i am at a loss

hello everyone

i am at a total loss. at this point in time i have almost a 1000 hours in poe1.
until now i have not been able to get past 2 void stones
i have never been able to farm t16 reliably let alone know how to run it comfy enough to actually chill and grind (dieying)

the game has always been to complex to make my own build and it frustrates me
every expansion its the same thing that i look at build guides and dont know what to pick
i dont know at end game how to progress my character further even with a build guide i get stuck all the time. my survivability is not great or its health or resistances or damage. even all the basic stuff seems harder for me to understand sometimes

i tried playing rf with phox his guide but then i get stuck during bossfights to do good damage so i can end them and i still die for who knows what reason

i am at a total loss

i feel i cant really play this game ever to a point i will enjoy endgame and finally get my 4 voidstones. kill maby an uber do some endgame hard content but all i am doing is stuck in lower tier maps and just dont know how to progress ever. even crafting is so complicated and it frustrates me all to much even though i love the game so much i just cant get there in the end

and when i ask for help they boost me or give me gear i dont understand what or how so i get stuck with that gear a bit later because i dont know how to upgrade

i really need some proper help but i have no idea at this point how
plz dont make fun of me this is actually serious. i am at a loss and with the new league aproaching i am feeling the same empty feeling i am gonna be again in the same boat like i am since the last 10 expansions or longer. is there anyone that can actually maby help me out with helping me understand the endgame and all the diffrent complexities. or have a chat with on discord or something. i have watched countless videos i have read phox website through and through but still to no avail.
is this game just to complex for me?

ow and poe2 on a sidenote has not faired any better

Try Gladiator: block is very forgiving in this game and gives you room to learn most of the dangerous fights. Lucky Block is very strong. Use a Paradoxica for a weapon and whatever melee skill you like, then get some shield with "recover 5% of life on block". Don't need to "craft". Even with low damage, staying alive will help you learn the game and is far more important until you feel comfortable.

"

falfool#6286 wrote:

Try Gladiator: block is very forgiving in this game and gives you room to learn most of the dangerous fights. Lucky Block is very strong. Use a Paradoxica for a weapon and whatever melee skill you like, then get some shield with "recover 5% of life on block". Don't need to "craft". Even with low damage, staying alive will help you learn the game and is far more important until you feel comfortable.

do you have a build guide maby for next league that would suit this playstyle that is beginner friendly ?

Learning how to be tanky is easier than understanding damage in this game.
Tankiness in PoE is like an onion. You can't choose one layer of defense and think that will be enough, you need the whole onion. The easiest setup for me is as a duelist, and I go for:
- Balance between evasion and armor. Around 20k each (favour evasion over armour, armour is just for small hits just to avoid dying when you get unlucky).
- Aspect of the crab (works really well with high evasion).
- 100% spell suppress chance (spell suppression is, in my experience, the number one defense against 1-shots/random deaths).
- Physical damage reduction on body armour (and shield if you have it) and physical damage taken as fire/cold/lightning on anything you can get.
- 5K life minimum.
- Block chance can be helpful, but not all builds can get it.
- Bleed and corrupted blood immunity (flasks, masteries, jewels...).
- Elemental ailment immunity (if not, at least freeze immunity and less effect of shock).
- Immunity to burning ground is advisable (pantheon, boots...).
- Fortification and endurance charges if your build allows it.

Damage is a different story. Depends on the skill and type of damage. The most powerful builds are unlocked by a specific synergy between unique items or damage modifiers.
It's important to know what to look for and focus on those sources and avoid trying to add secondary sources of damage to the mix that don't synergyze with what you have.

The best way to learn all this, in my opinion, is to use Path of Building. That app shows you what can increase your damage and by what amount. It helps you optimize your build (it can show you a "heat map" in terms of dps on your skill tree, it can sort uniques depending on how much dps they'd add to your build, etc). Also, looking at the highest damage builds for your skill in poeninja will help you realize what uniques unlock your particular build.

