need help with my stun berserker

I can't get past Tier 5 maps. I'm looking at my tree and my items and my skills and they don't seem to be much different from the starter builds I see on the net (not ready for end game).

I play standard. With two Weight of the Empire jewels I use:

Heavy Strike=Ruthless=Melee Physical Damage=Melee Splash=Brutality with Marohi Erqi unique Karui Maul

with rage node acendancy for damage.

I path for stun.

My problem is defence. Currently, I have:
1.)max resist (except for chaos).
2.) I'm using Leap Slam=Fortify and Vigilant Strike to get and refresh the fortify buff.
3.) Using Grace and Blasphamy=Enfeeble and with CWDT=Ball Lighting=Blind.
4.) node Stun Mastery for 10% to get endurance charge on if I stun with a melee hit.

Currently my build still has Herald of Purity gem in it, but I'm not using it. Same with Arctic Armour. I have a node that gives me 10% chance to get an endurance charge on hit.

I did try the node Unwavering Stance for Stun immunity, but I was just getting hit too much. So I went with Grace and Enfeeble. Currently enfeeble gem is low level, but I'm leveling it up.

Help!!!

This is what I'm wearing.

Sorry. I'm also not using Warlord's Mark, or Dread Banner, or the Golem.

I'll start with this: it is far less likely someone will help you if you aren't using Path of Building to generate your tree/gear/passive setup.

Step 1: Get Path of Building - Community Fork
Step 2: Install
Step 3: Open program
Step 4: Click New (Opens up the full tree, skip this step if it throws you straight into the tree)
Step 5: Top left, click "Import/Export Build"
Step 6: Under "Character Import" type your account name (which is jelf72)
Step 6.5: If your profile were private, you would have to go into your account settings on the POE website and change that
Step 7: Find the character you are trying to get help with
Step 8: Click "Passive tree and jewels" & "Items and Skills"
Step 8.5: Double check that this is the correct character.
Step 9: Under "Build Sharing" click "Generate".
Step 10: Click "Generate with Pastebin" and then copy the link.

This whole process achieves the following:
1: Installs POB which is a phenomenal program for builds
2: Generates a link that people can quickly access to be able to see what you're doing

With that out of the way, your profile isn't private so I can actually tell you what you're doing wrong.

1: You're missing 7 passives. Type /passives while in game and it will show you the quests you haven't done for your remaining passive points. If you chose a bandit over killing them all, you are missing 5. However, supporting any of the bandits with a build that doesn't crit is a terrible idea.

2: Heavy Strike isn't supported by Pulverize. Giving it Melee Splash doesn't give it the AOE tag for Pulverize, therefore you are running a 5 link which isn't a problem for tiers 1-10. Strike skills are really bad to use with slow weapons, so you're not only hitting very few enemies but you're also doing less damage than you should be.

3: Heavy strike is a garbage clear skill. Use Ground Slam for mapping and swap to Heavy Strike for bosses. Both aim to stun and Ground Slam is infinitely better for mapping.

4: Your tree is atrociously bad. If you're aiming to always stun, running Endurance Charge on Melee Stun and stacking endurance charges is the way to go. This not only generates you endurance charges, it saves you from having to grab some garbage nodes on the tree. Additionally, you pass up some incredibly powerful defensive nodes along with having awkward pathing.

5: Your skills... Man this is bad.
-Grace: Terrible idea. You don't scale evasion so getting a small amount is literally useless. Evasion is far less effective than you might think.
-Blasphemy Enfeeble: Also a terrible idea. Run Enfeeble in a lvl 1 Cast when Damage Taken setup and it will have the same effect except not nuking 35% of your max mana.
-Heavy Strike links: I've talked about this a little bit but these are really bad. Not to mention you aren't even running Ancestral Cry to make it where it hits multiple enemies when you use it. This should be your link setup (Heavy Strike/Ground Slam - Fortify - Melee Physical - Brutality - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun). Don't use Heavy Strike to map with, it is a terrible idea. Put this into your weapon when it gets 5 linked.
-Leap Slam in your weapon... That is bad. You're losing attack speed to gain a slim amount of AoE to get fortify, which is not good at all.

6: You're missing your Merciless Labyrinth and Eternal Labyrinth ascendancy points. That's loads of lost damage.

7: Most of your gear is good, minus your ring (Storm Circle) and your belt. These should have resists. Reduced enemy stun threshold is a terrible mod to look for since you can get 100% reduced stun threshold on tree along with linking Endurance Charge on Melee Stun.

So here's my conclusion: You feel like you're not tanky enough because you aren't killing enemies fast enough, so you feel the need to increase your defenses at the harsh cost of your damage which makes it even harder to survive because you kill them even slower.

"What should I do?" I imagine you probably aren't particularly savvy in the art of making your build better, so I'll leave you with a POB link to fix the glaring problems with your build. Look at it, compare it to your own, and think about why X was removed, X was added. Most things come with experience with the game and playing around with a lot of builds.
POB Link: https://pastebin.com/Uuxh3Le2
At the bottom left, you should see "Current Level Tree". This is a dropdown menu where I have also posted a lvl 90 tree as well.
In the skills section, I've rearranged your skills and made them far more efficient. You should have 1 open gem socket after all is done.
"I don't have access to some of these skills?" Go to act 6 and do Lily's quest for the Twilight Strand. She sells all the skill and support gems in the game.

