Where to go from here?

I am around 500 hours into this game, over many many years. Skipped multiple years and leagues in between. I come here asking for advice.

How do I figure out what my character needs?
How do I figure out what to chase for? What stats to craft? What uniques will benefit my builds?

I have fallen into the trap of guide following. I've reached the end point of where the guides are, and am floundering as to where to go from here.

I've checked PoE Ninja, and the builds there using the same main gems I have are completely different. The Skill trees, the uniques, even some of the stats. I am sure those builds are evolutions of mine, but key pieces are missing. Knowledge.

I've tried to use the PoB option of "Trade for this item" in which it gives weights for individual items as to, what I assume, is an upgrade? Is this the way to figure out what stats I should get next? Is there a better way?

I like the idea of crafting my own gear, all my items are hand made so far. Even if I were to buy, I would like to know what to get (and why).

Can anyone offer advice as to how to progress a character once the guides training wheels are done? Not specifically for my current build, as the issues will happen in the future. I like to understand and this game.. doesn't explain shit.

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Mabuz wrote:

I've checked PoE Ninja, and the builds there using the same main gems I have are completely different.

I love this about Path of Exile. The exact same skill can be built successfully in completely different ways.

I have the luxury of having a bunch of standard characters/uniques/etc that I can use to test a bunch of stuff. That helps me. But yeah I'm a bit of a PoB warrior. I find that program super useful and have spent 1000s of hours in it just exploring options.
PoE Ninja is great to provide inspiration/ideas and is better than many build guides imo because they actually built it, proved the build works.
I use PoE Wiki a bunch to search up and understand fundamentals in PoE for example Life leech.
I use PoE.db a bunch to quickly parse my crafting options / weightings on gear. I also use this website to see more detailed Boss information.
Finally I just google search and hope a relevant video or PoE forum thread pops up with a solution to a problem I've run into.

That's about it for how I make progress. I've never followed a guide to the letter... but instead I've took the basics and made it my own, then refined, refined, refined.

Good luck have fun and god damn I want that 4 flask Mageblood you got :)

Uprade damage: best way, no suprise, usually from the weapon. Maybe try to get a fractured base, usually very expensive. Fracturing Orb might be worth it but can be frustrating. Multimod craft on weapons is often good since good 6 mod weapons are usually very expensive. Other ways would be a cluster jewel, maybe try in pob what could be done there. They are kind of complicated, but you can copy a cluster jewel from the trade site into your pob and check it out. Other gear options would be gloves and amulet. There are syndicate options here like damage while leeching and cast/attack speed while focused(extra button for a cooldown).

Upgrade defense: Spell supression is powerful/often mandatory. Farm to buy fractured bases, there it is easier to roll and craft what you need on it. Otherwise max res(body armour implicit + tree) Chaos res. Check how many suffixes you need and how many slots you still have for additional suffixes that upgrade your denfenses there. Better base defensive stats from body armour(for example dense fossil craft to get high values and use life mastery on the tree that gives % for not having life mod on your armour) Crating 6 mod items is expensive, fractured bases are always good, if you play trade.

Uniques of course situational. Might be very good, might just be a placeholder for early league until one can afford to craft/buy good rares. Some stuff oyu might want corrupted with a nice implicit on it, but that can also mean the unique is way to expensive. Look for your build on poe ninja and see what others do maybe. Some unique jewels are very powerful, check on poe ninja what other people are using and why, of course a lot of that shiny stuff might not be affordable.
But to many uniques are usually bad if u are unsure.

Double check your passive tree if you are using to many travel points. Check on poe ninja if you are missing something or if there might be a more effecient way.

The best guides are usually from hcssf players if you are not looking for a multi mirror giga juice farmer and they often have crafting advice aswell in the notes.