Into Merciless

As I was ascending the Scepter of God, it became clear that I wasn't going to quite hit level 54 just in the tower.  I'm really glad that I dropped a portal and got the last little bit of XP I needed to level in the docks.  The fight was chalenging enough that I'm glad I took the time to grab the notable Light of Divinity.  It's a good sized damage boost, so without it, the fight would have been longer and more dangerous.

Here's my skill tree at the time I beat Dominus.  It's not quite ideal in my opinion.  Skill Tree  It would have been better if I had gone ahead and taken extra mana instead of a strength node on the way to a totem wheel.  The reason I say this is that I dropped Clarity and switched to Discipline.  On one of the trips back to town, I had to pick up a mana potion.  Still, this did work pretty well.  I breazed through all of Act III.

However, Cruel Dominus is much tougher than the rest of the level.  I actually had an easy time of Dominus's bodyguards.  Two of the first three were down to less than half health in the time it took to set a few lightning traps.  The dual specters help in the offensive output.  They didn't make it through the entire fight, but they are pretty durable now as long as they aren't fighting a boss or half the guardians of a strongbox.

Now, I did need to refill potions several times after getting Dominus to his final form.  One of those was a close shave that had me running for the portal almost as soon as I spawned it.  The dangerous part of that fight is that if there are too many tentacle miscreations on the screen at once you can get hammered just coming through your portal.  After that close call, I made sure to go into docks and raise a full set of minions before going back to the roof of the tower.  With enough meat shields, returning to the battle wasn't nearly as dangerous.

By getting past Dominus in Cruel, especially solo, I've accomplished one of the main goals for this character.  When I was first playing PoE, this was a huge roadblock.  Things could be going fine in Act III, then half a dozen deaths trying to move into Merciless.  The next major stumbling block I remember, other than the general increase in nastiness in Act III, was the Weaver's Chambers.  The number of adds is insane.  I have Brutus and Merveil to look forward to in the meantime, but that's the next big chalenge I'm expecting.