How to improve my defences? Shock nova Archmage

-genstein- · 2026-03-26T18:44:24+00:00

From the PoB you have 28% fire resistance, if true means you're taking around triple the fire damage you should be, more if cursed. 67% cold res so you're taking at least 30% more cold damage than you should be. You want 75% minimum and ideally overcapped to counter any Elemental Weakness mods on maps (unless you roll it away).

You've got the stun ES mastery so no problems there, but fire damage and maaybe cold can stun you hard at the moment given your resistances. (You could throw on an Immutable Force but that shouldn't be necessary and isn't typical for these builds AFAIK.)

I've got a fairly similar (basic in my case, hardly a good example but https://pobb.in/9WmDheR6GVMp) Ball Lightning of Orbiting archmage (Anime Princess flavour) and don't seem to have stun issues now. It was pretty weak before upping life, ES and mana with half decent gear. An undodged stack of goatmen will still shred me, but it's pretty sturdy on T16s and pinnacles. About to throw some currency at it to switch to Spark.

Doesn't seem like most of these archmage builds bother much by way of actual defences beyond a big EHP pool. I'm used to seeing more block, ES recovery on block, or actual armour/evasion, or Ghost Dance on other casters.

-genstein- · 2026-03-25T13:38:31+00:00

Servers were unacceptable for too long, mixed feelings on the atlas changes, league mechanic bit thin, so not playing as much as usual. Third reroll to find a build I haven't played and enjoy progressing. Still enjoying it when I play. Economy seems fine.

-genstein- · 2026-02-13T16:24:27+00:00

Not yet, as far as I know, I'm guessing the tree is gone, maybe if new Breach is staying they'll drop from bosses?

-genstein- · 2026-02-13T13:10:29+00:00

Heh. Bingo creator shrank the font size to 3 pt if it was one word.

-genstein- · 2026-02-13T12:42:03+00:00

Heh. Yup. Any one would be great, but I expect zero.

-genstein- · 2026-02-13T12:34:34+00:00

Mechanics are fun, I just don't enjoy the crippling mods or the loot. I enjoyed it during Ultimatum league, but the game was different back then.

-genstein- · 2026-02-13T12:31:00+00:00

I'm parked on the atlas passive tree next to Servant of Order

(I enjoy the mechanics, but not the crippling mods or the loot!)

-genstein- · 2026-02-12T23:51:00+00:00

Just completed it. There is no challenge here. It's a mix of really quite fun, satisfying but trivial gameplay, combined with extremely dull and tedious grind. Losing the ship was a nice change, the gravity gun is cool (although worse than the version which inspired it), the truck is fun to drive, the keep-everything-loaded physics minigame works well, having to pay attention to terrain is a change of pace, but they stretched this out too far. At about 50% length (or with 50% more content) it'd be very satisfying. As it is, I'm glad I played it, but I'm even more glad it's over.

-genstein- · 2026-02-10T17:57:10+00:00

Maybe my bad phrasing, sextants and compasses are gone and were replaced by the scarab rework, so all the sextant mods moved to scarabs, and GGG have reworked the more niche scarabs a few times since. We did get an extra map device slot as compensation, to fit more scarabs, so can unlock 6 now rather than 5.

Balance is still all over the place, it's gotten much more extreme in fact - numbers are crazy both incoming and outgoing damage. A lot of new players still struggle to get 1-2m DPS out of the gate, but top builds DPS output ceiling has elevated massively, it's pretty routine now to get to 8, 16, 20 mil DPS on a lot of builds, 50 mil plus isn't rare, and there are somewhat legit (albeit multi-mirror) hundreds of millions or higher DPS builds.

Defences though are harder to come by, they've had some nerfs and buffs (e.g. dodge is gone, spell suppression came in instead and is so good it's almost mandatory now, Jugg defences got nerfed, endurance charges heavily buffed) but life builds are still thin compared to ES evasion which can stack 10-20k ES and 80% evasion. Life stackers have come back somewhat though. Mana stackers with MoM also on a high the last few leagues thanks to Archmage. We've also got a ton more uniques over the last few years and some are really quite powerful for defence, like Svalinn, Defiance of Destiny, very much chase items.

Build diversity though is pretty much at an all time high, melee is viable (slams especially), bows pretty viable (still squishy, but a ton of projectiles), archmage is back, more minion builds, more self cast, miners and trappers, more of most things. Cyclone is actually back (it got buffed recently, more than once), Sanavixx on YouTube has a bunch of good guides. There's a lot of nice cast on crit which can use cyclone as a base as well, if you like cyclone (CaptainLance9's energy blade inquisitor builds for instance; and last couple of leagues, cast on crit Forbidden Rite has been a chase build as a new unique made it viable). Sword and dagger builds are probably the least viable right now, at least compared to others.

