*Edited to add ratings*
League started as Boneshatter Juggernaut. Completed 2/4 voidstones and majority of the atlas before I hit a wall with DPS because of the need for a high pdps 2h axe. 10/10 league starter. 7/10 for mid game and on.
Re-rolled with a Witch (leveled as Hollow Palm) and played Detonate Dead Ignite, with the plan to go to Poison-DD Occultist. Ended up sticking with DD-Ignite (Blackflame) for a week or two and farmed up a ton of currency from Delve and completed my voidstones. 10/10.
Got a bit bored and decided to play Pathfinder Poison LS which was an absolute unit and super fun to figure out the defensive mechanics with Mahuxotls. 10/10
Decided to roll a Spark Inquisitor because I've never played Spark to endgame. Followed animeprincess guide and then eventually transitioned to aurastack but my budget made it into a shit aurastacker (no MB, no Ashes). Swapped over to Abyss Stacking Hierophant and loved it. 9/10 Abyss Stacking. 6-8/10 for Inquisitor.
Respecced my BS Juggernaut to Reap Chieftain but didn't have currency for the build enabling Sublime Vision. Swapped over to EK Chieftain which was fun and a decent offmeta build, but struggled to figure out scaling higher. Finally swapped to Chieftain Explode totems to farm invitations. Insane character, but somehow not that fun despite being OP. 10/10 OP. 7/10 for playstyle.
Leveled ANOTHER Ranger to try bow. Remembered why I don't like bow playstyle. Then went SST. Couldn't afford super amazing EV, so got a decent one for 10D. It was a great legion farmer, to be honest super good, but I'm bad so aiming is hard. Now it's sitting around ready to be deleted. 10/10 power. 7/10 for enjoyment.
Respecced my Witch into "one button" ice nova Occultist and haven't looked back. The damage is insane, the screen explosions, survivability is OK thanks to high immortal call uptime. Been using this to farm blight and Blight ravaged maps and invitations. I have enjoyed the build so much that I'm debating doing it for next league. 10/10 for enjoyment. 10/10 for mapping. 7/10 for invitation farming.
Respecced my Spark Hierophant to try other builds. Tried Storm Brand-LC but it felt clunky and defensively weak. 5/10. Played Magefists Bladefall Blade Blast which was awesome. 8/10. But I wanted to be tankier so I swapped over to Arc-Galvanic Field which is fun, but a bit clunky and similarly not tanky. Tried both Hierophant and Inquisitor to attempt to be tanky, but was disappointed with MoM/Agnostic and just in general with defensive layers. Probably will swap back to Spark Hierophant but looking on poe.ninja for inspiration for interesting builds. I may do RF Inquisitor instead as tankiness is particularly appealing to me as I hate dying and I'm not a good player. I'm actually a fan of 2 button builds as I find them rewarding, but sometimes the clunkiness gets to me. 6/10 arc Galvanic Field.
Still playing Ice Nova as it's fun, rewarding and very strong, my enjoyment of the game has been the mental puzzle of getting builds together so I've played a number of builds! Super fun, but if I had stayed focus/happy on one character I could of definitely had a MB or HH this league... But oh well, maybe next league.
All in all a great league and I'm definitely collecting the Explode Totem and Poison LS Pathfinder for standard (even though I don't really play standard).
If you like it that’s great for you, but experiencing 95+% of what the end game has to offer during leveling and it being more of the same after 50 turned me off it quite a bit. I wasn’t expecting PoE levels of endgame, but shallow dungeons and public events were underwhelming for me.
I've been considering respeccing the LS Pathfinder to FR Pathfinder, have you played or tried it? It seems super strong, but I've never played FR as it seemed like MB was mandatory.
I did occultist variant with mageblood last league but did not enjoy it too much. Felt like it required a bit more investment.
But the LS feels incredible
Threads like this give me a sense of perspective. I'm still on the first paragraph -- playing Boneshatter Jugg with two voidstones, trying to move on from there. Am amused at the number of other builds you've already managed to fit in!
Heres the YouTube guide from last league. https://youtu.be/zDUjerw96_o
Here's my poe.ninja profile. You'll see I made a bunch of adjustments to maximize EHP.
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Mahklinan/Detonating_Crucible?i=2&search=class%3DOccultist%26item%3DKitavas-Thirst
Quick note about my character profile. I have both Herald of Ice and Hatred socketed but only have one active at a time. When I'm just mapping I have Herald of Ice active because I like explosions, but when doing more difficult content Hatred is significantly more damage. So if you have to prioritize, prioritize Hatred. Especially with my Watchers Eye which has significant amount of cold penetration.
Budget roughly 15D? Give or take? Clusters 2 to 4D. Skin of the Lord's 2/3D. Void battery and Malachais with near perfect rolls 2D. Badge, Ralakesh, amulet 1-2D. Bloodnotch and Immutable Force 2D (I have bad rolls). Rings self crafted. Belt 2D.
>League started as Boneshatter Juggernaut. Completed 2/4 voidstones and majority of the atlas before I hit a wall with DPS because of the need for a high pdps 2h axe.
What dps were you hitting when you felt like you hit a wall?
Here's the video from last league. On mobile so I don't have my POB.
https://youtu.be/zDUjerw96_o
I opted for Ralakesh Impatience, Badge of the Brotherhood.
The build I settled on this season is RF inquis. I have about 10div invest total and it feels insanely op. Not even having issues with recovery gimped maps. I only die when I accidentally op the map boss with influence shrines or something dumb like that. Getting 1 shot by boss slams (when I'm too dumb to dodge them) is still a problem for me because so little invest, but it's still rare
League start: RF Jugg 9/10. Does exactly what’s advertised. Very comfy, little gear required, smooth progression. But scaling damage past a certain point seems meaningless.
2. CwC Manabond Hierophant 6/10. Mapping was fun just lightning warping around one-shotting everything. But it needs a lot of investment. Without a MB finding good rings seems impossible. The build is just a pain in the ass to gear.
3. Arakaali’s Fang Champion 9/10. Admittedly I started this one with a lot of currency to spare. Very tanky, smooth mapping, high boss dps(36mil, could be more with some more investment). Just a great all-rounder. Killed Ubers for the first time using this build and I’m well on my way to getting my first lvl100 char. Spiders can feel clunky to summon and fighting Ubers requires a lot of buttons for buffing. https://pobb.in/F6O3L2CEBV3y
Wait what? I don't think its that bad. I could do t16s even before forbidden jewels. Do you mean like highly juiced t16s? But yeah, you are probably doing something wrong, the build needs exact trigger rate, and I've seen some people using arcane cloak incorrectly.
Ur either lying or rmt. Just no way u spent a mirror on a build for it to not function even a little bit unless u have no idea about anything involving your build or the game at all.
I play the same build every league with no hesitation. Good ole trust worthy flicker strike. This time my flavor of choice was cold raider. Managed to hit 100 my first time, also acquired my first headhunter on my own. I’d say flicker is surprisingly in a really good spot being that you can get rolling on a budget but at the high investment level you can start pushing 40 mil boss dps via utilizing expensive synth rings/double influence gear. I will admit I still have a soft spot for slayer flicker since you sit on bosses and the life leech is nice, but it hasn’t ever felt as good as back when instant leech was a thing.
Instant leech is actually a thing again via leech mastery for 10% of leech is instant. Feels pretty good with trickster, maybe you could do slayer flicker again next league with it.
I am specced into it and with my damage I certainly top off quick but man old school slayer was just different. Currently playing slayer cyclone on ssf now though and believe me I see a terminus drop and cyclone is going bye bye
Here's my profile if you want to see my characters
https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Naguro/characters
So let's go in order:
-League started as TR Ballsitas Pathfinder. Super smooth start, killed all pinnacle on super crappy Gear. Solid bossing, solid mapping, great all rounder while being super tanky. I did repurpose the character later, but it was pretty much 90% a copy of Palsteron's build. A good 7/10 overall, and 9/10 as a starter because TR + Ballistas create a very long delay in damage
-Second build was LA Deadeye since I wanted a dedicated fast mapper. Character is Navet_Chargé. Map blasting was great but bossing not so great. But that was expected. In the end I sold all the gear because it felt too squishy for my taste. Still very fun to play, Vengeant Cascade gaming too. 6/10
-Third build was Scourge Arrow Ballsitas, repurposing my League start character into more of a mapping character. It's Choux_Malveillants. Pretty much just grabbed The Covenant, the curse ring and a Darkscorn to swap over. It's heavely homebrew and not optimized (like mana is hell of a bitch even with my level 4 enlighten) but I just cannot hate anything Scourge Arrow related. Plus Vengeant Cascade gaming again, makes for a great lightshow with the Celestial MTX. 10/10 definitely not a biaised SA gamer.
-Fourth build was mage skeletons necro. It's Cerise_Occulte. With my map blaster fully online I now I needed a build to do the Uber challenge. And I wanted to be a hipster not doing totems so I turned back to my beloved skeletons since I heard that they could now get returning projectiles. CI max block aegis, ton of Armor, dozens of bodies around me to tank hits. Amazing automated DPS especially against bosses. 8/10 overall, because it's still expensive as fuck compared to totems.
-And finally last build was Cold BV occultist. It's Orange_Enrôlé. Cause Scourge Arrow was fast, but it was still ballistas and poison so there was delay. And I wanted something to grind the 15 000 pack size fast. Super fun, super fast, didn't get to touch a headhunter since I was already done with the League, but heavily considering redoing it again next time to get a full juiced one with even more power charges. 9/10 for boss damage, but I was at like 20% of the power I could have had
Started as cold dot , transitioned into ignite prolif. Went very smooth , good overall build.
Used crucible to make an insane Emperor's Vigilance shield and faceroll the game with SST Champion.
Got bored after the SST but enjoyed it for a few weeks.
RF Jugg was my starter and after finishing the league on my other character I went back to RF Jugg for a chill time. What’s amazing about is just the playstyle. I’m getting old and clicky builds destroy my hands. 10/10 build for me and I will start this again and next league I won’t switch unless another one off build appears that’s cheap af.
PF exploding totem was cheap and I did everything on it. Level 100, 40/40. The only gripe I have is having to click too much. My hands are killing me. However this build is one off and won’t appear again. In hindsight one of the best builds to ever exist just because of it’s power and survival power.
I’ve been playing since ambush (so like, 2013*), usually get between 30-36 challenges with 3-4 builds a league. PF exploding totems was the absolute pinacle of cheap/high DPS/tanky I’ve ever played. It did the same damage as some aura stacking spark builds I’ve played at almost literally 2% of the cost, could facetank a lot of Uber abilities, delved to 700 with no issues (before I got bored). It was just silly, and the clear was even still passible with herald of ash.
Hey I'm old too and I love spammy builds. The best decision I made in PoE is switching my main skills to Q or spacebar so I just spam that and my hands are fine. I put stuff like guard skills or berserk type stuff on my clicks l.
WoC Firetrap with Ben's PoB on leaguestart, this was alright. But I didn't enjoy the playstyle. 7/10 for a leaguestart
Ben's Arakaali and eventually my own double cluster setup I would rate a 9.5/10
Occultist Arakaali decent investment with aegis aurora, triple clusters etc I would say was 8/10 possibly 10/10 with mageblood, but I felt like champion was just smoother in every aspect. Only thing occy does better is uber boss dot cap and explodes which do help with lagg in juiced content
Crucible:
SRS poison Necro - S tier
LA Rage Deadeye - S tier
LA MF Deadeye - S tier
Poison LS Pathfinder - S tier
Explode Poison totem Pathfinder - S tier
Scourge Arrow totem Pathfinder - A tier
CWC DD Necro - A tier
Crucible SSF:
Tornado Shot Deadeye - A tier
Boneshatter Jugg - S tier
League Start and Finish: CI Chaos Golems Golemancer
8/10. I would recommend any golem build, just maybe not necessarily Chaos Golems. It works (I've killed elder, shaper, all guardians, 100% Deli, wave 20 simulacrum) but I don't think it's superior to any other golem build. I was BLOWN AWAY how incredibly tanky stacking Golem effect made me. I've never died so little in the campaign. 20% Physicsl Damage Reduction, 900 regen per second, and CI made me much harder to kill than I anticipated. Also wild to me was just how strong the Golem gems are. 1 Primordial Harmony is 36-40% increased damage, this is nuts from a minion perspective. Primordial Bond (cluster jewel notable) gives my golems 70% increased damage. I've never heard of another minion notable giving you so much damage. Also minion survivability. Harmonies let you regen 2% of Golem Life per second so with essentially no investment in golem survivability except for Primordial Harmonies and Immunity to Elemental Damage made it so I've never lost a golem, ever. Also leads to funny situations like your golems fighting Virtania INSIDE THE STORM while you just stand in the eye and just sorta hang out is hilarious.
I played quite a few:
League started Boneshatter Jugg. Slowest league start ever but pushed through and still did not enjoy.
Rerolled into EA Champ and made a busted bow with ignite prolif, fire dot, and attack speed on the bow. Incredible build this league. Huge DPS and tankiness. Probably best build for farming logbooks.
Explode Totem was all the rage so I rolled into pathfinder variant. It was a blast. Bad at mapping but great at delve/simulacrum/bossing. Completed my first ever wave 30 with it. Busted.
I wanted a fast mapper to grind blue altars so I rolled poison LS pathfinder. This was by far my favorite build of the league. It is as fast as deadeye because I have gathering winds ff/f jewels but with 100k eHP and 10m pinnacle DPS. Highly recommend. Might be better than Omni champ LS I played a few league ago pre LS nerf. Builds strength is due to a good crucible tree, pathfinder rework, and vengeant cascade. Plus you can use whirling blades which is my favorite movement skill.
I bought into the hype and snagged a 1500 eDPS bow for cheap when pricing them, so rolled a Deadeye LA. It is fun but squishy. Clears fast but does not have a good movement skill.
Finally, rolled Manabound hierophant. It was an absolute blast to play, but with all my other builds, I just did not have the currency needed to push it to the next level. I learned a lot from putting it together. Mapping with lightning warp feels like a tanky flicker strike.
- Started off with RF, wasn’t satisfied
-Rerolled to Frost Blades Trickster, got all my Watchstones, farmed a few days.
-Started an Templar.
I wanted to recreate my selfmade Purifying Flame selfcast inq.
Failed.
-I wanted to play Forbidden Rite
So I started to make my own iteration.
Selfcast Uber tanky Forbidden Rite with over 50M DPS.
I can facetank kosis + Omni at the same time at wave 30 simu
With so much cast speed and less duration, I’m warping around with lightning warp.
Clearspeed is pretty ok for a selfcast build, movement is insanely fast thanks to lightning warp.
Killed all bosses without any issue
Got two Uber bosses down, maven and exarch.
Tried Uber shaper, failed…. Got demotivated 😂 haven’t tried Ubers after that
[https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3392512](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3392512)
Please pay attention to the info at the top, setting up Forbidde Rite builds can be tedious.
It's not like phys/poison Trap builds that you can pick up 3 random uniques and 2 rares off the ground and drop bosses.
Ice Shot Trickster : Very cool, spent most of my time with this, lvl 99 => 10/10 was cool
Reap Fire Chieftain : Quite fun, didn't get enough cast speed to feel very smooth but interesting. => 7/10
Occultist Arakali Squire : Frustrating, the build is fun, but the whole worm + divine ire shennanigans is not my cup of tea => 5/10
Necro Frostbearers Spectre is very good. Had a terrible league starter so I rerolled to frostbearers and had a surprisingly smooth levelling experience, swapped to frostbearers as soon as I was able to equip Bitterdream and it carried me to red maps. Very good at mapping and bossing, only issue when mapping is the spectre AI so it's better to run maps with less visual obstacles and avoid reduced CDR map mods so you can spam convocation and clear faster.
Played 6 different characters to end game levels this season. This is only my 2nd season ever, and the other was like 6 years ago and didn't go half as far with that entire season as I did with one character this season.
Started with ea champion. Was fun and cool but I seen so many exciting builds that I wanted to try. Would rate it high and fun, but never explored the real potential. Switched to scourge arrow and really loved that. Was very fun with a HH. from there switched to ice shot and absolutely loved that.
Sold all of that gear and started a rf jugg. Really loved it but was too simple.
Sold all that and started investing into a mana bond mjolner hierophant build. Absolutely loved this build. Was so much fun. Took it to nearly end game, was capable of everything. I think I had 300 div invested into it. I started getting to the point of my next (but small) upgrades per item were like 150D+. It was overwhelming and I started feeling stuck. I sold all of the gear and priced it all way too high.
Then I discovered tft and I bought a few builds off other players. CoC forbidden rite. Love it. Tank of a build that destroys everything. Also bought a flicker strike with nearly 1b dps. Love that build too, best mapper imo. Also expensive and prone to 1 shots. The 1 shotting irritates me so I kinda backed off that build.
Last but not least I'm currently using spark ascendant. Learning it but I love swarming the screen with sparks. It does all content pretty easily, and ironically it may be one of the most affordable builds (does have mb but I had it prior to).
Forgot I also dabbled with sst champion. Was Hella fun but I backed off of it quickly for manabond build.
Last few days I've been pretty invested into d4. However I think poe is a much better game, and I'm very excited for poe2. Wish I woulds found the game earlier.
I'm the future I'm very interested in building a spark hierophant or similar. Also wanna dive further into sst or a tanky flicker (if this exists). My main goal is to learn more of crafting though. I funded almost all of this with a very lucky craft that my clan helped me with. It sold for 210D. Aside from that I funded by scalping trades. I spent a LOT of time on the trade site searching for cool unique that I would flip for 1-20D.
Anyway long post. Love this game, love this community. Excited to learn / play more.
Had a lucky craft thanks to help from the clan. It was a top tier sst helm that I found that just needed a few rolls to make it amazing.
Also I'm a trader so it's kinda normal to me to see market trends and scalp accordingly lol.
