I’m enjoying a high fire rate very simple markman charcter.
I use penetrate/HOA to proc debuffs and rely on Detonating Arrow to deal most of my damage to bosses and mobs. I never really run out of mana so am probably losing dmaage in exchange for that, My focus is on stacking lighting damage but im still figuring things out.
It worked pretty well up until now. About half way through Age of winter and im starting to die a bit more often than before. My surviviability just suddenly tanks a lot and im trying to figure why and how to solve.
Any advice on improving this build (which im sure is easy for more experienced players to see as im still getting a feel for how everything fits together) would be appreciated.
The most obvious thing is that you have virtually no defense beyond capped resistance and critical avoidance.
You have essentially no dodge (a rogues easiest first layer of defense), little armour, no glancing blow, low endurance and health.
You are not using any skills like Smoke Bomb etc that can boost defensive characteristics either. Your skills are all/mostly offensive.
I.e. you are making a glass cannon but it doesn’t have enough dps to ‘kill before getting’ killed.
This is why you are feeling squishy as the content gets harder.
LE requires that you layer defensive abilities and they are generally more important than dps.
Besides getting more defensive affixes in place, I would suggest you refocus your skill choice to include more defensive options as a start. You should see much better survivability and then you can work on properly specing for offense
There is most definitely a lot to learn and it depends on the class you are playing too. E.g. getting Dodge on a sentinel is not impossible but its incredibly hard vs getting the Sentinels thematic defence: Armour. For a Rogue dodge is very easy but armour is less so (still good tho). The game specifically doesnt want you to tank all incoming damage so its important to layer the defences - to help each other out and act accordingly when playing the character.
This is especially important for things like Dodge which either dodges or doesnt so you can still get one-shot vs Armour which is more like DR on all hits or Endurance which applies only when your health drops below a threshold. Whatever your defensive options your very last layer of Health and Increased Health are like gold.
From a skill perspective, most builds have a fast no/low cost spammer and a nuke that matches the damage type (easier to stack a single damage type than many). Then there is usually a movement skill, defensive skill and utility skill. Its definitely not written in stone and there are builds that dont stick to this, but its a good/safe approach for beginners.
Good luck, lots to discover in LE and remember its not actually that hard/complicated once you figure it out.
Think of this game as a tank melee game that lets you pretend to be ranged sometimes
That should put you in the right frame of mind for gearing up a supposedly agile ranged character. My Markman ends up spending nearly all its time in melee range. It just gets a little bit of flexibility in that it can get away with mid range and still do damage and can kill trash at long range.
But fundamentally - it gear is heading firmly toward what in most games would be a melee tank whihc is depressing for those who like to play agile ranged, but it is what it is.
