Why are resistances so damn worthless?

[Augoeides]

It feels like having 75% elemental resistance does NOTHING. I've noticed this since the beginning of the game, where crap would just one shot me, even though I had my resists at the max allowed amount.

Ever since the end of Act 5 and beyond, things will just flat out one shot me. It's infuriating, especially since you start losing XP at Act 6+. I finally beat the game last night at Lv75, and after some tinkering around with my build, I thought my had things at a comfortable spot to start doing the Atlas Map stuff, but the second I go into one, I get killed by a lightning bolt, when i have 75% lightning resist, with 2,000 HP, although 40 of that shifts into my mana shield.

So, that means I'm taking at least roughly 8,400 damage, from lv60+ mobs? What the hell is with that damage? I've lost over 100% XP to this garbage. I don't even think I can farm Act 8+ without getting killed quickly either. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong, this isn't my first ARPG, I'm used to the various mechanics from the Diablo series and various others, but PoE just feels flat out unfair at times.

If I can't get this figured out, I'll have to quit the game today. It's hard to have fun, when I have zero chance of fighting back, not to mention how impossible it is to level, when I lose ALL my experience before I've even earned any.

[arthelys]

2000 HP is NOWHERE near enough for maps. You would want at the very least 3.5-4k
Besides, damage also comes from other sources, like physical which will hurt if you don't mitigate with armour or dodge

[Augoeides]

Originally posted by venom:

2000 HP is NOWHERE near enough for maps. You would want at the very least 3.5-4k
Besides, damage also comes from other sources, like physical which will hurt if you don't mitigate with armour or dodge

I have life increase passives, but it's not like I just give myself another +2,000 HP, or I would have. Like I said, 40% of the damage goes into my mana shield anyway. I shouldn't need a billion HP, if 75% +40% of the incoming is reduced.

[The_Driver]

You'll need to have mana to get it to be counted against damage, if you don't, you'll take the damage to your life/ES. Standing in an AOE effect can quickly drain your mana with such a setup. Or getting hit repeatedly.

What might look like lightning might not be 100% lightning, it could have physical parts, which your lightning resist doesn't cover. Physical damage is quite deadly without armour. Many people use the determination aura to get (some) armour.

You might also not have been at that resist value you listed, e.g. because you were cursed or because the map reduces the maximum resistance. Read the map mods, reroll the maps, get more resists, use curse immune flasks etc to counter that.

If you're 75 and starting maps, you should be vastly overpowered and dispatching enemies rapidly, if not, you might be undergeared or not scaling your damage correctly (are you using 4L or better for your damage skill?).

[player7112]

Originally posted by Augoeides:

So, that means I'm taking at least roughly 8,400 damage, from lv60+ mobs? What the hell is with that damage? I've lost over 100% XP to this garbage. I don't even think I can farm Act 8+ without getting killed quickly either. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong, this isn't my first ARPG, I'm used to the various mechanics from the Diablo series and various others, but PoE just feels flat out unfair at times.

PoE mechanism is more punishing than D4, It won't guarantee your character survival to the last stage of the game.
If your stats/build does not meet the requirement, you will keep dying.

Also, some monster mods will make them too tough and still give little reward when killed, you probably need to warp away from them and move on to the next, to save your time.

You may check some meta builds from "path of builder".
But I'd say just build whatever you enjoy, it's just a sandbox anyway.

[Ratt]

Originally posted by Augoeides:

Originally posted by venom:

2000 HP is NOWHERE near enough for maps. You would want at the very least 3.5-4k
Besides, damage also comes from other sources, like physical which will hurt if you don't mitigate with armour or dodge

I have life increase passives, but it's not like I just give myself another +2,000 HP, or I would have. Like I said, 40% of the damage goes into my mana shield anyway. I shouldn't need a billion HP, if 75% +40% of the incoming is reduced.

4000 life isn't a billion; it's not very high at all. High life is more like >7000, and life by itself won't save you even at the highest values possible. Even if you have life passives, you probably don't have enough of them, and every non-weapon, non-flask item in your equipment window should have either "+x to maximum life" (where x is, ideally, a big number) or a very good reason for its absence.