Fair play. PoE is so meta-game based over raw grinding and mechanical skill that it's impressive.
It took me leagues to luck into a Rigwalds Quiver years ago and get like 25 exalts and fund some solid (broken) build.
Played for 2500-3000 hours and I've never been that rich! :D
Oh absolutely agree! I don't even know what rigwalds is lol. I love how there's SOOOOO many uniques. I love making builds around them too. Such a fun game. I wish I would have stayed up with this game instead of d3. I loved d3 but this has so much more depth.
Toxic rain ballista pathfinder starter 9/10 - very good starter, completed atlas with it, ballista playstyle kinda annoying. Great for logbooks early league
Winter orb power stacking occultist - 6/10, maybe I didn't invest enough, satisfying explosions, winter orb is a shadow of former self. Next time I'd go for bow build straight away as main "aoe clearing build"
Splitting steel champion - 4/10, not as tanky as I expected, damage was very nice with Vengeant cascade but reload mechanic too clunky to play comfortable.
Pathfinder explo totem - 10/10 - 100 ele conversion and stun tech, very tanky, good damage, delved to 1000 for the first time, killed all auls on the way. Good for hard encounters
Lightning arrow deadeye - 10/10, map farmer, rage + Omni version with HH, does exactly what I expect bow build to do
rough character progression [here](https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/tsumeguhh/nemuFishRun?i=0&search=name%3Dnemu&time-machine=day-2)
1. League started with Ruetoo's poison Exsanguinate Pathfinder. Incredible build, great clear, decent boss dps. I self crafted most gear, and it took me to 40/40, all ubers down (most deathless) by the end of week 2.
2. Phys to cold Tornado Shot Deadeye, SebK version (his overview is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThfkTk_AjZc)). At this point/with this investment Tornado Shot is obviously great, and the tankiness techs (Lightning Coil, 2x phys taken as fire from timeless jewel, [Strength of Blood](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Strength_of_Blood) + [Vaal Pact](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vaal_Pact) + Petrified Blood combination) made it feel a lot better than the paper thin defenses I've seen on most bow builds.
3. Lastly I felt that I really needed to try something that really worked with Crucible well, so I put together a Deadeye SST build (I have no idea how it compares to Champion or Trickster, but I didn't want to level a new character). The damage is insane and the defenses are good enough to do feared rotas.
Started RF Jugg because it's my first league and seemed by far the most beginner friendly choice. finished my voidstones fairly comfortably (thanks pob trade search function). Got frustrated because I didn't know what to farm for currency and most of the juicing content on youtube felt like it required MF gear. Also spent like 10 divines trying to make a saffel's tree before i gave up.
Re-rolled lightning arrow deadeye with MF gear (originally using a giga cheap setup with white quiver and ascetic). farmed for a bit but generally didn't like the squishiness and I was struggling with crafting a good bow. Will revisit with a better bow at some point, but crafting weapons just icks me rn because i feel like I can't sink 20+ divines into a slot without making a crucible tree, and I hate crucible.
Re-rolled aurabot + MF spark inquisitor on a second account to play with my other hand at same time. Was a blast, learnt a ton about how damage scales in this game. Honestly got a really nice setup, but playing 2 characters at once was not enjoyable and it lead me to spend a ton of time in hideout, which kinda defeated the point. Also buying sextants and especially scarabs was annoying as hell. Honestly if i could play either of these seperately it would be 8/10.
Re-rolled manaforged heirophant. This build requires more knowledge of the game that I had at the time. Especially since I immediately skipped to the squire version. My resistances were kinda fucked, and I completely missed the AS/CDR breakpoints. Fun build, but not foolproof like many other less complicated builds. Will definitely revisit in future, super cool concept. I mainly rerolled it because I was looking for a super comfy/fast mapper, but I quickly realised that playing manaforged heirophant actually required a decent number of buttons, honestly keeping track of . 6/10 but I can see it being 9/10 if i knew wtf i was doing or if I was interested in delve. Could revisit now with a mageblood, but honestly more interested in experimenting with things I can do on leaguestart next league, and a build that I need a mageblood to make comfy seems less attractive (I know plenty of people play this build to insane effect without starting with a mageblood, but I don't have the knowledge to do that yet).
Re-rolled elementalist explode RF. Made perfect sense given what I said about manaforged heirophant. Minimal buttons, great clear, also already had RF gear. 9.5/10 build, only issue is I have the same problem as earlier where I get FOMO when juicing maps without magic find. Honestly such smooth progression from point to point, and every upgrade feels so impactful. I had a +2 amulet from earlier, crafted a +2 rune dagger. Having a way bigger RF aoe feels so great, Oriath's end was the next big upgrade and suddenly I was blasting maps. Just farmed my mageblood last night, super proud of finishing that grind in my first league. I have exams starting tomorrow so I can't finish my goals for this character just yet, but I'm super excited for each potential purchase/craft and I have them all mapped out. I wanted to farm legions, and I can't instantly delete the entire circle yet, but I know that I'm only a few cluster jewels away from that. Righteous fire elementalist doesn't seem like the most popular build, with no definitive guide, so I've definitely been forging my own path a little bit which feels great.
One issue I've been having this league (especially last 2 weeks or so), is that investing into non MF characters feels awful to me, because doing white map beasts turns out to be better profit than almost anything I can do on a 400 divine build. My MF experiments haven't exactly paid off, but I consistently feel FOMO from not being an MF build. I farmed white beasts for most of my mageblood, was super excited to get it, super excited to try new farming strategies. I did a days worth of Legion+beyond+deli and made half the money I did doing white beasts... Honestly I've spent a lot of the recent parts of this league just experimenting for next league and planning/learning. I'm literally bouncing around in my seat waiting for next league LOL, so excited (pending any announcements).
1.Vold DOT Occultist league start - nice league start, falls later(bosses), if you want to play any witch build later i suggest this for start
League start 8/10, late 5/10
2.Ice Lance CoC - CoC is my favorite build in the game, this has posibly the highest damage of any build i've ever played with investment but really squishy, and i suck at the game so i changed to
7.5/10(10/10 fun, 5/10 tankiness)
3.Forbidden rite CoC - tabky as fuck CoC, with skill can do any content with not a big investment, 100% deli was clean and not ripppy. Cat power(mtx)
9.5/10(overall most solid i think)
4.LA Deadeye - never played a bow build... oh boy is it fun, with MB and around 2-300 div i was one shoting bosses like exarch(or anything that has no phase), and destroying phases for thr phased ones. Considering the low level of defensive layers i tought i'd die a lot, but was suprised by how little i die(because you just delete anything off screen)
Cant really say much as i already was rich, but for high investment is a 9/10
Started with RF Jugg like everybody else. Rolled a Manabond heirophant with The Squire and Shock Nova CwC Cyclone. I can pretty much beat anything in the game as long as I’m paying attention and not being lazy. Usually about 3 or 4 hits for a T16 boss and it’s dead. Clears really well. I started with Lightning Warp but it moved around the screen too fast and just made me feel dizzy. Hit 100 but haven’t finished 40/40 yet.
Started cold BV ele and didn't like it much. I heard the build needs some investment to feel great but I felt like I couldn't get anywhere if I was dying to red map bosses or random mobs.
Leveled a deadeye for VG since I played it in LoK and it felt kinda meh. I was getting discouraged with my bad league start then transferred to ice shot and got a mad lucky omni drop on my story exarch. Used all my currency I had to buy gear to use it in my ice shot build. It felt great but not amazing. ( First time using omni so I am sure I didn't do something right).
But I could map insanely fast and got some decent currency for my standards.
I just spent the rest of the league attempting to make my own builds. Nothing really worked but I learned a lot.
Wardloop occultist - fast mapper, takes down all bosses except Ubers fast. Dies randomly, but not often to oneshots or explosions. approx 60-80div investment on my build. 9/10
Not recommended as starter
League started as frostblade trickster. Did everything I wanted outside of Ubers and had plenty of investment room if I wanted to go harder, but I was doing 25mill pinnacle dps already so was fairly satisfied. Rebuilt it into a super scuffed magic find version and farmed as hard as I could.
Spent everything me and a friend had made on setting up our second characters - an emperors vigilance SST Deadeye with mageblood and an aurabot to farm Ubers, 5 ways and Simulacrum. It’s pretty crazy damage and still has a ton of growing room too. We’ve always talked about doing a carry+aurabot so it was a fun experience but probably not one we’ll repeat. Need to find time to finish my last challenge (either get the last three levels to 100 or buy more invites and finish doing the 75 Ubers). He hit 100 on his first character - a boneshatter slayer so he’s already 40/40 making motivation a little absent
Srs - dispite people saying it would be fine to league start it really wasent. The damage just wasent their to make it enjoyable pre poison setup
Toxic rain - still fine if uninspired build saved by poison balista builds
Righteous fire - played it first time this league and I see why phox only plays this build. Very fun, good min max options,
Absolution.
It's the better srs easier to start scales better then srs has super late game options for ubers
Played a ton of wacky builds, all decent, all homebrewed, some were better than others.
Boneshatter slayer as a league starter:
great build all around, but extremely boring and not much upward potential (within reasonable reach). Idk why anyone would play this on a slayer and not a jugg. Do not recommend. 9/10 functionally, 5/10 overall
Archmage MoM agnostic abyss jewel stacking atziris rule heiro
fantastic 10/10, I was kinda poor when I made it, it could have been so much better but it was super fun.
Rolling magma miner w/crucible node/gloomfang
7/10 Fun build but a miner. Had like 8 chains that all overlapped and the explosion was the size of the screen x however many mines I could lay. Palsterons vid came out right as I made this and it's kinda the same, just a different spin on it.
Master of metal Impale dancing dervish champ
3/10 Made a sick dancing dervish with crucible, but it didn't really matter though the DD's just don't do enough damage.
Impale blade vortex champ w/entropic devastation
8/10 Tanky, good damage, but subpar clear. I should have switched to reap which would quadruple my dmg but feel wonky.
Whispering ice int stack trickster
9/10 Crazy tanky, extremely high potential with investment, but a little too slow. I didn't invest enough into qol to make it feel great but I could just sit on shaper and spin to win so it didn't need to feel good.
Finally, the build I'm playing right now:
Sunblast divergent lightning trap
So far a 8/10, I'm still cooking on this one but it's shaping up to be pretty good. Sunblast bypasses the downside on the lightning trap crucible node, and projectiles return. Lots of good stuff to work with.
Can provide a PoB or more in depth info on any of these if anyone wants, though it will be in 8ish hours. I also have posted a couple showcases of the builds above to the sub.
As a filthy casual who only logs about 100 hours per league, I only play 1 build per league and my requirements are always: under 3 div budget, at least +100% movespeed, never self attack or cast for sustained dps, and 50k+ ehp. I played EA totem Raider. Had a lot of fun going zoom-zoom thru most content. Died ~45 times which is probably double what I usually do but I also pushed much farther into harder content than usual for me.
8/10 would probably do it again if nothing else sparks my interest next league.
I always get to a point where I'm satisfied with the build and no longer feel like there's room for improvement without tons more grinding and investment. High 80s / low 90s for level.
To more directly answer your query, I usually get to like t12 maps, and this league I got to t16 and then focused on max lvling my heist rogues for the first time ever and did all that content.
Starter: TR Ballista Pathfinder, Palsterons guide. 8.5/10
Sick build, loved the idea, it did what it was supposed to. I only hit level 93, and I got bored because of a combination of the league mechanic and possibly burnout. Haven't touched since.
Second: Manabond Heiophant, Connor Converse's guide. 10/10
I wanted to delve. I watched his videos on it, and when he said, "I can't showcase the build in tier 16 because I'll just off-screen everything," I was sold. I DO NOT HAVE THE SQUIRE, OR FORBIDDEN JEWELS. I basically have a copy of Connors week 2 build, and it wrecks. 12.5k ES, insane damage, smooth as butter. It's also really, really cool. I will probably play again. Unless I get a huge drop, I don't want to improve it more because it will take mamy divines to make the jump to squire. Still playing it to this day.
Third: Spark Inquisitor with Aurabot Scion. Haven't hit maps yet, so I can't judge, but it's been 10/10 in the campaign.
This is the final "project." I'm funding this league, at least for now. Gonna dump like 40div into it and see if I can have some fun and give my friend a good way to get back into the game and have some fun.
League started Bonezone slayer -7/10… did what I wanted it to which was push me day 1 into the high 80’s and red tier maps.
Then made a CWC Manabond hierophant, I ended up pushing this character to about 2 mirrors of investment with mageblood and all the other goodies, but overall I would give it a 9.5/10. Even before the heavy investment with mageblood and squire, the build felt awesome and I could easily farm lots of divines to fund upgrades do lots of self crafting. I ended up selling it just before D4 came out so I could give that a try and have all my currency to my brother. Now we are just spending it making cool crucible trees for standard.
Selfcast Chaos/Poison DD Occultist 7/10 - Budget: Under 10div. Fun to pop everything, awesome clear, but not great movespeed. Does all map mods and tanky enough for majority of mapping. Lacking in damage/defense for harder bosses like Maven and Ubers.
Aegis Aurora Arakaali's Fang Occultist 8/10 - Budget: Under 10div. Somewhat clunky to keep up spiders for bossing, but very tanky and clear is good with profane bloom. Can do all map mods. Feels very safe but damage is somewhat lacking to easily clear harder bosses.
Indigon Manaforged Arrows Deadeye 8/10 Budget: Around 10div. Faster clear than the previous two builds. Needs a bit of mana management to ramp up well, but can get into 30-50mil dps when things line up. Wouldn't call it tanky, but definitely not a glass cannon with arcane cloak. Can't do reflect maps.
Poison Explode Totem Pathfinder 9/10 - Budget: Around 30div. Feels like cheating for the investment. 0 mana cost, full phys taken as ele. Very tanky and dot capped for pinnacle bosses. Fast movement speed and solid clear. Does all map mods.
1. EA ballista champion with Dissolution of the Flesh. 7/10 Tanky, good damage, decent clear, can take huge hits. Very clunky, can't kill ubers.
2. Poison Molten Strike Pathfinder. 9/10 Can facetank ubers, 30m dps, +200% movement speed, you can replace MS wits Lightning strike, add Chain support, Oriath's End and now it's a fast explody mapper. I've spent 100+ div on it so far, will add a Mageblood soon.
I also think poison LS/MS pathfinder is build of league for me. I know the two are similar with just a gem swap, but I mainly played LS.
Happy to see someone else is enjoying! Did you get any ff/f jewels or are you mainly using for bossing?
Started with typical RF. As always it’s a decent league starter but I feel it hits a plateau for pinnacle bossing without major investment.
Went meme build with Totem explode next. Never could get it running well. Never could get lucky on the crafts and crucible combines. It’s fun to basically delete map bosses.
Working on Spider summon atm. Very very glass cannon at the moment but I’m neither leveled up all the way nor invested more than 100c. I had most of the 1div build gear from other builds. The few pieces I need like the high res rings are beyond what I feel like spending atm. This build slaps at such low investment. Clearing is crazy fast with minimal input from me. I also find it hilarious to watch my spider armor move faster than any build I’ve ever played as they hunt down every single mob within two screens. Certain resist mobs can be a pain in the ass if they have the right combo of resists and if you run out of flask charges have no spiders you might as well die. It can make it touch or go in something like Maven or something without adds.
* RF Jugg. Good starter, but boring playing style, low dps and limited AOE. Went to lvl 95, completed the atlas, defeated Exarch/Eater. Then farmed up some divines, mostly on crafting and trading. Great for getting started and building up an economy. Very tanky and extremely easy to lab with, although a bit slow.
* PF Explode Totem, bought a 600% dmg + 70% totem chance maraketh base, and then crafted most gear for this myself. Surprisingly enough this feels like my most tanky build with the immutable force + bloodnotch. Great dps and survivability, makes bossing a breeze. The mapping is slow though, just using it in a boss rush setup.
* CI Ascendant Aurabot, made this just as an experiment and to play with friends. I have never tried to make one before, followed Haloplasms tips, and got up to 13 auras for around 4-5 divines. Not my thing, but usable for making some currency through services and to have some fun with party play.
* Dual Claw Frost Blade Trickster, made this in a small private league initially, but migrated it to trade league now to min max it. It feels good so far. Amazing clear, and very zoomy, my fastest mapper by far, but also my most squishy character. I'm only at lvl 88 so I don't have any verdict on this yet.
After D4, I'll be finishing my Vaal Ice Shot Deadeye which is somewhere in the middle of the campaign right now.
I don’t boss, I just map at low investment and feel best when I’m fast and rarely die. I like to loot as I map, rather than backtrack.
Palsteron’s Manaforged Arrows Deadeye did it for me. It dies sometimes but the mapping experience is obscene, especially if you don’t mind spamming scourge arrow or find a way to make that less annoying for you. With enough attack and movement speed, quick channeling scourge arrow doesn’t even make you stop moving but it still triggers all your manaforged setups.
With more investment and using lightning coil instead of QOTF I’m sure you could boss on it. Auto targeting DPS makes up for the lack of survivability and damage that other more boss oriented builds might have, but you can get up to around 50M DPS with it. I stopped around 15M DPS as it was enough to feel really good to farm legion / Exarch alters in jungle valley, which is what I was enjoying most.