This is my pastebin.

https://pastebin.com/KEcFEAQz

For all you people who are trying to create your own build. Study mine, then study his. Then sleep on the confusion that will ensue on your brain.


Thank you very much for your pastebin example, Death_Meth. I'm guessing you created a character build that I should have made that were within the guidelines you saw in my build.

I'm still confused as to why what you have works so well and why mine does not. I can see that most of your damage is coming from the warcrys. From the descriptions (to me at least, the warcrys are fairly pathetic, but more damage is always good). Also, (to me at least) the warcrys should have given SOME benefit to heavy strike, but pastebin shows that the warcrys gave no benefit at all to Heavy Strike. Also from the in game descriptions (just for a simple example) Heavy Strike = Fortify should be giving 100% better damage than Ground Slam = Fortify. However, Path of Building showed that Ground Slam = Fortify did near equal damage to Heavy Strike = Fortify. There were other discrepancies I found after I started exploring Path of Building that leads me to believe that many in game text descriptions are an outright lie.

Thank you for opening up my eyes to all of this. Its saddening that you can't do a build from what the game tells you and that you either have to spend mega hours trying every combination hoping you hit the right one in Path of Exile; or you play the game of Path of Building and test out your game on Path of Exile. Path of Building kinda takes the fun out of Path of Exile. Part of my enjoyment was building my own build.

Thanks again.

I actually just imported your character and changed your tree and skills slightly. I use POB to get a benchmark for builds and see if they're viable. The first pass in a build is to see if it's worth playing. My current build, Demigod's Wrath (build guide in the forums), has undergone MANY revisions since I first made it last league. I would encourage you to try and make your own builds. I've been doing this since 3.0 and have made only a couple of builds worth even talking about. You should also look at what other people are doing and think how it improves their build.

Most of the Warcries in the game only affect slams, which Heavy Strike is not. Ancestral and Intimidating Cry are the only two that affect non-slam skills. This is why you're seeing a large damage discrepancy. Strike skills scale MASSIVELY off of attack speed, and warcries scale oppositely (to a point). If you wanted to do a Heavy Strike build, you might as well use any other strike skill because Heavy Strike has no worthwhile damage stats you care about.

As for "other discrepancies", you're likely overlooking something somewhere else. For example, I imagine you turned off Endurance Charges at some point and saw your damage tank some. Endurance Charge on Melee Stun gives you a 4% more damage multiplier for every endurance charge you have.
Or you allocated an attack speed node and saw your damage tank. This is because POB calculates warcry's effective DPS based off of the number of attacks you use during it's cooldown period. If you attack 6 times a second, your Seismic Cry's cooldown is 2 seconds and is an instant cast, and it exerts 6 attacks, only half of those attacks are being exerted. (ie 6 exerted, 6 non-exerted, seismic recast, repeat).
You might've also turned off "enemy is nearby", which dropped your DPS a ton. Ground Slam gets a massive damage multiplier based on distance from the target.

There are very few mechanics in this game that are incredibly vague or outright wrong (See: Hextouch's description). If you spend some time making builds, you'll eventually understand the massive differences in the builds.

This is my pastebin.

https://pastebin.com/KEcFEAQz

For all you people who are trying to create your own build. Study mine, then study his. Then sleep on the confusion that will ensue on your brain.


Thank you very much for your pastebin example, Death_Meth. I'm guessing you created a character build that I should have made that were within the guidelines you saw in my build.

I'm still confused as to why what you have works so well and why mine does not. I can see that most of your damage is coming from the warcrys. From the descriptions (to me at least, the warcrys are fairly pathetic, but more damage is always good). Also, (to me at least) the warcrys should have given SOME benefit to heavy strike, but pastebin shows that the warcrys gave no benefit at all to Heavy Strike. Also from the in game descriptions (just for a simple example) Heavy Strike = Fortify should be giving 100% better damage than Ground Slam = Fortify. However, Path of Building showed that Ground Slam = Fortify did near equal damage to Heavy Strike = Fortify. There were other discrepancies I found after I started exploring Path of Building that leads me to believe that many in game text descriptions are an outright lie.

Thank you for opening up my eyes to all of this. Its saddening that you can't do a build from what the game tells you and that you either have to spend mega hours trying every combination hoping you hit the right one in Path of Exile; or you play the game of Path of Building and test out your game on Path of Exile. Path of Building kinda takes the fun out of Path of Exile. Part of my enjoyment was building my own build.

I have a lot of questions, now. I’ll just ask one. Why would damage for the 5L Weapon setup be different from the 5L Body setup? Or does having identical setups in Body and Weapon somehow achieve true double damage?

Thanks again.

"

jelf72 wrote:

I have a lot of questions, now. I’ll just ask one. Why would damage for the 5L Weapon setup be different from the 5L Body setup? Or does having identical setups in Body and Weapon somehow achieve true double damage?

Note the "Socketed Gems are supported by Level 15 Pulverise" text on the item. You are right to assume running two of the exact same setup would do nothing. The point of the second setup in the weapon is to replace the 5 link setup in your chest later when you got a 5 linked Marohi Erqi.
The reason why it's more damage is because you are effectively using a 6 linked item now, with Pulverise being the 6th. If you got a 6 link Marohi Erqi, you could have an effective 7 link item.