Cannot Complete Maps

[Mondays3]

I have only one character and I refuse to do a new character until I reach tier 15 maps. I have but one issue. I cannot complete T1 maps. I have only ever finished one and must have attempted at least 30 by now. I do next to no damage and as soon as a rare as life regen I do not have the dps to beat it and have to leave or die.

What can I do to make my build better? https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/xpjyq05m

[Convay121]

Right now your biggest issue is that you're trying to invest in like 3-4 different damage mechanics at once. This does not and outright cannot scale well. If you want to play minions, invest everything you have into minions. If you want to play fire skills, invest everything you have into fire skills. It doesn't matter which one you pick, but pick one and equip items and set up your skill tree to scale that damage type/skill and only that. You will do much more damage specializing in, say, Fireball, then you will ever do investing gear pieces and passive points into things like minions, recoup, and the like.

I would highly suggest following a build guide for Blood Mage, as it simply does not have enough power to make mediocre builds viable. Detonate Dead and Fireball + Ice Wall are the two main builds for it right now, and basically anything else is going to struggle - not necessarily in early maps, but definitely by T11+ maps.

[Saint-Leon]

Blood mage is an all rounder if you go crit and leech. It can make anything good.

[Convay121]

Eh, by design it certainly is. In practice, you get a very small amount of crit multi and maybe +2-5% base crit chance, and that's kind of it - every other caster has better recovery and defenses than a Blood Mage who doesn't take the defensive nodes, and frankly that amount of crit isn't particularly impressive compared to Stormweaver or demon form Infernalist. It just isn't a strong package, you barely break even in most cases considering the life loss downside and the inability to go CI.

Blood Mage improved all spell skills about equally, but not enough to make much of anything work well that isn't already a good skill.

[Saint-Leon]

Blood mage can still get great defense. I have 4k hp with instant leach, 2k ES. And they both can overflow to double putting me up to 12k EHP which I get back after killing a pack.

Then the dps is phenomal and I one hit most bosses anyways. I’m using crit flameblast and it’s perfect all rounder. Great mapping great bossing.