Why did I die?

[Heavy]

@srsnaxalot

I’d waited for Reaper Form to finish it’s cooldown before clicking to transition to the next wave. I had just finished wave 30.

As soon as the load screens for the transition to the next Arena map disappeared, I died. No time to do anything.

That’s definitely the best approach.

But you dying instantly, when you finish loading screen sounds very strange. Does Arena have particularly long loading screens?

I don’t know if it could happen, if your system is loading very slowly, that the first wave in the new arena does spawn already, while your loading screen is still up.

@srsnaxalot

What size of health pool would you expect at my lvl?

You should aim for at least 1500 Health. You are still missing some Health from level ups, but you don’t have any defensive layer besides resistances.
Resistances are not sufficient as the only defense.

1500 should be the minimum, you can easily reach 2500-3000 health with some idols, suffixes and passives.

I am currently not at my desktop, so I can’t give you in depth analyze.
But try to increase your maximum health.

Acolyte has insanely good idols for health.
Large Idols (1x3) can give up to 9% Health + 54 Health and you can fit in multiple of those.

Maximum Health will also tremendously help you sustain AoD, due to the Abscene of Life Node giving %missing Health.

I will try to give you some more specific suggestions, once I am back home on my desktop.

[Shrukn]

Lich, Level 97 (LE Beta 0.8.2g) - Last Epoch Build Planner

My AoD Lich if you want something using AoD as a damage source

[srsnaxalot]

Many thanks @Heavy. Look forward to more great advice. It’s clear that I need to push for more health. I was unsure from what I’ve read from the forums and the defence rework dev posts whether it was better to push for more health, armour, or ward as a secondary line of defence.

To that end I have a few spare prefix slots on some gear, and I was unsure whether to drop in some points of int or vit. Would adding vit be a good approach?

@Heavy

I don’t know if it could happen, if your system is loading very slowly, that the first wave in the new arena does spawn already, while your loading screen is still up.

On my system loading screens between arena transitions are only a few seconds and yes, the enemies were already spawned when I landed. Is this not normal?

[srsnaxalot]

Thanks @Shrukn - a useful benchmark. I’m intrigued about the shield rather than a catalyst - what’s your rationale? Or is it simply that you dropped purple +125 health?

[Shrukn]

Ive tried all sorts of setups over time, ive used Plaguebearer Staff and had a resting hp of 15% as I didnt use the heal node on AoD, used 2H rare staff, never used a Catalyst, not sure why you would? The catalysts give crit and ward per second which just melts immediately and im not sure if you can roll Healing Effectiveness % on catalysts anyway which was why I switched. The shield is pretty insane for this build for the rolls.

So a while ago I started testing stacking Healing eff, and was aiming for 500%, I think im at 400% in reaper form which allows you to just ignore hp regen completely which was odd as at first I stacked HP regen and had 215ish and could sustain AoD but you cant sustain the ‘drain hp’ in the lich tree so I gave up on HP regen

The next part of making this build work well is Deathseal which I didnt like at first but with deadlocking your hp at 33%, but then EGH added endurance now you switch on seal when you want extra damage from death wave/poison procs/damage boost and massive dmg reduction

[Shtrak]

@srsnaxalot

yes, the enemies were already spawned when I landed. Is this not normal?

I’d say no, it’s not. You’re supposed to react to telegraphs, so the game should not start popping mobs before you’re available. Maybe this should be considered a bug and reported as such.

[srsnaxalot]

Thanks for explaining @Shrukn - makes sense!

@Shrukn

never used a Catalyst, not sure why you would?

Food for thought - I need to think a bit more outside the box!

Edit: Also @Shrukn I noticed that you haven’t bothered with Critical Strike Avoidance. Do you mind saying why?

[srsnaxalot]

Thanks - will do.

[Heavy]

So i am home and took a closer look at your planner.

The basic take-away doesn’t change: Build more health.

I don’t want to be too harsh, because you are still at “early endgame”, so the gear does not need to be perfect.