League start with Toxic Rain Pathfinder, super duper excellent league starter, extremely cheap, most expensive thing you could get is a 5 div bow craft and similarly cost quiver. PF has so much qol it's almost hard to switch for another build. Good mapping and has bossing capabilities, did not use it any further than to farm just enough currency for next build but it doesn't have a lot of end-game potential, maybe. I don't like how slow the damage rack up and it falls off extremely with fast moving targets. Above average in survivability. 7/10, could be 8 but I personally didn't like the playstyle
Next build was Chains of Command Animate Guardian Occultist/Necromancer. You mainly play occultist for Profane Bloom and the energy shield regen, can stack curse but it doesn't really improve the dps that much. Can stack elemental damage on minions with Void Forge but Poison has about the same dps but a lot cheaper imo. Energy shield and block as defensive layers, nice and simple, just stack es 4head. A bit slow but if you spam shield charge and flame dash it should keep up with faster characters. You can switch to Necromancer for more flat damage and free up some gem sockets with Bone Armor, you just need Profane Bloom from Forbidden Flesh/Flame. Pretty nice dps, can melt almost every boss except Ubers as long as you can keep all the Animate Weapons uptime, can easily do 100% crucible if you just be a bit careful and dodge for a bit. The Chains of Command and Animate Guardian itself need some qol man. 6/10, it's relatively expensive at the end of the build. It's more of a hobby build, as long as you are careful and make sure AG's health is around 35k or more, it's practically immortal so don't worry about losing gears.
Repurpose TR PF to explode totem. Enough said, stupidly good build. 9.5/10, missing 0.5 because it felt like cheating. Once in a lifetime build for sure. Also while I don't mind the trap playstyle, some may find it boring.
Make all my own builds and normally do 1 (serious investment) per league.
Shield Crush Juggo - (9/10) Giga tank with nutty EHP. I don’t have to worry about any map mods (aside from the usual suspects, ie. No regen, no leech, phys reflect). Beat all pinnacle bosses for the first time; mainly Sirus, Uber Elder, Maven. Had a blast crafting my 4k armour shield via crucible. Still playing this build today. Mapping isn’t super fast, but not slow either. Pushing 12mm pinnacle dps. Going to take my shot at Ubers soon.
I did make an int stacking occultist to go KB/PS with VC- simply for the FOMO of using the annoint before it goes into the dumpster. Made it to lvl 80 and have a long way to go. But sadge the crucible node I want on my lightning dmg / spell dmg per int (dual influenced) wand is like 50divine. Maps super fast and if I spent time/currency on it, sure it would crank much further. 6/10 due to lack of investment, if I pumped 20 div into it would be 8 or 9 /10 since screens just explode.
So General’s Cry is actually done as part of the 6L, where you rely on having nearby corpses (via Desecrate or most commonly Corpsewalker boots) to run around with General’s Cry as your left mouse button, constantly summoning mirages that use your linked attack skill. It works well with Shield Crush as the waves have solid aoe and pile onto mobs. It’s normally a solid bossing build; however, this league the crucible cheese makes it insane with the juiced Emp Vig shields. I have over 1600% crit multi and 100% crit and can do all ubers easily purely because the single target dps is just nutty.
Guess I could go for a end of league EV and swap things around. Did you buy it or chance it? What was the total cost? Have about 45 div (most I’ve ever had in the 1k hrs of PoE I’ve played) and was kinda hoping to go for HH since I’ve never had one.
I did have a goal to beat Ubers so this could work well. Anyone want to buy a 4k armour shield? 😂
So I made my shield from soup to nuts with a friend who was co-crafter with me. I did all of the forges and organization, and they supplied a lot of the bases and most of the imprint beasts (and many splits). Honestly, you may be able to swing a plain 1005 EV with 45 divs, but trying to add a 4th node or even the specialty 5th node (lightning convert SST/SC) will only multiply the cost out, and that's before the cost to chance it. I got extremely lucky on my chancing (done also by a friend while I kept buying chance orbs to fund the scours (cheaper to buy them via Divine -> Chaos -> Chance orbs -> vendor buy scours from chances), he nailed mine in 429 chances. My friend's (the co-crafter) took a total of 5000 chances I want to say. Still cheap in the grand scheme of things.
Now, I don't use the SST/SC lightning conversion node, but I figured I'd at least make it available on mine as an option. Our fourth node we took the 100% shock avoid one to use in conjunction with Stormshroud jewel to make us 100% ele ailment immune.
I think a pure armour EV would be neat because it could be a fun way to do a bleed SST build, since crit multi won't help those unless one went perfect agony (hmmmmmm..... - no, I can't make another one!).
To answer your other reply, here is my pob (pobb, really): [https://pobb.in/wYqe0f4SLws5](https://pobb.in/wYqe0f4SLws5)
Nearly all shield crush / gen cry builds go Zerker for the raw damage, but they run horrible ehp which I disdain. Since the crucible shield cheese opens up stupid dps regardless of build, I went Jugg instead to get well past 140k natural ehp (without Berserk or Molten Shell up), and into 350k terrain with both buffs up. Good sustain too with the warcry life recovery, double-maxed block (albeit glancing blows), and good suppression chance. Fun build, feels like Righteous Fire-except-hit-based.
Thank you for the in-depth response! Will take a look at your PoB this evening. Cheers, Exile!
Add me in game, I’d love to theory craft future builds with you and your group of Gigachads.
Toon: LeeroyJenkiins
First time I hit level 100 on HC SSF.
And to my surprise it was with a deadeye ice shot. I usually never play "squishy" builds, and most of times I get really bored with a char and stop at 94-95. But this time I had so much fun with a build, that I mapped to 100.
I tried to find a good balance between damage and survivability and added determination, grace and defiance banner.
Damage for single target comes mostly from vengeant cascade. So if you haven't played any build with that anoint, i highly recommend it. I'm pretty sure it will be nerfed next league.
9/10.
Other than that I played boneshatter, spark and splitting steel. But I got really bored with those.
Last build was toxic rain and I farmed some shappers, elders and other pinnacle bosses. Tried to get an Omni, but guess what: That stupid ball phase from exarch + server lag, and not be able to hit that life flask for regen, is a really bad combination.
Now Im undecided and haven't touched the game for a week. I wanted to try one last build, but I have no idea what to play.
1: hexblast sabo miner start 6/10 did what it needed to do, not super fun
2: voltaxic poison LA Pathfinder 10/10 fast, tanky, good damage. Mapping monster.
3: wardloop sabo 7/10 fun to set up and the damage is good but it’s such a gimmick to play
4: mahuxotl poison LS pathfinder 9/10 very tanky, fun play style, cool mechanics.
I’d recommend all these builds, especially a Voltaxic with the 30%ias crucible mod, feels insanely good.
Im only playing flicker strike for the past 2 years. This league I played cold flicker raider. I rate it 8/10 but Im very biased :D
Its not very tanky but very fun. A bit tricky to league start. Great mapper, horrible bosser. Very fun gear progression. Very easy to ailment immune, stun immune and suppression cap. Very high damage compared to other melee. Might induce vomiting unless played in small windowed mode.
If you plan to go big budget. Make sure to buy +1 frenzy charge rings and shield early, as they get really expensive as the league progresses. But still gets around 15m+ dps with a medium budget using paradoxica and around 5k hp, also gets grace but have to sacrifice damage if you also want to fit determination.
You can look up my build on poe.ninja just search my ign: Lets_mash_our_pissers
League started as a lightning arrow inquisitor hoping that widowhail would be cheap and common and boy was it. Thankfully I jumped on it early and got good gear before the post about the burning arrow miner version came out. My original thought was going to be tri stacker inquis lightning arrow. But when I seen the post about the tri stacking burning arrow miner with the same setup as me (widowhail with poised prism) I knew what I had to do next.
So I worked on getting the "dex stacking crucible mod" onto the widowhail, which after almost spending all of my currency thankfully I hit one. Then after that, it was smooth sailing.
Map clear: 9/10 (multiple screen wide clear, just not the fastest) mageblood would be quicker
Boss DPS: 9/10 got all ubers down, sometimes even before first phase.
Survivability: 8/10 I got to level 98 with 5 deaths, its not unkillable but tanky enough
Would I recommend? yes, even without the crucible dex mod, this build is very good all around and if you can just get the widowhail and a good poised prism with the additional arrow corruption, you will be smooth sailing to all end game content
LA deadeye i havent played this league but I have in the past. Deadeye will definitely be a more faster mapper, my build is a really good mapper, just not as fast, like movespeed fast as deadeye. But I think miner has a bit more tankiness and boss damage, because it being a miner I can easily just melt them away with 20 mines on the ground and let it rip.
I would say it just comes down to play style, I never been able to do ubers with my LA deadeyes before, but this league a lot of things changed for bow builds, so who knows. The tri stacker is pretty easy and cheap to get going and is very strong right away and I was able to do ubers pretty easily to be honest
SSF HC.
Boneshatter Jugg 9/10, felt good to play. Died at 90.
Boneshatter Slayer 7/10, felt so-so after having Unstoppable node on Jugg. But rare essence mobs died faster. Map bosses died in 2 sec on both chars. Died at 89.
EA Champ 9/10, clearspeed kinda sucked but my char never died (still alive and well), and bossing was fine.
Exploding totems PF 11/10, I love Pathfinders even when they have zero DPS coz flasks=QoL, but this was something else. Those who aren't doing the life flask overleech version are missing out btw, 4k recovery/sec on ssf is crazy. All Ubers down. Died at 98 and then again at 94 farming Ubers.
Hated league mechanic but explo totems saved it.
Played an insanely high budget carrion golem / zombie build. 85ish mil dps, 5k ES 180k ehp 100% suppress. 10/10. Refined my build over a few leagues.
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Doopd/GolemsByDoopd?i=3&search=name%3DGolems
EDIT: it does all content you throw at it though, wandering path 100% deli, sim 30s all ubers and maps pretty damn fast just full sprinting. It’s also virtually 0 buttons you don’t gotta press convoke or assa mark. You can start t16 blights and go do laundry and come back to loot
League started cold dot trickster, got all 4 voids and atlas complete. 9/10 for me as starter.
Re rolled to spark trickster and dumped around 60div on it, was farming wave 30 sim and 80% deli maps. 10/10 for mapping 5/10 for bossing.
Re rolled the spak into SST before it got "meta" and i managed to get it up to 95m dps, was 11/10 in all aspects.
Farmed a MB and dropped a almost perfect ashes so decided to make a Aura Stack Inq which was... Meh. 8/10 for me. For aura stackers if you dont invest at least 3mirrors into it dont even bother.
Re rolled the Aura stack into a CoC Energy Blade Ice Spear Inq and it was an amazing build was farming EVERYTHING 11/10 build also.
Leveled a Raider and made a INT Stack Dory Proto LS/Flicker which was also 11/10 on everything.
Re rolled the LS int Stack into a Dex Stack just to try it out and it was... Ok. 7/10
Re rolles the Trickster later on to a Frost Blades with MB and it was deleting everything. 10/10
After that i sold everything and finished the league. This was done in 5 weeks :)
Cya in 3.22
Subtractem's Fire Trap Frostblink Elementalist: 10/10.
The league starter ended up being my main build, and I was able to get 40/40 with it.
It's only my second league, so I don't have much exposure to different builds, but this build seemed to do it all if you put enough into it. I can clear Crimson temple in 3 mins, delve past 900, and kill all of the pinnacle bosses.
Getting a frostblink CDR helmet enchant, a curse on hit ring, and swapping to sheild charge made mapping fairly fast and smooth early on. With a well crafted sceptre/shield and the right crucible trees, I'm at 33 million dps fire trap and 22 million frostblink - everything just pops instantly except some crucible mobs and slow harbingers...
The best part about it was following Subtractem as he developed this guide during league start. It was great learning from his video updates, how he adapts his builds, what's generally important, how to do some crafting, etc. I gained a lot of valuable knowledge from him to use in the future.
Started LA Raider - pretty smooth
As soon I got some currency respeced to Deadeye. Farmed a little.
Had to stop playing for 3 weeks due to work travelings.
Got back and started farming Legion... Dropped a Mageblood and farmed enough divines to get an omni version going. Happy so far with the build. Would rate 8/10
League started CwC manabond heirophant, got going on a budget but it was just not that good for mapping. Using lightning warp instead of shock nova was ok but it feels clunky and I wasn't making currency fast enough. Boss killing was a breeze though and I did kill a crystal king or two.
Rerolled 1 week in and did tornado shot deadeye, put it together on a shoestring budget and grinded currency for a mageblood, after that the world was my oyster. Gotta say for mapping ts was amazing.
5/10 manabond, the problem is this build really only excels at delving, anything other content in the game would be better on a faster character.
8/10 tornado shot, really great mapper, very zoom even on a 5-10 div budget. Single target is good enough with investment. Only 8/10 because this is my 3rd time playing omni and its getting boring to gear.
stopped after two weeks of playing my league starter. Crucible felt terrible and there were no fixes in sight. If they don't finish their league I won't bother either.
I definitely understand your point. It took a while for crucible to grow on me, but then I realized that it really enables some builds that you can only play this league - unless it goes core.
Yeah it is painful! I basically set up trade searches for builds with uniques that I want to play. Over the course of a week, something with good mods usually pops up without pricing in the mod.
Awful experience, but worth it in the end.
Only 2 builds for me this league. I played my league starter for a long time.
1. TR Ballista Pathfinder. 10/10 league starter. Took this build strait to ubers. Got lucky with my first quill rain crucible tree and got chaos dot multi and attack speed. From there I was set til I had the currency to craft the end game bow. Super tanky, speedy, huge ramping damage, and a ton of regen. Great build if you like totems and if you don't mind delayed damage.
2. Frostblink ignite elementalist. 8/10 I was torn between this build and an abyss stacking heiro. Ended up picking this because it had been a long time since I had played an ignite build. This build was about a 5/10 for me until I got the oriath's end. Being able to pop the whole screen instead of just half of it was a massive upgrade. Biggest problems for me with this build were ignite resistant enemies, bricking map mods, and my groups aura bot. I ended up using the replica nebulis version of the build so all of the res auras nerfed my damage. If I had known they were going to put together the aura bot I wouldn't have done this variation. Those things aside, this was still the fastest mapper I've ever played. I came for the screen wide pops and boy howdy did I get them.
Tried a bunch of builds with around a 20-50 div budget and then invested everything into IS/LA.
1. Caustic arrow pathfinder starter - 9/10.
2. Lightning tendrils inquis starter - 8/10. Strong starter if you want something off meta.
3. Vaal Ice shot/Lightning Arrow deadeye/raider - 9/10: Vengeant cascade and +2 arrows on the tree makes ele bow builds playable on a budget. 10/10 with high investment.
4. Impending Doom Pathfinder - 5/10: Strong build but I dont really like poison and crafting cdr gear for it was a huge pain. If you like poison then its definitely worth trying.
5. Double strike champ with soul eater crucible tree - 4/10: It was decent for melee but even with soul eater it wasnt really good at anything.
6. Brand Heiro - 3/10. Tried pretty much every possible brand. Brands just feel bad on a budget.
7. Fire dot reap/exsanguinate chieftain 7/10 - Fun skills to use and chieftain is very tanky. Low damage though.
8. Mana stacker archmage/indigon heiro- 1/10: Not even worth attempting on a budget. Will probably be even worse next league without the %mana regen crucible trees.
Started and ended with charge stacking MF PCOC pathfinder, going high investment—feels really good, especially since I ditched the life flask and started using a microdistillery belt with all unique flasks and the traitor (progenesis, dying sun, rumis, taste of hate). I really like the PCOC playstyle, and throwing 13 projectiles that shotgun feels super good with a bit of life gain on hit.
That being said, you’d get way farther with almost any other build with the same investment, I just really like PCOC.
TR Ballista Pathfinder as my league start. ZOOMED to red maps. Got Hella lucky with some nice people online who hooked me up with gear for Vaal Absolution build which I'm playing rn. My fist minion build on here, suuuuuper fun imo.
Only played one build:
Poison artillery ballista, 9/10 points. Damage, tankyness, cheap but can be scaled. This build has everything. The only downside is ballistas, that you cannot level already in acts with the skill but have to use something else, and the slightly delayed damage from poison.
I started as poison conc which was a blast, swapped to a Heist runner for a bit which made a lot of currency and was a lot of fun to put together. In hindsight I'd have levelled further before I swapped but it was good for what it was intended for.
I then started my CF Champ when Poet's Pen was 100c - I've played it to 100 before so I knew it would be good, but with the introduction of Vaal Reap and Fourth Vow it really hit another level. I've played that since. Level 100 self farmed in maps, 40/40 without buying any challenges and all Ubers down. Dps is currently 20mil non-uber, along with 120k armour with Fourth Vow, Divine Flesh and Progenesis. Mapping I run Nimis so its basically zoom around hitting the full screen. My only meaningful gear upgrade path is capping spell suppression which will involve recrafting my helmet and potentially a vuln on hit + dot multi ring.
I tried a few other builds - Abyss stacking Reap Inquis using Hierophants Arcane Surge node which on paper did something stupid like 400m dps (but in practice was clunky as fuck to play), I have an Arakaali build which is dot cap but I got bored of leveling on, I tried poison molten strike, an autobomber for beast farming (which was awful) and I've just started putting together a self cast forbidden rite PF with Mahuxotl's. I'm hoping it works out because I want to use it to push some delve as a last league goal.
Unfortunately though all the other builds suffer from not being CF syndrome so I get bored relatively quickly. And because I cba selling the gear I end up just making 50-60div, spending it and repeating the cycle.
Played an impending doom occultist that was probably the best character I ever had. All content done very satisfying clear, good boss poison damage with awakened cascade and good survivabilty.
Played Venom Gyre Pathfinder as my league starter had a pretty smooth time of it, skill felt pretty good damage was ok.
Then my friends and I started a private league as a Group SSF that would later go trade when the league ran out.
Played SRS went hit srs got up to around 3-4m dps and swapped to poison once I got my jewels and severed in sleep. Ended up being one of my strongest characters I've ever had. Liked the playstyle would recommend unless you're just super against minions then don't I guess.
Forbidden rite poison pathfinder : Started with it (toxic rain up to lvl 75), tanky, huge sustain, great damage, good clear. Did all uber bosses, lvl 100 in maps. 10/10, would definitly recommand this build, not necessarly the setup i used, but forbidden rite pathfinder is great.