[Illumina]

I got a spoiler for you, even with mind over matter you want at least 3000 life. And your mana better be huge too.

[Boomer Plays]

in maps u'll need to prepare to die a lot, especially if u r not buying/crafting the best gears to complement ur build. max of anything can be effectively nullified by mods. so the game plan is, sadly, building ur character to one shot mobs and bosses (off screen if u can) before they can even move. many poe players r into that so u need to decide whether thats ur poison.

[Achmoye 🐙]

You need to find a "simple tanky build" for the current season, and follow it like a Bible. PoE is very hard and unforgiving, and it sounds like you lack everything except resists. You need a good build, good stuff, good reflexes, and good knowledge of the game to avoid danger (dangerous map mods).
If you do things right, you should have 4k+ HP, resists, another defensive layer (go armor, evasion, or energy shield or a mix, but I recommend armor for beginners), and an excellent mobility skill (a dash ) to fix your mistakes, all of this by level 68.
You just lack some crucial game knowledge. Watch some videos and you'll be fine I'm sure.

[vid23]

What about the other defensive stuff? Chaos res, armor, evasion, spell supress? Or the only defensive stuff you have is MoM and capped res with no armor? Give us your build so we can take a look at it and help, use Path of building or This[poeplanner.com]

[Augoeides]

Originally posted by The_Driver:

You'll need to have mana to get it to be counted against damage, if you don't, you'll take the damage to your life/ES. Standing in an AOE effect can quickly drain your mana with such a setup. Or getting hit repeatedly.

What might look like lightning might not be 100% lightning, it could have physical parts, which your lightning resist doesn't cover. Physical damage is quite deadly without armour. Many people use the determination aura to get (some) armour.

You might also not have been at that resist value you listed, e.g. because you were cursed or because the map reduces the maximum resistance. Read the map mods, reroll the maps, get more resists, use curse immune flasks etc to counter that.

If you're 75 and starting maps, you should be vastly overpowered and dispatching enemies rapidly, if not, you might be undergeared or not scaling your damage correctly (are you using 4L or better for your damage skill?).

Yeah, I started to become aware of this a couple days ago; that my mana shield might not be cutting it. Right after my original post, I ditched out unique armors that I was fond of, but weren't really doing anything good for me, and switched to stuff that raised energy shield and mana. Despite that, I only have 1,200 mana, which doesn't matter, because most of that is reserved, and i use my Energy Shield for both mana and defense through Eldrich Battery and Mind Over Matter.

Although, my Energy Shield is only 800 atm, but I can't do much about that with the gear I've been finding. So any significant hits does drain my mana source pretty fast, which is also an issue, but most of the time it's not too big of a deal. The problem, is the random fireball or skybolt that just comes out of nowhere from a mile away and INSTANTLY kills me. My build says I should be using Determination and Grace, but I don't know if I can Reserve those, and most of my issue is dealing with projectile attacks. My build does have me using some Spell Suppression, so maybe I should be doubling down on that, but gear with that seems pretty rare.

I don't know what 4L is, but i have 4 slot gear. I run EK Ignite Witch, and deal around 23,000 to 30,000 damage, so killing stuff isn't much of an issue. It's surviving incoming attacks or the BS zerg of a million enemies. Sometimes I'll activate events, and I'll just be killed the second I activate them, sometimes cause the enemy will freeze me during their millisecond spawn animation, which is stupid. Strongboxes can be especially infuriating at this level, because there's not much time for me to react and teleport to a safe place before they flood the field.

[The_Driver]

4L = An item with 4 linked sockets, which allows for an active skill gem supported by 3 support gems.

If enemies can freeze you, that's bad, a flask could help, but there are other ways to get ailment immune as well. Strongboxes shouldn't be a problem, as you pop your immune-flask beforehand and then immediately use your movement skill upon opening the box to get away.

[Augoeides]

Originally posted by Achmoyette 🐙:

You need to find a "simple tanky build" for the current season, and follow it like a Bible. PoE is very hard and unforgiving, and it sounds like you lack everything except resists. You need a good build, good stuff, good reflexes, and good knowledge of the game to avoid danger (dangerous map mods).
If you do things right, you should have 4k+ HP, resists, another defensive layer (go armor, evasion, or energy shield or a mix, but I recommend armor for beginners), and an excellent mobility skill (a dash ) to fix your mistakes, all of this by level 68.
You just lack some crucial game knowledge. Watch some videos and you'll be fine I'm sure.

