My shadow is too fragile :/ Help me figure out what is wrong with my build?

What AoE spells do you use versus mobs? Lightning Strike can be used with claws as well if you wish to pursue that route

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Invalesco wrote:

I haven't yet tried iron reflexes so I'm not familiar with it. Thanks for enlightening me though. But I do have a question. Are you a melee character? And without evasion,, don't u get hit all the time? And won't you get stunned? Especially since the previous patches have buffed stun?

Yes, I'm using claws melee-style. Yes, I get hit a lot. I mitigate it through life-leech, which works pretty well. I've only died once in Fellshrine/Pyramid runs since the update and there I got frozen, not stunned, although the principle is similar. I can see the benefit of Unwavering Stance but, for my build with life-leech at least, it's not worth going out of my way with those eight passive points to be spent. It's not necessary for a melee Shadow. If you go for it though you can pick up some of the other passives you can probably justify the expense though: Beserking (+15% ias), +armour%, reduced mana cost and Armour Master.

Artel, the basic choice is between melee (you go up close and hit 'em), ranged (you kite around enemies and hit them from a distance) and spell-casting (similar to ranged, only using spells instead of bows).
Melee with a pure evasion character can be hard, at least currently. I got my character up to level 46 or so and started hitting a wall as I was getting one-shotted to death a lot and couldn't deal with larger mobs very well. I experimented a bit with Acrobatics (still getting one-shotted) and Iron Reflexes and the latter really helped me out. It doesn't per-se cause you to take less damage, but you get to take it in smaller chunks over more hits and thus it gives you some time to actually "play". When you die after a single hit, there's nothing you can do. When you take it in smaller chunks, you can retreat after say half your health is gone and regenerate.

For AoE, I use Fire Trap as well. In my recollection it only started being really effective at later levels. So hang in there. You don't necessarily need to kill enemies with it every time but just wearing a number of enemies down can make your job much easier.

I had my share of issues levelling up too. Before I rebuild my character for the life-leech approach after the last update, here was my whining:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/36634

I am using viper strike and double strike.

After getting some HP nodes, switching from an hp regen amulet to a +max hp amulet, and switching in some pure evasion gear for some evasion + ES gear, my shadow can survive a lot better.

Now I'm still confused about whether or not I should get iron refexes. It's 10 nodes away, and that's 10 levels getting only dex while I could be getting other things like damage or critical.

I also need more int in the future for claws, but since I'm far from mana nodes, I might have to switch my +hp amulet for a +int amulet.

Depends on what you prefer and want to focus on. :)
If you think you'll at some point get to level 50-60 with your character and want to melee it, plan for taking Iron Reflexes. Look at the nodes that branch off the path you'd take to get there and see which you could incorporate so you're not investing 10 points just for Iron Reflexes but also for access to those other nodes.

+10 Dexterity nodes each give you +2% Evasion Rating plus the bonus to your accuracy rating. I know it feels like nothing especially when you can pick them up left and right but they're not completely useless.

Damage vs. survival is a tough issue. Before the last update my character was all damage, although not in any extreme build way. I did 1.3k DPS with Dual Strike but as I mentioned I got one-shotted a lot. 98% of enemies I could dispense with in one or two hits (depending on whether I rolled a critical or not), but if one of them managed to get a hit in before that... ouch.
Now I "scaled back" to 800-900DPS, instead putting more nodes into defensive stuff like Iron Reflexes/+life/+ev-or-armour and it's a much more enjoyable game for me. I can actually "play" it, with my decisions and movement/placement making a difference.

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ethone wrote:

Depends on what you prefer and want to focus on. :)
If you think you'll at some point get to level 50-60 with your character and want to melee it, plan for taking Iron Reflexes. Look at the nodes that branch off the path you'd take to get there and see which you could incorporate so you're not investing 10 points just for Iron Reflexes but also for access to those other nodes.

+10 Dexterity nodes each give you +2% Evasion Rating plus the bonus to your accuracy rating. I know it feels like nothing especially when you can pick them up left and right but they're not completely useless.