Also, know that MORE damage is far stronger than INCREASED damage. Getting increased damage might feel a bit underwhelming (unless it's something really high) while stacking crit or frenzy charges can be far more significant. Learn what has a higher impact in whatever build you prefer using the forementioned tools.

Hope that helps.

"

dutchy666#4559 wrote:

"

falfool#6286 wrote:

Try Gladiator: block is very forgiving in this game and gives you room to learn most of the dangerous fights. Lucky Block is very strong. Use a Paradoxica for a weapon and whatever melee skill you like, then get some shield with "recover 5% of life on block". Don't need to "craft". Even with low damage, staying alive will help you learn the game and is far more important until you feel comfortable.

do you have a build guide maby for next league that would suit this playstyle that is beginner friendly ?

In addition to the excellent post by Broadsword above, something like this would be comfortable for me for reasons I'll explain below so that you understand what people may look for when building their characters (and better understand the game): https://maxroll.gg/poe/pob/n4f8a0li

It's a melee projectile Gladiator with sword + shield using Molten Strike with critical strikes for damage, and Blood Magic/Petrified Blood for reliability and comfort.

- Immunity to elemental ailments via Purity of Elements (accessible from level 24)
- Immunity to other damaging ailments: bleed via boots (bench craft plus a few eldritch orbs) and poison via mastery and any evasion-base helmet
- Immunity to burning ground via pantheon
- Immunity to corrupted blood via abyssal jewel
- Blood Magic bypasses mana requirements. Your skills will always be available when you need them, like Frostblink and Immortal Call. Rares that have Mana Siphoner mod don't do anything to you.
- Overleech via Petrified Blood, which makes most other non-ailment degens easier to deal with
- Molten Strike is great because it hits often, and makes "life gain on hit" effects very powerful to give you "burst" regen. This is relevant when you're actively fighting a monster that chunks your HP, you will be instantly regaining it. You get some of that via the "5% of leech is instant" mastery, and wherever you can stack this stat.
- Good melee strike range because of sword, which is one of the most annoying downsides of Molten Strike to me.
- Explosions from Gladiator will make your mapping more fun. You'll almost always apply bleeding before killing enemies, even if you deal lightning damage because of the Cornered Prey cluster.
- Reasonable uptime on all charges: frenzy via sword mastery and block, endurance on block, and power charges via Assassin's Mark.
- Rotgut gives you onslaught for a long time since you can use frenzy charges. Makes you fast in maps.
- Thunderfist is accessible on trade/softcore and can carry you through non-uber content. It gives a ton of flat damage, which is needed for Paradoxica. It's stronger now with the Runegraft of the Bound (POB doesn't show this but I've tested it myself when it was introduced.)
- You don't need a 6-link. Kaom's Heart is cheap. Paradoxica can be anything, although the one I picked is probably the best.
- Life flask is very strong because you're always on low-life due to Petrified Blood. You can also pick the pantheon for extra recovery from flasks when maps don't have "burning ground" patches.
- Good flask uptime via watcher's eye when you can afford it. You hit very often with molten strike, it can keep up your elemental flasks, which will help you during Sirus, Uber Elder and Shaper fights. If you pair it with flagellant/gain charges when hit, you will have near-full uptime. You can also get this mod on a Hunter belt but you said you don't like crafting.

Reasonable to assemble on trade league and fun to play if you like melee. ~2M damage is enough to get 4 voidstones because you can survive long enough to understand what's dangerous, how to react, etc.

It might be less orthodox than builds you'll find online or on YouTube, but it works well enough for HC in my experience so maybe you'll get good mileage out of it as well.

