How to handle reflect damage?

Hey,

Have a question about reflect damage. The title basically says it all, how am I supposed to handle it?

A link to my current build:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIBAF4B0QR-BbUILgzyDkgPqxGWFfAZjhrbIWAhdiP2JJ0k_Si1KaUqOCyFMHwx-jY9OdQ6WD7PQKBKfU4qUUdVS1b6WhpaSFuvYeJiWmegbWxte2_ycFJwu3DVdPF293fUd9d_K4bOhxmHdohrjDaNfY2_kAqVBZXpm42do565oJ-hIqGkokCly6c0p9Sqf6q4r-uxMLVItkG95sBRxKLKqdN-3BXdDeHb44TnVOd06xTtg-4O707v8PBC9Pj5Vvlj_Kv8xf7I

Currently I don't have any problems with elemental reflect anymore. Using LA-LL-LMP-added LD, which gives me no trouble at all (healing a bit more than is reflected).

The main problem for me is my single target physical dps. I'm using

frenzy-add fire dmg-LL-inc phys dmg-inc crit dmg

(stats are including 7 frenzy charges)
900-1860 physical damage
2.55 attacks per second
+-13k dps
36.9% crit chance
650% crit multiplier

As for armor, I'm sitting on 7532 armor with 45% dmg reduction (including aura).

I thought getting Vaal pact would help me outheal the reflected damage taken. However, it seems like my life leech is not nearly enough with physical reflect. A crit takes +-40% of my life away. Which can be quite dangerous if an arrow pierces and crits a second mob.

So my question: is there any way to actually outheal the physical reflect or do I simply have to switch to a 'more elemental' main attack to run around without being worried that I might kill myself?

Had to write this post in a short amount of time, so feel free to ask for any other kind of info u might need to help me out (gear or w/e). I'll provide it asap then.

Thx in advance!

Edit: Saw that a lot of ppl are recommending a 6L voltaxic to counter reflect. Might be useful to know that I'm fairly new to the game. This clarifies 2 things:

1. My build may not be perfect (I'm not following any online builds but prefer to make my own, even if it means it will not be the most efficient because there still are much game mechanics I need to understand better).
2. I'm using a 4L bow with +- 250 dps. I'm by no means able to buy a very nice 5-6L bow yet (a couple of exalts is all I have to spend).

Thx for the advise,

Just tried that out (didn't think about it, but had it stuffed in my stash somewhere).

My dps drops from 13k to 11,5k, which is not that bad I guess..

Also don't have a big problem with a drop of 1.5k if it helps me with physical reflect..

So this might be a potential solution indeed..

Any other tips?

Reflect is an end game issue when players finally reaches some good DPS amount (everyone starts from the DPS issue with survivability all along).
There comes the reflect issue that everyone encounters, there 's many ways to solve this.

1: The lazy voltaxic answer, I don't like this one because it means playing a broken item and adding currency to the global gear price. And this doesn't solve the "I shoot from afar, and couldn't see it was a reflect rare mob".

2: Playing Active Defense, Armoured Granite and Passive Armor. Don't forget that your offensive stats are 100% reflected onto your defense. If you have a good accuracy, or playing Iron Reflexes, you will most likely take a ton of damage from yourself because you have a good accuracy or Iron Reflexe.
Granite Flask itself provides 7-9k armor without any passives nodes with Armor (and this is what i Do).

3: Immortal Call / Cwdt Setup : This is my main anti-auto-OS-reflect defense along the Armoured Granite Flask (i use the flask for extended AA spam). You need to level the CwDT with Immortal Call gem to a certain level where the setup can save you before you kill yourself, it needs to last at least a couple of second indeed enough to kill the reflect rare monster.
You can take (minus other reduction stats) your HP total / 300 to tune the level of your setup (I have 4000 Hp so i locked the Cwdt & Immortal call to lv 13-14).
This would result in : lv 20/20% Increased duration - Cwdt lv 13 - Immortal Call 13/20%.
I use a double setup, because magic damage can also trigger this setup and brings a cooldown on your enduring cry (note that one endurance charge is WAY enough to save your ass during 2 second) AND spam the cwdt trigger and gives you a bad refresh of immortall call duration to 0.3 second which is deadly. My second setup is a 20/20 Immortall Call with duration along Enduring Cry maxed out.