But you do have alot of unnecessary affixes, like CSA on both rings, even though you use Woven Flesh.
You do have % increased dodge on amulet (which has literally no value to you) and % increased armour on boots, which has just very small value for you.

Your Catalyst still has an open Suffix. Switch over some other resistance from Belt, Boots, Gloves or Helmet to the Catalyst and get % Health or Hybrid Health on those piece.
You might consider using a shield, which baseline would make you a littel bit mroe tank and a shield also has “% all resistances” as affix.

Try to get Frailty on hit on gloves, relic or amulet.

Endurance doesn’t has much value if you invest just a little bit into it. I would completely ignore endurance for now. If you have really good gear later and are higher level you could switch to use endurance, but that’s optional. Maximum Health does scale way better with.

Gloves and Boot Base Types don’t have much value to you. Get Void Resistance Gloves and Cold or Fire Resistance Boots, to open up more idols/suffixes.

All of this would are just general suggestions of course.

Your issue, with mobs attacking you right after you leave loading screen still sounds very strange, but having better defense definitely could mitigate deaths from that situation.

If you want more tips or suggestions, just feel free to ask.
I tend to just give people generic suggestions, because after all it’s your character and you should try to come up with ideas yourself, how exactly you want to tackle specific problems.

But i guess with all the informations from this thread you should be able to make your character alot better.

But since you character is not even close to high endgame some of the suggestions i gave will come naturally, because we clearly can see that you are still in the initial gearing process.

Once you have decent bases and at least somewhat desired affixes you just need to refine your gear step by step.

Don’t put your goals too high. If you find a decent items that already can be a small upgrade, use glyphs of the guardian early to make it a very save upgrade, instead of shooting for the starts from the get go and trying to craft with glyph of stability too much.

Once you have a decent baseline, you can try more risky crafts.

[srsnaxalot]

Thanks @Heavy - really appreciate you taking the time to help.

@Heavy

But you do have alot of unnecessary affixes, like CSA on both rings, even though you use Woven Flesh.

May I trouble you with a question about CSA? I’ve only just gotten woven flesh and hadn’t got round to swapping the rings out. I’ve noticed though that, @Shrukn’s Lich, Level 97 (LE Beta 0.8.2g) - Last Epoch Build Planner does not have any CSA at all. Should I be planning to ditch CSA once Woven Flesh becomes obsolete?

[Heavy]

Before i answer your question one more thing i forgot to mention.

The lich passive “Ageless Ascetic” is almost wasted on your build, since your only “hits” are transplant and hungering souls. Not sure if that’s worth it.

So generally i would say CSA is not mandatory, but depending on how tanky you build, i would still go for it.

Using Woven Flesh until you get better gear is totally fine, but overall Woven Flesh is not a really good item. It’s just a very good item for how early you can get it already.

A body armour with health, % health, vit, int or some +to skills is way better.
Especially if you decide to go for endurance later down the line, acolyte actually does have the Immotal Plate Body Armour, which is really nice.

I would say if you have 2,5-3k Health you could skip CSA entirely, otherwise you should spec into it.

And CSA is one of those stats: Go all in (100%) or just leave it at 0.

[srsnaxalot]

Advice much appreciated

[Kehtnok]

One thing I don’t see mentioned here, but you can note if you take a look at @Shrukn’s posted build - Endurance and Endurance Threshold.

As @Heavy said you definitely want more health, and Acolyte is amazingly good at getting more health. But even more valuable imo for Lich is Endurance/Threshold. In-game has more detail but the gist is “Once your health gets below < endurance threshold > you have < endurance % > additional damage mitigation” (@Heavy mind correcting me if I’m missing some nuance there?)

Basically it makes you incredibly tanky at low-life, which with Reaper Form (and a delicious Death Seal) can be incredible. This is one of the reasons for not taking CSA, since having 60% (the endurance % cap) mitigation against everything is pretty powerful. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if Endurance mitigation sees some nerfing in the future because imo it’s incredibly strong (but maybe it has fall off, my Lich is only 85 or so).

