Hey Eragon, thanks for the build, for a new player like me (who's lost in general) havign such a detailed guide helps out a lot.
At the moment I am only level 72 and being really new to this game I havent figured out the ropes of the currency system yet. So it's kinda hard for me to get all the really good and expensive items but it still is so much fun to play, I will keep playing it till the end of the season no matter what. Having said all that, I would appreciate some help with my current setup.
I am getting all sorts of weird numbers on PoB. For example I have no idea why I have a Poison DPS on my Frost Blades... I got no clue why I am being one-shot sometimes (I invested as much as I could to +life items) at regular white maps close to my level, whereas other times I just face tank mobs... I don't even know why MS feels like it does a ton more single target damage while playing it, when the numbers on PoB simply dont back it up...
I am ready to be taken to school, I am most likely doing a horrible job of following the guide =) (or playing the game in general to be honest)
If and whenever you have a couple minutes, I would appreciate a look at my character. Thanks in advance!
P.S: I know I am not exactly running the links you're suggesting, it's cause I am still leveling the gems. In the meantime I am using the ones that give me the highest possible dps
There are two nodes next to "Brutal Blade" that each give 10% chance to poison on hit. That's where your poison is from.
Spoiler
You're being one shot because that's just the way this game works right now, unfortunately. You'll eventually get to the point where you can probably absorb most one-shot attacks, but depending on the mods of the map (ele dmg/-max res/certain curses/extra monster dmg/etc) there's always situations where you'll pretty much instantly die. You can't always just expect to sit there and facetank. Abyss mobs are really bad for this, they do a LOT of physical burst damage, most of their big attacks are telegraphed, but not always. The more you level your character and increase your life pool and just get used to the way the game works, the better you'll get at avoiding instant death.
PoB is a great resource because it gives you a better look at your actual damage vs the tooltip damage you see in the game. Tooltip damage only scales on gem multipliers, it doesn't account for things like elemental penetration and some items/skills are just straight up broken. What you want to be looking at in PoB for molten strike specifically is the projectile, or "magma balls" damage. There's a dropdown under where it says "Main Skill" that you can change which part of the skill you're looking at. You'll take that and multiply that by your number of projectiles, and that's approximately your actual dps. Plus the primary attack, but most of your damage is going to be projectile related. That's why we get nodes like point blank, because the projectiles fall so close to the character, their damage more often than not gets multiplied significantly.
PoB will also help you optimize your damage based on support gems, if you look in your "skills" page and click on the skill you want to optimize, there's an option that says "Sort gems by DPS." If you do that, then click on a gem for example Added Fire, it will give you a list of the gems in order of DPS that could possibly be better. For this build, in pretty much every gem slot Elemental Focus will do more pure damage so it will be at the top, however it prevents ignites which gives us the Her Embrace bonus, so we don't use it. Concentrated effect will not be listed as a good gem for the "melee hit" part of molten strike, but it'a huge dps boost for the projectiles. Play around with the settings in the calcs screen too, becuse PoB will account for elemental penetration, and most bosses and a lot of rare mobs will have ele resistances. Penetration is very powerful in this game for single element ele builds. (and now even multi-element with shroud of the lightless)
As for your character specifically, 73 is still pretty low level in this game. Most builds really don't start to shine until the mid-high 80s/low 90s when the tree is mostly complete and you can wear/afford good gear.
So just keep plugging along and it will get better.
Hey zoinkjr, thanks A TON for taking the time to look at my character and reply in such detail. I think you covered all my questions and the tips regarding PoB I did not know about.
I am having so much fun with the build, I will obviously keep playing it and get to the early 90's with it, it will definitely do much better with a higher level. I assume since you did not mention anything regarding my gear that I am not doing something blatantly wrong. Already have the perseverance belt in my stash (requires lvl 78) and I am always keeping an eye for the more expensive items, should be able to get a Kaom's heart or a Xoph's amulet soon...ish (half way there :) )
I play SSF and I'm currently level 86 but die very very easily with 5600 life, 200%fire res and Vitality, Bloodgrip amulet... i need some levels on my gems and last lab, but this Jugg feels so squishy... i don't know how to fix it ;s
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Looks like you switched to slayer, but some of this will still apply.
Looking at your tree/char the first thing I see is you're using a lot of nodes that say "melee critical strike chance." These are not desirable for this build, or any MS build, as they don't apply to molten strike projectiles which is where most of your dps comes from. It just makes your tooltip look better. If you're struggling to clear with frost blades, just use molten strike with ancestral call and you shouldn't have any issues. Swap out for fire pen for bosses. Once your dps is adequate it won't matter that you don't have the melee crit and frost blades will clear fine.
As for defenses, if you're running blood rage with her embrace, that can be a lot of degen to deal with. You may want to forgo frenzy charges, or consider green dream/nightmare to generate them.
Also if you switch back to jugg, don't use IC as you want to keep your endurance charges up for the continuous phys mitigation vs. a short period of immunity.
Slayer oni builds are still good, but it's harder to get the crit you need for MS without the scaling of accuracy/oskarm of this build, or going up into the shadow area where the rest of the global crit nodes are.
Yes, I'll change certain things, switched to Abyss league to get challenges, migrated all SSF chara! Thanks man!
