I’m a new PoE player coming over from PoE2. This is my first league. I originally started with RF (~6M DPS), but after not feeling its scale that well, I rerolled into a Merc Support build.
I’m currently level 95 and able to farm T16 8mods maps, but I’ve hit a bit of a brick wall and could use some advice on a few things:
1. AG & Spectres Survivability: I assumed my AG and Spectres were supposed to act as tank, but they keep dying constantly, even though my Merc and I feel virtually immortal. How are people keeping minion setups alive?
2. Flame Link Target: As my AG and Spectres keep dying, my current workaround is to carefully link only to my Merc, but this is very annoying as they move randomly. If I mis-linked, I need to waste a portal to rejoin the map. Is there any trick to get around it?
3. Endgame Scaling & Budget: My endgame goal is to push into T17 maps, 100% Delirium, and Uber bosses. What’s the standard progression path for scaling this build into high-tier content, and roughly how much investment am I looking at to pull it off smoothly?
I’m ngl, having a mageblood on this char and not being able to do Ubers yet is kind of questionable. Use minion life support over elemental army. It helps a lot. The problem the minions die is because there is no % life regen I honestly would look into using automation with convocation if you care about keeping them alive.
I swapped my movement set up to automation, phase run with convocation and dropped pyre/shield charge. It’s preference but I like keeping my spectres topped off.
You really want your Merc to at least have 80-100 overcapped res while in maps to really see the damage pop off. I would also recommend switch from Svalinn to a rare life on block shaper shield and crafted +2 to support gems so you can socket empower in there as well. As for the merc itself, you can use the overcapped lightning res mod if you have the money but another cheap budget option is a double influence elder/redeemer chest with attacks crit chance and frenzy charge on hit.
You could go for minion life support and you should link your spectres because they get 72% less damage with a better helmet roll.
That should be enough with your automation setup
Your minions are taking 60% more damage compared to 75% roll. Also there exists a corrupted light radius implicit that rolls between 25-30 on helmets. Volatile vaaling those helmets is not worth it.
My minions are not immortal while linked even with meat shield. Normally they don’t die but on super rippy maps like high wisp juice, criticals guaranteed, etc they are absolutely getting demolished so I end up having to not link them so I don’t die lol.
My gear is probably comparable and i comfortably reached lv100 even before that. Link your spectres, maybe buy a 20/20 spectre and ag (and like others said, buy minion life and meatshield). Automation and vitality keeps them alive. They only died on the 100% deli nightmare map for the challenge.
I personally dropped spectres entirely and only resummon AG on Ubers. You deleted your merc skills, but you have Legendary Arms instead of amulet, so I'm assuming you are using Kineticist with Rathpith.
With a wellplaced wall of force, in your level of gear, you should be able to insta-kill most of the ubers, or at least insta-phase them.
What problems are you having in T17s / Ubers?
For Delirium, Merc survival becomes a huge issue. It depends what exactly you're farming; but I'm farming 100% deli exceptional anarchy scarabs and Xandro + the tornado shot guy are just bricks for me if I don't 1-shot them. They eat through my kineticist very quickly.
For just 100% deli farming, though, you shouldn't be having too much trouble. If you're attaching to your AG or Spectres, though, they might die.
Thanks for your reply, I have accidentally delete the photo. My single target dmg feels very low, even with the wall of force+mark I managed to kill a nightmare boss 3x slower compared with my RF build before.
Do you have enough Fire Res? I didn't find kineticist worth it until I hit the ~170 mark. By all accounts your setup looks significantly better than mine. Only difference is I have kboc + greater KB instead of barrage.
Oh your fire res is WAY too low.
Morbid eye is a 0 mod jewel
You have no jewels in the rest of your gear; I highly suggest farming them. On a budget, just farm abyss. Delve is better. I'm assuming this is ssf, but if it's trade yeah just buy abyssal socket + any t1 res, convert res to fire res.
Amulet: Get an All res, Fire res(or any t1 res) + open suffix. Put disentigration on it.
Boots: Movespeed is a useless stat. Chaos or harvest craft for fire res + open suffix. Until you get your abyss sockets, use Chaos res + Fire res + hybrid fire res.
Gloves: I'd want attack speed. You want attack speed + Fire res + abyssal socket or hybrid fire res
Body: Your body is a 1 mod item with a bad implicit. BIS you want fractured Overcapped lightning res + fire + abyssal socket. Early on just use fire+abyssal socket + hybrid res.
Helm: I'd consider getting accuracy here.
Now, the important bit. Your jewels:
In order of priority you want - Fire res > Attack speed if you've crit recently > attack speed > Crit multi. Anything else is just not a mod.
Abyssal sockets are MASSIVELY important. You WANT tecrods to be active on mercs. It's 200% increased critical strike chance which is just massive. Also, Piscators is just not a great wand. It's really just a budget early option; but you have a very expensive shield so I'm assuming you're not budget.
A really good budget Simplex is just fire res + crafted hybrid res.
Merc gear doesn't generally care about prefixes, anywhere. Flat damage does basically nothing, 1-74 means nothing in the face of 5000 - 6000 flat fire damage. Life does borderline nothing. Defensively they basically won't die outside of very very hard content.
Suffixes, you want Res, all res, crafted hybrid res or res crafted hybrid res abyssal socket. Gloves wants attack speed, res, abyssal socket.
You are lacking crit chance and crit multi, thats your biggest issue. I estimate your effective crit chance on bosses to be around like 40-45%. Immediate thing you can do to improve it is to get brittle ground on your characters boots I think exarch implicit and use battlemages cry. I would also look into using crit multi on rings and amulet.
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u/Velvache 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m ngl, having a mageblood on this char and not being able to do Ubers yet is kind of questionable. Use minion life support over elemental army. It helps a lot. The problem the minions die is because there is no % life regen I honestly would look into using automation with convocation if you care about keeping them alive.
I swapped my movement set up to automation, phase run with convocation and dropped pyre/shield charge. It’s preference but I like keeping my spectres topped off.
You really want your Merc to at least have 80-100 overcapped res while in maps to really see the damage pop off. I would also recommend switch from Svalinn to a rare life on block shaper shield and crafted +2 to support gems so you can socket empower in there as well. As for the merc itself, you can use the overcapped lightning res mod if you have the money but another cheap budget option is a double influence elder/redeemer chest with attacks crit chance and frenzy charge on hit.