"

Broadsword#0971 wrote:

Learning how to be tanky is easier than understanding damage in this game.
Tankiness in PoE is like an onion. You can't choose one layer of defense and think that will be enough, you need the whole onion. The easiest setup for me is as a duelist, and I go for:
- Balance between evasion and armor. Around 20k each (favour evasion over armour, armour is just for small hits just to avoid dying when you get unlucky).
- Aspect of the crab (works really well with high evasion).
- 100% spell suppress chance (spell suppression is, in my experience, the number one defense against 1-shots/random deaths).
- Physical damage reduction on body armour (and shield if you have it) and physical damage taken as fire/cold/lightning on anything you can get.
- 5K life minimum.
- Block chance can be helpful, but not all builds can get it.
- Bleed and corrupted blood immunity (flasks, masteries, jewels...).
- Elemental ailment immunity (if not, at least freeze immunity and less effect of shock).
- Immunity to burning ground is advisable (pantheon, boots...).
- Fortification and endurance charges if your build allows it.

Damage is a different story. Depends on the skill and type of damage. The most powerful builds are unlocked by a specific synergy between unique items or damage modifiers.
It's important to know what to look for and focus on those sources and avoid trying to add secondary sources of damage to the mix that don't synergyze with what you have.

The best way to learn all this, in my opinion, is to use Path of Building. That app shows you what can increase your damage and by what amount. It helps you optimize your build (it can show you a "heat map" in terms of dps on your skill tree, it can sort uniques depending on how much dps they'd add to your build, etc). Also, looking at the highest damage builds for your skill in poeninja will help you realize what uniques unlock your particular build.

Also, know that MORE damage is far stronger than INCREASED damage. Getting increased damage might feel a bit underwhelming (unless it's something really high) while stacking crit or frenzy charges can be far more significant. Learn what has a higher impact in whatever build you prefer using the forementioned tools.

Hope that helps.

Wow thanks for the awnsers here all of you now about pob
I dident know it can do that there seems to be more i dont know about the program. I have no idea myself but ill try that. Also the whooe damage types and how they work confuses me as well but ill keep it in mind.

"

falfool#6286 wrote:

"

dutchy666#4559 wrote:

"

falfool#6286 wrote:

Try Gladiator: block is very forgiving in this game and gives you room to learn most of the dangerous fights. Lucky Block is very strong. Use a Paradoxica for a weapon and whatever melee skill you like, then get some shield with "recover 5% of life on block". Don't need to "craft". Even with low damage, staying alive will help you learn the game and is far more important until you feel comfortable.

do you have a build guide maby for next league that would suit this playstyle that is beginner friendly ?

In addition to the excellent post by Broadsword above, something like this would be comfortable for me for reasons I'll explain below so that you understand what people may look for when building their characters (and better understand the game): https://maxroll.gg/poe/pob/n4f8a0li

It's a melee projectile Gladiator with sword + shield using Molten Strike with critical strikes for damage, and Blood Magic/Petrified Blood for reliability and comfort.

- Immunity to elemental ailments via Purity of Elements (accessible from level 24)
- Immunity to other damaging ailments: bleed via boots (bench craft plus a few eldritch orbs) and poison via mastery and any evasion-base helmet
- Immunity to burning ground via pantheon
- Immunity to corrupted blood via abyssal jewel
- Blood Magic bypasses mana requirements. Your skills will always be available when you need them, like Frostblink and Immortal Call. Rares that have Mana Siphoner mod don't do anything to you.
- Overleech via Petrified Blood, which makes most other non-ailment degens easier to deal with
- Molten Strike is great because it hits often, and makes "life gain on hit" effects very powerful to give you "burst" regen. This is relevant when you're actively fighting a monster that chunks your HP, you will be instantly regaining it. You get some of that via the "5% of leech is instant" mastery, and wherever you can stack this stat.
- Good melee strike range because of sword, which is one of the most annoying downsides of Molten Strike to me.
- Explosions from Gladiator will make your mapping more fun. You'll almost always apply bleeding before killing enemies, even if you deal lightning damage because of the Cornered Prey cluster.
- Reasonable uptime on all charges: frenzy via sword mastery and block, endurance on block, and power charges via Assassin's Mark.
- Rotgut gives you onslaught for a long time since you can use frenzy charges. Makes you fast in maps.
- Thunderfist is accessible on trade/softcore and can carry you through non-uber content. It gives a ton of flat damage, which is needed for Paradoxica. It's stronger now with the Runegraft of the Bound (POB doesn't show this but I've tested it myself when it was introduced.)
- You don't need a 6-link. Kaom's Heart is cheap. Paradoxica can be anything, although the one I picked is probably the best.
- Life flask is very strong because you're always on low-life due to Petrified Blood. You can also pick the pantheon for extra recovery from flasks when maps don't have "burning ground" patches.
- Good flask uptime via watcher's eye when you can afford it. You hit very often with molten strike, it can keep up your elemental flasks, which will help you during Sirus, Uber Elder and Shaper fights. If you pair it with flagellant/gain charges when hit, you will have near-full uptime. You can also get this mod on a Hunter belt but you said you don't like crafting.

