This game is kinda losin' me here

General
1

I quit playing PoE because you’re either full or dead. There’s nothing in between. Things either one-shot you, or they never hit you in the first place. That whole game’s meta is to meme on the game design by building 20 billion DPS characters that offscreen everything before they ever have an arrow fly at them, and to 1-frame a boss before they can even finish an attack animation.

Well, I’m feeling that with this game now. I’m not even high corruption, only at 438 right now. And I’m being walled by this Shade of Oro right now. My damage is fine. But apparently having 6k life pool just aint it. I’m being 1-shot by random desynced voidballs. Clearing maps goes fine, until a random… anything 1-shots me. I’ve had a single white mob do a teleport attack on me that did 2k damage, while I was looking at loot on the ground. Some rare enemies will tele-stomp me for 100% of my life pool. Some bosses will spam so many spell effects that I have to play the whole game offscreen - while they have reduced damage from distant players, AND increased life regen. I took 10k damage from the Boss Nemesis (atop the Nem tower node) when he did his whirlwind charge and my Teleport CD was down (god forbid). Which is another issue I have; if Teleport is down, I die to a threat, cuz Evade sucks. And threats can often come in way too frequently.

And not only are the spell effect spams obnoxious and pretty OP (that green orb will 1-shot pretty much without question, and other “telegraphed” spells are so subtle, you won’t see them amidst your OWN spell effects), but they also lack identity. It’s like Diablo 3, where every enemy just has an assortment from the same pool of spells. That part needs to be more inspired, honestly, but that’s a side topic.

Anyway…

Yeah, I dunno. My willpower is going downward now, and not upward. I enjoy the basic gameplay, but I don’t like getting PoE’d. I already quit that game, I don’t need another one.

2

I just started playing again after about a year off due to similar issues I had after finally reached Empowered Monoliths; Wengari Chieftans with their stupid Avalanches. I just reached Empowered again with my first character, but I’m cautiously optimistic that I won’t need a meta build to continue.

I don’t care about reaching 1000 Corruption, just want to at least reach Aberroth.

3

try a different build maybe. i’m currently playing shield bash forge guard and its super tanky. i’m lvl 95 and havent died on it yet. you get 100% block, 100% chance to stun so bosses/harbingers are perma stunned and dont even get to do any of their attacks. you just hold down right click until they die. simple 1 button build. no need for annoying skill rotations. easy regular abby kill also. you can facetank all his moves. only downside is that its a slow build but hey you cant have everything

can recommend if anyone wants to try something near immortal

4

Sadly, this is unavoidable in this type of games (I mean PoE-likes. Some old fashioned diablo-likes do manage to avoid it.)
Improving your build means delaying the moment when the one-shot will happen, but it WILL happen.

This is simply because our characters are way too strong. Any half-decent build restores full HP in a split second = monsters cannot two-shot you, you will heal to full long before they can land a second hit. Hence the feeling you have of “they either one-shot you or they never hit you”.
The only way to change that would be to redesign everything and go for a much slower playstyle altogether. Some games do. But in PoE or LE, I suspect it wouldn’t sit well at all with a lot of the players.

Plus “infinite” scaling also means that sooner or later, there will be enough damage to one-shot you. By definition of the word “infinite”.

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5

Hmm. Funny, because apparently I deleted half of my OP because it felt too long-winded otherwise, but the part that I deleted was that I think a lot of my frustrations come from the fact that I play Sorcerer. I know that I could, of course, play a Strength character and do much better. But that kind of defeats the purpose of having a choice.

Success in this game seems to be largely about finding ways to make any given stat scale in more than one way. For example, Snowdrift making my freeze rate give cold pen to frostbite. Or all of my talents that give me extra stats for Intel, like crit chance and ward threshold.

But I find that the things that Sorcerer gets are probably a bit lackluster compared to other classes. Hell, even just looking at default Intel versus default Strength, the comparison is WILD. Strength gives you 4% increased armor per point?!? That’s actually INSANE. One of the best parts about the relic I’m using is that it gives up to 16 Strength, which is 64% increased armor!!! That’s a whole t6 or t7 affix for me!!! Armor is hard to come by, which is why mine is so low, and is probably contributing to a good portion of my deaths.

Now compare that to… Intel??? I get ward retention??? That doesn’t even remotely compare. Ward is just so slow, in a fast game. Let’s even snap our fingers and pretend my gear is GFG status, and I have like 15k resting ward. Now some instant spell effect slams me for 10k damage. How do I fill up 10k ward in 1-2 seconds before the next instant spell effect slams into me??? Our primary stat as a Mage boosts the weakest form of survival, while Strength boosts the most sought-after universal defensive stat in the game.

