How best to use Pathfinder's Master Surgeon?

Hi all.

This league I started as Ranger->Pathfinder with Poisonous Concoction.
It was a really easy league but I never got enough damage for end game bossing. So now I decided to respec.

At some point I found about the Master Surgeon interaction with "Gain Charges when hit" I was really interested on it.

I found that Master Surgeon works best with Armour than Evasion Rating. Also works great with Fortify.

This led me to find a Melee build.
Using:
- Master Surgeon
- flasks (mostly Evasion/Armour) with 6/7 charges when hit
- +100% charges gained -34% charges used
- A bunch of attack block
Ok, this means I'm always hit and thus frequently getting but attacks are ~75% of the times completely nullified.
At least every other hit I'm getting back 30% of life instantly. Mostly getting 6% at EACH hit.

Now let's try to mitigate the incoming damage:
- Iron Reflexes
- I can fit Grace + Determination (+ one 50%mana damage) aura.
- Steadfast notable + "Melee hits fortify" Mastery for permanent 21 Fortification
- Inexorable + Deflection Notables for permanent 3 endurance charges
- 100% spell suppression

I'm pretty much immortal.

Cool!

Now I'm using Frost blades but I'm lacking the damage. :(

I would love any suggestion on how to improve in the damage domain ;)

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/3.16.0/AAAABgIDZQG8BS0FtQz3DjwOXBGBEjAUdRX9GJEY2xmKGo8fQSFgIuoj9imlMHwyATZiN0w31DmvOlI6rTxNPP5AoEHyRXxFfkX0TZJRR1b6XhNhUmKsY6dkr2S1bIx08XfXeBl673thfyt_gH-WhmCKOI19jYGNko25jb-YU5r-myabjZzEn22keKmVqeOsr7F8shm0xbcivJ_Av8GgwdXC7MM6w-bHnc6oz3rVZdYH3Ubd59745ebo1una7T_uDu9O73r22vc9-t37Cf1u_xAGADIALAAvACkARABDDboarRz7ffR8hk_Rb97y__hbklNMd5STo8fL4741vVD66gJRAIXCASSUJefH6iC-TRGkSmo=

You have a pob of your build? So I can also see your gear. :) cheers!

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tacata69 написал:

You have a pob of your build? So I can also see your gear. :) cheers!

Sorry, I play on PS4 and don't use PoB, unfortunately... :(

Here, I have loaded my character to PoE Planner so this should allow to see all gear and skills ;)
https://poeplanner.com/builds/609733

BTW, I've created a Google Spreadsheet to calculate some Master Surgeon interactions.
Have fun: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FMftukovG6JK_Wct2GTi-eJiFzerPUjloW1Un0X8RKA/edit?usp=sharing.

I've added a bit more info on the Spreadsheet in this Reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/rqvgn1/sharing_spreadsheet_to_help_with_master_surgeon/

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Jovanovsy написал:

- +100% charges gained -39% charges used

Is this a typo or do you actually get -39% charges used somewhere? Normally I thought the limit was -35% and I only found -34% on your build.

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Jovanovsy написал:

Now I'm using Frost blades but I'm lacking the damage. :(

I would love any suggestion on how to improve in the damage domain ;)

I am no expert at this but my impression is that your passive tree is too sparse - too many travel nodes.

I'm a pretty inexperienced player so maybe I missed where you can see this but it looks like you only have the base 60% physical to cold damage conversion from the skill? If so 4 passive points could get you winter spirit + cold mastery so you're at 100% conversion. Again very inexperienced so this may ruin something I'm not aware of.

Edit: Eh I imagine that wouldn't influence your damage much as it stands nvm.

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Zrevnur написал:

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Jovanovsy написал:

- +100% charges gained -39% charges used

Is this a typo or do you actually get -39% charges used somewhere? Normally I thought the limit was -35% and I only found -34% on your build.

Yes, was a typo. Fixed ;)

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Zrevnur написал:

I am no expert at this but my impression is that your passive tree is too sparse - too many travel nodes.

Yep, I think you're right. I need to drop defenses. I'm pretty much immortal but damage is blahhh. As an example it took me 30 min to take down the Eradicator! Just the boss fight... I was facetanking him but to get any damage in I would need to have both my totems out and since he kept killing them... you was a disastrous fight... he died, eventually.

If I drop the leftmost side of the three, Steadfast notable + "Melee hits fortify" Mastery and Inexorable, I lose the fortification but should keep the endurance charges from Deflection. That should be ok and allow a bit more investment in tree damage.

But now, if I lose the Fortification cluster I have no incentive to keep being melee attack (frost blades currently). Does this open any better alternative for single target damage?

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Jovanovsy написал:

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Zrevnur написал:

I am no expert at this but my impression is that your passive tree is too sparse - too many travel nodes.

Yep, I think you're right. I need to drop defenses. I'm pretty much immortal but damage is blahhh. As an example it took me 30 min to take down the Eradicator! Just the boss fight... I was facetanking him but to get any damage in I would need to have both my totems out and since he kept killing them... you was a disastrous fight... he died, eventually.

If I drop the leftmost side of the three, Steadfast notable + "Melee hits fortify" Mastery and Inexorable, I lose the fortification but should keep the endurance charges from Deflection. That should be ok and allow a bit more investment in tree damage.

But now, if I lose the Fortification cluster I have no incentive to keep being melee attack (frost blades currently). Does this open any better alternative for single target damage?

Whether dropping fortify is good or bad I dont know.
But AFAIK Frost Blades is one of the worst skills for single target: Just look at the numbers here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Frost_Blades
The base damage is 175%(*). For single target melee this is very low. So simply by picking a melee skill with more effective base damage you can increase your single target DPS. Note that the effective base damage of skills is not obvious for many skills - Blade Flurry for example does far more single target damage than Frost Blades. Also note that Frost Blades also got 'added cold damage' which helps somewhat but with the amount of damage you have added already this doesnt amount to much.

And there are of course many non-melee options for getting more DPS.

Also note that for vanilla DPS scaling it is critically important not to waste points - 1 wasted point typically means missing out on ~5% more DPS. So if your passive isnt optimized and you could get the same with 10 points less you could use those to do 50+% more DPS. But min-maxing in PoE is kind of too difficult for most players. Thats why they copy builds or parts of builds from other players.

Edit: (*) If you can get additional hits with Hydrosphere then (which I dont know) its much better though.

Edit 2: Does that 'Trinity' actually work in your main link? (Other links are probably not optimum either.)