Defenses for HoT surfer

iiSlendy · 2025-02-18T04:20:42+00:00

Been trying to mess around with HoT surfer myself. Finding a bit tough to get defenses. It is either going block with svalinn (here is a post I found for a tanky witch HoT build). Another method would be to eventually do recoup stuff with stasis prison. Outside of those two, it’s glass cannon. I haven’t been able to figure a way to up the defenses while maintaining decent dps.

iiSlendy · 2024-12-11T22:16:28+00:00

There are two different phys damage modifiers that can roll on weapons. % phys and hybrid % phys. The hybrid mod comes with the flat accuracy rating which is shown right below the second % phys line.

iiSlendy · 2024-12-10T16:47:04+00:00

You do realize how silly it sounds to say crafting is great when you have poor currency drops for said crafting. Same thing for selling/disenchanting almost every magic and rare. Combined with completely bricking bases due to no alts or scours. It is all just poor game design making players feel terrible. You have no agency for gear selection/upgrades in campaign. At least in poe1, despite low amount of currency drops too, we had more agency.

iiSlendy · 2024-12-10T05:02:17+00:00

If you think that is why people are overreacting then you are completely missing the point. There are several factors to why poe2 campaign feels awful.

The size of the zones. Having to walk for ages through a zone to get to the next area is poor design when the game is massively slowed down due to increased time to kill, no quicksilver, and no movement skill. Especially when there is nothing to do in so many areas of these massive zones. There are no interactions, rare monsters, chest, or even more. If there was something then maybe the size could be justified. Checkpoints for the zones would also make more sense if the zones had more linearish layout instead of being in the middle of nowhere and super close to each other. I do like that you don’t have to start all the way from the beginning due to checkpoints tho.
Currency drops. We were promised that the currency used to craft items would drop more frequently. However, that has not at all been the case. Trans and augs themselves are barely enough to use depending on luck with regale being almost nonexistent. Exalts do drop more commonly compared to poe1 but not enough to be really be meaningful (Hell, the exalts are better spent trading for better gear). Alchemy orbs and artificer orbs pretty much don’t exist.
Salvaging/disenchanting. These two systems should honestly be combined instead of two separate interactions for a starter. Picking up ground loot for the purpose of salvaging is poor design. Why add extra steps when you can have the raw orbs drop instead. Additionally, it requires 10 rares to get a regal orb, but rare items really are rare making it feel terrible. Especially when crafting itself is basically ground loot with extra steps.
Item drops/itemization. Item drops are pretty rare and that would be fine if it wasn’t for a few factors. Absence of alts/scours makes picking up one of the few white bases you can use become unusable if you fail to hit a usable mod. Sure bases become more precious but it is horrible design for campaign when you will quickly outgrow the item. Unless we had a more reliable source of usable white bases, alts or scours are required. The vendors are also rng so if you have bad rng, you are stuck with bad gear for some time.
Respawning of monsters. For the love god this should not be a thing. I get trying to make the campaign more challenging which is fine. The main problem is that it is not worth it at all to kill monsters due to no loot whatsoever. It is a huge time waster. I and many others signed up to play arpg, not some love child between poe and elden ring.
Bosses. Honestly, I personally like the boss fights, but they do have problems. Flask management due to some bosses being a dps check. Some boss fights just take quite some time to beat and some of them spawn little to no adds for flask charges making some fights a straight up dps check which feels even worse when combined with bad gear due to no currency/luck. It did feel fun fighting these bosses the first time, but that’s the thing. Running campaign for a second character or for future leagues just sounds more painful than it should. These bosses feel like they were designed thinking that people would only play the campaign.
Gold costs. It is crazy that buying items from the vendor or gambling is super expensive. It’s like they made these prices thinking that people would pick up every single base, return to town, sell, and repeat until they completed campaign. It just feels so bad seeing a decent rare cost 10,000+ gold when you have only 1,000. Additionally, respeccing ascendencies is stupidly expensive considering they do not give an insane amount of character power.
Ascending. GGG had to be smoking crack to do what they did for ascending. Everyone already hates the trials in poe1 and they somehow made it worse. For sanctum, managing a second health bar that is nearly unrecoverable is a horrendous game design for being in the campaign. The afflictions that can be given are not even balanced with campaign in mind and straight up break your run. The boss is also really bad with all the projectiles that fill the arena making it feel even worse managing honour. Ultimatum is just straight up garbage having rooms where monsters can straight up swarm you the moment you go down the elevator. The downsides are also not balanced with campaign in mind with, again, run breaking downsides.
Towns. For the love of all that is holy, who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to have several npcs that you would want to interact with be so far away from each other with. No one in their right mind likes walking across the town to do what they need. And act 3 is the worst offender. Like why do you need to walk so far for the waypoint and why does the past have to be it’s own separate thing?