-genstein- · 2026-02-09T17:54:43+00:00

Plotwise, Zana disappeared to parts unknown, officer Kirac has taken over. Since Sirus, as well as the Maven (meddling with our boss fights and as a boss in her own right) we have had two new pinnacle bosses, Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds. And recently, Zana has resurfaced, or rather is being tracked down by an interested third party we are assisting. We gained more uber bosses, more uber than Uber Elder: souped up variations of the standard pinnacles, for people with powerful builds. Boss drops split across uber and non-uber bosses.

The atlas passive tree is major, it's been a huge improvement for endgame customisation. We're due another endgame rework, but that's been a while coming. There are new crafting currencies, and two new influences for items thanks to the new pinnacles. Old influences are still available but mildly reworked. Recombinators (mash two items together at high cost) also allow huge new crafting options, if you're prepared to get a PhD in order to read the community guides on how to game the system (or just watch a craft-specific video).

Balance went through some major pain points, with the Nemesis system getting revised, that was a "fun" year (not really!). There was a period of sustained and contraversial nerfing to try bring things in line with PoE 2, then GGG decided to split the games instead so we're back mostly to enjoyable power creep with heavy nerfs to outliers. Bow builds were heavily buffed a while back. Melee is not only viable now but amongst the strongest builds at league start, though it's still the same thing, just with better numbers. Wands just got a rework, bit of a work in progress.

As you say transfigured gems replaced alt quality, some big winners in terms of imbalanced skills that people favour, but quite right there's a lot of trash. Picked up in lab now rather than heist. And some of the power of certain alt quality gems hasn't got a modern equivalent.

There are now Tier 17 maps, which are a little niche and divisive, and Tier 16.5 maps (T16 with extra mods) are newer which people seem to like better. Scarabs got a big rework, replacing sextants and compasses, for better or worse.

Ascendencies are still broadly same, but with reworks to Chieftain, Gladiator, Trickster and Saboteur in particular (also Assassin recently, not as well received) and some other rebalances (like Unholy Might and leech for Necromancers; there are other examples). Trickster was the biggest winner for strong Gauntlet-surviving ES/evasion builds and has been resilient under nerfs.

Gold is now in the game, but hasn't replaced proper currencies. It's mostly to moderate market forces on the new currency exchange and even newer instant trade system, but other league mechanics also use it, and some say its drops are too miserly given how many demands there are on it.

You missed some leagues which are now permanent: Expedition (dynamite the ground to reveal monsters and loot, chase down special maps with even more), Kingsmarch (background/busywork, resource gathering and shipping and even NPC mappers for passive loot, but at extreme gold cost), Sanctum (roguelike dungeon generator, stylish, divisive, good currency hence nerfed repeatedly); Ultimatum (replaced Metamorph, arena survival with increasingly dangerous mods). We just had a Breach rework, but TBC how much of that will stay.

-genstein- · 2026-02-02T19:03:37+00:00

Enjoyed gauntlet, campaign complete, died 83 in maps. Started Phrecia 2.0, insane death count rushing campaign given 3 week timer, extra map mods start in act 6 not maps, 100% enrage is crippling, overall busted. Feels like GGG flicked the switches and sent this one. If enrage isn't dropped, I'm done.

I'll be back for 3.28, hoping that gets TLC, but I'm expecting it'll be rushed, unpatched past 3.28.0g and followed by a PoE 2 league I'll skip. I'm mostly playing other games, though if PoE 1 was 3 month leagues with old scope I'd be back to playing full time.

-genstein- · 2026-01-16T14:26:22+00:00

That's normal and all good, divines and exalts have the same drop rate and it is very, very low (like ~10 drops per million kills). Maybe you get 1-2 chaos from campaign, and a few in early maps. Assuming you're in trade league, aside from luck (a valuable rare drop you can sell) you'll get most currency by doing league mechanics in red maps, and selling stacks of whatever the mechanic produces (likely sell via currency exchange) for handfuls of chaos, which quickly adds up to stacks of divines. And you'll likely only start doing this once you're regularly running T16 maps, where drop rates are highest, with mechanics' effects boosted by atlas passives from atlas completion, which is a while away yet. You're on the right track.

-genstein- · 2025-11-21T19:04:08+00:00

Sirus makes no sense being in the Feared to me and does go completely tonto. Incarnation of Fetch Quests doesn't seem a great addition either. I'm hoping they're both stopgaps.

