[3.24] fezz's Toxic Rain Champion - Step-by-Step PoE Build Guide for Beginners & Casuals

Thanks for the tips again. I try to use them to fix my build, but as I said, I'm currently very resource limitted. I used the rest of my orbs in fixing to colors of my sockets. My flasks have been lacking of some suggested features for that reason. I have normal quicksilver flask with immunity to ignite, but haven't got enough currency for enchancement. I was testig the Rotgut, which I got recently, since it have much longer time of effect.

I did try my second best belt, which had 139 life in it instead of Wurm's molt, but I ended up being severely short of mana. The free amount was 64, and it was also slowing down my firing rate significantly. By allocating charisma, my mana situation improved and normally I wasn't performance limitted. However, in the middle of fight, I ended up having my flask empty and my firing rate slowed down.

What I'm doing wrong, is propably my habit to drink from mana flask perioidically. I have used to do it and in the middle of intense situation, I find it difficult to follow the the flasks and use them only when needed. I had one Stygian Vise, which had bad stats. I was able to get better ones, so I'll go with it and try to change my habit with wasting mana.

I have some renovation going on with my jewels, so that's why molten shell and some others are overleveled. I'm leveling them to 20, so I can make the quality trade to improve them. I have my second hand weapon full of replacements for my toxic rain setups, so this one I do in place, and suffer the consequences. Since I have to run lots of lower tier maps, that doesn't bother much. I'm very close to reach 20, and lower levels go up fast.

Yesterday I run maps faor about 8 hours, and didn't die once. There were lots of <tier 6 maps, but also rare and corrupted ones up to tier 12. Most of the times I did Viridian run, because it seems to be the best way to get at least something.

What comes to my playing style, I've been thinking do I suffer from some penalties for being in too high level. The monsters on my maps are at level 70-80, when I'm at 88 now. I don't like dying and I like to take challeneges. I'm typically careful when aproaching enemies and don't like taking risks. With my previous build, I got one-shotted too many times. I've been also thinking if my gear is not up to my level, because I level up pretty fast because of that style. Should I take more risks and die in order to keep my level low enough to get profit from lower tier maps.

When I run maps, I typically throw some curses and ballista's on enemies, stopping for short while to spill arrows with my main weapon. With larger and agressive packs, I throw ballista's in the middle, run around, stopping for cursing and shorting. When it's get quiet enough, I kill the rest and collect the stuff, which isn't much. I've been trying to find a way to shoot without stopping, but apparently it's not possible. I've also tried timed sequences on my mouse buttons, but haven't find anything I like. In delve, I have used curse and fire sequence on my right button, but it unnecessarily slow down shooting if enemies are already cursed. It is not good in normal maps. I had ealier setup with significant speed boost from friency charges. Then I was able to just run throught the tunnels, trying to guess where crawler was going, without monsters being able to touch me. If not including the strong bosses, if I die, it happens because I get caught in the middle of monster pack without being able to move. I have phasing, so I don't know for sure why. I've been suspecting it could be because of network latency. That's why I avoid running through dense packs.

Delving was one of my favours in lightening conduit build, but now it's not producing anything. I hardly never get currency or the items that show through my loot filter. Propably because weight have been shifted towards Viridian Underworld bonuses.

Yesterday confirmed me that whatever the reason is, I get practically nothing from low tier maps. Practically all I had came from 10+ Kirac missions. They are not problem for me, but if I do full Viridian round, I'm not able to handle blight encounter, since there are too many fast and resilient monsters that destroy the pump. My towers also don't seem to do much, as most of the monsters come with almost full life. From low tier maps, I get close to nothing from them either. Many times no oils, no currency byt just crappy stuff. I have followed recommended skill and atlas tree, and I have 55/115 map bonuses cleared.

I've been using Path of building since the start of my previous build. I undestand basic mechanism on damage and damage reduction, but there's lot of information missing and is based on guessing. Sometimes it also feels like I'm missing something, since some small change appeared to be bigger than expected.

I have been puzzled why you said my current DPS is around 800k. Currently Path of building gives me about 129k FULL DPS with all sets and flasks enabled. I didn't find any option to get bigger number. This is way les than my other build in this level, but I have though it's because this is chaos damage and typically because lack of resistance, it causes much bigger damage on eneny. Are you using some other metrics, which translates into inflicted damage, or what can cause this difference? When I import some top player toxic rain setups from Poe Ninja, they have around 800k-1.2M in level 100 and with really fancy gear.

Also, I was wondering what you said that my bow sucks, which I guess is true if thinking about using it on higher levels, but when searching from the trade place, I could get about 24% more DOT with 40C (which I don't have) buyig +2 bow gems and 20% chaos over time multiplier. For me, it don't seem that much in this stage, since the dps goes up quite fast anyway, and it don't seem to have much effect on my problems anyway. My jewel quality updrade gives more than that, and it seems to disappear into normal variation in monster strength. Is there something more dramatic, which don't show in these stats if I upgrade the bow, or is it just requirement for higher tier bosses? I'll propably have new bow quite high in shopping list, anyway.

Hey fezz! Your guide is great and made me progress the most I have ever done in PoE in a few attempts of trying to get into it.

But.. I feel like after buying multiple endgame items you suggest I feel weaker than I did with 1 chaos items I bought preparing for maps, what did I do wrong?

Hey fezz, it's great of you to answer all our nooby questions on here :P

I was wondering if you could check my build and advise on where I go next? I'm starting to struggle a bit for damage (and sometimes dying) on T14-15 maps. T11-12 feel not too bad, I can even juice them up with wisps a bit.

I'm working on trying to get 3rd wildwood ascend, getting some more levels to fill out the cluster jewel section, and getting gems at least 20/20 if not 21/20, but is there anything else obvious I should work towards?

Snaglet0es, I hope you don't mind since I took a liberty to spy your gear a little, since you are nice 3 levels ahead of me. Looking your stats, that confirms my suspicions that my gear is behind my level. You have almost 3x more DPS than I have and much better defences.

However, this raises some questions for me, since I have now been running tier 11 corrupted maps with full wisps without problems and I feel I could do much higher if I just had the maps. I have few tier 15, but I'm not that ambitious.

What interests me, have you already fight the Infinite Hunger in eater of the world challence, since that one really screwed me up few levels ago. I got a new invitation, but don't feel I could fight it anytime soon. If you have done it, how long ago it was and did you have any problems maintining life and mana. Mine were draining up like crazy.

"

Masteropii wrote:

I did try my second best belt, which had 139 life in it instead of Wurm's molt, but I ended up being severely short of mana. The free amount was 64, and it was also slowing down my firing rate significantly. By allocating charisma, my mana situation improved and normally I wasn't performance limitted. However, in the middle of fight, I ended up having my flask empty and my firing rate slowed down.

What I'm doing wrong, is propably my habit to drink from mana flask perioidically. I have used to do it and in the middle of intense situation, I find it difficult to follow the the flasks and use them only when needed. I had one Stygian Vise, which had bad stats. I was able to get better ones, so I'll go with it and try to change my habit with wasting mana.

I really don't get the mana issue thing. As explained before, you can mathematically spam your mana flask and you would almost never run out of mana - even in your hideout, without killing or hitting any enemies whatsoever.

PS: The free amount of 64 mana is absolutely fine and expected.

"

Masteropii wrote:

I have some renovation going on with my jewels, so that's why molten shell and some others are overleveled. I'm leveling them to 20, so I can make the quality trade to improve them.

There's no connection between your jewels and your gems (unless it's attribute-related, but given that you overleveld them, indicates that that isn't an issue). You can't make the quality trade with skill gems (anymore), so your plan wont work out. Even if, your plan would be bad ;) Removing your very best defensive layer in order to get one of your most less important upgrades is just not worth it.

"

Masteropii wrote:

What comes to my playing style, I've been thinking do I suffer from some penalties for being in too high level. The monsters on my maps are at level 70-80, when I'm at 88 now. I don't like dying and I like to take challeneges. I'm typically careful when aproaching enemies and don't like taking risks. With my previous build, I got one-shotted too many times. I've been also thinking if my gear is not up to my level, because I level up pretty fast because of that style. Should I take more risks and die in order to keep my level low enough to get profit from lower tier maps.

That totally depends on you. I, for example, have set goals which change. If I want to level up, I play safe, if I dont care about dying and only care about making currency, I play whatever and my defensive layers are my 6 portals :). It's a choice - at least if you don't play HC.

"

Masteropii wrote:

When I run maps, I typically throw some curses and ballista's on enemies, stopping for short while to spill arrows with my main weapon. With larger and agressive packs, I throw ballista's in the middle, run around, stopping for cursing and shorting. When it's get quiet enough, I kill the rest and collect the stuff, which isn't much. I've been trying to find a way to shoot without stopping, but apparently it's not possible. I've also tried timed sequences on my mouse buttons, but haven't find anything I like. In delve, I have used curse and fire sequence on my right button, but it unnecessarily slow down shooting if enemies are already cursed. It is not good in normal maps. I had ealier setup with significant speed boost from friency charges. Then I was able to just run throught the tunnels, trying to guess where crawler was going, without monsters being able to touch me. If not including the strong bosses, if I die, it happens because I get caught in the middle of monster pack without being able to move. I have phasing, so I don't know for sure why. I've been suspecting it could be because of network latency. That's why I avoid running through dense packs.

Normally, maps can be cleared without Ballistas. It's pretty much hit and run (literally!) until a yellow/blue pack comes along which might need 2 or 3 more hits with TR.

"

Masteropii wrote:

Yesterday confirmed me that whatever the reason is, I get practically nothing from low tier maps. Practically all I had came from 10+ Kirac missions. They are not problem for me, but if I do full Viridian round, I'm not able to handle blight encounter, since there are too many fast and resilient monsters that destroy the pump. My towers also don't seem to do much, as most of the monsters come with almost full life. From low tier maps, I get close to nothing from them either. Many times no oils, no currency byt just crappy stuff. I have followed recommended skill and atlas tree, and I have 55/115 map bonuses cleared.

I feel like you overreact. There's no way you get "nothing" out of low tier maps if you spam them. One important thing is, that you will only get GREAT loot (such as Divine Orbs) very rarely (depending on your clear speed), but your currncy wealth doesn't build up only due to these GREAT loot but all the small things (Essences, Contracts, Fragments, Scarabs, Oils etc.) which you can sell to increase your wealth in order to buy new items.

"

Masteropii wrote:

I've been using Path of building since the start of my previous build. I undestand basic mechanism on damage and damage reduction, but there's lot of information missing and is based on guessing. Sometimes it also feels like I'm missing something, since some small change appeared to be bigger than expected.

This comes with experience. The learning curve is pretty high and even players with 10k+ into the game learn soemthing new every now and then.

"

Masteropii wrote:

I have been puzzled why you said my current DPS is around 800k. Currently Path of building gives me about 129k FULL DPS with all sets and flasks enabled. I didn't find any option to get bigger number. This is way les than my other build in this level, but I have though it's because this is chaos damage and typically because lack of resistance, it causes much bigger damage on eneny. Are you using some other metrics, which translates into inflicted damage, or what can cause this difference? When I import some top player toxic rain setups from Poe Ninja, they have around 800k-1.2M in level 100 and with really fancy gear.

The reason is most liekly that you did not set-up your PoB properly. You are currently doing ~1.1M DPS. If you want to know how to set-up PoB properly, check out the Q&A section.

"

Masteropii wrote:

Also, I was wondering what you said that my bow sucks, which I guess is true if thinking about using it on higher levels, but when searching from the trade place, I could get about 24% more DOT with 40C (which I don't have) buyig +2 bow gems and 20% chaos over time multiplier. For me, it don't seem that much in this stage, since the dps goes up quite fast anyway, and it don't seem to have much effect on my problems anyway. My jewel quality updrade gives more than that, and it seems to disappear into normal variation in monster strength. Is there something more dramatic, which don't show in these stats if I upgrade the bow, or is it just requirement for higher tier bosses? I'll propably have new bow quite high in shopping list, anyway.

Sometimes - and especially in PoE - offense is the best defense. On top of that, you undererstimate how much additonal gem level scale your damage. For example, a bow like this would increase your damage from 1.1M to 1.5M which is +36% which is HUGE.

--------------------

PS: For me, it fells like you a) overthink quite a bit or b) make your own assumptions which are most of the time wrong. So my advice is to stick very very close to the guide in order to not mistakes AND try to grind more (I'M pretty sure you could have completed like 20+ maps while writing your comment :D). Time is currency!

"

SEMENTARY wrote:

Hey fezz! Your guide is great and made me progress the most I have ever done in PoE in a few attempts of trying to get into it.

But.. I feel like after buying multiple endgame items you suggest I feel weaker than I did with 1 chaos items I bought preparing for maps, what did I do wrong?

It's hard to tell without knowing what your gear was before and it obviosly depend on which content you run. For the most part, I don't see any critical mistakes in your setup. You just have to grind and upgrade your gear more and complete the milestones.

PS: Since you have a Curse on Hit ring, you don't need the Despair gem anymore.
PS2: What's up with your Vicious Proejctiles Support in your gloves?

"

Snagglet0es wrote:

Hey fezz, it's great of you to answer all our nooby questions on here :P

I was wondering if you could check my build and advise on where I go next? I'm starting to struggle a bit for damage (and sometimes dying) on T14-15 maps. T11-12 feel not too bad, I can even juice them up with wisps a bit.

I'm working on trying to get 3rd wildwood ascend, getting some more levels to fill out the cluster jewel section, and getting gems at least 20/20 if not 21/20, but is there anything else obvious I should work towards?

Your gear looks decent already and you already have the biggest investment done, namely your bow. So now it's time to minmax all other areas, like - as you already mentioned - gem level and gem quality. I would say the very next easy/cheap-ish investment woudl be a Malevolence 21/0 and a Determination 21/0.

All in all, this looks very good. Keep grinding ;)

It's hard to tell without knowing what your gear was before and it obviosly depend on which content you run. For the most part, I don't see any critical mistakes in your setup. You just have to grind and upgrade your gear more and complete the milestones.

PS: Since you have a Curse on Hit ring, you don't need the Despair gem anymore.
PS2: What's up with your Vicious Proejctiles Support in your gloves?[/quote]

Thanks for the reply fezz!

First of all, I changed a few things around,
this was what I had before I decided to ask for help, no other changes, except necklace which was just a basic life+res one compared to this one that also has chaos dot%:





As for the PS:

Yup, I know. I just forgot to take it out because I stopped playing for the day after doing a few maps.

And 2, because I had the unique Maloney's Mechanism, i put Vicious Projectils in there so I could swap it out for greater multiple projectiles if I ever needed to, but my dps was great so I never ended up doing it. I kept it there same reason as despair, your endgame setup recommends to use lifetap, but I have not had a single issue with mana so I skipped it completely.

Again, thank you for the reply.

@Fezz Thanks man, glad I'm not missing anything important - your guide is really comprehensive thanks so much. I'll be honest I watch streamers just absolutely vaporising everthing on screen instantly and I'm like, well why am I not doing that :P

I just had "one" more nooby question! I've ended up all with all AOE gems in my gloves, and there is a bench craft +1 to level of socketed AOE gems plus +#% area of effect, is that worth it over having +armor/evasion? If I knew how to use POB I'm sure I could probably calculate the improvement, but I find it stupidly hard to use.

@Masteropii - I just did the eater of worlds thing tonight, looked up a youtube tutorial and just went for it, died once. The hardest part is standing on all the circles for long enough before the big laser gets close. The video I looked at said it does mostly lightning damage and recommended a topaz flask, maybe that'll help.

In terms of maps - look up 'wandering path atlas build' - basically you get 100% chance for a monster to drop a connected map - I'm still missing a few but I'm swimming in maps now. Hope it helps.

"

SEMENTARY wrote:

Thanks for the reply fezz!

First of all, I changed a few things around,
this was what I had before I decided to ask for help, no other changes, except necklace which was just a basic life+res one compared to this one that also has chaos dot%:

As for the PS:

Yup, I know. I just forgot to take it out because I stopped playing for the day after doing a few maps.

And 2, because I had the unique Maloney's Mechanism, i put Vicious Projectils in there so I could swap it out for greater multiple projectiles if I ever needed to, but my dps was great so I never ended up doing it. I kept it there same reason as despair, your endgame setup recommends to use lifetap, but I have not had a single issue with mana so I skipped it completely.

Again, thank you for the reply.

I don't see anything that would explain the feeling of getting significantly weaker, to be honest.