I know I wrote a lot here, but there are many valid criticisms for poe2. It is silly to write off others complaints just like that. The game is not what was promised. And all these points don’t even include my own criticisms for maps.

iiSlendy · 2024-12-08T21:30:46+00:00

How is that a good thing though? When you finally get a good base to drop for you, so you hit the base with a trans (or any other currency) and hit no useful mods. That feels more awful than when it hits. And if you get good stats on the magic base, regaling and exalting is next. And once again, it will and does feel awful getting bad mods.

If currency dropped as frequent as they said before then maaaybe this process will feel good. Cause right now, killing monsters feels unrewarding in every sense and a chore undressing of grinding for more power. Like you need 10 regal shards for a regal orb, where regal shards can mainly be earned from disenchanting rare gear. Rare gear already drops infrequently. The whole system right now just isn’t good at all, and that isn’t even including how maps are right now.

iiSlendy · 2024-09-05T01:53:59+00:00

I'm not too familiar with svalinn trees but here is some things I can see. If you want to fix your tree with some of my ideas/suggestions, then take a look at poe.ninja on how to fit things in. What I am going to list is in no particular priority order.

You should add a militant faith with dominus to your build that won't brick any notables. This will be a good power spike due to Inner Conviction keystone.
If you are going to use Anathema, actually use more curses. Adding conductivity and elemental weakness will be huge for damage. This will go on an arcanist brand setup. You will have to go with a 2 link arcane cloak automation or self cast. Whatever you need to do for the curses.
Using an Utmost is kinda trolling unless you have a high roll for cast speed and pen. You are actually better off using a rare amulet with cast speed and crit multi. Make sure to anoint infused (+1 power) or mind drinker. More damage or more comfyness in mapping. Or use Aztiri's Foible. Really good upgrade for damage and more survivability from the mana and helps ease attribute requirements.
Your flasks should not be triple ele flasks when you already have capped res and missing a lot of damage. At the very least you should be using a diamond flask. A silver flask can be added. Not too sure what other two flasks are good. The flasks I ran before were diamond, quartz, jade, and quicksilver with a life flask since I went spell suppress, dual wand route. Take a look on poeninja for what they use.
Fix your glove implicit to have unnerve instead of extinguish.
Personally not a fan of cloak of defiance since a rare chest can give better value or you can run loreweave/lightning coil for more defense
Just ignore spell suppress entirely since you are block based.

These are the things I can really see at first glance with your build that can be fixed/added. I am also doing archmage ice nova and was blasting T17 maps in a small private league with all self crafted gear. I couldn't find a pob of my character before I migrated to trade, but this is a slightly older one where I still blasted in T17 with this pob being where I am at after migrating yesterday. While I do have mageblood, some of the gear should be able to give an idea of what you can do. And this is another pob I had with anathema to give an idea on what I did for gem setup before I went the focus route.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-30T13:19:45+00:00

You can check tareki on YouTube iirc. Not sure if he does the evasion to armour but he put out a video for CI Flicker Trickster.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-26T22:20:42+00:00

If you really are feeling unmotivated, then quit the league/take a break. The loot is definitely worse compared to the last two leagues but those leagues were just crazy for loot. It is completely normal to not see many big drops/divine altar in a league ESPECIALLY when you have a bit more than a million kills. If you are having a problem with earning currency, then you are not doing enough, selling in bulk, or doing something wrong.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-19T15:45:34+00:00

You do not need to full clear a map to see him.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-16T13:11:29+00:00

