playing Falconer. I was 78 when I hit empowered and I’m 80 now so I’m 20 levels below the empowered level. Not sure how much of my issue is from that or just poor gear. My resists are all capped except necrotic which is 58 (I think I can fix this but not sure this is the problem really). I have 1221 health, 32% endurance, 244 threshold, 72% crit avoid, 44% glancing blow (and health on glancing blow from passives), 1055 armor, 17% dodge, 25 vitality and 72 dex.
My health feels low and I would like to maybe switch more of my dex for vitality but haven’t really had the opportunity for that (which is why I was trying to get to empowered in the first place for better gear). Any tips? How do I get better defensive gear if I just keep dying?
Yeah. I mentioned that in the OP and even stated my health amount (and my concern about it) so not sure why you needed my exported build for that. lol. That was also part of my question…as to how to better gear up to improve it.
I’m not sure why you’re acting all huffy and put out about being asked to show the specifics of your character. Like, are you embarrassed by it or something? You can’t get more than very generic advice without showing exactly where you’re at. This is standard information to provide and be asked for when the question is “I’m having trouble please give me advice”.
In any case, the character export wasn’t for me, it was for the people who will eventually come to your thread that know Rogues better than I do and can give you more Rogue specific advice for build and/or gear. But you’re a rare case where every other problem with your character and gear is irrelevant compared to your Health being in the dumpster. So, get more health. It can be on almost every piece of gear and you have it on two. And I’m not really sure why you need a human being to tell you that the way to do that is “Do the content you can handle”.
I’m not “huffy” I just thought it was funny that you requested all this info only to make a simple observation from already provided information. If it wasn’t for you then fair enough but you were the only one responding in the thread so…
As for doing the content I can handle…well that’s how I got the shit gear I have now and the shit gear I have now is why I was trying to do empowered because so far I wasn’t getting what I needed. I also mentioned that I had not done dungeons and asked if that was a better option but if you don’t know or have no comment about it other than “do whatever you been doing (and so far hasn’t helped)” I guess we are just wasting each other’s time. Regardless, thanks for the effort.
For empowered monoliths there’s a couple of things about the defenses.
In order of importance for your class…
Health
Leech
Armor
Resistances
Stacked multiplicative damage reduction
Critical Avoidance
Glancing Blow/Dodge/Endurance
1221 health actually isn’t even that bad if your other defenses (especially armor and leech are high). You can drastically change this by getting health idols. Although, Health% / Health idols are usually overpriced for this reason. So if you are Merchant’s, I recommend going Health%/resistance or Health%/damage. You could also go armor/resist 1 square idols if you need really cheap ones.
Probably just this one change is enough to fix the problem as long as you can sustain with leech. It’s important to also get a cleanse. The poison and ignite damage over time can get comically insane. The easiest way is to get the “cleanse on potion use” for the belt.
But if you really want to spike your defense and you are getting a consistent cleanse through an ability, you could use the set belt (Isadora Tomb Binding) that has a high flat armor and a monsterous % armor up to 35%. The set belt is practically free to get if you are merchants and this is basically a defensive hack for early game (my mage still uses this in the highest stuff cause I use an ability for cleanse).
I also want to re-itterate the importance of Armor with Resistances. Sorry for math, this game makes managing damage easy but complicates things with defenses.
In Last Epoch resistances are pierced by default. So the moment you are doing Empowered Monoliths, all damage types are doing 175% damage to you. You are only able to reduce this damage to 100%. In other games you can reduce the damage from 100% to 25% resulting in a massive 75% damage reduction from max resists. But in Last Epoch reducing from 175% to 100% means you are only reducing the damage by 43%.
Meanwhile Armor when stacked up to about 70% will reduce physical damage by 70% and reduce non-physical damage hits by 49%. Gloves can be used to reduce damage over time if you really need it as well as amulet implicit if you are really desperate. But the truth is, you don’t need this much defense normally. 50% armor can be achieved fairly easily which reduces physical hits by 50% and reduces non-physical hits by 35%.
