Is it too late for my Duelist?

Hi,

I'm wondering if some experienced eyes may be willing to look over my setup and advise what my next steps could look like in terms of improving my character for mapping. I'm new here; I think my profile should be viewable now.

I just managed to get to maps recently, not following any builds and kind of just winging it with a Leech Cyclone build (with a couple of other random skills I've just happened to fall into), which has been fun but I can tell its definitely caused some setbacks for me.

I'm wondering if there's any hope for this character and if so, what should the next steps be to help with survivability and completing maps.

Any T2 maps I'm dying too much. White T1 maps I can do, but any that I've done so far don't contribute to bonus rewards to progress the Atlas.

Or am I at a point where it would make more sense to start over with a new character? I've definitely learned a lot with this one, but I'd ideally like to avoid to binning all this progress.

Things I think I've done wrong:
1. Only recently learned about Life and Defences. This has meant I can redistribute some stats but not enough to make a big difference. Do I need better gear, nothing I'm finding is giving me a big stat boost or the ability to craft to make a big difference.
2. I leaned heavily into weapon-choice on the skill tree quite early. So I have a lot of points in dual wield and specific weapon types. While I'm levelling should I be avoiding commiting to a type of weapon setup usually?
3. I haven't spent much time with my skills and supports since I found something thay worked early on, and I think my sockets are a right mess.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. I have about 30 Chaos Orbs at the moment if there's gear worth buying, but if there much point doing this while I'm still levelling? Or now that I'm at maps, does it not really matter?

Thanks in advance.

Yep, it's probably easier to start over. You didn't take enough life in your skill tree, generally speaking you want as many life nodes as you can. Just looking at your skill tree I'm surprised you even made it into the atlas. Try researching some builds and plot out your build next time and you'll do better.

It's always possible to fix a build if that's what you really want to do. I also agree with Opiate that, in this case, it would be a fair amount of work.

Whether you recover or start over, I would suggest going with a well-established league starter and following a build guide. The advantage of starters is that they can get well into maps (often through the entire atlas) on very low investment. The advantage of a build guide is that you get a solid build even if you don't understand everything yet. (And there are always build guides around for league starters.)

If you like your Slayer, the league start meta there is Boneshatter and you can find a solid build guide here: https://maxroll.gg/poe/build-guides/boneshatter-slayer-league-starter-guide

I notice you're playing in Standard rather than Challenge. That's probably not so great if you want to trade, since everything will be more expensive than in Challenge. But you can only switch if you start a new character, and you won't be able to take any of your currency and gear with you. Something to think about for next time.

your passive tree, gear, gem setup and pretty much everything are all over the place. as others stated, it would be best to abandon this character and follow a league starter guide

As suspected!

Thanks for the help, everyone. It was a fun time getting through winging it, and I'm happy I manage to get to the Atlas, but I guess that can only go so far.

I started playing a few days before the league started hence Standard, so I'll start up something new on the seasonal league and look up a build to get a better idea of hiw to sustainably progress.