Reasonable to assemble on trade league and fun to play if you like melee. ~2M damage is enough to get 4 voidstones because you can survive long enough to understand what's dangerous, how to react, etc.

It might be less orthodox than builds you'll find online or on YouTube, but it works well enough for HC in my experience so maybe you'll get good mileage out of it as well.

This build looks interesting i also found a shield crush build that looks simular in tree but is shield based but the problem i have with most buolild is i dont know what to do mostly before endgame is they dont put that in the buildguide then i get lost. Maby i am relying to much on build guides in general and then thats why i dont learn the game myself and get stuck in the first place. But i will take all your tips in to consideration so ty

You're getting pretty far. End game aspirational content beyond what you are doing is supposed to be difficult, it's built up on years of added content that push builds further.

RF is not an optimized bossing build. It's a great build for levelling, mapping HC survivability and SSF, and capable of doing all content, but if your finding it difficult to do something in particular, hitting a wall on your ability, you may need to use a different build depending on what you are trying to do.

Having a look at some of the RF builds you've got on your account. It looks like you've done really well with the basics, but may need to improve your character further to do harder content. This shouldn't be too hard to do if you are utilizing trade. If you are finding that tough, it may be you need help with farming currency, though in standard league, where I don't play, it may be tougher than in leagues. RF gear should be relatively easy to get with how popular the builds are.

Some quick pointers on the ones I see.

Your gems and characters aren't levelled. If this is taking a lot of time, you may need more efficient levelling techniques. Delve is pretty good for leveling with RF. You should be able to get upto lvl 96 and level 20 gems. It will take some time, but with the amount of time you are putting in, where you are at, I think you need to be levelling more efficiently.

Your firetrap is on a 4 link. 6-link helm would be better imo. Obviously that is harder to get, but if you are struggling with bosses, that will be a bit of dps increase. Along with levelled and qualled gems

Your gear overall is basic. Its all efficient, but can be vastly improved, particularly in trade league.

You can look at the RF build on my account if you need some ideas on gearing.
Pokerdome - lvl 100 Jugg SSF HC
Alexandretta - lvl 94 Jugg Ruthless

Jugg variant is slightly different, but it is the same basic idea, particularly with utilizing a link setup in helmet and just a different chest armour. I'm not sure if second skill setup is as important on chieftain as it is will jugg, but in my opinion it is pretty useful for RF, both with dps increase and utility of the second skill type in certain situations.

I played those a characters a lot, and they are outdated from years back now, but the gear is obtainable in trade restricted leagues and still above what you are using to try and boss with. The ruthless character has done everything up to the feared, so it is possible to do this content, but again, I would not recommend RF as an easy build for bossing.

These characters are still a way from optimized from what would be available in trade league, but I would think they would be easier for complete what you are trying to do, if a player where to try the characters for bossing. I have not looked at the POB's, but am assuming there is a dps and survivability difference that would make the fights easier. I'm not great at bossing, it took me some goes to be able to pass Maven, but it is possible, even with average or below skill level. I think you are making it even a step harder with the setup you are using, unleveled gems, lvl 91, etc. I think it would be possible to complete without levelling and improving your character further, as players may be doing on league start. That is tough while learning the fights and trying to complete for a first time though.

