Please help me beat merc lab
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I've tried like 5 times now and when I do not die to some random mob before the first Izaro fight, then Izaro 2-shots me.
Do I do something wrong? Do I have bad gear? If so, how can I improve it so I can comfortably complete it and get the 2 ascendancy points? Last bumped on Aug 7, 2025, 6:31:53 PM
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You dont have enough gearpieces with flat liferolls. Except for the helmet, all the other pieces are really bad in this regard.
It looks as if your were prioritizing armour as a stat a lot and its unfortonately nowhere near as good as you might think. Run determination aura (buy it in act3) instead. That alone would boost your armour a lot more and it might actually do something as a result. Next is your dmg output. I dont know how to phrase it other than: Its abysmal. Your axe is ok for where you are at, thats not the problem but why are you still using a 3l, when you have perfectly good 4l in your boots available? If you have to recolor the boots, use some chromatic orbs and do it. Next: Get some dps buffs going. Could be Herald of Purity and/or Blood Rage (both are act2). Get vulnerability curse in act3. In essence: Use the sockets you have availabe. You dont need the purity of elements provided by the amulet, which means the amulet is really bad and needs to be replaced asap. Same goes for Loris Latern ring. Why is it even there? Just for that little bit ele res? Cuz you dont ever want to be lowlife, so you never get to benefit from those things. Replace the ring with any other ring granting you some res, life and whatever else you can get. Those 2 items are not just bad, they are holding you back and making the build worse by existing... ;) You could do a lot more but those few changes alone should suffice to dunk on merciless Izaro. Edit: Where is your moveskill at? Grab Leap Slam, Flame Dash, Forst Blink or whatever else you like. You have to have some sort of emergency movement skill to gtfo whenever you have to. Last edited by Orbaal#0435 on Aug 7, 2025, 2:36:05 PM
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I'll buy those gems you've recommended, thanks. I basically haven't changed my gems since A4 or so, so it probably checks out that they're lacking.
What would be the best way to get a good flat life affix? This is my first league where I've actually tried to get into the game, so I don't know much about crafting my gear. I've been prioritizing ele res because just about everyone has been telling me how important it is to max them, so that might probably be why I kept using the inferior ring & amulet uniques. Last edited by Ondrashek06#5795 on Aug 7, 2025, 2:55:25 PM
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Res are important and you should always try to cap them, so you were told the truth.
That said: The %life nodes on the tree basically have nothing to work with, if you dont have flat life rolls on your gear. You should roughly be at 3k life as a melee build by now. So that right now is your most pressing issue. Your res would be mostly fine, if you were to unequip Loris Latern. You´d just need a tiny bit lightning res and thats it - assuming you havent beaten act10 Kitava yet. So check the vendors for rings with res implicits. If they already come with a good liferoll - great you are done. If not either use the crafting bench to add flat life or use alterations orbs and fish for life rolls. If you dont like either of those options, go to the trade site and buy some cheap rings or really whatever else you want. Spending some 10chaos total for upgrades in all slots except weapon and helmet would go a very long way and should your character improve massively. The latter option is by far the easiest and fastest available. Your call |
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" Ok, so I used your advice and found an amulet with a T1 flat life prefix for sale + a decent ring with ele res which I crafted flat life on. That got me to about 2.6k life with max ele res, which isn't the recommended 3k but it's much better than the previous 2.1k. I also reorganized my gems to prepare to put Sunder on my boots, however there's one issue - both of the DPS gems you recommended have a stat requirement I don't meet (int/dex). I'm sorry for asking about stuff too much, but I'm really enjoying PoE, it's just that I hit some roadblocks sometimes that I need help with. |
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You can craft stats like dex/int on your gear.