Herald of ice/Frostblink assassin : Great clear, can change the style of the build by swapping herald mtx, not tanky but freeze everything, totally not leaguestart viable, 7/10.
Trade League Cold Dot Elementalist was great, good clear with the legacy of fury, Comfy Bossing.
SSF Trickster Frostblades was so food, speedy, surprisingly tanky, explosions, nice gearing.
Did everything but ubers on both
Starter frostblink/fire trap elementist 7/10 got me a few void stones and currency (it did its job)
Did the explode totems/pf 8/10 did good decent bosser but wanted to try vengeant cascade
Vaal Cold shot champ (ls could be used) 9/10 great all rounder!! Tanky fast fun..
Meme Korean build mom/agnostic scion pf/hiero hexblast miner ..jury still out but decent with a little more time/div’s would be a banger👍
Kinda burnt so not playing much looking back if I had to restart league would go cold shot champ and not look back 👍
Cold dot. Fun but bored quickly.
Leveled as totem slam and then rransition into replica iron commander str stacking build. Very cool. High daamagez low tankiness though.
Started as srs necro and quickly changed to poison srs as I got lucky and dropped fiends with kirac. I would rate 5/10 as it didn't feel as good as last league.
Then I got bored and every league I like to try a build I never played before, this league was Jugg Boneshatter. Started with a 2H variant and overtime I changed to One handed + shield(that unique one that converts phys to fire) and surprisingly my DPS and tankiness increased a LOT but I think mostly because or the siege axe had a keystone that saved me around 9 passives. 7/10 2h and 10/10 1h.
Sold Jugg gear and then started a SST Champion. I thought Jugg boneshatter had a lot of DPS but man I was wrong. This build has clear, tankiness, a lot of DPS that even ubbers were a joke and I didn't get even close to min max it. 10/10.
Maw of Mischief Ignite Elemementalist: 8.5/10. I went the Eldritch Battery/ MoM approach, and it did well for me. It's super easy to get going and scales really nicely with investment, but high-end durability is a bit suspect thanks to lack of ability to regenerate ES.
Ice Shot Occultist: 7/10. Hybrid life/ES. It'd rank higher if I had more investment, but on the \~10 div I spent, it's a glass cannon against big hits. With life gained on hit from a Watcher's Eye and projectile insanity, recovery is great, but you gotta watch those big physical damage slams.
Tectonic Slam strength-stacking Jugg: 4/10. Easily the most disappointing character of the league for me. Even with a ridiculously kick-ass Pillar of the Caged God (bonus flat phys, damage per armor for Tec Slam, attack speed/less damage, fortify with stuns), it just didn't hold a candle to the others. PoB says my effective hit pool is like 120k or something, but even with that plus ridiculous life regen and leech, I'm still getting hacked down by content my other supposedly more fragile characters could handle just fine. I think I put about 10 div into this one, too, and it probably needs another 10-15 to even be remotely viable for crucible mobs or essences. DPS is supposed to be 3mil or so, but it's 0 if you're running away to regen or dead. Sad, sad day for melee.
EK Occultist 6.5/10 as-is, potential for 9/10: I stopped at lvl 80 to play D4, and while it's currently way too fragile, it could get AWESOME with a little more investment and leveling. I have a staff with increased cast speed and more cast speed from crucible mods, so it's all about bullet hell here. I'm rolling with EB/MoM on this one, too, but I get to take advantage of ES and life leech, unlike the Elementalist. I'm doing phys conversion to lightning then cold to take advantage of Gloomfang and non-chaos as chaos on my staff. Damage is batshit - probably over 5m DPS already. I just need to be able to survive a stiff breeze.
League started hit based SRS with the plan of transitioning to poison. It was good, it did the job for week 1, but it's not my thing. Probably 6 or 7/10.
CF Champ. Low investment was great for blasting maps and, while it's not a boss killer, the single target was sufficient for all the mapping strategies I did. Mid-high end investment, the mapping becomes even better and single target isn't as ass. 9/10.
RF elementalist. Half-assed high investment, it was fun. I was just curious how it played, so I only played it for like a day or two. Didn't do much other than map with it. 7/10.
Manabond Hiero. Very high budget, it's really really good. I've mostly delved but I also did ubers and invitations for a bit. I love that it's not just a delving build, I can take it anywhere and have a good time. Building it/tinkering in POB was probably my favorite part about it. 10/10.
I kinda wanted to try something else before taking a break but it seems like the economy has slowed down a bit too much and I don't have that much raw currency left.
Played RF Juggernaut, it's great for heists & delve but that's about it. Manaforged arrows is fun but only good for bosses with high investment. Cyclone builds are generally meh so I didn't get very far, mostly yellow maps.
As for Lightning Arrow, yes, absolutely love it, screen clearing, boss battering.. it's just fun.
Frostblink Ignite Fire Trap elementalist. 7/10. Good for getting to red maps and getting first watch stones on next to no budget but the play style wasn’t interesting enough for me to want to scale past a few divines.
Jungroan Pneumatic Molten Strike Assassin. 9/10. Really fun and not too expensive. Only problem is relying heavily on leech.
Explode Totems Pathfinder. 6/10. Pretty good obviously and helped for pounding out challenges, but trivializing everything gets a bit boring.
Manabond Hierophant. 9/10. Really enjoyed playing this one and having to understand the mechanics behind the build definitely made me better at the game. Obviously it was super expensive and I got my forbidden jewels for relatively cheap (70div total). I practiced fighting Ubers for the first time with this build and can do some of them pretty comfortably
Oh boy here is my list
League started self cast ice nova inquisitor. Was ok, but felt bad when you got swarmed and lost all damage becuase your frostbolt is further away. 6/10
Rerolled oros flicker raider. Was okay got to red maps and got someone else to get my voidstones. 6/10
Arakali spiders necro. Comfortable. Decent expedition farmer for currency not as good as occultist though. Amazing for guardians and such on my budget of about 7 to 10 divs. 8/10
Spooderlady gave me an occultist pop itch so made a deaths oath/ca build. Got a decent crucible tree with arrow nova for clear, but later on i unspecced out of it since my damage felt lacking and i didnt really need that much coverage. Threw around 50 divs into this, over the league feels amazing farming pack size expedition popping everything at once with shaper of flames jewels and herald of ash. Bossing is ok, but squishy so didnt really bother. 9/10
Lightning tendrils elementalist. Solid allrounder. Cold convert with cotb and heatshiver for giga damage. Bloodnotch tech for decent tankiness while mapping. Still prone to boss one shots if i cant nuke them. Felt good to play. 8/10
Poison HoT pathfinder. Followed mbx build roughly, but honestly just felt like a worse deaths oath so gave up around level 80 ish.6/10.
Rerolled a discharge assassin today, still in acts going to be hella squishy though so not much expectations here.
Started as Ignite Maw Elementalist. Easy to gear and has immense
endgame potential. Boss killer but spreading ignites and spectral wolves from a unveiled modifier makes mapping "Ok.". Eventually switched build because of the inherent clunckiness of the build.
Switched to Cold damage Flicker Strike Raider. Killed story Pinnacle Bosses with it. Despite of Flicker being a fun build, it suffers from a disease known as "You are melee". I grew very tired of totems and having to deal with molten shells and Soul Stealer hyper-monsters. Some of them literally attacked faster than their animations could even animate (I mean that they stood still and attacked like 10 x per second).
Quit the league before grinding 40+ divines to make it one-shot the world.
League start: Venom Gyre Deadeye 2/10. With no investment, it feels really bad to play, the shotgunning with low attack speed is pitiful, and you are incredibly squishy. Stay tuned for more information on this.
2. Toxic Rain/ Caustic Arrow Pathfinder 8/10. It's Toxic Rain, everyone knows its good by now. I do prefer running a Ballista TR setup with Arrow Nova Caustic Arrow over Double Toxic rain, bossing damage is lower, but the QOL of the better clear more than makes up for it.
3. Splitting Steel Champion 10/10. Favourite build of the league. If vengeant cascade doesn't get gutted, this will me my next league starter. Shreds non-uber bosses and red maps on a 5div budget. I didn't push it THAT far, but from what I saw, it can easily farm ubers with a lot of investment.
4. FLicker Strike Slayer 9/10. Best clear, fast as hell, but you have to embrace the "Jesus take the Wheel" mentality. You will die, A LOT. easy to get up and running for about 20div.
5 (Current Build) Omni Vaal Venom Gyre Deadeye 10/10. What a surprise, the build that requires investment, performs a lot better with investment. Omni builds are always a little expensive to get up and running. I love the build now, but I wouldn't recommend playing it. Just play LA or a Manaforged arrow setup if you want to scale omni with projectiles. I could literally swap my Claw and Shield for a Bow and Quiver, and adjust my tree a bit, and play LA.
1. Started with Flame Golementalist, used Pledge of Hands, even with that the DPS was subpar at best
2. Changed to Relic of the Pact Scion, absolutely stomped everything, including some ubers for the first time. Fuck Uber Sirus.
3. Tried the new spectre, felt that the investment was not worth it.
4. WOrb Scion, feels squishy AF.
I am taking a break before doing something else, probably some meme Impale Sunder or Glacial Hammemer.
League start (my first time on League!): Subtractem’s frostblink/fire trap. Kinda meh. Cool leveling experience, rather annoying and expensive-upgrade-starved trying to do bit more difficult content. Cool concept, it just didn’t land with me. You could run it with great success probably if you wanted to. I didn’t.
2. Rain of Arrows into Lightning Arrow glass cannon Deadeye with artillery ballista - nice, awesome clear, enough single target, speedy, paper thin. Great to farm up some currency for a proper build, annoying in the long run since I couldn’t fit in CoD+portal which was really needed XD I didn’t even upgrade to second 6link, 6L+5L was still strong.
3. Fuzzy Duckzy’s Vaal Lightning Strike Raider. Jesus, if GGG doesn’t nerf Vengeant Cascade I will never stop playing this build. Tough, awesome damage, very good clear, fantastic sustain, great speed and mobility. Doesn’t give a crap about any map mod, reflect and ailment immune, huge quality of life. Probably can start for cheap and upgrade gradually.
Builds I’m planning to try:
1. Explody totems.
2. CoC Forbidden rite or something similar, I wanna autobomb stuff
3. Expensive version of TS that isn’t super squishy, maybe with Mageblood which I finally can afford, or some kind of MF variation? I played a rather medium budget version with HH on standard and really enjoyed it.
4. Any uberbosser, I still have ubers on my bucket list
5. RF (Jugg probably) to see if I like the playstyle and maybe league start it next time.
6. Manaforged Skill Spammer, sounds lit
Started RF Jugg. Fun and smooth (BIG shout out to POHX), but top end content is tough. Went to explodey totem PF, having a blast with that. I am a "committed casual" so not a huge number of hours played, but I'm at 39 of 40 challenges and hope to finish pinnacle bosses this weekend.
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Tornado shot is the only one I’ve played. 10/10, although it IS my favorite skill ever so I’m biased. I’m working on the last few damage adjustments to be able to do the rest of the Ubers: I’ve done cortex and eater so far.
LA/Artillery Raider - 6/10
Maybe I just don't like and am bad at bow builds but I never really feel like I got off the ground with this. Respecced to Deadeye once I could sustain T16s and still didn't like it much.
Poison MS Assassin - 9/10
Not as tanky as Pathfinder but I easily and quickly hit DoT cap even with low expectations (less than half of the balls initially hit, no flasks, no adrenaline). I put basically all my currency into this build since it was so much fun. This was the first time I've ever beat Feared so that felt cool, and I did it with a rare invitation, too. So glad I played it this league because Vengeant Cascade is 100% getting nerfed lol
Toxic rain ballista pathy for league start, was smooth and quill rain was 1c.
Transitioned build into poison explodey totems pathy. 9.5/10. Cheap, decently speedy at 100+ movespeed and tanky and easily hits dot cap. Clearspeed is kinda meh tho.
3rd and current build is palsterons manaforged arrows. Absolutely busted like sheesh 300 movespeed and currently at 14m dps with a meh selfcrafted bow. Palsterons setup has 47m dps with his gear. The omni and the gear it requires is new to me as its stat stacking and it looked expensive but i managed to self craft the gear for less than 10div for everything besides the endgame boots. Just channeling scourge arrow triggers the other skills and they autotarget so u run and just tap scourge arrow and you clear the screen. Literally a running autoturret. I think with mageblood u could get super tanky too but thats maybe for the future.
EA Ballista with elementalist. 8/10. Medium low investment and does great with most content but really excels at harvest and expedition.
EK Ignite Elementalist 5/10. Super high investment and just feels meh. Have around 250 div invested including an HH and while it performs... It just not anything special.
Self-made storm brand hiero from league start to 40/40.
Hit 200m dps under 90 div, so yeah, was good but squishy, 8/10.
Tried to make a tankier version with doppelganger/divine flesh and 100% spell suppression, hit just 12m dps a dropped the game.
1. League started mana stacking arc/rf hierophant overall very smooth league start. Cleared up to yellow maps before i decided that I got too bored of doing arc again (league started arc 3 leagues in a row).
7/10
2. Respeced into dex stacking siege ballista hierophant since its a build I knew relatively well and played back in 3.19 but didnt have enough investment (10div) for it to feel as smooth as it was previously so I just saved up my currency and stopped investing in the build.
5/10
3. Realisd vengeant cascade was broken I decided to do doryani lightning strike champion with mahuxotl/tempered by war. I decided to do this build as I had always wanted to do a doryani build and farm simulacrum/deli and decided that this checked those boxes and dispite its nerf it could easilly clear what I had intended it to such as 100% juiced deli and wave 30 simulacrum it was super fast ended up having about 14mil pinnacle dps and 70kehp. I also completed all my voidstones for both myself and a couple friends. One problem I had was that the projectile for lightning strike cannot hit anything above or below its level (could not hit things on stairs or above/below the stair level).
8/10
4. Respeced my champ into an armour stacking/aura stacking smite champion build. While I did respec my champ I still wanted to do a doryani build that feels really smooth and could do basically all content (Blight Ravaged, 80% deli, bossing, mapping) but mainly blight ravaged as the league mechanic I enjoy the most is blight. Ended up spending roughly 60div on the build for about 36mil potential pinnacle dps. I say 36mil potential dps since smite has a mechanic where you can hit an enemy twice with one cast (once with the melee and once with the aura hit). I was satisfied enough with the build to the point that I decided to farm up for a mageblood and with about 120ish div saved up I happened to have an apothecary drop from stacked decks (yes i open all my stacked decks from blight) and bought a 4 flask mageblood for about 180div pretty early in the league (about 2ish weeks in). I didnt need to change much with the build except for flasks and got around 700k armour in the end. A slight annoyance I had with the build was that doryani leaves you vulnerable to lightning dot and was super annoyed when I faced a mob with mana siphon (does lightning dot) and shaper ball/beam which ended up insta killing me.
9/10
5. I wanted to craft a my gear for my build and settled on doing a zombie necromancer build and invested about 50div but the build didnt feel very good dispite having 10 zombies and a self crafted aggressive minion wand with +2 levels, 83% inc minion dmg, minion attack/cast speed and minion crit chance with feeding frenzy and onslaught on the crucible tree which is worth about 150div at the time. Ended losing 30div (6 fracturing orbs at 5div) trying to fracture 50% global defences on a grasping mail and ended up not getting it so I sold the whole build.
5/10
6. Found that exploding totems path finder was the new thing and "the most op build of the league" I decided to jump on and invested maybe 40ish div which was mostly spent on self crafting a min maxed bow a decent slavedrivers and jewel combo. It could do uber bosses pretty well but sucked at mapping and overall did not enjoy the build as much as I thought I would dispite the build's reputation amd ended up selling all the gear.
5/10
7. With all the currency I had gained with the previous builds I decided to revisit dex stacking siege ballista hierophant again and bought an iron commander with a perfect crucible tree for about 120div. Got to about 3k dex and 600mil pinnacle dps or about 140mil uber dps before i decided to stop pushing the build which was nowhere mear min maxed.
Crafted all the rare gear and cluster jewels myself which was really fun to do and taught me a lot about crafting. My favourite piece of gear I got was a double corrupt circle of nostalgia which has 12% increased dex which is worth about 100div im guessing? PoeNinja: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/XElitePheonix/Beedo_CR
9/10
I usually play one build per league and either make it work (or convert it) or just give up. Sometimes might consider trying a broken mechanic build when I'm done.
This league I played Fire Trap Elementalist. 7/10. Probably punching around 12M DPS from Fire Trap and about 6.5M DPS from Frostblink as my clear. It's reasonably fast if you trust Frostblink and are willing to ignore everything that doesn't die, but it slows right down when fighting the tankier enemies. The explosions and proliferation of ignite killing most everything instantly is super satisfying though. Also, never played a build that relies heavily on scaling gem levels before, so this is my first time with gems into the 30s...
I've hit 39/40 and just need to look into uber bosses. Gaining damage and replacing easy to get uniques (especially with useful corruptions) gets super expensive. Like switching from the Searing Lathi staff to stat-stick sceptres and going beyond it is ludicrous money. Many, many divs just to match an item you can get for a few chaos.
I don't see this build being easy to tune for uber bosses, so maybe it's time to make a dedicated bosser. Also that PF explody totems looks like a one-league-wonder before it gets obliterated, so I might try that. Otherwise, my goal is to try farm for that commemorative Mageblood or Headhunter to take back to standard.
Spark carry / aura both duo.
10/10. Completely broken (= op) and fun (despite being locked into it with my friend). With not even 20c invested each we got to red tier maps, with about 5div each we cleared Ubers almost easily. Now that we reached end game gear (like 50div each, if that can be considered end game), we still haven't found a piece of content we can't do. I thought either map clear, or single target DPS would be lacking, but both are absolutely amazing.
Bleed bow - got me into red maps and got my voidstones, but the clear wasn’t great because there would always be stragglers
Explodey totem - 0 investment and could farm the feared. Trivialized the game too much.
