Keep Hitting a Wall

Hey everyone,

So I recently made a new arc witch and I am having a blast with it! The ability to chain from mob to mob from a decent distance away with decent damage is wonderful.

But sadly, I keep hitting this wall in a1m where I can lose 75% of my life with one hit from a blue mob.

In the spoiler below are my items.


In this spoiler below is my skill tree and a tree I'm working towards.


When observing my item set, I notice that I don't have very good +HP or +%HP gear. However, it seems that any drop I get does not challenge the gear I have at the moment.

So I've finally come to the questions I have for everyone.

1. Should I back track to piety or vaal in cruel, wear gear that gives %IIR, and hope for very good drops to help me or to sell?

2. Should I change my skill tree at all?

3. Should I just begin a new character and repeat the process until I eventually find good drops for my first two characters?

A3C/A1M is the standard place to hit a wall, but it's not insurmountable. It just means you need to start taking more care with your gear and gems.

Your skill tree is fine. You're finding that you can't find good enough drops to kit yourself out fully, and that is normal. Ideally you want to be buying some gear at this point. You have enough currency to afford it, I guarantee you. Just find some stuff with more life and resists, and a wand with a bit more damage.

The other problem is that you need to be using your mana better. You don't have Arctic Armour (which is basically mandatory for EB builds to survive). You don't have relevant auras (Wrath doesn't apply to spells, if you weren't aware, and PoL is really only useful in endgame when reflect becomes a real problem). You could be using Clarity, Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder and Arctic Armour, and you'll deal more damage and be a lot tankier.

you need to just get some better gear mostly. some of it is just straight bad for your character build.

-the atk speed on gloves and the X added damage on the jewelry do nothing for spells.
-you didn't even bother to aug your helm
-why invest in only es if your relying on self found and dont have the currency to invest in a ES build get armor and evas or hybrid es/arm or evas on your items. your getting 2 shot(and probably stunned alot) because you have no damage migration
-you shouln't need EB for a 4l arc
-also IIR is pointless if you cant stay alive to kill shit. prioritize staying alive and clear speed before worrying about drops.

"

Pemmin wrote:

-the atk speed on gloves and the X added damage on the jewelry do nothing for spells.

Thank you, I did not even know that. I assumed that lightning damage would be added to my spells damage, not just auto attacks.

"

Pemmin wrote:

-you didn't even bother to aug your helm

What do you mean?

"

Pemmin wrote:

-also IIR is pointless if you cant stay alive to kill shit. prioritize staying alive and clear speed before worrying about drops.

I have no problem with killing cruel level piety or vaal. Both are medium difficulty for me to do by just predicting what the boss will do next.So my question was should I just do boss runs with %IIR and hope for good drops that will actually help me.

Thanks for your input.

"

Pemmin wrote:

-you didn't even bother to aug your helm

"

What do you mean?

use an augmentation orb on your helm if your going to use it...it only has 1 affix

If you are going for HP build, you need HP (and probably a decent one, around 50-60 at least) on all of you gear. That, while maintaining your elemental resistances capped (think about chaos resistance, but probably a little later). Start buying stuff from people (poe.trade is a good place for that). Having blue items as this stage of the game is a absolutely not acceptable. :-V

ALSO:
If you really don't want to buy stuff, and all you have are blue items, makes sure to at least max them out - blue items can have maximum of 2 affixes (a prefix and a suffix). Your helm has only one. Use orb of augmentation on it, to add one missing.

And if you are taking EB, you most probably want Arctic Armour (AA in short). To get that, use Clarity and Discipline. You'll need some energy shield from items too, so items you want should look something like this:

These are acceptable at this stage of the game, and should do the job just right.

These are ones you should be aiming for in the map level of play. Energy shield is secondary thing to worry about - you only need enough to maintain your AA up, and be able to cast spells.

Resists, life and if you can the most energy shield you can get to maintain your AA. These come from my summoner, who happened to use EB-AA. Other items needs to focus on damage (shield, wand).

10/10 merciless helm

well im also new player, (1 month only), but the helm, and the wand ? ulalaaa.....

1) Whats your DPS shown on arc icon ?
(honestly you must be good on gameplay, i cannot imagine to go to 50 level, with equipment like you have....)

Dont tell me, you havent found yellow items, that are better then your current blue...
2) Do you know how to use jeweler orbs, chromatic , fuse on items, do you ?

3) what your current HP ?

4) how many chaos orb/vaal orb/exalted orb do you have curently ? (possibility to trade for better items ingame....)

5) do you have hideout ? any masters leveling ?

"

Ryan80053 wrote:

But sadly, I keep hitting this wall in a1m where I can lose 75% of my life with one hit from a blue mob.

I recommend to also use a wall, because one key to survive here is to make it nearly impossible for 95% of the mobs to hit you. Use a spell totem + frost wall + faster casting setup. Place the totem and spam Arc - most mobs will try to attack the totem, but become knocked back by the wall, so melees won't get into close range with you and archers+casters get knocked out of their attack range. The wall doesn't prevent spells from flying through, so you can still kill the enemies. The wall also won't block leaping mobs, but you'll still have enough seconds to react and not die.

Your wand is suited for this, because it has the needed RBB slot colors. Also because: You use Wrath but you don't attack. Spells like Arc or Lightning Tendrils do not count as attacks. Attacks are skills that require a certain weapon or physical hits done by minions like Skeletons or Zombies. Better put the gem into your stash for another character. Do not use too many spells, because this will result in a lack of defense.

If you do not want to buy the gems, just start a new character, eg. Templar is suited, because he'll get a few gems as quest rewards earlier in the game, that will also be very helpful for your Witch, like Decoy Totem, Tempest Shield and Molten Shell. Here is an overview of quest rewards by classes: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Quest_Rewards

"

But sadly, I keep hitting this wall in a1m where I can lose 75% of my life with one hit from a blue mob.

Especially at the point where you are now, this almost always is because of one thing: resistances. There's a huge penalty to resists once you move up to merciles. You need to get those capped again ASAP. And as mentioned, getting more hp from gear is also important. You're currently using a magic helm and shield. Those should be the first things you replace. Find any sort of decent rare with the resists you need and some hp and it should make a huge difference. You can probably buy some for a chaos or less that will easily get you through to early maps. Replace the rest of your gear as well whenever you are able. A better weapon is probably your next priority since it would boost your damage significantly.

Shouldn't take too much effort to at least get to the point where you can farm Ledge efficiently and that will let you get the rest of the gear you need to make it into act 3.