Your tree looks pretty fine to me. Unsure how overcapped on fire res you are without looking at POB. Not much of problem for bossing, but I found that to be important for not dying while levelling, particularly if you have no other mitigation against things that lower your res, such as curses and exposure. My SC ruthless character has no chaos res, which is not a big problem for a lot of bosses, or levelling, but can mean character is vulnerable to death/xp loss when pushing higher levels. May not be necessary for what you are trying to achieve. In Maven fight for example, you can get some random bosses spawn in that might be tough, but in SC it's not a huge thing to worry about.

Which content is it that you are stuck on currently? I'm assuming Maven and Uber elder are the ones you don't have? In some respects RF is good for RF because of the regen, but the beams are also deadly for turning off the regen. That is pretty much instant death. If like me, you are mechanically constrained and touch them from time to time, it may be useful to have a flask that turns off your rf when needed, or even do the final phase with just firetrap and no rf. You need a good fire trap set up for that though, with decent dps. If you are getting to the last phase, you may just need more practice on the last bit, or more careful keeping the arena clear of degen. If you are not getting to the final phase consistently, you are likely pretty far from completing the fight, as it gets harder as the fight goes on.

Uber elder I find just a tough fight myself. In general just having more dps will help. Killing the adds is important if it is being done slowly without much dps. With RF you have good survivability, but need to be tracking which target you need to be ontop of to be doing damage. A god firetrap setup can be good for this as well. Even with RF healing the degen build ups can start to be tough. Same thing, last phase is toughest, so if you are not getting to that part of the fight consistently, you likely need more practice on the fight, or build improvement.

I would suggest improving your build a lot before doing these, if you are struggling. I have not read through the guide you are using extensively, but my understanding is a very good guide for efficiently building a league start build that is ssf capable and can potentially do bossing, without changing build, after being very good at mapping. With using that efficient gear, the build is not optimised though, and the progression comes down to skill, Such as being good at boss fights and knowing the mechanics. I would suggest trying to gear past that, while learning and doing these mechanics the first time. As they will be harder for less skilled players, and again this build is great at levelling and mapping and tankiness, but just ok at single target dps.

Ubers are a big jump in difficulty. You should be able to do everything upto that with RF, but you would want a very optimised rf set up or be amazing mechanically to be doing ubers with RF in my opinion. Some of the easier ones may be achievable if you reach that point, but a few of them are very hard, and I don't think I would be able to do them on a good RF build, where they can be much easier on some of the powerful builds that are available. Anything below that should be quite achievable on RF, but may take some build improvement and practice on boss mechanics.

"

Belegur85#5784 wrote:

You're getting pretty far. End game aspirational content beyond what you are doing is supposed to be difficult, it's built up on years of added content that push builds further.

RF is not an optimized bossing build. It's a great build for levelling, mapping and SSF, and capable of doing all content, but if your finding it difficult to do something in particular, hitting a wall on your ability, you may need to use a different build depending on what you are trying to do.

Having a look at some of the RF builds you've got on your account. It looks like you've done really well with the basics, but may need to improve your character further to do harder content. This shouldn't be too hard to do it trade league, if you are utilizing trade. If you are finding that tough, it may be you need help with farming currency, though in standard league, where I don't play, it may be tougher than in leagues. RF gear should be relatively easy to get with how popular the builds are.

Some quick pointers on the ones I see.

Your gems and characters aren't levelled. If this is taking a lot of time, you may need more efficient levelling techniques. Delve is pretty good for leveling with RF. You should be able to get upto lvl 96 and level 20 gems. It will take some time, but with the amount of time you are putting in, where you are at, I think you need to be levelling more efficiently.

Your firetrap is on a 4 link. 6-link helm would be better imo. Obviously that is harder to get, but if you are struggling with bosses, that will be a bit of dps increase. Along with levelled and qualled gems

Your gear overall is basic. Its all efficient, but can be vastly improved, particularly in trade league.