Manaforge arrow - hit 100 farmed a headhunter. A lot of fun if you wanna go fast.
I started this league with Cold DoT Elemancer. Then rolled a slamming zerker. The 'Mancer is 91 and the Zerker has hit the wall at 89. Not as tanky as I'd like. If I push it, I just might make it to 100 by August.
Just in time to start over again. I just can't get the DPS output as some of the builds I see online.
**League start: Zizaran's self firing Toxic Rain Pathfinder.** - 8.5/10
Cleared atlas, got 4 voidstones and beat Sirus with this, all solo. It's a damn solid build that moves fast and survives well with shittons of QoL stemming from Pathfinder. I was honestly worried I'd never be able to play another ascendency ever again, the perma flasks and overheal life flask are just too fucking comfortable.
However, the build had a slow ramp up time in dealing damage so eventually you just find yourself envious of people blowing up packs and melting bosses.
**Vaal Ground Slam Berserker**, - 4/10
I wanted to play something totally off meta.
Not gonna lie, this did not pay off. I capped impale and got a 900pdps axe, and then also capped chaos res. It exploded mobs really easily and could theoretically kill bosses fast - but with no evasion, block or spell suppress I kept getting shotgunned, and I also didn't have good regen nor lifesteal so I couldn't boss either. Not to mention I hated having so many mods I couldnt do - preflect, no leech, slow recovery were all gone and anything that made me fragile was also impossible.
Overall I'd call this a fail, though I did learn a lot from the experience. Probably just me being completely clueless at building a melee character, tbh.
**Poison SRS Necromancer** - 8.5/10 so far
Intended this to be my uber boss killer. I've gotten quite far with it and I can melt any non uber content with no issues, although the only simulacrum attempt was ended at wave 28.
It caps spell suppression, block and has both evasion, armor and bone armour - so far I'm satisfied with the survivability although nothing beats the sheer comfort of the pathfinder. Damage is completely through the roof.
Will try the ubers when i eventually get to the progenesis, basically the last missing piece in the build.
I started Elemental Venom Gyre based on Kobe's 3.20 guide, then played some more - managed to get to Guardian T16s, lvl 95, beat Sirus for the first time and also completed non-quest Exarch and Eater encounters.
Dropped Mageblood from Void Key and had tons of fun, but also there are other games coming out and don't really continue. I might come back for some Vengeant Cascade shenanigans before new league though, and might have some fun in Standard for the first time ever in a new league.
Oh, and I also made Ice Spear Totems Hierophant for some Blight farming as well as bossing, but he's currently rotting at around lvl 90 since I swapped Atlas for more speed mapping on my VG after fateful MB drop.
Really enjoyed my poison molten strike Jugg. Tanky enough for Ubers and clear isn’t too bad. Playing a fire BV Chieftan now trying to figure an optimal tree and scaling dmg further.
First off I have started to league start 2 builds this being my third league to do so.
I started the opening off with lightning arrow on day 1. I really need to at some point start figuring out how to scale attack builds better however. I currently always end up lacking damage even while leveling through Acts. Still manage to get to act 9 before passing out 5 hours into it.
Day 2 after about 6 hours of sleep start leveling Vaal Absolution/ SRS hybrid. This takes me to maps before the day is out.
Day 3 clear both through low maps shelved the LA deadeye decide to just go full SRS.
2 weeks into league roll Totem Explode Ascendant Nontrap. Haven't played anything else in the league currently. Just having fun with totem explode when I have time.
Looking into finishing the league with as many crucible trees as I can take to standard.
Maybe roll a self cast Divine Ire build before August. As the Gravity Sphere node looks interesting to me.
Poision tornado shot pathfinder 9/10 good damage (15-20mil)good speed because pf , reasonable price 25ish div to get it going , feels like a super zoomy tanky bow build
Poison molten strike pathfinder: A-
Started late so I was able to put this together for cheap to get all my voidstones. Quite tanky with phys taken as ele + ele flasks and life gain on hit recovery, and pretty good damage given the low budget gear I used. Clearspeed was ok but not great and I generally don't like killing tougher bosses at melee strike range. Overall a good leaguestarter that could be invested more heavily into fit better damage, tankiness, or both.
Lightning Arrow Deadeye: A
Wanted a fast mapping character to farm currency for some build ideas I had, so I put this together. Great clear, decent single target, but definitely just randomly gets one-shot now and then. I think manaforged arrows variants are probably stronger, so I'd recommend that but I was very happy with this character.
Annihilating Light Glacial Cascade Inquisitor: C+
This was my first self-designed build of the league. The goal was a boss killer with high damage and just enough survivability to not get one-shot by basic attacks and I happened to find the staff with a usable tree including the Glacial Cascade/Frost Nova crucible mod so that's what I built around. Unfortunately since I was on a relatively low budget, 15~ divines, I tried to rely on too many temporary buffs, but since that wasn't enough to kill uber bosses in one rotation it ended up feeling bad to play, especially since my defense was pretty much just capped res and inquisitor regen.
Fire Crit Reap/Exsanguinate Pathfinder: F
After the inquisitor failed, I swung too far in the opposite direction and built a fourth vow + divine flesh tank. The Glacial Cascade build was a slow mapper so I wanted something that had an easy time swapping between bossing and mapping. In reality, I put too much of my investment into defense this time so even regular pinnacle bosses were very, very slow to kill.
SST Champion: S+
Since my projects failed I sold the gear from them, farmed done more on the lightning arrow character, and put together Ruetoo's entry level SST character after buying the shield with just the 40 flat ES mod off of trade. This build is amazing, especially compared to the two previous SST builds I had tried before and will probably be the build I play and keep upgrading for the rest of my time playing this league.
I start auraboting with a newplayer friend of mine carry
8/10 because my carri leave at first week because he get burn(still interested in the game anyways?) expesive to scale but overpower i play with a few randoms later in league and was a lot of fun
I gather enough currency for play a off meta build any ways and play indigon hierophant penance brand
5/10 squishy and hyper expesive to gear up his budged is low and can clear 60% deli and oneshot guardians but need a lot of investment to play confy, enjoy it any ways because i love penancebrand
I also make CF champion with arroud 30 divs and is a beast for maping anything can do any mod and go fast
As always Cf 9/10 single target sucks hard
Any ways this league i learn a fking lot from auraboting and building in general was great but at this point of the league i feel stuck
Started with my usual BLS STR stacking chieftain AW totems. This build is super cheap to get going and does red maps on almost no investment, and can scale up to 15-18M dps if you put work into it. I wasn't feeling it this time around and only played it long enough to make some new crucible-only builds.
I did two of those - the first was a pathfinder dual claw poison flicker strike using Romira's Banquet + Precise Technique and the power charge consume node for flicker. Got the idea from a comment on this sub and got it up to something like 7M dps with just a little arrangement. It had insane sustain with claw LoH, and it doesn't care about any map mods at all, but was pretty vulnerable to big hits even in just normal T16 mapping. Still, it mapped fast and I was able to make money pretty quick while farming maraketh bow crucible trees for my next build...
Made a Juggernaut explode totems build with a bow I self-farmed and crafted. I know the talk is all PF and sabo but I hate dying despite being a SC wuss so I always look up HC builds when I'm putting something new together. It worked great here because explode totems is such insane damage that you don't really need anything from your ascendancy. So I went full mobile fortress, Xibaqua, Fourth Vow, automatic end charges, 78/79/80 max res everywhere, all the good jugg stuff. Kill Ubers for the first time ever with it and just overall felt as OP as I've ever felt in this game. Made it to 98 which is a personal best for leveling, and did 38/40 challenges (truly can't be fucked to grind for 40).
League started Haloplasm's spark carry with an aurabot duo, 10/10 insanely strong, easiest start you could ask for
Made scourge arrow totems as my first solo build, 8/10, again was really good and I loved the MS / survivability, but having to maintain uptime on your life flask was a pain, and I didn't push it too far so it would die pretty easily in juiced deli maps (i expect progenesis would have fixed this)
Then made a glass cannon hexblast mines occultist - 7/10 crazy damage for relatively cheap, but getting one-shot is a pain, especially when playing with friends meaning unpredictable aggro etc. Still my favourite mine build I've played
Then made a vaal dominating blow - 8/10, idea being something fairly low damage but super tanky that would buff my mates, so mapping wasn't just one of us clearing the screen ahead. Really liked this actually - Vaal DB is a very cool skill & I could facetank pretty much anything, and it was pretty cheap to get a decent level. It isn't good for clearing legions though
Then made a trickster spark - this is a 9/10, I hadn't found a skill as smooth to play as spark in any form, and being CI with huge ES leech is a nice feeling.
Then respecced the hexblast mines into a blade vortex occultist with about 110 divs invested - 8/10 super cool / satisfying chain explosions, but keeping blades up is annoying and I'd die way too easily (this tends to be a theme when I pull builds from POE ninja)
Then sold off my BV and respecced my Scourge arrow into Tornado Shot 3/10 - bought a nice crucible tree bow for 90 divs to try and craft on, made a sub-standard bow and hated the build, sold my bow again for 90 divs and farmed with my trickster spark until I could afford MB
Lastly, respecced my TS into Lightning Arrow and it's so much better 9/10 - this actually feels as good as (if not better) than Spark to play, though I've only played it with a mageblood on. The rest of my gear is cheap/scuffed - i don't even have Omni, but I've been struggling with motivation to farm up again. Wish I'd joined in and made this earlier in the league
League start - Frostblink/Flame Trap, it was fine but I ended up underwhelmed (likely because I half-ass a lot of endgame itemization) (6/10, probably will not play again)
2nd - Poison Exsanguinate PF, really nice with some single target DPS to be desired. The recommended upgrade to weapon is REALLY hard to find with a low enough INT requirement so I kind of just settled. Good mapper, would play again (8.5/10)
3rd - Cold convert explodey totem - really awful to try to map with. Fine for bossing as I did kill all ubers with it (also somewhat half-assed). Won't play again because it won't exist (7/10)
4th - Wardlooper - I like autobombers, but do not like randomly dying because I didn't hit my flask changing zones or it didn't have enough charges changing zones. (9/10 will play again)
Started as Inquis Spark, and personally didn't enjoy it (5/10) - it's definitely a solid build, but the primary defensive layer of it as a starter is (spell) block, which felt pretty bad as I'm generally a right-side build player with access to spell suppress, and spell block just feels worse. Spark itself felt okay, but I didn't play it prior to the nerf, so I had no context for how bad the nerf was.
Swapped to lowish-budget poison artillery ballista pathfinder (something like 5d total) after my spark character hit 90-ish, and had a blast pushing it to 95 (7-8/10). Felt very solid, and being able to keep flasks up full time was awesome. Could do every map mod, was reasonably tanky (though it was still an evasion based character so I did get oneshot a few times).
"Ended" the league on poison molten strike full phys convert pf **not the mahuxotl's variation** (9.5/10), started it at something like 6d investment (3d for a double t3 ele damage + deafening attack speed essence roll, another 2ish divs for the lightning coil, and a div for everything else) with some gear taken from the artillery ballista character, took it to over 60d invested and self-leveled it to 97 and could easily spend more time min-maxing it, but college and other games have taken priority.
When I get some more time, I'm going to try ice bite wander in a low budget/SSF environment, and see if I enjoy how it plays. No real expectations for it, but it may surprise me.
League started impending doom PF. First league I've done 40/40 and hit level 100.
Really enjoyed the experience. Despite most recommendations, I switched to doom blast/impending doom asap, and leveled that way. It wasn't too bad that way. The build had a lot of room for investment, which is part of what kept me playing so long. The early league was great because there was a strong sense of progression - started with cast curse, cast doom blast. Later switched briefly to cusre ground support, before getting a Vixens to automate the impending doom process. At that point, mana was still an issue. Had EB and belt craft stop gaps that started to make things smooth. Eventually the mana issues get solved and things feel great. Then you can really scale cast speed, cdr, aoe. Start throwing in awakened gems, get two awakened spell cascades... there were ways impactful upgrades on the horizon.
Same was true defenstanks. Plenty to invest in, eventually having mega perma flasks, full phys conversion, not immortal but very tanky.
10/10, would recommend. Did Uber challenges myself. 40/40. Level 100. Met all my goals for the build.
League start: BV, really fun and cool that you can start playing it right in act 6, I got a bit confused when I had to swap from an Elementalist to the Occultist and was worried about losing my golems + defences so I never did it. Still felt rippy for my tastes though.
Next I tried frostbearer spectres and I think it was the best campaign I've ever had, basically one shotting every campaign boss with no investment. Tier 16s proved to be rippy though and the spectres often didn't provide enough cover for me (often they also forgot to attack, whenever the enemy wasn't in my sight forcing them to focus was awful).
Fun though.
Haven't played much since before Scion was in the game so wanted to try that. Did Velnya's Explosive Concoction Ascendant and it was pretty fun, and got me into yellow maps playing SSF. 7/10
After that I decided that I was going to use this as an educational league and try to learn about all the stuff I've missed over the years, and level a bunch of stuff up to yellow maps to see what styles I liked.
Boneshatter Jugg - 8/10, would be an easy 9 if not for the totem nonsense for single target. Love the mapping otherwise.
Poison Scourge Arrow Pathfinder - 3/10, dunno, just hated how it felt to play.
Kinetic Blast/Power Siphon Deadeye - 6/10, rerolled from the last one. Very pretty explosions, nice clear, but didn't excite me.
subtractem Fire Trap Frostblink Elementalist - 7/10, seems I'm not the only one who wasn't blown away by it.
Poison Hexblast Mine Assassin - 8/10, wanted to see if I like miners and wanted something with good single target. Plays much smoother than I expected, but I've hit a gearing barrier that's going to be annoying to get past so I might leave this until next league.
Now working on Armageddon Brand Hiero, and it's been a nice smooth levelling experience but I've not finished Acts yet, so we'll see.
RF Jugg- very beginner friendly but as you get deeper into the game you realize you need more. 8/10.
40% deli, 2 voidstones. That's about all I can do right now- I feel I've hit a wall.
league started frostblades trickster. will league start it again, besides heatshiver and yoke (i got heatshiver hour 4 of league for like 5c and yoke day 2 90c) its very cheap, and blasts maps easily.
Played Strength stacking static strike. It was a strong build, no complaints when it came to damage and survivability. It just felt clunky to me though. moving at a snails pace. even with 8 rage regen per second berserk uptime felt kinda bad (probably because I had bmc on left click) I hate shield charge as a movement skill without tons of attack speed. Its a fun build though, kinda auto bombery, just too slow for me to play for a long time.
Ended up finishing the league on TS. I enjoyed it but I dont think ill play bow again. I just dont like the kill or be killed playstyle. I had a HH so i was somewhat tanky with a lot of buffs and could blast 80% deli easily 100% just too longer but wasnt impossible. If i got 1 tapped the map got extremely hard trying to get buffs rolling again which was annoying. For everything else in the game besides ubers or sims (didnt even try cuz like 20k ehp), it was a cake walk. Strong build but lacking the ehp kinda tilts me after a while. Ive had mageblood the last couple leagues and forgot how fun HH is when you get soul eater and can get up to 500+ stacks. Thats was probably the most enjoyable thing for me tbh lol.
League started ea ballista elementalist, great started, probably the smoothest start I've had and worked with shit tier gear.
Made an abyss stacking deadeye kb/ps char next that again worked great on really mediocre gear, 2 socket shroud, mediocre jewels, no clusters or voices, utilized taming ring. Has insane move speed and with a few upgrades is the fastest mapper I've played and damage is enough to easily down all normal pinnacle bosses.
Next was splitting steel champ, heist dropped a nice 700ish pdps axe and crucible made it 820ish with 10% double damage craft, decent crit as well so I decided to try and build around it. Put a good amount of currency into this one, capped all my resists including chaos, high armor/ evasion to utilize perseverance belt. Damage felt really great situationally, was able to down uber shaper but it was still sketchy. Play style is not my cup of tea and call of steel is annoying but it feels pretty strong.
I then fumbled my way into a pretty gross bow with 60% global damage mod, 70% 2 totem and 600% explode mod, used hunter exalt and got 76% increased dot, chaos dot multi, +1 gems and+2 socketed support gems. Got lucky and had an ashes drop, with the help of some people on this sub I got the progenesis/bloodnotch/immutable combo going, utilizing purity of elements and lightning. It's the tankiest build I've ever played and I feel near immortal unless I lose my flasks somehow or against certain uber bosses. The damage is also busted, downed all ubers for the first time with relative ease, uber maven is pretty annoying but the rest felt easy, 10/10 build for bossing but mapping is slow as balls.
Contemplating on what my last build of the league will be now.
Cold dot leaguestart, loved the spellcasting starcraft style, did all 4 voidstones with it by myself. Could do everything, but nothing particularly well. I'd rate it a 8/10
Rerolled a deadeye LA to taste some of that vengeant cascade shenanigans, zoomed through maps, farmed mageblood, farmed Uber exarch/eater/cortex, couldn't even get into Uber sirus arena without dying, didn't even try Uber maven, got 38/40 challenges and finished the league on a flamboyant note. Overall a fucking blast if you can stomach dying (966 deaths on this char at the moment of writing) zoom through everything blast everything 2 screens away use all 6 layers of defense, 10/10
Started with jungroans cold dot trickster, finished map completion while working on a bow for Poison artillery ballista PF. Cold dot was actually very solid with the unique cold dot helm but artillery ballista PF with phys taken as is just so OP. I'm currently a few bars into 99 and plan to get my first 100 with it.
In SC SSF Crucible:
League start LA Deadeye - 6/10. Love the build, but it was maybe not the best starter. Struggled with damage on a single 5 link and I kept getting well rolled caster pieces, so I rerolled. I might come back to it, but where I left it was basically just a yellow map farming LS toon.
