Feedback on my character

Hi all,

I am new to Path of Exile and I've gotten to level 57 so far with little trouble. I am currently in act 6, but I am noticing it's getting harder. I think the main reason is my lack of resistances, but I also thought the Witch would be a bit of a glass cannon.

I clear mobs incredibly fast with ice nova, bosses take a tad bit longer, but not super long. Act bosses seem to be a bit harder and the end of act 5 wasn't easy at all and I died multiple times, but I suppose it wasn't supposed to be easy.

I am just curious to see if you guys have any feedback for me that could help me progress further and maybe I'm missing something totally obvious! I've been a long-time Diablo player (1 through 4), didn't like 4 and found out about PoE, which is amazing so far. I don't like to follow build guides and prefer to discover things myself. This is how I ended up with the build I am using now.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts about my character (I only have 1).

Thanks in advance!

If you post under the sub forum listing for your class, youll get more accurate responses.


But in general, don't worry too much about gear while going through campaign.

Get resist and life on gear, worry about everything else once you finish act 10

Oh okay, I will post it there instead. Thanks for the heads up

Finishing Act 10 on your first character is a great achievement.

Please make your profile public.

Kitava and Innocence on Act 5 can be easier once you are familiar with their mechanics. Watch out for cues and telegraphs then side step so you don't get hit, because some things there are simply not designed to be facetanked.

For boss fights, the sequence should be like this:
1 - Drop Arcanist's Brand (linked to a spell of your choice) or any brand or spell totem. They deal damage while you are busy dodging the boss.
2 - Mark the boss with Assassin's Mark.
3 - Drop Frost Bomb (can be Level 1).
4 - Sip diamond and sulphur flasks.
5 - Blast away.

Act 6 is ramping up elemental dmg quite a bit.
So you have to fix your ele res and cap them at 75% if possible. Get a purity of elements aura in act3 if needed as a temporary fix.

Also try to stack about 300hp per act, which means you should be sitting at roughly 1800hp now. You can get away with far less, if you know what you are doing but thats highly unlikely given that this is your 1st playthrough.

To stack enough life, you want to get flat life on your gear and %life on the passive tree. Both combined will provide enough life to beat the campaign smoothly.

Use the crafting bench in your hideout to craft life, in case gearpieces have open prefix slots or ele res in case said gear has open suffixes to craft stuff.
This is a pretty quick way to overcome those issues, allowing you to progress and eventually replace gearpieces with whatever you find to improve over time.


Good luck

Yes as a new player I would focus mostly on capping resistances you can do so by craft / buy high resistance rings generally. Then I would focus on getting damage the game is a lot easier if you have good damage. That's not to say defenses aren't important but the complicated defenses in this game are tricky for a new player to understand without a guide. Also learning how to make currency is a part of the game and your at the point where you want to kinda start thinking about it. I would suggest farming essences and boxes if your new but there is at least 10 other mechanics to farm that are profitable.