Then if we look at Attunement, even us Mages can laugh at THAT one.

And apparently Rogues are considered weak as well, so we’ll look at Dex. Dodge chance is innately flawed in any game. It’s all well & good, until you end up NOT dodging something and taking full damage. Investing in it feels silly, because it gives you benefit until it doesn’t. In games like this, nobody dies to a thousand cuts, which is where the RNG of dodge would even out to actually serve as mitigation. In games like this, people die to a single hit, or a small burst of hits, and dodge stops this until it doesn’t.

My friend is playing Rogue alongside my Mage, and he’s found the most success by using Foot of the Mountain. Now his silly dodge stat becomes his whole health bar of 60% endurance damage reduction, and he just facetanks everything, lmao. The best thing he did for his character was undoing his character. He plays Foot of the Mountain and spams some fire breath ability at melee range. We joke about the fact that he’s a “Rogue.”

…

Yeah, I dunno, I think this game’s still relatively new, so the best I can do is voice my thoughts on things so far.

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6

Yeah, I hear you. I’m comfortable with that on surface level. The problem for me is that I know people go to 1000+ corruption, and I’m being one-shot at 400. (Let’s be honest, though, I get one-shot way before 400, too, but of course less often.)

Sorcerer is just so rough… I’ve tried so many different things, and none of it is good enough. I’ve done Exsanguinous + Last Step + Experimental, and had almost 7k resting ward, and I’d still get one-shot, or take big hits close enough together that whatever ward generation I had wasn’t good enough.

I’ve tried raw HP to rely on leech, that didn’t work out well at all because I had no endurance threshold (because it’s incredibly rare to get that, and most good sources are for everyone but Mage), and my max life itself was just too low anyway.

I’m now trying health + ward hybrid, using the dragon heart relic (forgot the name) for 8% of current life converted to ward on elemental spell use, and leech so that I maintain a full current health pool to make it generate max ward each cast. This felt pretty good for a while, but the fundamental weakness was that I have very low resting EHP. I require some slight ramp up before my EHP is about 6 or 7k, so ultimately, it’s probably not as good as the Experimental setup… which was already not good enough.

So I’m kind of at my wit’s end. I just don’t have the tools or resources to have an effective character.

7

I’m hitting the wall on my paladin build right now, I feel you. But I’m not done experimenting with trying to find the right synergies to make him better. I am at ~650 corruption and it’s really hard to kill orobys(sp?) now.

I’m not sure, but I feel that my paladin build is kind of unique.

  • I use a 2H weaver spear that has a bunch of spell dmg on it and after 9 hits will cast a random spell with triple dmg. So, I chose some gear & passive points to increase melee attack speed so that random spell gets cast more often.
  • I use Javelin with holy trail and stacked healing effectiveness so I can run around in my trail and get healed. Turns out holy trail does an incredible amount of dmg over time. This dmg over time is my main dmg output.
  • I use symbols of hope with that unique ring that triggers its effect. When I lose health below my endurance threshold, it kicks in with dmg reduction & ward. Really helps with survivability. Unfortunately, this does not help if you get 1 shot.
  • I use holy aura to further boost healing effectiveness for synergy.
  • I use judgement for the consecrated ground that also heals.

All in all, kind of a fun build even though I’m stuck now. I’ve come to realize that my health pool is really the problem with the 1 shots (I only have about 2.7K HP). I use evade a lot haha.

8

Get yourself the cleaver solution and you r ready to go :slight_smile:

9

Whats your chest? If you use 2h, get yourself titan heart, slan t7 max roll %hp into it abd u r ready to go! Gl&hf!

10

I’m not using titan heart, ty I will try that

11

Why would he need a cleaver solution?
He stated in another post that he doesn’t like and doesn’t want to play Ward… And, he has only 13 strenght. So… Cleaver will do nothing for him.

Apparently, he’s going all in for Freeze rate multiplier to scale cold penetration for his frostbite, health-based sorcerer. But lacks raw frostbite chance in the first place, not to mention he has only 2600 health with 1300 armor…
Again, cleaver will do nothing to change that.

12

Right, but could stack strght to be tanky if he is not enough. Just easy fix too squshiness problems.

Ps. If I were a developer I would nerf Clever solution and titan heart.

13

Block is OP and should be capped as armor and other mechanics. Some shields providing too easy sort of 100% block

14

Why is it OP? The DR in it has a cap, much like armor does. So even with 100% block chance, you’re still taking damage. It’s just another layer of defense.

Plus, you need to stock up on block effectiveness to reach the cap, so it’s not like it’s a free stat.