Damage vs. survival is a tough issue. Before the last update my character was all damage, although not in any extreme build way. I did 1.3k DPS with Dual Strike but as I mentioned I got one-shotted a lot. 98% of enemies I could dispense with in one or two hits (depending on whether I rolled a critical or not), but if one of them managed to get a hit in before that... ouch.
Now I "scaled back" to 800-900DPS, instead putting more nodes into defensive stuff like Iron Reflexes/+life/+ev-or-armour and it's a much more enjoyable game for me. I can actually "play" it, with my decisions and movement/placement making a difference.

I decided to go the Claw route with Life on Hit and Blood Magic (gem). I'm currently at level 36 and feeling a little brittle, but part of that is also my gear (need better gear for sure). Could you give me some pointers on where to go from here on my skill tree and if there's anything that perhaps I might remove?


My current skill tree:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQYAHW6o4ioRdGYvowyDMOlmEja4SjBCJVkLVtJialkjwa1asQ7DXJ9o116y-Nxj8nqPbE8gYm0HEvlwq3iSe8LQtoDNN9CHnkkHiAlmJYu_Ct-ODS0KltEcBJ0wuNedZRilrVqs67dArbrF21VCx0Gqlt3iyCbgwRcg6G2vF-uABwLsCIE871NMQfc8b3v3xWYx-z4jqP78fw7_c6fz

Here's my current gear as well:

Your gear doesn't look too bad for your level. Your Leather in particular is quite high evasion IIRC. More +health would help, but there isn't an obvious weak link there. Perhaps a better belt with more +health. The leech on both your rings is quite good.

For the endgame you might want to switch to leech based on % of physical damage instead, depends on the gear and weapons you find. Life on hit is better for stuff that does elemental damage, if you're going physical then % of PD is probably better.

For your passives - the right hand side intrigues me but I personally went another way.
For melee builds I'd of course recommend Iron Reflexes. You can't leech health when you're dead (or alternative,y when you haven't been hit yet and are still at full health).
Crystal skin and the nodes sound good, ambidexterity adds damage, as do the the one handed damage nodes at the beginning of that branch.

You said you feel brittle though so first thing you should pick up some +health nodes. You're two steps away from two such clusters, perhaps pick up the one on the right edge branch first as it'll also take you closer to Iron Reflexes. More health doesn't just add straight health, it also makes it less likely to get stunned/frozen/set on fire/etc. as that's based on the damage you're taking exceeding a certain amount of your total health. You don't need to pick up every single health node on the tree (I have picked up 8 for 8% each, plus Thick Skin for another 18%) but nothing keeps you more healthy than health. ;)

After Iron Reflexes I've had a great bonus from Leather and Steel. Since you come from the right and I came from the top it will probably cost a few nodes more to get there.
You could consider going along the outer edge in the direction of Unwavering Stance like Invalesco suggested earlier. There's some +health/health regen nodes there too (behind Golem's Blood) and some +Armour nodes north of Unwavering Stance. And reduced mana cost nodes which could be useful for skills/auras (those not using "x% mana reserved").
Could work. I'd love to see how it would turn out. :)

You're a bit short on +evasion% perhaps. There's still two at the top right including Nullification. The Energy Shield bit might not help you too much (it does stack with the Discipline aura if you find it though) but it's still 10% evasion rating.
I have only picked up 60% plus another 40% from the Leather and Steel cluster too though, so you're not too far from that.

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DeathTouch wrote:

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ethone wrote:

Depends on what you prefer and want to focus on. :)
If you think you'll at some point get to level 50-60 with your character and want to melee it, plan for taking Iron Reflexes. Look at the nodes that branch off the path you'd take to get there and see which you could incorporate so you're not investing 10 points just for Iron Reflexes but also for access to those other nodes.

+10 Dexterity nodes each give you +2% Evasion Rating plus the bonus to your accuracy rating. I know it feels like nothing especially when you can pick them up left and right but they're not completely useless.

