LVL 85 Elementalist hitting wall

I used a crackling lance build from poebuilds.net and was liking it alot but since the last conquerors I am constantly dying and was hoping to get some tips on how to improve the build. Here is my gear and I hope you can see my skilltree on my profile? Char name is dairas.



Clearspeed is awesome but bossfights really give me problems as health regen is non-existent and i am having problems building intensity when constantly attacked.

Only have about 160c to spare.

thanks.

It seems you do not have maxed resistances.

For life regen stuff you can try to get an amulet with "x% of Lightning Damage Leeched as Life"

Also, added Lightning damage to Attacks (crafted on your amulet) does not work, as Crackling Lance is a spell and not an Attack.

It also appears you have about 190k(240k Convergence) dps on Crackling Lance, with Exposure and Shock (base) enabled, seems a bit low!

Could you please link me the poebuilds.net link, so I can check it out and backtrap that build in order to see where you "mess up"?

thanks for the tips. here is the PoB link
https://pastebin.com/ZmxqGhc5

i think the real damage comes from intensity buildup but its sometimes hard to do as you have to stand still. thanks for checking!

https://www.poebuilds.net/builds/witch/crackling-lance

Btw the build you copied is outdated, command of steel (anoint) was changed in 3.15 to only work for attack, not spells. The craft you put on amulet "lightning damage to attacks" also doesn't work for spells. Same thing for belt craft, it also says "with attack skills" so won't work for spells.

Generally I don't think it's a very good website for builds, they're full of bad ads and stuff.

The "I die when I try to cast my spells" is unfortunately a known issue atm and I hope 3.16 improves it a bit. One way to alleviate this problem is getting a shield with "recover 5% life when you block" mod. Glancing blows was nerfed some time ago and now you take most of the damage from blocked hits (65%) so recover life when you block helps to reduce the life drain from hits.

Less important, but also helpful would be to get a large cluster jewel with Doryani's lesson passive which enables your elemental damage to leech.

For damage you have to save up to get a 6-link, on a 5-link you can only go so far.

I would also consider using a diamond flask instead of silver to up your crit chance.

Also your POB is missing passive points, even if you picked Alira it's still 4 points off, check /passives if you didn't miss anything, unless you're deliberately saving these points for clusters? You should probably path to arcane potency on the tree for more crit.

that is unfortunate. hopefully i can still salvage this build.
today i have upped all my resistances to max (chaos is at 60% tho)

the belt now has increased mana, not good but better than a useless craft.

i will then exchange the annointment on the amulet or buy a new one.

this is my first league so i dont know why i am missing passive skills. i have non to set currently.

i used the silver flask because i was dying to physical attacks so much and thought this helps, it also gives me onslaught.

Your main issue right now is:

- Recovery (the means in which you recover your HP
- Single target damage

This is correct, right?

Which tier maps or content are you currently running?

i am currently gathering watchstones where i have 3 stones set. so the maps are around tier 10-12.

the issue is life regen during boss fights even though i use desecrate. also i just get killed before i can do any damage. i just run around to prevent getting killed but cannot do damage myself as i have to stand still to build intensity to really do any damage.

made some changes with the help of your tips and this is the current PoB now: https://pastebin.com/A1r0eiQG

I tried a few things, but it's very difficult to come up with a build that is not literal glass with Crackling Lance and doesn't cost your whole bank.

Crackling Lance has a low base damage. Yes, one could argue that if you include the built in Intensity makes up for it, but in practise this is difficult. It's great that it has a built in Intensity mechanic, but you need to stand still for it, which in PoE means certain death unless you have incredible defences.

Defences are in a broken state at the moment, because they increased pack size, lowered ES across the board, introduced new mob types, etc, without giving players (especially north of the tree) proper options to defend themselves. You need a very high investment in defences to take 1 cycle of damage (with 1 cycle I mean a pack hitting you at the same time) on top of good recovery mechanics. Lightning spells typically offer no defensive mechanics, like freezing.

Just having a high HP is not enough in PoE.

The best strategy is "Nuke them before they nuke you" and sidestep all attacks, which with Crackling Lance is difficult to do unless you invest multiple exalts.

While you might not like the following advise, I suggest you look into a different build capable of handling the content you do.

I genuinely hope someone way more competent than me takes a look at this concept and is able to fix it for you, because it's never nice to have a build not satisfactory while you like the concept.

What BrightDanny said is what I keep learning over and over. I keep trying to make an Elementalist build that has decent defenses compared to old builds I used to run (since I've been out of the loop for a couple seasons). Trying to be a self-casting Elementalist right now seems like a fool's errand. I can't stack enough damage to nuke bosses reliably and I can't build enough defense to dance around them. I mean I'm just a random PoE noob but making a viable self-made build wasn't this bad in year's past.