Also, note the Aura of Decay node “Absence of Life”, which heals allies (including you) 12% of your missing health per second. (EDIT: My bad, I see you already have this node in your build, so you see the potential but it’s even stronger with endurance) This becomes extremely more powerful coupled with high hp and endurance/threshold. But of course this is all just one approach for a strong sustain build.

[Heavy]

@Kehtnok

One thing I don’t see mentioned here, but you can note if you take a look at @Shrukn’s posted build - Endurance and Endurance Threshold.

@Heavy

Endurance doesn’t has much value if you invest just a little bit into it. I would completely ignore endurance for now. If you have really good gear later and are higher level you could switch to use endurance, but that’s optional. Maximum Health does scale way better with.

The thing is, he is so early in his item progression going endurance already is probably not worth it.
Endurance is really good, but does require a high level of investment and only starts to get really good, once you have a certain level of investment.

@Kehtnok

As @Heavy said you definitely want more health, and Acolyte is amazingly good at getting more health. But even more valuable imo for Lich is Endurance/Threshold.

I definitely don’t want to downpaly endurance, endurance is amazing.
But for a AoD Build that uses Absence of Life Maaximum Health is waaaaaay better.

@Kehtnok

In-game has more detail but the gist is “Once your health gets below < endurance threshold > you have < endurance % > additional damage mitigation” (@Heavy mind correcting me if I’m missing some nuance there?)

That is very accurate.
One more thing that is noteworthy here. A hit can be partially reduced by endurance, if the hit will bring you below your endurance threshold.
This is very important, because endurances does protect against single big hits.

@Kehtnok

Basically it makes you incredibly tanky at low-life, which with Reaper Form (and a delicious Death Seal) can be incredible. This is one of the reasons for not taking CSA, since having 60% (the endurance % cap) mitigation against everything is pretty powerful.

If @srsnaxalot wants to consider using Death Seal, endurance would become alot mroe valueable of course.
But since i wanted to give ideas and suggestion on his current build, i considerd endurance as a defensive layer, that he might want to invest in later down the line, once he has a very good foundation.

@Kehtnok

Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if Endurance mitigation sees some nerfing in the future because imo it’s incredibly strong (but maybe it has fall off, my Lich is only 85 or so).

I don’t think so, Endurance does require alot of investment. And i mean alot.
We are talking 3 affixes/implicits(or blessings +1-2 affixes/implicits) for reaching 60% endurance and then another up to 6 (excluding shields) affixes to get maximum threshold.
So we are talking 7-9 affixes (+ potential blessing).

With Death Seal and a lowlife build this is definitely the best defensive layer, but if you are playing non low life, it’s not the best, it’s just one of many options.

@Kehtnok

Also, note the Aura of Decay node “Absence of Life”, which heals allies (including you) 12% of your missing health per second. (EDIT: My bad, I see you already have this node in your build, so you see the potential but it’s even stronger with endurance) This becomes extremely more powerful coupled with high hp and endurance/threshold. But of course this is all just one approach for a strong sustain build.

While endurance is not bad in conjunction with this node, stacking max health is superior.

You can easily reach over 3k health as a Acolyte. Which makes Absence of Life a True Monster of a Node

[Kehtnok]

@Heavy

@Kehtnok

One thing I don’t see mentioned here, but you can note if you take a look at @Shrukn’s posted build - Endurance and Endurance Threshold.

@Heavy

Endurance doesn’t has much value if you invest just a little bit into it. I would completely ignore endurance for now. If you have really good gear later and are higher level you could switch to use endurance, but that’s optional. Maximum Health does scale way better with.

Doh let me get my foot outta my mouth

Hmm… yea I’m currently leaning heavily into death seal + low life for Reaper Form sustain but thanks for the advice, I’m going to play around with trading some of that endurance for max HP and see how it feels. Also realized my Lich is only 76 (Spellblade was my 85ish one) so still tons of points to play with on that.