If thats not possible because you need more important stats, you can always pickup +30 stat nodes on the tree for the time being and get rid of those later. |
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For the actual Izaro fight itself: the movement skill is going to be your best friend. There are 3 times when you will use it:
1) When he leaps up and tries to slam you. This will happen if you are any amount of distance away from him. Dodge in any direction while he's in the air. 2) When he winds up to slam the ground: just dodge right behind him. 3) When he releases those green orbs. You might be able to just move out of the way of these. For all the rest of the time, you should be attacking and leeching. More damage will definitely help with this as Izaro won't get off as many big attacks. If you are in trade, you can likely buy a dirt cheap 5L (or even a 6L at this point) instead of relying on the 4L. Here's a trade link to cheap 5L axes. Sort by physical dps and buy the highest 6L physical dps you find (bonus if it has the double damage mod, not factored into dps). There's even some decent 6L axes on there for 5c or under.*Note: I made the search only up to 5c. If you have more chaos to spend, you can make it more expensive and get likely better options. But you probably wouldn't need better than something 5c for a while, especially if its a 6L. https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/JmRvJjRHl Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Aug 7, 2025, 4:33:18 PM
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I think you should be able to beat it with the gear you've got. Your tree is not optimal, but I also think it is good enough for you to beat it. You're also leveled enough to do it.
Without seeing gameplay the likely cause of not being able to beat it are: 1. Main problem, you're not utilizing skill gems, or support gems adequately. You're on a 3 link main skill, which is not so bad, but since you are struggling, you want to be on a 4 link if possible and since you have a four link on your boots, you should be using it. Four red will be better than what you have got, but if you really want to use close combat, it is not hard to roll that to 3R1G. Also you are using barely any other skills. You want some auras. Defensive aura option maybe Determination, flesh and stone, vitality. Alternatively offensive aura, which you probably want Pride, herald of purity, etc, anything that buffs your damage. Any aruas will be better than just blood and sand. You shouldn't be needing all your mana, especially since you have 2 mana flasks, as well as mana cost and reservation reduction on your tree. So reserve most of it. Also you want a guard skill, probably molten shell for this build, and have it linked to a trigger support so you dont have to worry about timing the casting yourself while learning the mechanics. It wont always save you, but it will save you some of the time. You're not using a curse, which is staple for pretty much all builds. Probably vulnerability, but there are other options as well. A movement skill. Unless you are in ruthless mode pretty much every one uses atleast one, and often two movement skills. I would say your build probably wants frostblink and leapslam. This is particularly relevant for doing lab. I'm not surprised you are finding it frustrating without one. There are plenty of other good things you can add as well, but that should be a start. Putting a bunch of that on should make your build double as strong instantly. (Possible reading through some of the thread that you are making changes currently, but looks like people are suggesting similar things, so hopefully some of this is useful. Path of building is also a useful tool for helping with your build. If you are not familiar with it, it can be a bit to learn at first, but it is very helpful.) 2. It sound like you are not very familiar with lab. Lab is difficult when you don't know the mechanics. If you are struggling with the traps, having a good amount of regen can help and bleed immunity on a life flask at least while learning. For Izaro, he does a lot of damage. Your build archetype can probably handle a hit from him if it is set up right, but it is pretty much all completely avoidable if you get good at the fight, so you don't want to be getting hit. You will need to learn the mechanics to be getting hit by him only rarely. The third room is the hardest, you can influence the difficulty with the encounters on the first two rooms. Lab also changes every day. Some days it will be easier than others. If you want more information about this, try this website, which also shows the layout, if you are having trouble finding the way quickly. https://www.poelab.com/ . It also shows other things that can be useful, like locations of shrines in the lab that can give you helpful buffs. Last edited by Belegur85#5784 on Aug 7, 2025, 5:02:36 PM
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" For 1, I've equipped both Herald of Purity as an offensive aura and Determination as a defensive one - however some random crap in the labyrinth still kills me in a split second. I've also rolled the boots to 3R1G and also use bleed support linked to Sunder. Regarding 2, I've ran like 20 normal labyrinth runs in hopes of getting VFoS (which I didn't get), so I somewhat know how the traps work in there - and I'm 99% sure that it isn't traps killing me, as their damage scales to the life pool and always provides time to heal. I've tried 3 times with the new gem setup and the instakill happened during all 3 times BEFORE the first Izaro, so it most likely isn't some kind of bad luck. |
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You still dont have a moveskill.
Get something like Leap Slam (act1) with faster attacks (act2) and put it in your helmet. Could also add lifetap to make sure it doesnt cost mana and you can leap around forever. Then use that to avoid all traps or at least try to avoid them. Traps dont deal flat dmg but %life dmg, so they will always be dangerous no matter how much life you end up having. Moveskills are the bread and butter in this game. Dont leave your house without one |
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