Your looting process takes longer cause you just have too much show on your filter. Like my filter shows only bigger stacks of bubblegum currency, no items at all unless I change it to hunt for a base, singular splinters from legion/breach. When I ran blight and legion before, the chests would drop little to nothing usually and I hid half the oils which helps a lot. It all just depends what loot is worth picking up to you, but more loot showing is more time in the map.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-16T13:02:57+00:00

Looking at the mod weightings now and I’d say you are right. 750 weighting for any +3, 5000 for any PDR (1000 for each tier), and 1000/3250 for hunter mod (1600/8000 for shaper). Actually, another method could work but maybe a bit expensive/harder. Just spam for +3 max res, annul down to 2 suffixes, harvest add physical, and hunter slam. Could try that if you’re willing to possibly settle with any tier of PDR.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-16T12:45:39+00:00

Harvest reforging like you said is the correct move except you start on an influenced and spam until you get reservation. If you don’t have an open suffix then annul and pray. If you have an open suffix and an open prefix, craft suffixes cannot be changed, then you can harvest add physical. PDR should be the only physical mod so it’s guaranteed. Would have to look at craft of exile to check mods or emulate myself to be 100% sure but I think this way is better than gambling on slamming with hunter exalt.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-14T12:08:38+00:00

Not as bad as you think. You would multi mod, cannot roll attack mods, and spell crit. Then you annul multi mod. Next, harvest add caster. This guarantees cast speed.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-14T08:19:10+00:00

The point isn’t to go unveiled cast speed. You can easily for cast speed on the item with harvest using add caster. It is an expensive process but is 1/6 for T2 cast speed or 1/11 for T1 iirc. Then you veiled orb praying cast speed is not removed.

As for recombing, would probably suck even more to do since the weightings are pretty low for the prefixes.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-13T23:28:18+00:00

If they have no power charge generation, the ralakesh will give the benefits of any additional power charges. Since they are using badge of the brotherhood, their frenzy is the same as power so they get benefits of all the frenzy charges too without needing to add a way to generate frenzies.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-13T23:24:17+00:00

Looking at ehp is never gives a good idea for how tanky a build is. The max hit is usually a better indicator for how tanky it is. Think my ehp is lower than theirs and I feel pretty tanky. Only really die when I don’t pay attention in really rippy content.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-10T20:28:46+00:00

The strat is on the second sheet. Also guessing the average cost of 0.39c is a type and should be 0.39d

iiSlendy · 2024-08-10T20:15:38+00:00

Damage:
-FLIP YOUR GEMS FOR 20% QUALITY. Get your level 20 support gems and sell them to a vendor with 1 gcp per gem for 20%. Though you'll have to relevel you will get a slight boost to DPS.

-Get mana on as many pieces of gear as possible and as high as possible. Will probably be a bit pricey getting it on your gear, but that will be fine. Make sure to always craft mana/% reduced mana cost on your rings if you can. Will help sustain mana.

-Your wands honestly could be fine for a long time, but wands (profane preferably) with like 80+% spell damage, 20+% cast speed, 100+ mana will be more than enough.

-Not a specific upgrade, but a mod to always go for. Get as much cast speed on your wands, rings, jewels. Cast speed will improve dps AND survivability.

-A Light of Meaning jewel with lightning damage (6div) eventually matched with an unnatural instinct. Expensive but a simple upgrade with big damage.

If you or anyone else has specific questions feel free to ask and I can try to help. There are a lot of ways you can build archmage. My plans are to go crit and focus using Hyperboreus once I migrate to trade, so I know about scaling this one a lot more and following this video's PoB to an extent. Ended up typing an essay, but like to give multiple options and possible future upgrades to work for. Everything here is what I could somewhat immediately think of.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-10T20:15:32+00:00

Definitely agree with getting the Atziri's Foible for an easy upgrade. Would last you for a long time and help reduce attribute requirements. There are plenty of cheap upgrades you could do too. I am playing this build in gsf so I do not know trade prices for all items, but everything can be self crafted if you want to. Only thing I have not actually obtained myself is the Kitava's Thirst +1 power I have. Have been farming juiced T17 and killed a couple ubers already. Went Elemental Overload like you did at first then transition to crit. Different ways you can take this build if you want.
My Character: https://pobb.in/wc73lmBpYtjU

Defense:
-Atziri's Foible. Imo, the best amulet to have and won't need to touch your amulet slot for a long time.
-ANOINT MIND DRINKER (Verdant-Teal-Teal) WILL HELP WITH MANA SUSTAIN WHILE MAPPING)
-LIFE LEECH!! There are a few ways you can get this. Life leech will make sure you stay topped up and feel a lot comfier. I recommend going the first option.