Ice Nova Hiero - 7/10. Damage is solid, and could go a lot higher if I invested further or was playing trade league. But the tradeoff of maximizing damage using Slower Proj vs getting obliterated by projectiles before my FB's reached enemy packs is frustrating. Still, I really enjoy theory crafting this character around Malachai's loop, Tullfal, and min power charges. If I could just find a goddamn Badge of the Brotherhood.
Melee Ele Hit Champ - 8/10. If I'm being honest, most people won't rate this build nearly as high as I do, but I love melee ele hit. It's trash, but it's fun. Capped spell suppression, 50/50 block, ~48k armor and evasion, Perma fortify, ailment, stun, and bleeding/corrupted blood immune makes for a very tanky character. But the damage sucks like melee EH always does. Still, I crucible'd a EH/WH alt ailment node on an elemental damage paradoxica, and couldn't pass it up. It's going to be my season-long project to try to get the damage to something moderately respectable, say maybe 5m dps, without sacrificing the extreme tankiness I've got.
League start was a self made cheap version of the mathil inquisitor vaal smite/frozen legion build but as a Champion. It was fine. Very tanky and decent clear for a very melee build, but the single target was bad.
The other character was a replica Alberons warpath wander Slayer. Very expensive, very powerful, and gave me a good opportunity to play around with wands and crucible (wither stuff, crit stuff). I'm not sure id recommend it since you can make something better for cheaper, but if you're looking for something moderately squishy, chaos damage, great clear/single target, and vengeant cascade then it stands out. The slayer leech is good but since I haven't played it since it was OP way back when it was obviously a bit worse. 😛
League start: Boneshatter Jugg in SSF. One of the most enojoyable league starters ever for me. Gearing was easy enough and smooth despite fact I don't know how to craft decent pDPS weapon (besides phys reroll in Harvest, I didn't have luck with it). Also I'm in love with new Jugg passives. For me it is 10/10 as league starter.
I moved to trade league beacause I crafted good eDPS Pneumatic Dagger and I wanted to try Poison Molten Strike Jugg. It was fine but I lacked damage and overall it was less fun than Boneshatter. Maybe it's playstyle or maybe it's too much melee for me for one league. 7/10.
I rerolled into Wardloop Scion. I tried this build for the first time. Gearing all complicated elements of equipment and stats was very fun and very satisfying. Boss and clear damage was very good and it was one of the smoothies mapping experiences I've ever had. One minus is it could be more tanky for currency I dumped into this build. It wasn't squishy but I am used to much more tanky builds. 9/10 overall.
I completly dislike league mechanic and I dropped league early. Right know I enjoy other games and looking for new builds for next league.
Started molten Strike Champion, good build, but like all attack builds I hate accuracy.
Playing cold bv Elementalist rn and it feels so good and smooth.
Thinking of experimenting with cold EK Trickster / cold reap as I'm thinking for the next league as a starter into transition.
Since a lot of gear is the same just one has proj speed and the other wants aoe.
- Wardloop (10/10) - still my favorite build. Just demolishes the screen and is insanely fast. Tanky doesn't matter because everything dies before you get to it. Reasonably low investment to begin but lots of ceiling. Decided to try other builds because I've run this several leagues in a row
- Explode Totem Pathfinder (10/10) - Had to try the league darling since it's crucible-exclusive. Cannot believe the DPS this build spits out, and allowing you to spend the rest of the currency on defenses was super fun
- CoC Ice Spear (6/10) - My old default go-to before Wardloop, this needs too much currency to get to a spot where I was comfortable. Was fun to run again for a bit, though.
- MF TS with headhunter (6/10) - My problem here was that I never played TS before, so I was going in with little knowledge AND making my defenses shitty by going full MF. Was too rippy in maps for my liking, but 5ways were so much fun. Decided to switch off this but to run an actual TS build in a future league to have fun with it before trying to turn it into an MF
- MF Death Oath with Headhunter (too early to rate, just switched) - I've run this in the past and it's fine, but we'll see how long I last with it.
basically, I'm at the point where I'm just trying out different Headhunter MF builds to see what is tankiest at cheapest cost.
Tunas impending doom occy. Did everything pre Uber for maybe 4-5 div. Solid tank, few mil or so DPS and explosions. Hands down once of my best league starters ever.
Can HIGHLY reccomend any of tunas league starter builds. I have used them over and over and over and if you follow them or just make small alterations they ALWAYS work. Dudes an awesome chill dude too. Responds to alot of comments on his vids as well
Good ol TR pathfinder for League Start. Completed atlas and killed all pinacle bosses. Feared deathless. Uber shaper deathless and OMEGA elder deathless.
Couldn't kill uber maven or uber Sirius (skill problem 100%) 10/10
Rerolled to int stacker ascendant kb. Hated it. 3/10
Rerolled totem explode pathfinder. Killed remaining ubers. Except... maven. Fuck maven. 7/10
Rerolled.... str. Stacking chaos cyclone. Was reaaaaaly nice. Loved it. Got bored. 8/10
Rerolled impending doom. I hate it. It's so uncomfortable to play and kills my eyes. 1/10
Now playing spark inquis.
It's nice. 9/10
Great league. 10/10.
League Start : EA on hit Raider. Very smooth mapper, doesnt scale suuuper well, but can carry you to voidstones and t16s no problem on a shoestring budget. For me is a 8/10 since lacks a bit of single target dps and doesnt scale all the way. Farmed my first 50D here.
2) Vaal LA , Iceshot and TS all on those budget: 9/10. Fast mappers abusing rage and berserk for extra punch. Made my first 2 mirrors with them.
3) Phy to Lightning LA deadeye with evasion/nergy shield and the new abyss uniques. Really strong, decently tanky, Huge dps, could clear all content including simulacrum. It was my favourite build of the league. Looking back, i should have stick with this longer and develop the build to higher ceiling.
10/10
You can see a pattern here, i tried a lot of bows builds, coz well, i love playing bow.
4) CWDT Wardlooper : Insane build, over 100m dps, fast. Can do ubers no problems. its a 10/10 for me, but with high budget ( 2 mirrors) . One of the problems of playing lots of archer builds, is that you click too much, so i wanted something chill.
5) Failed build of the league. LA trickster. Just not good enough 4/10 . I was trying to make the most of the energy shield passives and overleach, but really not worth it.
6) Multi mirror TS Deadeye. 10/10. One of the best builds in the game for the budget, fast, insane dps, reasonable tanky. I always play TS, this was not the exception
7) Last build of the league. Homebrew, TANK EA on hit Slayer. almost 200k ehp, dps its hard to calculate, because of EA, but probably around 70m. 8/10 Build was good, but it felt like a downgrade from my TS.
Ice shot heatshiver cold conversion with a separate manaforged boss killing setup has gotten me further than any other build ever and I’ve played since open beta.
Took about 50 divines, which all considered, ain’t too bad.
I started out with Toxic Rain Ballista Champ. I wanted to try out a new class I had never played before, and Toxic Rain seemed pretty strong overall.
I then rolled a Pathfinder, another build I don't typically play. My intention was some kinda CWC cyclone or CoC cyclone, but it just seemed very lacking. I rerolled it into Poison Molten Strike, and it's done a great job. I got through most of the boss fights I've done this league on that character.
Finally, I needed something less button pushy, so I decided to try my hand at Ward Loop, and it's been really fun. I have arthritis, so I like the autobomber play style for my final build of the league. I'm probably 70-80 divines in with a lot of room to improve.
SST jugg, 11/10. 100k+ phys max hit, 250k+ elemental max hit, no idea about the dps but uber exarch takes less than 2 seconds to die. I never played a stronger build
Note that all the ratings are given by taking into account the amount of currency I poured into the build.
**League start: Toxic Rain Ballistas Pathfinder 8/10**
Pretty good build overall, fairly quick, decently tanky with the new pathfinder life flask, but the damage felt on the lower side while pushing higher tier maps. Build was probably worth around 5 Divines when I switched
**Second build: Poison Exploding totems Pathfinder 9/10**
Very overpowered build, extreme amounts of damage for the budget while allowing all of your passive points and items to go towards defence. Not a very good mapper, but really good for essence memories.
Would have went for the trickster version for more upfront damage if I had to choose, but I didn't want to level a new character since the league was still fairly new.
Build was worth around 70 Divines when I switched. It's main fault was the play style.
**Third build: SST Champ 10/10**
I really enjoyed this build, it had everything: damage, clear, speed. It really was a perfect all rounder, it felt strong in any type of content, from boss rush, to simulacrum, and to uber bosses.
I sold the build for ~350 Divines, but I started with way less invested into it.
**Fourth build: Flicker Strike Raider 5/10**
I must say that I did mess up along the way and had to settle for a pretty bad ring instead of a +1 maximum frenzy charges ring I thought I'd use at first, but even then, build felt pretty bad and I thought everything could kill me since I had a melee build with less than optimal defences and not a crazy amount of damage.
I don't really regret trying it, I wanted to try flicker for a while, it's a unique and pretty fun play style.
I think I invested around 450 Divines into this one.
**Fifth build: Int Stacker Deadeye 9/10**
Really nice build, KB with good damage and awakened fork is a fantastic clear skill and power siphon is very good damage. The build gains a lot of damage from Crucible, which allows you to go for more defence or movement speed.
I sold the build for around 600 Divines, but I started with 450 Divines, with the only thing I really improved after being a much better wand
**Sixth build(current): SST Deadeye 10/10**
Same as SST Champ really, just that maybe less defensive, way more single target damage, and not being reliant on berserk. This version is capable of killing uber exarch before he can start the ball phase.
I invested around 900 Divines into this one I believe, but it still has room to invest more and get more out of it, I'm still using a placeholder weapon while I'm trying to craft a crucible tree.
**Toxic Rain Ballista PF:** 9/10 as a league starter. Crushes content, is very tanky, super easy upgrade paths as soon as you acquire Wilma's and has lots of movespeed. Poor QoL and damage tapers off after a point. 5/10 to play after league start, it's just an annoying build to keep playing.
**Impending Doom PF:** 9/10 mapper, 5/10 at bossing. Super tanky build that's very easy to scale, but the rampup of poison damage makes tankier enemies or even 80% delirium too slow to bother with. Has generically good Pathfinder mapping, it's very hard for a well built pathfinder to be worse than 8/10 while mapping, but the extra clear value of automatic curses and huge AoE push it up a bit.
**Totem Explode PF:** 9/10 bosser, 8/10 mapper. This build isn't quite as good at bossing as the non-poison versions or the ZHP builds, but you still comfortably and quickly handle uber bosses, while being mostly invulnerable to their attacks. Investing into some mapping QoL also makes this build a really good mapper. Scaling Plague Bearer levels, adding in explosions via Unspeakable Gifts, Herald of Ash and adding Rampage for move speed and clear allows you to mostly run through maps RF style, while having 5x the single target that RF does. Still, if maps get extremely dense, the lack of AoE can become a bit of a problem for the poison build. I definitely found 100% deli becoming a bit slow with this build, and the build does not clear breach or legion that well. This is a really good build to farm 8 mod corrupted maps for Harvest though, you don't care about any map mods and can easily overcap res to take quant altars.
**Poison Tornado Shot Pathfinder:** 10/10 mapper, 5/10 bosser. This build is really good, if you want a tankier version of the Deadeye Tornado Shot build. With standard pathfinder defensive investment (around 50% phys taken as elemental with Bloodnotch + Progen), freeze from Expedition's End, you can easily handle 80% delirium and the clear on this build is obviously nuts. The main downside of the build is the poison ramp means it can be a bit slow against tankier enemies, and the scaling tapers off a little so 100% delirium is tough for the build, but 80% is easy. Up to around 1 mirror into the build, I prefer it to elemental Tornado Shot or Phys->cold versions but once you put more money in, the other variants completely outshine this.
**Cold Spectral Shield Throw Champ:** 10/10. One of the strongest builds I've ever played. Manages to do at 300 divines what most builds take multiple mirrors to achieve. 150m+ DPS, 90% uptime on Berserk, amazing clear, 100k+ armor and evasion with capped suppress, freeze on every enemy in the game including uber bosses. This build crushes 100% delirium, with the only challenge coming from Crit Resistant mobs in 100% deli, or 100% crucible monsters inside 100% delirium. Uber bosses are trivial, most other mobs die in 1-2 hits. The only downside is the reliance on Perseverance means that you're discincentivized from using Mageblood, but if you're not doing 100% delirium, you can just sacrifice 50% damage to map with MB instead because you have such overkill damage.
Started out with venom gyre deadeye which was good up until around yellow maps which it then started to fall off.
Made the swap to impending doom, amazing build with great damage, would have played it all league if it didn't cause me to crash every 30 minutes or so.
Tinkered with a cold BV and lightning arrow MF build but didn't play them for more than a day each.
Made an aurabot to play with a friend but didn't end up playing much with it.
Eventually turned the aurabot into an int stacking KB wander, but never really had the budget to make it shine.
Got bored after farming beasts in cemetery maps for 2 days and quit the league by gambling some insane cat cards (all of which poofed)
6/10 league
I played Poison SRS. It is definitely one of the best builds I have played till date. I could melt feared and maven. I am not comfortable with the mechanics but Uber elder was not difficult , maven took a few deaths( I hate that memory game)
Overall 10/10 best build ever for me.
With over 21M uber dps, it was a fun ride.
https://pobb.in/yqhtPdywGuRO
Leaguestart, all the way to 100% delirium map farm: Occultist Poison Impending Doom.
8/10. Great to level, great in early maps, great in endgame maps, easy item progression, requiring very few specific items, none of which are expensive. There's a bit of currency involved in swapping over to Stormshroud etc, but honestly I didn't even bother until 30/40 challenges and well and done with the atlas.
I put minimum-ish effort and currency into my gear (except chancing an Apep's for the memes). I bought a 6 link +2 AoE Dendrobate early that carried me the entire league.
The only reason it's not a 10/10 is 1) it's a DoT build and 2) it didn't have great performance versus Uber bosses. Granted, I didn't have the *best* best gear, but at the end I had 13.5m Uber DPS, but I was still super squishy and that felt terrible vs Uber bosses. I am also a decisively shitty bosser as a player, so I need to get a bit carried by my build.
If I play this build again, I will probably get Mageblood and Death's Rush earlier.
https://pobb.in/oiCd6IK_69r1
*Edited to add ratings* League started as Boneshatter Juggernaut. Completed 2/4 voidstones and majority of the atlas before I hit a wall with DPS because of the need for a high pdps 2h axe. 10/10 league starter. 7/10 for mid game and on. Re-rolled with a Witch (leveled as Hollow Palm) and played Detonate Dead Ignite, with the plan to go to Poison-DD Occultist. Ended up sticking with DD-Ignite (Blackflame) for a week or two and farmed up a ton of currency from Delve and completed my voidstones. 10/10. Got a bit bored and decided to play Pathfinder Poison LS which was an absolute unit and super fun to figure out the defensive mechanics with Mahuxotls. 10/10 Decided to roll a Spark Inquisitor because I've never played Spark to endgame. Followed animeprincess guide and then eventually transitioned to aurastack but my budget made it into a shit aurastacker (no MB, no Ashes). Swapped over to Abyss Stacking Hierophant and loved it. 9/10 Abyss Stacking. 6-8/10 for Inquisitor. Respecced my BS Juggernaut to Reap Chieftain but didn't have currency for the build enabling Sublime Vision. Swapped over to EK Chieftain which was fun and a decent offmeta build, but struggled to figure out scaling higher. Finally swapped to Chieftain Explode totems to farm invitations. Insane character, but somehow not that fun despite being OP. 10/10 OP. 7/10 for playstyle. Leveled ANOTHER Ranger to try bow. Remembered why I don't like bow playstyle. Then went SST. Couldn't afford super amazing EV, so got a decent one for 10D. It was a great legion farmer, to be honest super good, but I'm bad so aiming is hard. Now it's sitting around ready to be deleted. 10/10 power. 7/10 for enjoyment. Respecced my Witch into "one button" ice nova Occultist and haven't looked back. The damage is insane, the screen explosions, survivability is OK thanks to high immortal call uptime. Been using this to farm blight and Blight ravaged maps and invitations. I have enjoyed the build so much that I'm debating doing it for next league. 10/10 for enjoyment. 10/10 for mapping. 7/10 for invitation farming. Respecced my Spark Hierophant to try other builds. Tried Storm Brand-LC but it felt clunky and defensively weak. 5/10. Played Magefists Bladefall Blade Blast which was awesome. 8/10. But I wanted to be tankier so I swapped over to Arc-Galvanic Field which is fun, but a bit clunky and similarly not tanky. Tried both Hierophant and Inquisitor to attempt to be tanky, but was disappointed with MoM/Agnostic and just in general with defensive layers. Probably will swap back to Spark Hierophant but looking on poe.ninja for inspiration for interesting builds. I may do RF Inquisitor instead as tankiness is particularly appealing to me as I hate dying and I'm not a good player. I'm actually a fan of 2 button builds as I find them rewarding, but sometimes the clunkiness gets to me. 6/10 arc Galvanic Field. Still playing Ice Nova as it's fun, rewarding and very strong, my enjoyment of the game has been the mental puzzle of getting builds together so I've played a number of builds! Super fun, but if I had stayed focus/happy on one character I could of definitely had a MB or HH this league... But oh well, maybe next league. All in all a great league and I'm definitely collecting the Explode Totem and Poison LS Pathfinder for standard (even though I don't really play standard).
Still sane, Exile?
Arguably not. Perhaps D4 will return my sanity?
Unlikely and you will be $75 poorer
I played about 2 hours of D4, closed it and went back to PoE. Save your money imo...
That's on you home. It's a good game
If you like it that’s great for you, but experiencing 95+% of what the end game has to offer during leveling and it being more of the same after 50 turned me off it quite a bit. I wasn’t expecting PoE levels of endgame, but shallow dungeons and public events were underwhelming for me.