You can look at the RF build on my account if you need some ideas on gearing.
Pokerdome - lvl 100 Jugg SSF HC
Alexandretta - lvl 94 Jugg Ruthless

Jugg variant is slightly different, but it is the same basic idea, particularly with utilizing a link setup in helmet and just a different chest armour.

I played those a characters a lot, and they are outdated from years back now, but the gear is obtainable in trade restricted leagues and still above what you are using to try and boss with. The ruthless character has done everything up to the feared, so it is possible to do this content, but again, I would not recommend RF as an easy build for bossing.

These characters are still a way from optimized from what would be available in trade league, but I would think they would be easier for complete what you are trying to do, if a player where to try the characters for bossing. I have not looked at the POB's, but am assuming there is a dps and survivability difference that would make the fights easier. I'm not great at bossing, it took me some goes to be able to pass Maven, but it is possible, even with average or below skill level. I think you are making it even a step harder with the setup you are using, unleveled gems, lvl 91, etc. I think it would be possible to complete without levelling and improving your character further, as players may be doing on league start. That is tough while learning the fights and trying to complete for a first time though.

Which content is it that you are stuck on currently? I'm assuming Maven and Uber elder are the ones you don't have? In some respects RF is good for RF because of the regen, but the beams are also deadly for turning off the regen. That is pretty much instant death. If like me, you are mechanically constrained and touch them from time to time, if may be useful to have a flask that turns off your rf when needed, or even do the final phase with just firetrap and no rf. You need a good fire trap set up for that though, with decent dps. Uber elder I find just a tough fight myself. In general just having more dps will help.

I would suggest improving your build a lot before doing these, if you are struggling. I have not read through the guide you are using extensively, but my understanding is a very good guide for efficiently building a league start build that is ssf capable and can potentially do bossing, without changing build, after being very good at mapping. With using that efficient gear, the build is not optimised though, and the progression comes down to skill, Such as being good at boss fights and knowing the mechanics. I would suggest trying to gear past that, while learning and doing these mechanics the first time. As they will be harder for less skilled players, and again this build is great at levelling and mapping and tankiness, but just ok at single target dps.

Ubers are a big jump in difficulty. You should be able to do everything upto that with RF, but you would want a very optimised rf set up or be amazing mechanically to be doing ubers with RF in my opinion. Anything below that should be quite achievable on RF, but may take some build improvement and practice on boss mechanics.

well i have never been able to do even elder and shaper in my life. i never think being able to do the uber versions of them i have never done a maven fight eithe. most of my characters i have given gear away from or deleted entirely. i havent actually done really endgame mechanics like delve or any of the others.

i will keep what u said in mind however but i dont think i will do rf this season at all this block based stuff does look good but at this point ill try anything so ill give it both a go

Yeah there is two part obviously, having a good build and being good at the fights (also farming upto them and the currency entry efficiently).

Most of the boss fights, recovery is pretty important. Unless you have enough dps to trivialise the fight, they are probably going to go on long enough that flasks may run out. Often multiple sources of recovery is needed for different times in the fight.

Block is good, spell suppression is often also good, as a lot of these bosses have high damage spells.

I would say for looking at you builds on your account, they are getting close to being able to do bosses, but you probably want something stronger while learning the fights, so that you have some leeway for making mistakes in the fights.

I'm not across what is going to be good for the upcoming league, but I'm sure you can find something. Those fights are not easy without a strong build. I still find them difficult, though I played a build that could face tank most Uber mechanics. The strength of the build does make a big difference.

Shaper is a pretty good fight to learn, once you have something strong. The POE bosses are pretty frustrating for punishing weaker builds. A lot of mechanics that compound with slow dpsing.

You must be pretty close to doing some of these if you completed exarch. That fight is not easy, even if it was the quest version, there is a lot of challenges in the fight to overcome.