Yea I probably have a tad over-exaggerated view of endurance since I couple it with the Death Seal’s “Deadlock” to ensure it always puts me near threshold range + the crazy mitigation I get from Death Seal itself

[Shrukn]

@srsnaxalot

Edit: Also @Shrukn I noticed that you haven’t bothered with Critical Strike Avoidance. Do you mind saying why?

Yeah cant fit it in currently, however was doing Lagon timeline for Lightning res blessing, and then would move onto Age of Winter for cold res, so I can then drop elemental resist on my boots and 1 ring to exchange for CSA - it took a lot of gear shuffling to fit in those Coral Rings instead of Gold Rings. Also my Poison resist is lowered down to 76% from AoD when its actually 90+

I also chose the Poison shred instead of CSA so this character at best will only maybe get 40-50% CSA and its fine really because I am almost always in Reaper Form

I tend to aim for blessings I cannot get anywhere else. ie poison shred immediately boosted my damage over longer fight by a good 25%

My endurance is 59% which I need a 1% higher blessing, my endurance threshold is pretty much set to my deadlocked HP in deathseal. so I have 33% damage reduction + another 59%, the 33% can actually go to 48% if I drop to extremely low HP. what this means is you almost NEVER get knocked out of Reaper form when deathseal is up. Also Aura of Decay healing me for upwards of 500/hp second and all that leech. I can survive lagon beam as it passes through me for example

The main thing you always want is 33% of your HP to match your endurance threshold and endurance to be 60% - mine is 560 or something so im always receiving the reduction in deathseal

I tried to respond earlier but for some reason this forum only lets me post a few times a day saying im a new user but ive had this account for over 1.5 years

[srsnaxalot]

Thanks for drawing my attention to the role of endurance @Kehtnok. I’d read about it and hadn’t fully grasped the way it might play. Thanks again @Heavy for weighing in.

I’ve also been stuck behind the new user restriction @Shrukn. I was only allowed to reply to posts a max of 13 times in my first 24 hrs (despite lurking in the forums since January)!

Also, thanks for talking about your strategy vis-a-vis CSA and blessings. I’m still only early endgame so only have my first blessing, so this is really useful stuff.

I’ve played a fair amount of D3 and Grim Dawn but always stuck religiously/mechanically to build guides without every understanding the build synergies.

Am loving LE a lot. Partly because for the first time I get a sense I might realistically be able to (and want to) put the time in to understand the mechanics at a deeper level.

Following this conversation has been really illuminating. Thanks again all.

[elnawawi]

My build is indeed not up to date. I’ve not played LE long enough in recent patches to put together new guide (after defenses rework).

Though my own character can still do endgame content in current patch, without gear or skill tree changes. But I was deep in gear progression already.

My philosophy was taking full advantage of healing from AoD, coupled with healing effectiveness to have potent healing for the first few minutes after using reaper form (say 3 minutes is very good goal to reach, anything longer will make second health bar gets reduced so quickly). Then there’s also life leech, which only helpful if you are actively attacking and doing damage to enemies.

And ofc I build poison resistance higher than cap, because AoD can reduce my own poison resistance. And use some idols with stats like take less damage over time and similar stats to minimize self damage.

Currently the only thing that can kill me is damage types that I don’t have capped resistance against. Especially physical archers at higher waves.

I’m sure sharing my current build will not be really helpful, since it’s far from optimal, and can improve in every aspect. Current players already gave you way better advice… I just wanted to share my thought process with you, since you so kindly summoned me to your thread.

[srsnaxalot]

Thanks @elnawawi for the detailed reply and for putting your guide out there in the first place. Am thoroughly enjoying the play style, particularly the way the Lich slices through whole packs of trash mobs (and then hearing the clink of gear dropping in the distance as the DoT hits!!!)

I’m currently re-tooling my gear away from CSA into health, more health and health again. Fortunately I’d already got a lot of + healing effectiveness.

I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for an updated guide if you ever decide to do one!!