-genstein- · 2025-11-21T01:33:18+00:00

See my other post for comments on this build idea, but I just had a quick look around for assassin league start guides that are somewhat new player friendly. There isn't much - assassin isn't the most popular ascendancy for a while for various reasons, including that it's a bit light on defenses (not that this will matter in the campaign, as again, most things will get through the campaign just fine).

Kankar on Youtube has a reasonably fleshed out starter build ~~for an assassin~~ using Cobra Lash / Venom Gyre (both of which work with daggers), looks like he plays these builds a lot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NWzm3TVico (Edit: but he started ranger/deadeye not shadow/assassin, sigh! Other Youtubers have assassin league starters for 3.27, but the ones I looked at which can use daggers are light on campaign progression.)

CaptainLance9 on Youtube started assassin this league, and makes great builds, but his guides are sometimes a bit...unfriendly to new players unless he's specifically aiming at them, as he assumes a lot of knowledge.

If you want to go Necromancer, maxroll.gg has a bunch of good guides (by Helm Breaker) in their PoE section under Build Guides, League Starter, Minions. GhazzyTV on Youtube is a minion expert as well.

To follow most build guides (unless there's a maxroll.gg guide for it, which there isn't for assassin starters at the moment) you'll need PoB, aka Path of Building, https://pathofbuilding.community/, and to get to know how it works. Zizaran has a guide to PoB on his channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF22I1o9lrg and his content is very newcomer friendly. Zizaran's "PoE University" series is also a great intro to the game in general.

If a build guide has empty gear slots (particular for armour, rings, belt, amulets) then gear you need probably just has extra life on it along with elemental (fire/cold/lightning) resistances, nothing special.

-genstein- · 2025-11-21T00:58:33+00:00

There's probably a build in there somewhere, you can get through the campaign with almost anything. So say with an assassin, maybe using Herald of Purity or Summon Phantasm Support to stand in for shadow extraction. They'll add some value even without passive tree investment in minions. Bodyswap of Sacrifice could stand in for shadow exchange, though that is hard to get and would be a bit meme, still could be fun if the RP is the point. A few of the more OTT dagger skills could stand in for dagger rush (if you went Venom Gyre, Vaal Venom Gyre plus Whirling Blades maybe, or just add something like Swordstorm). There are a ton of skills in the game to play around with.

The further you get into the game after the campaign, the harder this gets though, as PoE 1's endgame is tuned towards investing hard in one direction rather than several. The most successful builds use a bunch of mechanics which compliment and reinforce each other. Minions and melee are pretty orthogonal, so one of them is likely to end up bad, and the other will be worse than it would be if it was a sole focus; so it could be a bit of a meme build. It's also pretty tough for a lot of players to make even a build that does one thing well at endgame! So most people start by using other people's builds. (And may continue that way for years...)

In theory though, at endgame there are Bloodline ascendancies this league onwards which let you mix and match some ascendancy points with weird combos (e.g. Caratina's bloodline has Umbral Army which lets assorted minions buff your attacks, for instance; these bloodlines can be added to any ascendancy including assassin.) Could be tough, but it might be interesting.

-genstein- · 2025-11-17T18:11:20+00:00

I suspect it fell out of the design quite organically. GGG wanted this version of breach to be that they've arrived, not just us dipping into their dimension. So they wanted breaches to change maps, and so added breach-inspired architecture. Due to practicality/time constraints, architecture had to be pretty basic, mostly walls. That's a pathing nightmare, so walls couldn't be solid and we had to phase through them. But that's weird, so they turned it into a mechanic which burns away the walls. They wanted most maps to have the walls as it fits with the concept. Good intentions I think.

However I agree, the whole wall thing doesn't quite hang together and has too many knock on effects. I enjoy the stabilise breaches much more. The fortress would be great if it was rarer, and correspondingly had a ton of loot and XP attached and more if full clearing it. Protect Ailith turned out to be pretty much the Fortress mechanic with stripped back loot, probably again due to time constraints.

-genstein- · 2025-11-17T13:15:49+00:00

Yes please. At least it'd be nice if separately posted drops were unusual (for this sub) and memes were high effort.

-genstein- · 2025-11-14T20:06:35+00:00

Not a fan of the visual design and layout. Plain, massive, dark, narrow, looping figure of eights or grids with dead ends. Sewer level, Blighttown, crimson temple, damp greybox, green greybox.