I have several health nodes, and I'm aware of Armor/Evasion/etc. from other ARPG's, but PoE's gear droprate is kind of garbage. Despite 90% of the things I find being yellow, none of it is useful, and even the unique gear is kind of meh. For a looter, it seems lacking, outside of the super high end legendary gear, which is extremely disappointing. It's like they build the game just for lv100's, and completely ignored everything before that. I don't even know why I bother selling the stuff I pickup, because Alteration and Transmutation Orbs seem worthless, beyond buying Skill Gems.

I have Flame Dash and all that, but all the reaction time in the world means nothing if enemies can one shot me from a mile away, or move at the speed of light. Shifting my gear around, I managed to get another +400 HP, but unless the game decides to drop me a bunch of gear with like +300 HP a piece on them, it's not getting higher than that. My current armor is starting to lean towards Evasion and Energy Shield, but even with that, the stat screen says I can only dodge like 8% of the time, so Evasion doesn't feel worth the investment.

Originally posted by vid23:

What about the other defensive stuff? Chaos res, armor, evasion, spell supress? Or the only defensive stuff you have is MoM and capped res with no armor? Give us your build so we can take a look at it and help, use Path of building or This[poeplanner.com]

Chaos is definitely an issue I'm away of, as most of the game it say at like -60%, but until a day ago, I NEVER found anything with Chaos Resist, and what I did find would sacrifice a ton of Elemental Resist. Against like Act Bosses, who seem to use Chaos, it's definitely an issue, but most of my deaths seem to be elemental related... despite my resistance to them.

This is the build I'm following, although I kind of went off the grind and spent like 20 points elsewhere, although the points I'm lacking weren't defense-based in anyway, so that's not much of an issue. I couldn't really fix that if I wanted to anyway, cause despite having like 100 hours in the game at this point, I've only ever found like 10 Orbs of Regret, and I already spent them backtracking.

[Augoeides]

Originally posted by The_Driver:

4L = An item with 4 linked sockets, which allows for an active skill gem supported by 3 support gems.

If enemies can freeze you, that's bad, a flask could help, but there are other ways to get ailment immune as well. Strongboxes shouldn't be a problem, as you pop your immune-flask beforehand and then immediately use your movement skill upon opening the box to get away.

Most of my stuff is 4L, my EK should be setup mostly correctly. Damage isn't much of an issue, unless there's a rare mob with a billion health, which is becoming more common than I would like it to be. Although, the amount of resources it takes to actually make that stuff drains me pretty fast. Getting the Jeweler's Orbs and linking them through recipes isn't too bad, because I sell stuff pretty often and have dozens of those. However, Chromatic Orbs NEVER seem to drop, and I usually end up going through 30+ of those trying to fix one piece of gear. Unless there's some way to craft those or are cheap to trade for, I have no idea how to get them faster.

The real problem is surviving them long enough to actually damage them. Enemies with huge life regen are an issue though. I don't understand why GGG thought giving monsters like 50,000 regeneration a second would be a good and fair idea.

[The_Driver]

Life regen? Drop a frostbomb.
Chromatic orbs? Sell Items with R-G-B linked (any order).

I'd probably just farm some chaos and buy some cheap gear. League is old enough to have stuff available. In SSF, I'd try to get Essence farming going to craft stuff myself.

[Augoeides]

Originally posted by The_Driver:

Life regen? Drop a frostbomb.
Chromatic orbs? Sell Items with R-G-B linked (any order).

I'd probably just farm some chaos and buy some cheap gear. League is old enough to have stuff available. In SSF, I'd try to get Essence farming going to craft stuff myself.

I sell basically every yellow I come across, I still don't have Chromatic Orbs. I have 40 Chaos Orbs (one shield modifier I had last night let it sell for +20 Chaos, so I got lucky), but I don't know WHAT is worth buying from other players, unless i find something as a drop, and want a better version of that item. I don't know what Essence if for, or how to farm it.