Trickster EK need advice

Hello everyone!

I have a character with build, that i like, but it doesn't perform well.

Character name is behLifeES
https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/aavataar/characters

Offense is based on EK with Added Fire and Herald of Ash. I use Consuming Dark fire to chaos conversion and free poison. I manually cast Vulnerability and I throw fire trap for bosses and rares.

Defence comes in form ES+EV+block, so ES can recharge mid-fight. With Patient Reaper it recharges really fast. On top of that I use Sorrow of the Divine with "on demand" Zealot's Oath to regenerate ES when it can't recharge. Occasionally I use Vaal Grace and Vaal Discipline. And, of cause, standard cwdt setup.

The main problem is casters, and especially chaos casters as the ignore both my defense mechanics - evasion and energy shield. I met one - enemy exile and he killed me 4 times before i kited him to death. And even magic caster mob pack leaves no space for an error.

So, the most important question is if this build is any good or should I reroll it?

And if this build is possible, then what could be done to improve it? Is gear bad? Is skill setup bad (I though about throwing away consuming dark an switching to some cwc chaos setup or to Scorching Ray)? Is tree suboptimal?

Thank you.

I plan to make life/ES HC SSF trickster when 3.0 comes, right now CI trickster is my favorite build though.

Most of your gear is fine, but you should definetly invest in a better shield. The shield should have at least 200-300 ES, pref hybrid with some ER and life, but the ES is most important. I think your belt can be rerolled into a better version. For flasks I would use 2 life flasks with increased life regen, 1 stibnite, 1 quartz flask, and maybe keep your sorrow of the divine if you want, but I would probably go for another utility flask focused on evasion or life flask if 2 are not typically enough. Ideally some of your gear should have a bit of chaos resistance (but that is budget so is last prioty).

Overall I think your build is too focused on offence. I like the synergy you are building for EK between chaos, poison, etc, however, you invested maybe a bit too heavily into that. I am geussing you do not have problems killing stuff? I think people see posts like "200000k DPS BUILD" and think they have to go for that, personally I have invested very little into DPS nodes and am basically instently killing everything so 20 million dps is way overkill.

I think the main problem is your EHP is too low since you have not taken many life and ES nodes on the tree (I think 10k EHP is minimum to aim for around 80, and 12k around 90). Basically at least 5k hp and 5k ES. Many people call this path of life/ES nodes for a reason xD

Also If chaos is a problem then more chaos resistance is needed.

This would be my personal skill build if I did Life/ES EK:
http://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYCAbDYotnIFPVvaowWvyaVYeJVS3X9hG_UQrVI62MRLysKXfIOSBGWBx6VLvDVSVF_xpMn74j5N9fPSbFsCyL0bRkRUDW5pysdT9lbGyVLrukC34oI9MBUakOMNjY9napsjGKstMXC7Dqtb4T_HAW16NYi6tsaEHu-OvVLwQAyAbIZz3ph63pTwzqbtYTFX7DKSlFMrEd9WypNPydKyG6qtfI1kti9_gryRTrhpldN4_6PMZ4A7izpFSAJM9E24iyGs0fiIuKkOW-e8bNLV8DjBnBOn3p_vOpFfI_6XEBUvRXtlovVufmkcNRMg3SBiw5auTy22js=

Thank you for your reply!

It's nice to know some numbers on life/ES to aim for.

Sadly, even if my tree is focused on offence, I have a humble dps tooltip of 10k and even though it does not account poison, things don't drop as fast as I would like. I was tricked by Zana into Poorjoy's Asylum and that was really really long and taxing.

But I get your point with EHP and will respec once full respec from 3.0.0 arrives. However I have some further questions:

1) You did not take Essence Surge notable, the only node beside ascendacy that gives faster start of ES recharge - I thought it is mandatory for non-leech ES recovery

2) You skipped nodes with life regen - I guess there's not enough to make a difference with Sorrow of the Divine trick. Even with Consecrated ground 4% bonus.

3) You skipped Method to Madness cluster - but this build desperately needs chaos resistance. Maybe sacrifice some life ot ER/ES nodes for that?