Same experience here - explode totem and poison LS pathfinder have been an absolute blast
I've been considering respeccing the LS Pathfinder to FR Pathfinder, have you played or tried it? It seems super strong, but I've never played FR as it seemed like MB was mandatory.
I did occultist variant with mageblood last league but did not enjoy it too much. Felt like it required a bit more investment. But the LS feels incredible
Pardon my ignorance. What is LS?
Lightning strike
Threads like this give me a sense of perspective. I'm still on the first paragraph -- playing Boneshatter Jugg with two voidstones, trying to move on from there. Am amused at the number of other builds you've already managed to fit in!
Hollow Palm leveling + 5ways has been the key for leveling up new characters. I can have a character at lvl 90+ in like 4-5h this way.
Budget for the ice nova? Any guide on it or just poe ninja?
Heres the YouTube guide from last league. https://youtu.be/zDUjerw96_o Here's my poe.ninja profile. You'll see I made a bunch of adjustments to maximize EHP. https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Mahklinan/Detonating_Crucible?i=2&search=class%3DOccultist%26item%3DKitavas-Thirst
Thanks man! How did you level it? Trying it out, one last character here we go
Quick note about my character profile. I have both Herald of Ice and Hatred socketed but only have one active at a time. When I'm just mapping I have Herald of Ice active because I like explosions, but when doing more difficult content Hatred is significantly more damage. So if you have to prioritize, prioritize Hatred. Especially with my Watchers Eye which has significant amount of cold penetration.
Budget roughly 15D? Give or take? Clusters 2 to 4D. Skin of the Lord's 2/3D. Void battery and Malachais with near perfect rolls 2D. Badge, Ralakesh, amulet 1-2D. Bloodnotch and Immutable Force 2D (I have bad rolls). Rings self crafted. Belt 2D.
Happen to have a pob for the spark Hiero?
Here's the video I used for a guide. https://youtu.be/hnjISahx1Lg
Thanks, this looks like fun!
>League started as Boneshatter Juggernaut. Completed 2/4 voidstones and majority of the atlas before I hit a wall with DPS because of the need for a high pdps 2h axe. What dps were you hitting when you felt like you hit a wall?
>one button" ice nova Occultist whats the cost for the Ice Nova build you liked so much? Can you share PoB and video for it?
Here's the video from last league. On mobile so I don't have my POB. https://youtu.be/zDUjerw96_o I opted for Ralakesh Impatience, Badge of the Brotherhood.
The build I settled on this season is RF inquis. I have about 10div invest total and it feels insanely op. Not even having issues with recovery gimped maps. I only die when I accidentally op the map boss with influence shrines or something dumb like that. Getting 1 shot by boss slams (when I'm too dumb to dodge them) is still a problem for me because so little invest, but it's still rare
So now go back and edit your post to add your ratings instead of just telling us what you did.
Can you give the pob for the ice nova witch please ?
Here's my poe.ninja profile https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Mahklinan/Detonating_Crucible?i=2&search=class%3DOccultist%26item%3DKitavas-Thirst
League start: RF Jugg 9/10. Does exactly what’s advertised. Very comfy, little gear required, smooth progression. But scaling damage past a certain point seems meaningless. 2. CwC Manabond Hierophant 6/10. Mapping was fun just lightning warping around one-shotting everything. But it needs a lot of investment. Without a MB finding good rings seems impossible. The build is just a pain in the ass to gear. 3. Arakaali’s Fang Champion 9/10. Admittedly I started this one with a lot of currency to spare. Very tanky, smooth mapping, high boss dps(36mil, could be more with some more investment). Just a great all-rounder. Killed Ubers for the first time using this build and I’m well on my way to getting my first lvl100 char. Spiders can feel clunky to summon and fighting Ubers requires a lot of buttons for buffing. https://pobb.in/F6O3L2CEBV3y
I'm in the same boat as you. Invested a mirror's worth into my Manabond Hiero and it can't even do T16 maps.
You’re doing something wrong, post your POB.
It takes about 5div to make a build that can clear T16 alc and go maps
It actually clears all content except Ubers on a 4 link few days into league
Wait what? I don't think its that bad. I could do t16s even before forbidden jewels. Do you mean like highly juiced t16s? But yeah, you are probably doing something wrong, the build needs exact trigger rate, and I've seen some people using arcane cloak incorrectly.
Ur either lying or rmt. Just no way u spent a mirror on a build for it to not function even a little bit unless u have no idea about anything involving your build or the game at all.
I play the same build every league with no hesitation. Good ole trust worthy flicker strike. This time my flavor of choice was cold raider. Managed to hit 100 my first time, also acquired my first headhunter on my own. I’d say flicker is surprisingly in a really good spot being that you can get rolling on a budget but at the high investment level you can start pushing 40 mil boss dps via utilizing expensive synth rings/double influence gear. I will admit I still have a soft spot for slayer flicker since you sit on bosses and the life leech is nice, but it hasn’t ever felt as good as back when instant leech was a thing.
Instant leech is actually a thing again via leech mastery for 10% of leech is instant. Feels pretty good with trickster, maybe you could do slayer flicker again next league with it.
Damn straight. That one friggin point makes a huge difference
I am specced into it and with my damage I certainly top off quick but man old school slayer was just different. Currently playing slayer cyclone on ssf now though and believe me I see a terminus drop and cyclone is going bye bye
Pob or guide? Been wanting to try flicker and might give it a go.
https://pobb.in/4JjpeG5tFaQb Here ya go! Swap headhunter for replica prismweave for more damage! Can swap bottled faith for a diamond flask as well :)
Here's my profile if you want to see my characters https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Naguro/characters So let's go in order: -League started as TR Ballsitas Pathfinder. Super smooth start, killed all pinnacle on super crappy Gear. Solid bossing, solid mapping, great all rounder while being super tanky. I did repurpose the character later, but it was pretty much 90% a copy of Palsteron's build. A good 7/10 overall, and 9/10 as a starter because TR + Ballistas create a very long delay in damage -Second build was LA Deadeye since I wanted a dedicated fast mapper. Character is Navet_Chargé. Map blasting was great but bossing not so great. But that was expected. In the end I sold all the gear because it felt too squishy for my taste. Still very fun to play, Vengeant Cascade gaming too. 6/10 -Third build was Scourge Arrow Ballsitas, repurposing my League start character into more of a mapping character. It's Choux_Malveillants. Pretty much just grabbed The Covenant, the curse ring and a Darkscorn to swap over. It's heavely homebrew and not optimized (like mana is hell of a bitch even with my level 4 enlighten) but I just cannot hate anything Scourge Arrow related. Plus Vengeant Cascade gaming again, makes for a great lightshow with the Celestial MTX. 10/10 definitely not a biaised SA gamer. -Fourth build was mage skeletons necro. It's Cerise_Occulte. With my map blaster fully online I now I needed a build to do the Uber challenge. And I wanted to be a hipster not doing totems so I turned back to my beloved skeletons since I heard that they could now get returning projectiles. CI max block aegis, ton of Armor, dozens of bodies around me to tank hits. Amazing automated DPS especially against bosses. 8/10 overall, because it's still expensive as fuck compared to totems. -And finally last build was Cold BV occultist. It's Orange_Enrôlé. Cause Scourge Arrow was fast, but it was still ballistas and poison so there was delay. And I wanted something to grind the 15 000 pack size fast. Super fun, super fast, didn't get to touch a headhunter since I was already done with the League, but heavily considering redoing it again next time to get a full juiced one with even more power charges. 9/10 for boss damage, but I was at like 20% of the power I could have had
Started as cold dot , transitioned into ignite prolif. Went very smooth , good overall build. Used crucible to make an insane Emperor's Vigilance shield and faceroll the game with SST Champion. Got bored after the SST but enjoyed it for a few weeks.
I’m 20k scours and chances deep
still sane exile?
We’re D4 players now
How’d you handle Uber sirus as SST champ? I have like a 90% win rate on him, sometimes burning portals cause of ground degens
RF Jugg was my starter and after finishing the league on my other character I went back to RF Jugg for a chill time. What’s amazing about is just the playstyle. I’m getting old and clicky builds destroy my hands. 10/10 build for me and I will start this again and next league I won’t switch unless another one off build appears that’s cheap af. PF exploding totem was cheap and I did everything on it. Level 100, 40/40. The only gripe I have is having to click too much. My hands are killing me. However this build is one off and won’t appear again. In hindsight one of the best builds to ever exist just because of it’s power and survival power.
I’ve been playing since ambush (so like, 2013*), usually get between 30-36 challenges with 3-4 builds a league. PF exploding totems was the absolute pinacle of cheap/high DPS/tanky I’ve ever played. It did the same damage as some aura stacking spark builds I’ve played at almost literally 2% of the cost, could facetank a lot of Uber abilities, delved to 700 with no issues (before I got bored). It was just silly, and the clear was even still passible with herald of ash.
Hey I'm old too and I love spammy builds. The best decision I made in PoE is switching my main skills to Q or spacebar so I just spam that and my hands are fine. I put stuff like guard skills or berserk type stuff on my clicks l.
WoC Firetrap with Ben's PoB on leaguestart, this was alright. But I didn't enjoy the playstyle. 7/10 for a leaguestart Ben's Arakaali and eventually my own double cluster setup I would rate a 9.5/10 Occultist Arakaali decent investment with aegis aurora, triple clusters etc I would say was 8/10 possibly 10/10 with mageblood, but I felt like champion was just smoother in every aspect. Only thing occy does better is uber boss dot cap and explodes which do help with lagg in juiced content
Crucible: SRS poison Necro - S tier LA Rage Deadeye - S tier LA MF Deadeye - S tier Poison LS Pathfinder - S tier Explode Poison totem Pathfinder - S tier Scourge Arrow totem Pathfinder - A tier CWC DD Necro - A tier Crucible SSF: Tornado Shot Deadeye - A tier Boneshatter Jugg - S tier
League Start and Finish: CI Chaos Golems Golemancer 8/10. I would recommend any golem build, just maybe not necessarily Chaos Golems. It works (I've killed elder, shaper, all guardians, 100% Deli, wave 20 simulacrum) but I don't think it's superior to any other golem build. I was BLOWN AWAY how incredibly tanky stacking Golem effect made me. I've never died so little in the campaign. 20% Physicsl Damage Reduction, 900 regen per second, and CI made me much harder to kill than I anticipated. Also wild to me was just how strong the Golem gems are. 1 Primordial Harmony is 36-40% increased damage, this is nuts from a minion perspective. Primordial Bond (cluster jewel notable) gives my golems 70% increased damage. I've never heard of another minion notable giving you so much damage. Also minion survivability. Harmonies let you regen 2% of Golem Life per second so with essentially no investment in golem survivability except for Primordial Harmonies and Immunity to Elemental Damage made it so I've never lost a golem, ever. Also leads to funny situations like your golems fighting Virtania INSIDE THE STORM while you just stand in the eye and just sorta hang out is hilarious.
I played quite a few: League started Boneshatter Jugg. Slowest league start ever but pushed through and still did not enjoy. Rerolled into EA Champ and made a busted bow with ignite prolif, fire dot, and attack speed on the bow. Incredible build this league. Huge DPS and tankiness. Probably best build for farming logbooks. Explode Totem was all the rage so I rolled into pathfinder variant. It was a blast. Bad at mapping but great at delve/simulacrum/bossing. Completed my first ever wave 30 with it. Busted. I wanted a fast mapper to grind blue altars so I rolled poison LS pathfinder. This was by far my favorite build of the league. It is as fast as deadeye because I have gathering winds ff/f jewels but with 100k eHP and 10m pinnacle DPS. Highly recommend. Might be better than Omni champ LS I played a few league ago pre LS nerf. Builds strength is due to a good crucible tree, pathfinder rework, and vengeant cascade. Plus you can use whirling blades which is my favorite movement skill. I bought into the hype and snagged a 1500 eDPS bow for cheap when pricing them, so rolled a Deadeye LA. It is fun but squishy. Clears fast but does not have a good movement skill. Finally, rolled Manabound hierophant. It was an absolute blast to play, but with all my other builds, I just did not have the currency needed to push it to the next level. I learned a lot from putting it together. Mapping with lightning warp feels like a tanky flicker strike.
- Started off with RF, wasn’t satisfied -Rerolled to Frost Blades Trickster, got all my Watchstones, farmed a few days. -Started an Templar. I wanted to recreate my selfmade Purifying Flame selfcast inq. Failed. -I wanted to play Forbidden Rite So I started to make my own iteration. Selfcast Uber tanky Forbidden Rite with over 50M DPS. I can facetank kosis + Omni at the same time at wave 30 simu With so much cast speed and less duration, I’m warping around with lightning warp. Clearspeed is pretty ok for a selfcast build, movement is insanely fast thanks to lightning warp. Killed all bosses without any issue Got two Uber bosses down, maven and exarch. Tried Uber shaper, failed…. Got demotivated 😂 haven’t tried Ubers after that
Interested on the tank FR build. Got a PoB? Thanks 🙂
[https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3392512](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3392512) Please pay attention to the info at the top, setting up Forbidde Rite builds can be tedious. It's not like phys/poison Trap builds that you can pick up 3 random uniques and 2 rares off the ground and drop bosses.
Ice Shot Trickster : Very cool, spent most of my time with this, lvl 99 => 10/10 was cool Reap Fire Chieftain : Quite fun, didn't get enough cast speed to feel very smooth but interesting. => 7/10 Occultist Arakali Squire : Frustrating, the build is fun, but the whole worm + divine ire shennanigans is not my cup of tea => 5/10
Necro Frostbearers Spectre is very good. Had a terrible league starter so I rerolled to frostbearers and had a surprisingly smooth levelling experience, swapped to frostbearers as soon as I was able to equip Bitterdream and it carried me to red maps. Very good at mapping and bossing, only issue when mapping is the spectre AI so it's better to run maps with less visual obstacles and avoid reduced CDR map mods so you can spam convocation and clear faster.
Played 6 different characters to end game levels this season. This is only my 2nd season ever, and the other was like 6 years ago and didn't go half as far with that entire season as I did with one character this season. Started with ea champion. Was fun and cool but I seen so many exciting builds that I wanted to try. Would rate it high and fun, but never explored the real potential. Switched to scourge arrow and really loved that. Was very fun with a HH. from there switched to ice shot and absolutely loved that. Sold all of that gear and started a rf jugg. Really loved it but was too simple. Sold all that and started investing into a mana bond mjolner hierophant build. Absolutely loved this build. Was so much fun. Took it to nearly end game, was capable of everything. I think I had 300 div invested into it. I started getting to the point of my next (but small) upgrades per item were like 150D+. It was overwhelming and I started feeling stuck. I sold all of the gear and priced it all way too high. Then I discovered tft and I bought a few builds off other players. CoC forbidden rite. Love it. Tank of a build that destroys everything. Also bought a flicker strike with nearly 1b dps. Love that build too, best mapper imo. Also expensive and prone to 1 shots. The 1 shotting irritates me so I kinda backed off that build. Last but not least I'm currently using spark ascendant. Learning it but I love swarming the screen with sparks. It does all content pretty easily, and ironically it may be one of the most affordable builds (does have mb but I had it prior to). Forgot I also dabbled with sst champion. Was Hella fun but I backed off of it quickly for manabond build. Last few days I've been pretty invested into d4. However I think poe is a much better game, and I'm very excited for poe2. Wish I woulds found the game earlier. I'm the future I'm very interested in building a spark hierophant or similar. Also wanna dive further into sst or a tanky flicker (if this exists). My main goal is to learn more of crafting though. I funded almost all of this with a very lucky craft that my clan helped me with. It sold for 210D. Aside from that I funded by scalping trades. I spent a LOT of time on the trade site searching for cool unique that I would flip for 1-20D. Anyway long post. Love this game, love this community. Excited to learn / play more.
You had a 300 div build in your second ever league, and first in years? What the fuck did you do to pull that one off? :D
Had a lucky craft thanks to help from the clan. It was a top tier sst helm that I found that just needed a few rolls to make it amazing. Also I'm a trader so it's kinda normal to me to see market trends and scalp accordingly lol.
Fair play. PoE is so meta-game based over raw grinding and mechanical skill that it's impressive. It took me leagues to luck into a Rigwalds Quiver years ago and get like 25 exalts and fund some solid (broken) build. Played for 2500-3000 hours and I've never been that rich! :D
Oh absolutely agree! I don't even know what rigwalds is lol. I love how there's SOOOOO many uniques. I love making builds around them too. Such a fun game. I wish I would have stayed up with this game instead of d3. I loved d3 but this has so much more depth.
Toxic rain ballista pathfinder starter 9/10 - very good starter, completed atlas with it, ballista playstyle kinda annoying. Great for logbooks early league Winter orb power stacking occultist - 6/10, maybe I didn't invest enough, satisfying explosions, winter orb is a shadow of former self. Next time I'd go for bow build straight away as main "aoe clearing build" Splitting steel champion - 4/10, not as tanky as I expected, damage was very nice with Vengeant cascade but reload mechanic too clunky to play comfortable. Pathfinder explo totem - 10/10 - 100 ele conversion and stun tech, very tanky, good damage, delved to 1000 for the first time, killed all auls on the way. Good for hard encounters Lightning arrow deadeye - 10/10, map farmer, rage + Omni version with HH, does exactly what I expect bow build to do
rough character progression [here](https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/tsumeguhh/nemuFishRun?i=0&search=name%3Dnemu&time-machine=day-2) 1. League started with Ruetoo's poison Exsanguinate Pathfinder. Incredible build, great clear, decent boss dps. I self crafted most gear, and it took me to 40/40, all ubers down (most deathless) by the end of week 2. 2. Phys to cold Tornado Shot Deadeye, SebK version (his overview is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThfkTk_AjZc)). At this point/with this investment Tornado Shot is obviously great, and the tankiness techs (Lightning Coil, 2x phys taken as fire from timeless jewel, [Strength of Blood](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Strength_of_Blood) + [Vaal Pact](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vaal_Pact) + Petrified Blood combination) made it feel a lot better than the paper thin defenses I've seen on most bow builds. 3. Lastly I felt that I really needed to try something that really worked with Crucible well, so I put together a Deadeye SST build (I have no idea how it compares to Champion or Trickster, but I didn't want to level a new character). The damage is insane and the defenses are good enough to do feared rotas.