70% armor and capped resists
71% damage reduction from non-physical hits
83% damage reduction from physical hits
50% armor and capped resists
63% damage reduction from non-physical hits
72% damage reduction from physical hits
15% armor and capped resists
49% damage reduction of non-physical hits
52% damage reduction of physical hits
Difference in damage reduction between 15% and 70% armor with capped resists
1000 damage physical hit
170 damage on the 70% armor/max resist user
510 damage on the 15% armor/max resist user
This is a 300% increased damage taken.
Difference in damage reduction between 15% and 70% armor with capped resists
1000 damage non-physical hit
290 damage on the 70% armor/max resist user
510 damage on the 15% armor/max resist user
This is a 76% increased damage taken.
Difference in damage reduction between 15% and 50% armor with capped resists
1000 damage physical hit
280 damage on the 50% armor/max resist user
510 damage on the 15% armor/max resist user
This is an 82% increased damage taken.
Difference in damage reduction between 15% and 50% armor with capped resists
1000 damage non-physical hit
370 damage on the 50% armor/max resist user
480 damage on the 15% armor/max resist user
This is a 30% increased damage taken.
I’ll let the pros answer your question in detail but I think this is a factor. Not only because you are many levels below the monsters but also those are points in passives and skills that you haven’t earned yet. So, yea maybe level up a level or two the try again?
I’m kind of in the same boat, although haven’t started the empowered mono’s yet. And I’m 86. I’m doing the bosses in the normal 90 mono’s and dying here and there so I figure no point going to empowered until I can master the normals.
Yeah this definitely feels like a speedrun, cause if you do the campaign first and make a straight line for empowered you are like level 85 when you press the empowered monolith button for the first time.
I didn’t really speed run. I did the full campaign and all side quests. However, I didn’t do all regular monos. I just did the right side until I got to the top and completed those to unlock empowered. I also didn’t do any farming or grinding. I just did what was required to complete the timeline and move on. That put me at 78 in my first empowered mono.
I died a few times here and there but I felt it was always just from something I wasn’t doing right on a mechanic. After making an adjustment I completed it and moved on. My build is doing so much damage I think it has sort of masked my lacking survivability. Even in empowered I’m completing them I just have to play much more careful and dodge things much faster because my health plummets so fast if I’m getting hit.
Thanks for all the info. I don’t have a lot in leech but I am using the bleeding heart amulet with a generic 5.5% leech. That’s about the extent of my leech for this character. Maybe I’ll try to find more of that elsewhere. Since my build is doing pretty high dmg going for leech might make sense.
I’m not doing MG so I been trying to level up CoF but it’s been a bit slow. Only level 5. I rearranged some stuff that allowed me to equip the few health idols I had and add a health affix to a couple items but that still only gets me to 1440 health. In 80 levels I have only found 1 single hybrid health affix and not many %health affixes. Most are flat health. I know hybrid is rare but I don’t remember it being this rare. Not sure why I can’t find it.
I also put points into stymphalian feathers which scales armor from dex and I have a lot of dex (58) but this still doesn’t seem to be enough as I only have about 991 armor. I also already have a cleanse affix on my belt.
I guess I’ll just try to struggle through some additional levels and hope I get some upgrades soon.
So far as the bleeding heart amulet goes. Don’t! Right there are some missing defenses/offensive stats on a rare/exalted amulet with other pre/suffixes.
Here’s a fun trick. Swap to MG, at rank 1 you can buy yellow items with hybrid health on them for practically free (you just need to do a few monos for some favor) and then shatter them or rune of removal for the shards.
Yeah I had planned on upgrading that all along but to date had not really seen anything that looked good enough to give up the leech for. Will keep an eye out and maybe give something “lesser” a try when I find it even though that will leave me with no leech at all. Thanks.