4: Vaal Pact, absolutely a good anti-reflect keystone, I explained in many posts how chaos resist is supposed to be the end game resist. This is where it shines the most because you will run a Blood Rage 20% giving 10% life leech, I supposed you have at least 2 or 4% life leech on your gear (5% on amulet is not a hard point to reach to be honest). 55% Chaos Resist is a great number, reachable with 4 item slot with 25%.

5: Avoid Damage Spike you do, High level players knows that heavy heavy dps can kill yourself even with Vaal Pact because the amount of Damage is tremendous : Critical Weakness mainly or any other Damage Curse. Avoid Double reflect maps, nope you can't do them being a full damage char.


Current numbers from me :
*4000 HP
*2200 Armor
*1500 Evasion
*1200-3000 Damage with 75% crit (95%) and 800 Crit multiplier
*16% life leech from blood rage & gear
*Ratio 1:1:1:1 Physical:Fire:Cold:Lightning
*330 pdps Harbinger Bow.
*lv 14 Immortall Call setup

I do fine, reflect maps force the 6 th link to be life leech, not a single surprise killing me with reflects.

Thx rowlav for, again, helping me out

Lets consider the options.

1. Probably not affordable at the moment.

2. Sounds like an option, but I am worried a bit that P Ref maps will get me out of flasks pretty fast. I do have Iron reflexes. Removed it a while ago, but added it again since the reflect was oneshotting me if I didn't evade it. I fail to see how playing iron reflexes does more dmg on myself though?

3. I'm currently using CwDT-End cry-decoy totem-molten shell. However, I'm playing it at a lvl 5 CwDT gem, because I do not have enough mana unreserved to activate all 3 skills when the dmg barrier is reached. I haven't tried imm cry in combination with EC yet, so will definately give that a shot. I'm not in the 'luxurious' position to buy 20% quality though, but will definately try it out with increased duration.

4. Currently don't have any life leech on my gear tbh. I was under the impression that Vaal pact + LL gem would be enough to counter reflect. I will try to get some on rings/ammy though.

5. Thx for the tip. However, I was not under the impression that I made a full dmg char. The next couple of nodes will give me +200% life from nodes, so thought I was doing well in being 'balanced' between dps and tankiness.


Also, it seems a short term solution is using the quiver that converts 50% phys dmg to fire dmg.

This would give me the following numbers:

430-950 physical dmg

In that sense, lets suppose a 18% reflect with max hit (950). This would return 171 dmg to me (without any armor).

my total dmg from that spell, however, is 1150-2560.. So lets suppose I do minimal fire dmg, this would at least hit the mob for 1650 (950 phys and 700 fire). Since reflect would only account for physical, I would get 171 dmg from a non-crit. On the other side, the 8% LL account for all of the dmg done. So I would get 132 life back from it (.08*1650). Keep in mind that this is an 'everything goes wrong' situation and I'm not taking any of my armour (7.6k) into account. In that sense, if I did the calculations right (I'm sure you'll correct it somewhere :)),would the best short term solution be to use that quiver?

Also, I didn't take crits into account but am not sure if it would be relevant. A crit would basically mean more reflected dmg, but also more life leeched. Since the majority of my dps in now fire dmg (with the quiver), the LL will have more effect than the reflected phys dmg.

2: Reaching a certain amount of crit, recharging flasks is easy. On Reflect Maps you play Life leech over the Crit Damage Gem because its safe. IR doesn't deals more damage to you, it just skip the dex bonus with eva and force the grace aura play to be effective. You lose some total defense and damage reflected too.

3: 20% Qgem is not a "luxury", consider it a "end game" investment because this will never change. Saving a bulk of chaos is not killing anyone. And players tend to always skip mana management in their tree/gear, very lacking.