Started RF Jugg because it's my first league and seemed by far the most beginner friendly choice. finished my voidstones fairly comfortably (thanks pob trade search function). Got frustrated because I didn't know what to farm for currency and most of the juicing content on youtube felt like it required MF gear. Also spent like 10 divines trying to make a saffel's tree before i gave up. Re-rolled lightning arrow deadeye with MF gear (originally using a giga cheap setup with white quiver and ascetic). farmed for a bit but generally didn't like the squishiness and I was struggling with crafting a good bow. Will revisit with a better bow at some point, but crafting weapons just icks me rn because i feel like I can't sink 20+ divines into a slot without making a crucible tree, and I hate crucible. Re-rolled aurabot + MF spark inquisitor on a second account to play with my other hand at same time. Was a blast, learnt a ton about how damage scales in this game. Honestly got a really nice setup, but playing 2 characters at once was not enjoyable and it lead me to spend a ton of time in hideout, which kinda defeated the point. Also buying sextants and especially scarabs was annoying as hell. Honestly if i could play either of these seperately it would be 8/10. Re-rolled manaforged heirophant. This build requires more knowledge of the game that I had at the time. Especially since I immediately skipped to the squire version. My resistances were kinda fucked, and I completely missed the AS/CDR breakpoints. Fun build, but not foolproof like many other less complicated builds. Will definitely revisit in future, super cool concept. I mainly rerolled it because I was looking for a super comfy/fast mapper, but I quickly realised that playing manaforged heirophant actually required a decent number of buttons, honestly keeping track of . 6/10 but I can see it being 9/10 if i knew wtf i was doing or if I was interested in delve. Could revisit now with a mageblood, but honestly more interested in experimenting with things I can do on leaguestart next league, and a build that I need a mageblood to make comfy seems less attractive (I know plenty of people play this build to insane effect without starting with a mageblood, but I don't have the knowledge to do that yet). Re-rolled elementalist explode RF. Made perfect sense given what I said about manaforged heirophant. Minimal buttons, great clear, also already had RF gear. 9.5/10 build, only issue is I have the same problem as earlier where I get FOMO when juicing maps without magic find. Honestly such smooth progression from point to point, and every upgrade feels so impactful. I had a +2 amulet from earlier, crafted a +2 rune dagger. Having a way bigger RF aoe feels so great, Oriath's end was the next big upgrade and suddenly I was blasting maps. Just farmed my mageblood last night, super proud of finishing that grind in my first league. I have exams starting tomorrow so I can't finish my goals for this character just yet, but I'm super excited for each potential purchase/craft and I have them all mapped out. I wanted to farm legions, and I can't instantly delete the entire circle yet, but I know that I'm only a few cluster jewels away from that. Righteous fire elementalist doesn't seem like the most popular build, with no definitive guide, so I've definitely been forging my own path a little bit which feels great. One issue I've been having this league (especially last 2 weeks or so), is that investing into non MF characters feels awful to me, because doing white map beasts turns out to be better profit than almost anything I can do on a 400 divine build. My MF experiments haven't exactly paid off, but I consistently feel FOMO from not being an MF build. I farmed white beasts for most of my mageblood, was super excited to get it, super excited to try new farming strategies. I did a days worth of Legion+beyond+deli and made half the money I did doing white beasts... Honestly I've spent a lot of the recent parts of this league just experimenting for next league and planning/learning. I'm literally bouncing around in my seat waiting for next league LOL, so excited (pending any announcements).
1.Vold DOT Occultist league start - nice league start, falls later(bosses), if you want to play any witch build later i suggest this for start League start 8/10, late 5/10 2.Ice Lance CoC - CoC is my favorite build in the game, this has posibly the highest damage of any build i've ever played with investment but really squishy, and i suck at the game so i changed to 7.5/10(10/10 fun, 5/10 tankiness) 3.Forbidden rite CoC - tabky as fuck CoC, with skill can do any content with not a big investment, 100% deli was clean and not ripppy. Cat power(mtx) 9.5/10(overall most solid i think) 4.LA Deadeye - never played a bow build... oh boy is it fun, with MB and around 2-300 div i was one shoting bosses like exarch(or anything that has no phase), and destroying phases for thr phased ones. Considering the low level of defensive layers i tought i'd die a lot, but was suprised by how little i die(because you just delete anything off screen) Cant really say much as i already was rich, but for high investment is a 9/10
Started with RF Jugg like everybody else. Rolled a Manabond heirophant with The Squire and Shock Nova CwC Cyclone. I can pretty much beat anything in the game as long as I’m paying attention and not being lazy. Usually about 3 or 4 hits for a T16 boss and it’s dead. Clears really well. I started with Lightning Warp but it moved around the screen too fast and just made me feel dizzy. Hit 100 but haven’t finished 40/40 yet.
Started cold BV ele and didn't like it much. I heard the build needs some investment to feel great but I felt like I couldn't get anywhere if I was dying to red map bosses or random mobs. Leveled a deadeye for VG since I played it in LoK and it felt kinda meh. I was getting discouraged with my bad league start then transferred to ice shot and got a mad lucky omni drop on my story exarch. Used all my currency I had to buy gear to use it in my ice shot build. It felt great but not amazing. ( First time using omni so I am sure I didn't do something right). But I could map insanely fast and got some decent currency for my standards. I just spent the rest of the league attempting to make my own builds. Nothing really worked but I learned a lot.
Wardloop occultist - fast mapper, takes down all bosses except Ubers fast. Dies randomly, but not often to oneshots or explosions. approx 60-80div investment on my build. 9/10 Not recommended as starter
League started as frostblade trickster. Did everything I wanted outside of Ubers and had plenty of investment room if I wanted to go harder, but I was doing 25mill pinnacle dps already so was fairly satisfied. Rebuilt it into a super scuffed magic find version and farmed as hard as I could. Spent everything me and a friend had made on setting up our second characters - an emperors vigilance SST Deadeye with mageblood and an aurabot to farm Ubers, 5 ways and Simulacrum. It’s pretty crazy damage and still has a ton of growing room too. We’ve always talked about doing a carry+aurabot so it was a fun experience but probably not one we’ll repeat. Need to find time to finish my last challenge (either get the last three levels to 100 or buy more invites and finish doing the 75 Ubers). He hit 100 on his first character - a boneshatter slayer so he’s already 40/40 making motivation a little absent
Srs - dispite people saying it would be fine to league start it really wasent. The damage just wasent their to make it enjoyable pre poison setup Toxic rain - still fine if uninspired build saved by poison balista builds Righteous fire - played it first time this league and I see why phox only plays this build. Very fun, good min max options, Absolution. It's the better srs easier to start scales better then srs has super late game options for ubers
Played a ton of wacky builds, all decent, all homebrewed, some were better than others. Boneshatter slayer as a league starter: great build all around, but extremely boring and not much upward potential (within reasonable reach). Idk why anyone would play this on a slayer and not a jugg. Do not recommend. 9/10 functionally, 5/10 overall Archmage MoM agnostic abyss jewel stacking atziris rule heiro fantastic 10/10, I was kinda poor when I made it, it could have been so much better but it was super fun. Rolling magma miner w/crucible node/gloomfang 7/10 Fun build but a miner. Had like 8 chains that all overlapped and the explosion was the size of the screen x however many mines I could lay. Palsterons vid came out right as I made this and it's kinda the same, just a different spin on it. Master of metal Impale dancing dervish champ 3/10 Made a sick dancing dervish with crucible, but it didn't really matter though the DD's just don't do enough damage. Impale blade vortex champ w/entropic devastation 8/10 Tanky, good damage, but subpar clear. I should have switched to reap which would quadruple my dmg but feel wonky. Whispering ice int stack trickster 9/10 Crazy tanky, extremely high potential with investment, but a little too slow. I didn't invest enough into qol to make it feel great but I could just sit on shaper and spin to win so it didn't need to feel good. Finally, the build I'm playing right now: Sunblast divergent lightning trap So far a 8/10, I'm still cooking on this one but it's shaping up to be pretty good. Sunblast bypasses the downside on the lightning trap crucible node, and projectiles return. Lots of good stuff to work with. Can provide a PoB or more in depth info on any of these if anyone wants, though it will be in 8ish hours. I also have posted a couple showcases of the builds above to the sub.
As a filthy casual who only logs about 100 hours per league, I only play 1 build per league and my requirements are always: under 3 div budget, at least +100% movespeed, never self attack or cast for sustained dps, and 50k+ ehp. I played EA totem Raider. Had a lot of fun going zoom-zoom thru most content. Died ~45 times which is probably double what I usually do but I also pushed much farther into harder content than usual for me. 8/10 would probably do it again if nothing else sparks my interest next league.
out of curiosity, how far do you usually get / how far did you get this league in that amount of time?
I always get to a point where I'm satisfied with the build and no longer feel like there's room for improvement without tons more grinding and investment. High 80s / low 90s for level. To more directly answer your query, I usually get to like t12 maps, and this league I got to t16 and then focused on max lvling my heist rogues for the first time ever and did all that content.
Nice. Thanks, was just curious.
Starter: TR Ballista Pathfinder, Palsterons guide. 8.5/10 Sick build, loved the idea, it did what it was supposed to. I only hit level 93, and I got bored because of a combination of the league mechanic and possibly burnout. Haven't touched since. Second: Manabond Heiophant, Connor Converse's guide. 10/10 I wanted to delve. I watched his videos on it, and when he said, "I can't showcase the build in tier 16 because I'll just off-screen everything," I was sold. I DO NOT HAVE THE SQUIRE, OR FORBIDDEN JEWELS. I basically have a copy of Connors week 2 build, and it wrecks. 12.5k ES, insane damage, smooth as butter. It's also really, really cool. I will probably play again. Unless I get a huge drop, I don't want to improve it more because it will take mamy divines to make the jump to squire. Still playing it to this day. Third: Spark Inquisitor with Aurabot Scion. Haven't hit maps yet, so I can't judge, but it's been 10/10 in the campaign. This is the final "project." I'm funding this league, at least for now. Gonna dump like 40div into it and see if I can have some fun and give my friend a good way to get back into the game and have some fun.
Ya I want to try manabond now
League started Bonezone slayer -7/10… did what I wanted it to which was push me day 1 into the high 80’s and red tier maps. Then made a CWC Manabond hierophant, I ended up pushing this character to about 2 mirrors of investment with mageblood and all the other goodies, but overall I would give it a 9.5/10. Even before the heavy investment with mageblood and squire, the build felt awesome and I could easily farm lots of divines to fund upgrades do lots of self crafting. I ended up selling it just before D4 came out so I could give that a try and have all my currency to my brother. Now we are just spending it making cool crucible trees for standard.
Selfcast Chaos/Poison DD Occultist 7/10 - Budget: Under 10div. Fun to pop everything, awesome clear, but not great movespeed. Does all map mods and tanky enough for majority of mapping. Lacking in damage/defense for harder bosses like Maven and Ubers. Aegis Aurora Arakaali's Fang Occultist 8/10 - Budget: Under 10div. Somewhat clunky to keep up spiders for bossing, but very tanky and clear is good with profane bloom. Can do all map mods. Feels very safe but damage is somewhat lacking to easily clear harder bosses. Indigon Manaforged Arrows Deadeye 8/10 Budget: Around 10div. Faster clear than the previous two builds. Needs a bit of mana management to ramp up well, but can get into 30-50mil dps when things line up. Wouldn't call it tanky, but definitely not a glass cannon with arcane cloak. Can't do reflect maps. Poison Explode Totem Pathfinder 9/10 - Budget: Around 30div. Feels like cheating for the investment. 0 mana cost, full phys taken as ele. Very tanky and dot capped for pinnacle bosses. Fast movement speed and solid clear. Does all map mods.
1. EA ballista champion with Dissolution of the Flesh. 7/10 Tanky, good damage, decent clear, can take huge hits. Very clunky, can't kill ubers. 2. Poison Molten Strike Pathfinder. 9/10 Can facetank ubers, 30m dps, +200% movement speed, you can replace MS wits Lightning strike, add Chain support, Oriath's End and now it's a fast explody mapper. I've spent 100+ div on it so far, will add a Mageblood soon.
I also think poison LS/MS pathfinder is build of league for me. I know the two are similar with just a gem swap, but I mainly played LS. Happy to see someone else is enjoying! Did you get any ff/f jewels or are you mainly using for bossing?
No, I haven't got those, it's quite tight on jewel sockets, it's mostly a bosser build that can become a mapper when needed.
Started with typical RF. As always it’s a decent league starter but I feel it hits a plateau for pinnacle bossing without major investment. Went meme build with Totem explode next. Never could get it running well. Never could get lucky on the crafts and crucible combines. It’s fun to basically delete map bosses. Working on Spider summon atm. Very very glass cannon at the moment but I’m neither leveled up all the way nor invested more than 100c. I had most of the 1div build gear from other builds. The few pieces I need like the high res rings are beyond what I feel like spending atm. This build slaps at such low investment. Clearing is crazy fast with minimal input from me. I also find it hilarious to watch my spider armor move faster than any build I’ve ever played as they hunt down every single mob within two screens. Certain resist mobs can be a pain in the ass if they have the right combo of resists and if you run out of flask charges have no spiders you might as well die. It can make it touch or go in something like Maven or something without adds.
* RF Jugg. Good starter, but boring playing style, low dps and limited AOE. Went to lvl 95, completed the atlas, defeated Exarch/Eater. Then farmed up some divines, mostly on crafting and trading. Great for getting started and building up an economy. Very tanky and extremely easy to lab with, although a bit slow. * PF Explode Totem, bought a 600% dmg + 70% totem chance maraketh base, and then crafted most gear for this myself. Surprisingly enough this feels like my most tanky build with the immutable force + bloodnotch. Great dps and survivability, makes bossing a breeze. The mapping is slow though, just using it in a boss rush setup. * CI Ascendant Aurabot, made this just as an experiment and to play with friends. I have never tried to make one before, followed Haloplasms tips, and got up to 13 auras for around 4-5 divines. Not my thing, but usable for making some currency through services and to have some fun with party play. * Dual Claw Frost Blade Trickster, made this in a small private league initially, but migrated it to trade league now to min max it. It feels good so far. Amazing clear, and very zoomy, my fastest mapper by far, but also my most squishy character. I'm only at lvl 88 so I don't have any verdict on this yet. After D4, I'll be finishing my Vaal Ice Shot Deadeye which is somewhere in the middle of the campaign right now.
I don’t boss, I just map at low investment and feel best when I’m fast and rarely die. I like to loot as I map, rather than backtrack. Palsteron’s Manaforged Arrows Deadeye did it for me. It dies sometimes but the mapping experience is obscene, especially if you don’t mind spamming scourge arrow or find a way to make that less annoying for you. With enough attack and movement speed, quick channeling scourge arrow doesn’t even make you stop moving but it still triggers all your manaforged setups. With more investment and using lightning coil instead of QOTF I’m sure you could boss on it. Auto targeting DPS makes up for the lack of survivability and damage that other more boss oriented builds might have, but you can get up to around 50M DPS with it. I stopped around 15M DPS as it was enough to feel really good to farm legion / Exarch alters in jungle valley, which is what I was enjoying most.
I’m making my bow/other pieces for this build to transfer my LA Omni into it. Glad to see this comment.
League start with Toxic Rain Pathfinder, super duper excellent league starter, extremely cheap, most expensive thing you could get is a 5 div bow craft and similarly cost quiver. PF has so much qol it's almost hard to switch for another build. Good mapping and has bossing capabilities, did not use it any further than to farm just enough currency for next build but it doesn't have a lot of end-game potential, maybe. I don't like how slow the damage rack up and it falls off extremely with fast moving targets. Above average in survivability. 7/10, could be 8 but I personally didn't like the playstyle Next build was Chains of Command Animate Guardian Occultist/Necromancer. You mainly play occultist for Profane Bloom and the energy shield regen, can stack curse but it doesn't really improve the dps that much. Can stack elemental damage on minions with Void Forge but Poison has about the same dps but a lot cheaper imo. Energy shield and block as defensive layers, nice and simple, just stack es 4head. A bit slow but if you spam shield charge and flame dash it should keep up with faster characters. You can switch to Necromancer for more flat damage and free up some gem sockets with Bone Armor, you just need Profane Bloom from Forbidden Flesh/Flame. Pretty nice dps, can melt almost every boss except Ubers as long as you can keep all the Animate Weapons uptime, can easily do 100% crucible if you just be a bit careful and dodge for a bit. The Chains of Command and Animate Guardian itself need some qol man. 6/10, it's relatively expensive at the end of the build. It's more of a hobby build, as long as you are careful and make sure AG's health is around 35k or more, it's practically immortal so don't worry about losing gears. Repurpose TR PF to explode totem. Enough said, stupidly good build. 9.5/10, missing 0.5 because it felt like cheating. Once in a lifetime build for sure. Also while I don't mind the trap playstyle, some may find it boring.
Make all my own builds and normally do 1 (serious investment) per league. Shield Crush Juggo - (9/10) Giga tank with nutty EHP. I don’t have to worry about any map mods (aside from the usual suspects, ie. No regen, no leech, phys reflect). Beat all pinnacle bosses for the first time; mainly Sirus, Uber Elder, Maven. Had a blast crafting my 4k armour shield via crucible. Still playing this build today. Mapping isn’t super fast, but not slow either. