New Player - Looking for input

I've been playing POE for about a week now. I started with a toxic rain pathfinder and I'm finally beginning to understand better (relatively speaking) how things work, so I'm trying to plan my gem setup. I used some guides to do my skill tree, which is mostly +dmg/chaos/poison/life/avoid/resists from what I can tell, and am staying consistent with what the pathfinding ascendancy offers.

The problem I'm finding is there are like a gazillion TRP builds out there and nearly all of them use different gem setups.

I'm reading all the comments on the TRP builds and most of them talk about how this build is really great 1-50, and clearing exp mobs 1-80'ish, but bigger mobs and bosses from ~45-90+ are really hard. And nearly every reply is "You need more resists and hp regen."

Okay, so here is what I've come up with on my gem setup, and I'm hoping you good folks can tell me if you like it. I've increased survivability/durability against bigger mobs (I think) and only sacrificed a little bit of damage in the process.

I think this setup, along with my skill tree and ascendancy choices, plus adding as much resist as possible on my gear (trying to reach 100-125% in as many as I can) should make me able to take this char to endgame (I hope). Please tell me what you think.

6L-Bow
- Toxic Rain - Ga
- Lesser Poison - Gs
- Added Chaos Dmg - Bs
- Unbound Ailments - Bs
- Vile Toxins - Gs
- Life Gained on Hit - Rs

6L-Body
- Cast When Dmg Taken - Rs
- Increased Duration - Rs
- Summon Stone Golem - Ra [30-54 mana, 6s cooldown] - 1 minion who taunts and grants 33-105 life/sec to me
- Immortal Call - Ra [21-36 mana, 3s cooldown] - temporary invulnerability
- Phase Run - Ra [11-14 mana, 4s cooldown] - +movement/+dmg buff
- Enfeeble - Ba [24-50 mana] - enemy curse/debuff -dmg/-accuracy/-crit/-crit chance

4L
- Spell Totem - Rs
- Multi-Totem - Rs
- Faster Casting - Bs
- Wither - Ba [4-10 mana, stackable] - enemy curse/debuff -movement/-chaos resist (get's better as totems stack it up)

4L
- Herald of Agony - Ga [25% mana reserved] - personal buff grants +poison dmg/+chance to poison/summons minion that does good dmg
- Vicious Projectiles - Gs - minion will do a bunch more phys and chaos dmg
- Minion Dmg - Bs - minion does 30-50% more dmg
- Withering Touch - Gs - minion does even more +chaos dmg/+25% chance to debuff enemy with wither

4L
- Vaal Blight - Bav [30 souls/1 charge] - AoE enemy debuff significant -movement speed(3s hinder)/6s huge chaos DoT/enemies take +20% more chaos dmg while hindered
- Vaal Haste - Gav [50 souls/1 charge] - AoE personal/ally buff 3s of +atk/cast/movement speed
- Blink Arrow - Ga [14-20 mana, 3s cooldown] - creates a clone/minion of you in your spot, then teleports you ahead to your target arrow
- Increased Duration - Rs



And that's it. As you can see, the spells that cast on their own when I take damage create a really big defensive/damage mitigation/escape mechanism/+hp regen that should greatly reduce the squishiness of the build. The "Life Gained On Hit" with Toxic Arrow, which is pretty much being spammed constantly, is effectively around +210-315 hp gained per second (I'm using a Quill Rain bow) with super fast atk speed bow and +atk speed modifiers + 5 shots every attack at +21 hps gained per hit, there's somewhere between 10-15 arrows hitting mobs every second.

My only worry at this moment is my mana pool, I think. Auto-casting 4 spells for around 150 mana when I take dmg might be rough, especially if HoA is on at same time (-25% mana reserved). Then combine that with spamming Toxic Rain and fitting in Wither totems and Blight, and I hope I'm not forced to spam mana potions just to keep up. Anyone have any advice for this, I'd love to hear it.


So you experts out there... is this viable? Do you have any advice or tips for me with any of this? Did I screw up anywhere (which I probably did because I'm a noob)?

Thanks for any assistance.
Last edited by SkylerOG on Jan 26, 2019, 6:45:04 PM
Last bumped on Jan 26, 2019, 6:38:36 PM

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