4: Life Leech is an option before you reach the end game, it lowers greatly the dps. You can't die off-reflect but this is not end game. Blood Rage and some life leech can deal with it. Just get it on amulet (5-6%), it is not that effective on rings/gloves (1-2%).

5: Iron Reflexe is a tweak in defense, not an upgrade of any kind (except for playing Unwavering Stance along with it) because you lose the Dex bonus, spend more points to get evasion & armor passives that could be more dps & health (I do play with a single granite, no problem tho).

Don't talk black gleam as a physical reflect solution, you need WED & Crit Mult with life on quiver.
Life leech & specific items are mid game transition.

2. Fair enough

3. Same as 2. Yea thought that saving some currency to get me a 5L/gear upgrades was a priority. I will c what every quality does and decide which gem has priority over others.

4. Only problem I have with blood rage now is that I haven't stacked a lot of chaos res. I've stacked evasion/resistances on armor to get me to a point where I'm above capped. Thought this will not hurt me in any ways since having an elemental debuff/equilibrium will not have too much effect on me in maps then. Getting the same gear + chaos resistance will be a bit expensive though. So I'll have to c whether I can get chaos resistance while keeping the same defensive stats or with a minimal downgrade on my current stats.

5. I know it is. U lose some dexterity which lowers effective survivability (since evasion is not rng). The only reason I'm walking around with it is because I'm still in some sort of 'exploration' phase. Continuing maps and maps, to c how far I get and c what kind of troubles I run into. So far, 73 maps are doable. On the other hand, this means that I'm often getting in situations which I'm not too familiar with. With that said, I prefer taking some (smaller) hits all the time over evading 2-3 attacks and getting a big hit. Although I understand the point ur making, these smaller hits currently provide me a 'warning'. And although it might not be the best solution, I think it works best for me in my current situation. When I'm familiar with all maps/mobs/dmg sorts etc, I'm guessing Iron reflexes (alone) wouldn't be my surv keystone anymore.

Fair point made about black gleam as well. Would like to argue about it, but I'm pretty sure u know what ur talking about a lot more than I do :p

So, considering the options I have now to go forward.

1. Getting granite with +%evasion and recharge on crit on it
2. Getting quality gems to help with dps + survivability
3. Getting chaos res to start playing blood rage and get extra LL from that

Think this would be the best option for now. Not sure If I have enough for options 2 and 3 though. Well.. pretty sure I don't, since 20Q gems are 1 exa each (at least). But I'll just have to see how important the quality on these gems are to make a priority..

Thx again Rowlav!

Edit: definately need some chaos resistance for blood rage first. Just tried it out - near death experience :p

Quality on blood rage isn not mandatory, and not mandatory for every gems. It is for super lategame where every % life leech can save your life or not on reflects. But Qual Gems is a definitive investment, so it is completely worth (and easily sellable).
About the IR topic, it's better for the cwdt setup to trigger once for a big hit, but again this is about defense tweaking. I don't like IR since the nerf to dex (I played IR with my all 22 first character, all class included) and many end game players tend to say that evasion (most likely with acrobatics but i don't play it with EB) is better (except for hardcore i agree).

"Improving has a cost, no pain no gain"

"

"Improving has a cost, no pain no gain"

Well said!

Yup, understand ur point. Again, thx for the info row!

Running with max level Arctic Armour on all the time. You can maintain this with Clarity and the Mind Drinker passive.

I'll still kill myself if I'm careless and spam my attacks but for the most part it's enough of a buffer to make me realize I'm taking damage and give me time to stop firing and adjust to elemental.

"

Rowlav5 wrote:

3: Immortal Call / Cwdt Setup : This is my main anti-auto-OS-reflect defense along the Armoured Granite Flask (i use the flask for extended AA spam). You need to level the CwDT with Immortal Call gem to a certain level where the setup can save you before you kill yourself, it needs to last at least a couple of second indeed enough to kill the reflect rare monster.

Quick question: Do you cast Enduring Cry manually or is it triggered somehow? I tried Immortal Call on Damage Taken for a while but it didn't seem to have any effect. Then I read it has to have Endurance charges in order to work.