Please Help with my Shaman bear !

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Digicult-8064/vaal/character/SpinalFusion

thats my poeninja

im so confused , with all this expensive gear i still die fast and low dps
any idea which changes i need to do to get better ?

also i hardly get good drops despite 80% item rarity

thanks

There's a billion places to start.

5 of your 121 skill points are allocated defensively. Your amulet gives you more defensive scaling than the tree. You can't just magically manifest defences in this game (but that would be cool). The general answer to "how do I get more defense" is "spec into defensive nodes".

There aren't a lot of defensive stats to scale in the first place because you have uniques in the helmet and chest slot on a melee build with no shield. The chest isn't that bad I guess.

Why are you using a sceptre - to buff pounce minions? Pounce minions are useless. Ditch the sceptre and put brutus brain on them and some debuffs like maim/incision/blind and forget about them lol.

Your DPS numbers look fine, what content is giving you trouble with 316k ninja rampage numbers? Or is it that you don't live long enough for the S part of DPS to really mean much?

You also have no recovery mechanism outside of your flask - this is what makes it so that when you walk up to any pack of mobs or monster that hits you more than once every 3 seconds, you instantly melt.

Changes that would significantly make you feel tankier - get some life regen and recoup, switch out your boots and gloves from AR pieces to AR/ES pieces, ditch Lord of the Wilds and replace it with Zealot's Oath. Unspec the entire portion of your tree that goes past Vengeful Fury and past Hide of the bear.

Take stand ground, thickened arteries and heart tissue, and reinforced barrier, ancient Aegis, tribal fury, bashing stuns, mauling beast, iron slippers, resolution, personal touch.

Lose the entire furious wellspring ascendancy path. Generate rage with maul and it also auto-generates with walking calamity up. You are being wasteful with ascendancy nodes in a redundant manner. Take avatar of evolution and adaptive flow.

with the 80 spirit, lose stone and antidote charms, replace lunar blessing and shockwave totem with Barkskin and time of need and vitality 1.

Put holy ground support on pounce.

Vertex feels like a lot to sacrifice for only giving +3 and some crit. Can get a better rare AR/ES helmet with defensive stats and even more life regen (and can still roll crit)

Get your limbs from the temple that add bonuses (IAS, recoup, regen when moving)

Put efficiency gem on rampage if you want it to last longer (it will spend less rage)

If you'd like you can take inspiration from my lvl 98 hcssf bear that can do all content - and with a headhunter it could do a juiced temple too.

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/karsey-2995/vaalhcssf/character/IsFiveAliveStillAround

He is using the scepter for the spirit saving on the support gems socketed into purity of ice.
I also don't think it's worth it even though that is where he is getting his sustain from atm.

Ninja isn't very good at showing real numbers for defenses since it's missing all the condition buffs. What is your actual armour amount when running maps in bear form, full rage and charges?

I agree with the previous poster that you can't afford to run Vertex. You don't need to switch to AR/ES armour works great if you get it high enough.

If you go armour you are probably going to want scavenged plating.

If you can't get armour over 20k it's pretty much useless.
20k gives you around 90% reduction against white mobs in level 80 maps.
Lets you concentrate on avoiding the hits from the bigger mobs if you don't need to avoid all the white mobs chipping away at your life.

Holy ground is great in pounce, add in encroaching ground and you get a nice healing area to move around in if you need the time to kill the mobs.

From your ninja, it looks like you are doing a rampage bear build. Your build is pretty similar to mine but I have my rampage damage quite a bit higher. This is due to support gem, jewel and passive choices that are a wee bit different. My rampage skill is over cap (41) and shows 943k on ninja.

I, personally would not follow the advice above. The advice does not seem like it's for a rampage bear at all. The posters above mention pounce. While I do have pounce slotted, its not on my hotbar so it does not get used. Also, at least from his ninja, he shows great amount of armor but no damage. As for them saying to ditch the scepter, do they understand that a 3 hole scepter is giving you 120% damage while shapeshifted thanks to Wisdom of the Maji?

Anyways, here is my rampage bear. It's not perfect but it can clear all content and is a blast to play for an extra character.

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/The_Gadget-2563/vaal/character/Fuzzy_Wuzzzy

I know the sceptre idols are giving extra damage. Just feels like an offensive over-investment when one of the problems is defense.

I figured a level 98 hcssf bear would speak for itself in terms of tankiness and capability.

It's not meant to be a min-maxed rampage damage build but it still rampages through a 50% inc. life t16 with ease and gets rid of the boss in a few seconds too. Even faster if you go in with a shrine buff up. The damage is enough, but not :O YT thumbnail worthy lol.

It's primarily meant to survive anything and everything while using rampage/furious slam/maul/walking calamity and it balances that with damage.

Would still handedly trample over temple with 20 HH buffs like almost any build with HH.

Ssf just highlights the accessibility. I'm aware that stronger versions could easily exist in trade leagues, but not everyone looking at this build forum is going to be able to trade for gear as good as yours!

Also I'm too much of a wuss to power-farm a prism of belief in hc lmao. Too many characters lost to getting an elbow clipped in the hallway phase.

Karsey. It wasnt really meant as a jab at your character. Your character is in HC SSF and looks to be built for that with survivability taking the highest priority. It looks like you character has lots of survivability.

But the OP is not playing HC SSF and has access to trade etc. His gear and build look very similar to mine. My bear is not YT worthy and has a lot less damage/survivability than the top rampage bears on ninja. I just felt that I needed to chime in to say that, because his build/gear etc is very different, I don't think it aligns with your suggestions.

In the world of "build-a-bear", there can be many types of bears and they all serve a purpose :)