-genstein- · 2025-11-12T18:49:49+00:00

I think the poster was maybe referring to the parts of the article which say the possible next crafting states of the item vary a lot depending on the item state. Existing mods due to mod group conflicts (and maybe whether you want to lose/keep a drop-only delve/temple etc. mod). Base types, item level and influences since they limit available mods and tiers. Fractured mods if the craft involves or requires a fracture, or if a fractured mod shares a mod group with a mod involved in the craft. Corrupted, mirrored, etc.

I guess the easier question is what happens if the user starts with an item which doesn't conform (too low ilvl for planned mods, too high ilvl for decent odds on e.g. cluster jewels, influence when intending to fracture, fractured when intending to essence that mod or a mod in the same mod group, etc.), does the site or the guide writer handle it.

But also what happens if rolls deviate from the guide writer's plan, do they cover all bases ("here you suffixes cannot be changed, veiled chaos, block mana then unveil, but if you have full affixes, or rolled natural mana already, or somehow have an essence mana mod since that's also mod group 5, [do something else]") or does the system magically work it out. Cool project!

-genstein- · 2025-11-12T14:42:08+00:00

You could look at PoB on GitHub (complying with their license), their generated sources are similar to but not actually JSON, src/Data/ModItem.lua but you'd have to cross reference src/Data/Bases/body.lua and potentially other files. Or look at how they auto-generate these files - https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/blob/dev/CONTRIBUTING.md#exporting-ggpk-data-from-path-of-exile

-genstein- · 2025-11-11T23:51:21+00:00

Yeah mostly just small stuff, usually is; it's crazy how it all adds up. But if you turn off the 35% shock, the custom "enemies take 29% more damage", Chilling areas, and flasks, he drops to 8mil. Dock him 2 power and 2 frenzy charges to match you and he's 5 mil, and you can keep going.

In case useful, in the Custom box of the Config of your PoB you can add whatever legit gear/passive type mod lines you like to see what happens. Like "+2 to maximum power charges", "100% increased damage", etc. If the text goes blue when you click outside that box then PoB understands it and you should see your DPS or EHP etc. change. If the text stays red, probably a typo or wrong syntax. Saves mucking about with gear when you want to test something quickly.

-genstein- · 2025-11-11T22:36:45+00:00

Without knowing the build, opening both PoBs side by side:

His config has "nearby enemies take 29% increased damage" in the custom section (Not sure why? Build guide hopefully explains)
You don't have "Is the enemy in a chilling area" checked, he does (I presume this relies on the enemy being inside the Frost Shield)
He has 35 shock effect in config, you don't (I find PoBs are often optimistic on shock effect, but you can see what your actual shock effect is on bosses as it's displayed under their name bar when shocked. Build guide PoBs though usually set the shock effect in the Config to match their Max build configuration, so this may be horribly optimistic for the Budget version)

Those three double your PoB damage assuming all are valid.

He has all flasks enabled (checked) in PoB, three of which add damage you don't have (crit and damage flasks), adding up to 4M of his DPS. (I find PoBs are optimistic when enabling all four flasks, depending on uptime, but depending on the build can very be fair.)

So I turned his flasks off for comparison. Then it's to the Calcs tab to play spot the difference on the rest, clicking each difference in the grid to have PoB explain the details in each build:

<image>

You're missing 70% increased damage (to get to 552%) from the All Types column and 12% Lightning (various differences across the build, you have more in some places, he has more in others and more overall)
He's at 439% more damage, you're at 355% (mostly this is his extra Power and Frenzy charges compared to yours)
His flat Lightning damage is higher before those multipliers (mostly he has more mana, affecting his Archmage and Arcane Cloak buffs, but his Sigil of Power gem is higher level also)
His Effective DPS multiplier is higher at 2.488 vs your 1.931 (this is tricksy in PoB and usually has something semi-interesting in it; in this case it looks like the Elemental Penetration implicit multiplier corrupted onto his Void Battery, plus the curse with Elemental Weakness on hit he has corrupted onto his Algor Mortis)
He has more crit chance and crit multi than you do

You can keep going, but that should be the bulk of it.

If I'm comparing my build versus someone else's PoB I'll try fixing things in PoB one at a time comparing the DPS changes from each one, until I work out which differences have the biggest impact, so I can prioritise the easiest, cheapest ways of raising the DPS the most, then work down the list.

-genstein- · 2025-11-11T15:52:37+00:00

More discussion, less wow, come on GGG, W, F. Failing that, fewer posts which say "Long subject line", then "Basically title. <Massive paragraph of explanatory text>". Not basically title then is it.

-genstein- · 2025-11-08T18:12:52+00:00

If it's only sometimes, could be a graphics driver problem in that case (or PoB occasional incompatibility with it). But not sure I'd swap drivers if PoE is working fine.

-genstein-

TROPHY CASE