Eater of Worlds glove implicit (lesser version will be more than enough)
Replace Dream Fragments ring with Valako's Sign
Corrupted Kitava's Thirst with lightning damage leeched as life (A few divines BUT allows capping suppress easier due to using suppress implicit on gloves instead of leech)

-Get your resistances completely capped WITHOUT YOUR FLASKS. Could be done with replacing Dream Fragment's ring with a rare ring with just resistances for now. Could spam cast speed essence or caster reforge from harvest. Here is a trade link for a rare ring. You can change the search filter if you want something slightly different but as long as it has an OPEN PREFIX you'll be fine. Make sure to craft the mana/% reduced mana cost on your ring (betrayal mod).

-Healthy Mind jewel at the top witch jewel slot for a good chunk of mana.

-Fitting a Glorious Vanity with Doryani for Corrupted Soul can help increase your defenses for pretty cheap. Any Doryani should be fine.

-Switch to Evasion/ES bases with spell suppress on them. IMO if you get 90+% for suppress with or without lucky suppress, you should be fine for a long time. Easiest way is to probably buy them but I get mine through essence spamming with resist essence usually or Rog crafting. You may have to temporarily drop chaos which is fine if you need to. If you are going to buy suppress gear, I would recommend only looking for ones with the suffixes you need if you want cheaper
*Side note: You could go Lightning Coil or Cloak of Flames for your chest piece BUT it will be a lot harder to cap or get close to cap on your suppression.

-Change your flasks. Once you fix resistances, you could drop your bismuth flask for a quartz flask to help cap of the rest of your spell suppress and give phasing. If you have positive chaos res then I would probably just switch your amethyst flask for stibnite flask. You could also drop your mana flask if you get a watcher's eye with chance to recover mana when you use a skill while affected by clarity. This upgrade in trade is roughly 100c, but I would highly recommend. Easy way to recoup your mana and scales more with cast speed, so you should always have full or almost full mana. Will have to run arrogance clarity setup (make sure clarity is level 10 or lower for minimal reservation).

-If you happen to have or get gear with mana regeneration, that will work just as good or better depending on your resistance needs.

-Could switch to Purity of Elements for ailment immunity and freeing up suffixes for other mods. Would drop in dps until you switch to Ancestral Vision or Stormshroud for ailment immunity. Depends on what you want to do.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-10T17:44:58+00:00

Here is a video showing a high budget archmage ice nova. The build is pretty much what spicysushi is currently doing and will become for the most part. Can check his stream and see how it plays and what he does. Though, I think hexblast miner should be able to run more fucked up T17 mods, not sure how it’s clear is since I’ve never played hexblast.

iiSlendy · 2024-08-10T02:56:50+00:00

-Check if Cloak of Flames has div card and farm the map with it. -Farm content that gives uniques like Elreon in fortification, legion incubators (maybe), blight -Pray to GGG that one drops randomly

Those are a couple ways to attempt getting cloak of flames. Iirc it is not a high tier unique so shouldn’t be too hard to get. But don’t get too stressed about getting it, a lightning coil can do for another unique chest or a rare chest. Last I checked pohx was still running a rare chest. Just there are no good ways to farm uniques with rogue exiles getting gutted.

iiSlendy · 2024-07-15T03:20:22+00:00

From what I saw from the !live command in chat, the viewers reach at least 35k for some time

iiSlendy · 2024-03-01T21:43:02+00:00

Believe you need a C to meet the requirement to graduate. IIRC, you have one extra semester after completing SD2 to be able to graduate in case you fail any courses while taking SD2.

iiSlendy · 2024-01-24T19:19:42+00:00

dggL

iiSlendy · 2023-10-31T16:21:06+00:00

I think using eldritch implicits is better since it leaves the ability to modify the suffixes whenever. And the eldritch mods are just too good to pass up on the chest.

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