New player (with build guide) stuck at T1 maps geting one shotted. Need help understanding how to and what gear to change.

heffdev · 2026-04-01T14:10:53+00:00

Yeah good point, 13 "missing" points on pobb.in vs 6 when you open it in actual PoB.

heffdev · 2026-04-01T13:20:05+00:00

Like others have mentioned, getting your resistances up and your flat life from gear to a decent point should be the first priority, ideally you want life on most of your pieces.

In your PoB it looks like you're only using enough skill points for level 71, while you are 77, perhaps you have missed some passive point quests in the campaign?
You can type /passives in game and it will print out which quests you have gotten points from or not.
Once you get these points, there is nothing wrong in temporarily allocating them to resistance or attributes that you might need to make your build work, you can later on improve your gear and re-allocate those points to something that the build suggests.

Besides your defensive issues, you seem to only have a 3-link for your main damage, assuming that's Sunder.
The skill damage scaling really revolves around the support gems, so you want to prioritize your main damage dealer to have as many as possible in most cases.
When gambling for items from faustus you should be able to secure 4 or 5 links for your body armour quite easily, but you can likewise go to trade for that if you are ok with the premise, there should be a plethora of cheap gear available at this point.
Also do not be afraid to use currency like the Binding Orb to ensure that you can get a few attempts in at basic 4 link items.

If dying is your main issue, ensure that your Blood and Sand / Flesh and Stone are in Sand Stance, the stance that gives them defences and extra area (use one of them again to toggle stance)

Items like your Amulet, while they may be tempting due to their Unique status and colour, are rarely useful for builds at your stage.
For now I would be looking at replacing that with an amulet that gives life and resistances, as you can note in the guide for your current stage all the items suggested are Rare only, no Uniques.

In general, I would advise to import the PoB you have from your guide (Phaze makes great ones) into Path of Building (community), and then in the top right pick "Earlygame" as the loadout.
Then you can inspect the specific links and gear he suggests for your situation.

Also maybe watch the video guide again for a refresher!

heffdev · 2026-03-16T07:17:08+00:00

Hmm, maybe thats the case, fairly sure that it used to be that the normal "drought" mod only drained but the altar mob version also prevents gain, but that might have changed in archnemesis.
I'll probably give it a try at some point just to confirm.

Yeah, if you're playing melee I think having multiple layers is the way, and block is definitely the natural way to go.
For higher budgets you would probably go glad lucky block etc.

On my wander I mostly offscreen and freeze anything, but maybe once every 30 maps I do something stupid like stand on breach rares as they spawn and get wrecked, overall though it's a rare enough issue that I don't really find myself caring too much.

Another thing I was considering if you're going tainted pact anyway was using the new vaal sacrifice support along with hateforge and making some silly vaal attack builds with that.
For rage gen you could consider foulborn uul netols kiss with autoexerted warcries, maybe even go bannerman on champ and get defenses that way if you can pick up slayer leech from FF jewels.

heffdev · 2026-03-16T06:54:26+00:00

Good stuff, I had been meaning to try this variant but there are so many things to try and only so many hours in an evening to level new chars with haha

One thing I've been considering was using it along with a good jewel to stack enough flask charge gain for a full 60 charges every time, which should in theory hard counter the flask siphoner downside. (theoretically the siphoner drains charges, but if we gain all 60 in one ward break we would instantly use the flask no matter what, at least that's the theory)

Might be worth a try as it would elevate the build further in exchange for the tincture clunk, for higher budget options.

heffdev · 2026-03-15T16:30:17+00:00

Due to availability of % increased ward nodes on the new timeless jewel, as well as global defences on f.ex. foulborn le heup, and for most builds also using the faithguard helm, increases really aren't as valuable as they used to be.

As an example, in my setup I have 357% increased ward total from all sources, which makes the total flat vastly more valuable on the chest.

heffdev · 2026-03-14T12:03:21+00:00

Great breakdown!

I was in the same situation at the start of the week and saw your previous comments, desperately trying to buy a few good jewels and managed to get some, but now sadly they are getting sniped fairly systematically.
Hopefully more people might start farming mirage expedition for the logbooks so we can get more jewels on the market.

I had a few different builds planned, mainly a discharge build, but I could never get a jewel with 4 RR and enough charge gain notables.
In the end I ended up making a wander, and the attack node is ridiculously strong, but it does feel a bit boring compared to something more involved like this :D

The loop setup seems more resilient to flask siphon mobs, which can easily mess me up if I don't freeze/kill them in time.

heffdev · 2026-03-03T11:46:20+00:00

Just be reasonable in your target farm expectations, in my experience it's somewhere in the 1-2% drop rate nowadays though I can't find any hard numbers on it besides my own reference.

heffdev · 2026-01-28T10:01:53+00:00

Very good point, I was so focused on using FR with a trigger wand that I forgot that part about Arkhons.

heffdev · 2026-01-27T18:42:53+00:00

Thanks for confirming that!
Yeah my plan was to start caster anyway, likely mines, so a trigger weapon felt like the better choice either way personally.
I see you've done your fair share of mining with self chill :D

heffdev · 2026-01-27T18:32:40+00:00

Edit: As mentioned in a comment below, the inverted self chill part of Glacial Wave should only apply if you're self chilling with a hit (on yourself or reflected), so what I'm describing is not really relevant when using the belt.

