Noob at this level, asking for advice (level 75 Hierophant)

So, I am playing a league for the first time.

I have never played "seriously", so jewel crafting, flask crafting etc is new to me.
However, I can read and possibly understand, so if that is one of the moves forward I will learn.


I have now reached the epilogue and delved to 60+ monster level.
I need to figure out what to do next, because I die too much and there were monsters in chapter 9/10 that I simply couldn't kill because I do too little damage.

Any suggestions are welcome.

I have some orbs, but no serious currency amounts. So I can't buy expensive equipment. I have and exalt and some chaos as main currency.
I have a bunch of stuff, maybe 20 uniques and a some jewels, so I guess I can get some more by selling stuff.


Here is my current build:

https://pobb.in/3-9YkQxm3Wgy

OK, I'm pretty much a noob myself, but figured I'd take a look.

First thing I noticed, you have 1,829 total life! That seems terribly low for your level. I'm on my first char (following CheapBunny's guide in this forum), and at level 73 I have just over 3,000 life.

Conversely, your mana pool is 2600+, mine's about 750 :) However, I'm playing a Guardian, not a Hierophant, so that may be a big part of the difference.

Your ES, evasion and armor are all OK-ish. Perhaps focus on one, and get it to some better defensive values.

Your elemental resists are capped, which is good, but your Chaos resist is at -49%, which is terrible. Not sure what is happening when you do die, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't because you are taking Chaos damage.

Now on to damage... To get a picture of where you're at, I went to the skills tab of your PoB, and clicked the "Full DPS" checkbox for each skill (no idea which ones add DPS or not, but this way I won't miss anything). The total is 104K DPS. Now, again, I'm a noob with little to compare to, but this seems REALLY low. At level 73, my full DPS is ~417K DPS.

The bulk of your DPS is from Penance Brand (47K) and Spark (37K). I don't know much about either of these skills, but you should probably look to find ways to boost those up, A LOT.

I see Penance Brand is a 4 link, and Spark is a 6 link. At level 75, that many support gems should be adding a LOT more to your attacks. One thing you can try, is to go into PoB, on the skills tab, and check/uncheck the "Enabled" box for each support gem, and see how much they are helping you with the base skill gem. This will help identify support gems which don't add much value for that skill.

Another tip is to click the empty drop-down underneath the last support gem for that skill. After a pause (that's PoB running some calcs), it will fill in the dropdown with all support gems, in the order of how much DPS they will add to that skill. This is a good way to find out which are the best support gems to pursue. When doing this, I usually make sure the "Gem Options" box on that tab has the "Sort gems by DPS" checked, and the associated drop-down set to Full DPS.

Looking at your Spark, as an example, it's doing ~37K DPS. Inspiration is adding about 6200 of that total, Greater Volley 12,000, Cruelty about 7000, and Archmage about 12000. Obviouslty, Increased Duration is adding duration, so I don't really know how much added DPS that adds up to.

So, Inspiration is adding the least to your total. Let's see what we could use instead. When I try it, it shows "Cast when Stunned" would add 86K to your total, which is more than your skill gem plus 4 support gems is doing! It is, however, a blue gem, but you could replace Cruelty instead.

Of course, this doesn't take into consideration what passives and gear changes you could make to buff up your main skills. But hopefully, this helps you with knowing where to look to find your weak spots.

EDIT: I did just notice that Spark fires 4-8 projectiles. So, on the skills tab, I set the "Count" box to 4, and that makes your FULL DPS 216K (much better), with 149K coming from Spark. This also means that the numbers I quoted above for each support gem are 4 times greater, as well as the replacements, so everything is magnified. In other words, if you replace Cruelty with Cast when stunned, your Full DPS will go up (86 - 7) x 4 = 316K DPS. That's huge.

And another big mistake on my part. When looking at the Full DPS contributions of your support gems, Greater Volley is actually LOWERING your DPS. Just taking that out increases your Spark DPS to 50K (for 1), or 200K for 4! So, do that right away. Try replacing it with Hypothermia (best green gem recommended by PoB).

Thx for the PoB tips!

There were functions I wasn't even aware of, so I am trying them out immediately.


I think I have too many skills that do damage, but not enough for tough monsters.
Spark is for mobs, which is why I did the greater volley, but i will definately try your advice.

Then I need a nuke, and penance brand doesn't do the trick. I will experiment in PoB and see if my Ice Spear would be good in a 6-link (a staff perhaps). I guess the Vaal skill can be kept until I figure out some "cast when xxxx" that helps my protection.

I will look at chaos res also. Perhaps a good flask and an item switch.


I really appreciate the tips. This is a complex game, so all the details are important.

"

colinthecorgi wrote:

I really appreciate the tips. This is a complex game, so all the details are important.

No kidding. I've been playing PoE for just over 8 weeks now, and the amount of detail to absorb is almost ridiculous. Gotta say though, people on the forums have been very helpful, and if you have the desire, do some searches for good youtube videos. Lots of great tips there, and that's how I learned about using PoB to help your build, finding and fixing the glaring problems, etc. I think it was a Subtractum video (that's the user name).