Damage vs. survival is a tough issue. Before the last update my character was all damage, although not in any extreme build way. I did 1.3k DPS with Dual Strike but as I mentioned I got one-shotted a lot. 98% of enemies I could dispense with in one or two hits (depending on whether I rolled a critical or not), but if one of them managed to get a hit in before that... ouch.
Now I "scaled back" to 800-900DPS, instead putting more nodes into defensive stuff like Iron Reflexes/+life/+ev-or-armour and it's a much more enjoyable game for me. I can actually "play" it, with my decisions and movement/placement making a difference.

I decided to go the Claw route with Life on Hit and Blood Magic (gem). I'm currently at level 36 and feeling a little brittle, but part of that is also my gear (need better gear for sure). Could you give me some pointers on where to go from here on my skill tree and if there's anything that perhaps I might remove?


My current skill tree:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQYAHW6o4ioRdGYvowyDMOlmEja4SjBCJVkLVtJialkjwa1asQ7DXJ9o116y-Nxj8nqPbE8gYm0HEvlwq3iSe8LQtoDNN9CHnkkHiAlmJYu_Ct-ODS0KltEcBJ0wuNedZRilrVqs67dArbrF21VCx0Gqlt3iyCbgwRcg6G2vF-uABwLsCIE871NMQfc8b3v3xWYx-z4jqP78fw7_c6fz

Here's my current gear as well:

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i feel in a similar boat to you, i have a very similar (ofc) passive tree, but i have taken the defensive evasion nodes upto nullification and 3 of the easy life nodes rather than travel down right just yet.

survivability is horrific at level 36, making me honestly wonder if the build will make it. Once i get hold of a bunch more life i will switch to iron reflexes and boost life even more for the melee leech mods, but right now i die a tonne. I am seriously considering scrapping the idea of dual wield, purely because its way too tough to leech enough and much harder to play with the limited melee range. Compared to every other class where you just hold shift and click this is much more tricky, which i like.

I will persevere to level 60 though, hoping that i can jam enough life into the build to enable it to take a couple of hits before i leech is all back; looking like dual wield melee is too tough to pulloff with shadow though tbh, anyone prove me wrong>?

Thanks for the advice guys!

My build right now:
Passive skill tree build



For survival, I'm doing acceptable. I don't die much, maybe once every other map on cruel difficulty (though I'm sleep deprived right now which means my skill isn't as good as it could be)

Damage wise is okay, not that great. My dps is only around 150. I rely on poison and traps to deal the most damage. Spamming Double Strike does decent damage as well.

Mana is great if my aura is off, and okay if it is on. If my aura is off I can use most of my skills without drinking potions frequently, and with it on I'll probably need 1-2 grand mana flasks to keep on using my skills. I feel like the only reason my mana is tolerable at this stage is because I have a lot of regen bonuses on my equipments.

Going back to survivability, I get 50% damage reduction instead of 50% dodge chance. With my aura I have 60%. With my potion effect (100% increased evasion rating). I get around 74% damage reduction. Great for boss fights when I'm spamming mana burning skills.

Bingobill,

I've recently got to level 41 and I'm doing pretty good survivability wise. Dual Strike does 395 DPS. For AOE I went to Lightning Strike (It's great with GMP and if I pumped some skills into + lightning damage it would really be sweet--It does around 670 dps right now). I still use Whirling Blades, but I think its better for evading then destroying. Although, I might try Blind with it and see how that goes.

The biggest problem I see is that you don't have a "Life on Hit" gem or a "Life Leech" gem, which I think makes a huge difference, especially early on when you're so brittle and you can drop in health quickly. Keeping your gear upgraded is really important too. I may lose Blood Magic and switch to Mana Leech, but I'll have to run some tests first. A few of my gear pieces are nice, but the rest needs some upgrades.

Here's my current build:


And Here's my current gear:

ok, iv found a fix, im using bloodrage and being REALLY focused on not getting surrounded, i mean i 1shot nearly everything with flicker, but its very risky with the random movement/disturbing tougher clusters. I got some really good help and i find it quite challenging, which is inherently more rewarding. Mages and archers give me big trouble still, so i might go pop a linked LS with weapon ele/mana leech and maybe ele prolif to get weakening them before flickering the arse out of the remainder.