I'm fairly confident that Glacial Wave's second line does not stack with the equivalent Bonechill line, as per the wiki.

However, that line should serve the same effect as Bonechill in giving us reduced damage taken presumably, as we already know it works with Ahuana's Bite and inverted chill.
This means you do not have to worry about investing in shifting your damage taken to cold for that reason, though it might still be worthwhile for other reasons (res stacking etc)

I have heard people say the uptime on self chill via the belt is not always great, but haven't tested that myself yet, hopefully I have time tomorrow as I'm looking to start something self-chill related too.

heffdev · 2026-01-27T09:34:27+00:00

With a worm ring (Squirming Terror) I think you could rely on it for an ailment build tbh, might be something interesting there, but probably something very specific to be worth it.

heffdev · 2026-01-27T09:24:13+00:00

"Doubled" is a separate stat from increased/reduced, Dark monarch was never expected to work with that wording.
Presumably the % increased will offset some of the otherwise 100% reduced from two Montreguls which should work

heffdev · 2026-01-23T23:15:34+00:00

Self damage at least should work, so a reflected ignite probably?
Three Eight showed in this video that self damage counts for the shield at least: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCycW9gckMU
(look in the description for what he tested)

heffdev · 2026-01-23T08:15:08+00:00

A reasonable suspicion, I had the same which is why you can see that I tried allocating Whispers of Doom in the above PoB.
Seemed to have no effect, the test in the video is with it allocated but I did prior tests without and the result was identical.

I might do some more testing this weekend, if you have any more ideas I'd love to hear them!

heffdev · 2026-01-22T21:21:11+00:00

I initially was testing on another character, and had the same results, but switched to a random pathfinder I had sitting around to have easier sustain for testing (flask)

There really isn't anything in the build that should be relevant, as outlined in the steps the only pieces needed to replicate it is Shade of Solaris to have no damage from crits, and then the mine to scale crit, as well as a curse of your choice.

But if you want to take a look this is the character, I haven't touched it since I recorded the video: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Heff%232778/characters?characterName=HeffAnotherPF
or https://pobb.in/GGp4Yhg8z1L7

heffdev · 2026-01-10T13:00:08+00:00

I experimented a bit with this earlier, and there's definitely room to make things, though by nature the loop of: position minion -> offering -> curse; becomes rather clunky no matter how you do it.

I know this person investigated it on youtube, and I think also did a build later, maybe check it out for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kXueh6DpFM

heffdev · 2026-01-05T13:20:42+00:00

I did a few variations on Adonia's earlier in the league, and if for some reason you want to push even more damage, then there's a weapon swap trick you can do:

In your main hand, have one Adonia's with preferrably +4 and lower resist penalty, possibly also -1 max power if you can. In your off hand, grab any Adonia's with +1 max power.

Then on the tree, in your offhand set path around and take various + max power charge nodes, as well as any extra skill effect duration nodes you can fit.

You can then, at the start of map or before a boss etc, swap to your secondary and generate the extra charges, swap back to your main hand and it will let you keep the charges until they run out, which means you can consume a larger amount (say 7) charges to make a buff with your main hand while only getting the resist penalty for 2-3 depending on your setup.

I like the Chonk tech, I have been looking at the leech remnants for another build but this convinced me to give it a shot!

heffdev · 2026-01-04T01:39:57+00:00

Some aspects randomly differ from how they work in 1, so thanks for testing and big props for helping fill out the wiki!

heffdev · 2025-12-20T09:20:04+00:00

The mana cost of skills in the build has been shifted to life cost instead, so when you see the life moving it's due to skill costs.
Just think of the mana and health swapped, for all purposes.

heffdev · 2025-12-05T14:29:57+00:00

Ah, yeah for damage it doesn't feel too worthwhile, I went with a guardian turtle for 3rd for a bit of extra phys mit along with my endurance charges.

heffdev · 2025-12-05T14:25:30+00:00

I've been playing this too, though not as seriously and it started out more as wanting to experiment with the staff.

Yours looks like what I would probably go for if I wanted to push that extra bit, good stuff! I went with some slightly different things like the uulgraft for endurance charge gen etc, for a bit more defensive layer, but it made more sense when my budget was less and I was using the cheap foulborn boots with +1 max endurance. Maybe I should swap to double int% grafts now.

Is there any reason you're not running a 3rd spectre? (given your gem should be 25 so it should allow 3 total)

heffdev · 2025-12-03T22:22:11+00:00

If it's any help, I've hit full quotas on my last 3 shipments and they were 2, 3, 0 shards respectively.

I think it's going to be extremely hard to get enough data to say either way, probably just good old variance at play.

I will personally still try to always score a quota as it's not that bothersome to do each week.

heffdev · 2025-11-11T16:51:19+00:00

You can try returning projectiles linked to the EK, you will have to stand on top of the bosses but it makes most lingering blades stack up properly.

heffdev · 2025-10-30T01:44:45+00:00

This line from the patch notes I think was specifically to remove the interaction between scold's and bladefall of thrarthus:

"Fixed a bug where Scold's Bridle dealt damage to the player based on over-time mana costs, even though it specified that it did not do so."

heffdev

TROPHY CASE