15

After playing a bunch of builds (with red ring and other things) I’m trying FG with shield, w/o titan heart, red ring and etc. And ~90% block overcomes all of them. With crappy 3.3k hp and 2% hp leech
And I’m not using Bastion or Mountain shields which may provide 100% w/o any +% items. So you can max BE with them

16

Yes, but there are two stats that are relevant for block, which is chance and effectiveness.
Block chance without effectiveness does (almost) nothing. You block 100% of the time but you barely reduce any damage.

Block in LE isn’t like in other games. When you block, you reduce the damage based on your total block effectiveness. And this stat is capped, like armor is. And to reach the cap you actually have to invest into a lot of block effectiveness sources, so it’s not free.
So even with 100% block chance, you will never take 0 damage.

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17

You cannot always faceroll Orobyss - but with your helath you should be.

18

See, as I said before, this is just demoralizing. I’m stuck apologizing for not having multi-t7 gear drop for me.

2291% character sheet freeze rate multiplier, before +600 from the Teleport buff, is a lot.

Weapon: 294
Offhand: 478
Gloves: 494
Belt: 151
Ring One: 344 (Font, by the way)
Ring Two: 330 (Font, by the way)

My uniques are low LP, and even then, I decided to use the merge to give them freeze rate above anything else, and I’m STILL told that I lack in the stat. Do you see the issue? It’s never good enough. I’m measured against perfect gear. That doesn’t make me want to grind it out to GET perfect gear, it makes me say, “This road is just obnoxious, and I’m being told that I am personally not doing a good enough job in the meantime.”

And while I’m STRUGGLING to TUNNEL VISION to have “good enough” freeze rate (which I’m always being told is way too low), WHERE, exactly, do you propose that I get more Health and Armor???

This whole situation is a total mess. Maybe everyone else is playing League + Merchant’s and can just buy perfect gear for 10k gold a pop?? But I’m playing Legacy because I don’t want my character to reset, lol. And because I’m playing Legacy, everything costs tens of millions of gold, so Merchant’s isn’t really a viable option. I’ve been Fortune for the bulk of leveling up, then I switched to Merchant to test the waters. It did nothing for me and seemed unapproachable (nothing I ever found was worth anything, while everything I wanted was giga expensive), so I went back to Fortune.

Fortune has given me everything I have, and yet, it’s still not good enough.

But whatever. Been down this road before. I probably just need to find a new game, because whenever a person suggests improvements to something, the community always collapses on them like a bunch of white blood cells.

19

I hate to tell you this, but “perfect gear” in the market is more like several million (not 10K). You can get decent, usable gear for 10K or less, but it definitely not perfect.

But I feel you, I’m also getting 1 shot by Oro. The only thing I can suggest is - don’t get hit. Evade a lot. Heal. But yea, it takes a miracle to get through a long fight and not get hit.

If you have really tried everything with your current build, the only option left is to change it and keep farming at higher corruption. Once you find the upgrades you need for your original build, you can always respec back to it.

Also - keep in mind that 400 corruption really isn’t that bad. Apparently if your build makes it into 300+ range, it’s considered OK. Sure, there are stronger builds that can farm 750-1000 but you don’t need to feel bad if your build isn’t one of those.

Personally, I’m determined to keep experimenting with different synergies with my paladin. He’s stuck at 650 but maybe there is a way I can get past it without getting the perfect gear. Think carefully about your passives & skills.

20

That’s because you don’t heed the suggestions given to you already.

Once again:

‘Gain % Ward for missing health’ Affix. Either chest or Gloves (Gloves are Experimental Affix). Strongest Ward generation possible with Health stacking. Otherwise why stack health in the first place as a Mage?

Crit Reduction is key! 24% is absolutely unreliable and far too little. You’re using a Catalyst, so use ‘Mental Catalysis’ in your Runemaster tree. Gives another 36%.

Are you focusing crit or not? Depending on that ‘Inscribed Instruments’ is a reliable option. If not then go for Scepters and get the extra War retention, 72% is nothing to scoff at.

Add ‘Spell Slinger’, it gives generic ‘Spell damage’ and hence applies to Cold, Lightning and Fire. Triple reward for a point with elemental Nova.

Add the last 3 points into ‘Sphere of Protection’, 3% DR is 3% DR, massive, always. DR is the most important method of defense since it works against everything.

Total needed points hence: 20.

Since you now have not enough point the following can be removed (give you go into the ward for missing health affix): ‘Transcendence’… kinda useless. ‘Chill to the Bone’, if you go into ward for missing health leech is a death-sentence, the penetration is not that important comparatively. ‘Arcane Insight’, at 100 Int it’s 500 threshold… which is basically nothing. Not worth it. 500 Threshold gives you… 500 more stable Ward, higher Health for more generation does a lot better. ‘Freezing Point’ gives you what? 200% freeze rate? That’s nothing, remove that, absolutely not worth it. 7 Points.

