Need help on Trickster HoAg build

Hi guys, I'm currently playing a Herald of Agony Trickster, taking inspiration from Chromino's Guide https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3477280. But I can't keep up because of $$$.

The problem I'm having is that my build feels really squishy as I'm only at 3.4k ES. And I can only handle T16 maps (non juiced) so I'm not exactly sure what to do to optimize my build. I suspect it has to do with my armor but not sure what armor I should make.

Also, my current max stack of Virulence is at 70 so I don't find it "high dps". When soloing bosses, my max stack get up to around 35-ish with Cyclone.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

PoB: https://pobb.in/hHztPz31G3a-

Gameplay forum might be a good place for getting a responses on this topic.

Not familiar with the build but 3.5k es seems low. If your flasks are up its probably alright but are they staying up? I would of also thought replica rumis is a good option on this build, although the build guide is using the same on you are.

Seems like a bit of a glass cannon build. They are using adorned and your not, probably fine if you have accounted for the changes.

I don't see anything noticeably wrong with how you are building it on first glance. I think the build is going to be susceptible to physical damage on anything you are not destroying instantly. Don't know there's a lot you can do about that. There's not much wiggle room on your rare items. I don't see any eldritch mods, may be because they are not viewable on the web page but that might help. If you can get phys to ele somewhere or endurance charges. Might not be possible. What pantheon are you using?

I don't know alot about HOAG stacks, that might be one for gameplay.

Is anyone familiar with this build? I'm assuming that it's mainly having survivability problems from low e/s pool and not much physicals mitigation against large hits. Seems like it might be just a squish build in general though? I don't think OP has missed much on the build.

If heartstopper is down and it takes an unlucky spell phys hit it is probably going to get crunched.

Yes, your armour is too low, you use aegis aurora and miss pdr and es on block without ar. You have only 1/3 and less pdr.
You miss immunity to corrupted blood on a jewel, flasks have downtimes.
You miss ailment immunities.

As far as pob shows you have not enough mana to use your auras.

etc.

You deal only 5% of the damage of the build.
You put out 3M instead 65M damage the build does.

Start with a cheap skin of loyals and cheap small clusters for the mana-management.

Sounds like good advice to me.

There's also an extensive checklist for defenses on the build guide under the section "Checklist defences". It's quite extensive, 11 points, about 3 scroll pages. Have you checked off these points? Are there any that you are missing?

This build relies on quite a few layers of defense that combine, rather than 1 or 2 main defenses.

In terms of replica rumis, I think the reason it is not being used is because you would need to self cast to get a reasonable duration with enkindling rather than relying on auto flask enchantments. I assume thats why it is not used, but I would still investigate if its not putting you over block cap, its a fair increase to block values and endurance proc. This build doesn't seem like it has that many buttons. Maybe it's not smooth and reliable enough to justify over regular rumis.