That opens up 26 Points.
6 points more then needed. Use those 6 for ‘Elemental Affinity’ in the Spellblade tree, that’s 18% ele res, you’re lacking fire and lightning res anyway. Also 55% ele damage, which once more… works triple since you use elemental nova.

Now to elemental Nova directly:
Are you direct casting or triggering through Frost Claw? I imagine triggering, so direct cast is useless for you, you always wanna do Ice Claw attacks hence. Focus on that hence.
If you actually wanna go into crit then use ‘Charged Destruction’. You can imagine crit-chance without crit multi as a 2% more damage multiplier beyond the ‘more’ multiplier since it’s multiplicative with that one. Far better then pure ‘more’ multipliers. That means each point is a 6% more multiplier at least.
So that means you need ‘Fiery Destruction’ too, giving 1,4% more per base crit. So each % crit is a 3,4% more damage then through that alone. Those 7 points provide at least 38% damage. (5 base + 1 from lightning nova + 9 from the extra base.). To get those 7 points remove ‘Spark Charges’ (5) and 3 in ‘Melting Nova’ since converting the shred chance is actually detrimental. Leaves you 1 extra point so you can put it into ‘Elemental Expanse’ to actually reach ‘Charged Destruction’.

Next up, Ice Barrage. You’re using that as a support skill with cooldown anyway. It’s not a permanent thing, it’s something to boost you hence. Means ‘Biting Cold’ is not really good. You can either put it into ‘Frigid Doom’ for more small freezing hits which causes enemies to do less damage through chill… or even better remove ‘Intensifying Cold’ too. 4 points free, 2 into ‘Frigid Barrage’ and 2 into ‘Subthermal Velocity’ for more supporting action.

Frostclaw: Remove ‘A Crack in the Ice’ to reduce mana cost a bit, instead go into ‘Brightfrost’ since you wanna cast it often for Nova. ‘Kolheim Ballista’ is also not really good since your Barrage is a support… you don’t wanna support Barrage but supported by it. Hence that point can go into ‘Rending Cascade’ for a bit of extra chance to actually chill.

Teleport: Your core damage skill is Elemental Nova, Teleport focuses in a branch specifically on using that. Also Mana tunnel is really detrimental for mobility, hence removing all those points there (10) can be used to go into ‘Resonant Plasma’ to ‘Elemental Affinity’ and further into the 3 Nova points. Minimum cost is 8. The last 2 can be used for ‘Flicker’.
If you wanna optimize it a bit further then remove ‘Time Dilation’ and instead go into ‘Flicker’ fully followed by ‘Wormhole’ to allow Teleport to be up even faster again, also it helps with barrage a bit to keep it up a bit more reliably.

I don’t quite know why you’re going into DoT damage as a focus given you’ve got elemental Nova as your core skill rather then direct damage. Already your Nova has a DPS potential of over 100k… mind you, Frostbite does 50 per stack and scales from there, the only multiplier you have is global Cold which does give it 60%, hence 80 base damage per stack. 15 stacks max means 1200 base at max potential and from there the % inc scales.
It’s really low actually.
Your build would do much more damage if focused on direct nova damage or a full built into ice barrage by removing the ice shield. Whichever you prefer. In that case you would use Glacier though for the Ice Vortex chance to create those and scale DoT off them.

You kinda got a weird mish-mash of half-working stuff.
So you gotta decide if that specific build with Frost nova should be your focus… or actual DoT focus with Glacier and Ice barrage for defense and ongoing damage. The mix is mediocre at best.

If you switch to direct damage then obviously the ‘Frostbite shackles’ can go, if not then at least focus on getting the experimental Affix on them rather then freeze multi.
Overall if you go direct damage you can fix up your defenses massively. Transient Rest for using your mana better to get some extra Ward, Eternal Gauntlets for more Armor and better DoT defenses. And since you can switch out your catalyst then you can actually put crit multi and ele damage on it, potentially fixing your res and saving up some points in the passive tree and even get more damage on your wand instead of the current setup.

If you wanna go freeze then switch from elemental Nova to Glacier and use ‘Age of Vengeance’ in your frost claw tree to enhance that. Glacier for scaling DoT damage, freeze rate multi, getting ice vortexes, ‘Perma Frost’ for more freeze and even moving into ‘Frost Blink’ potentially for a secondary movement skill making you basically a flickering mage which is always away from danger.

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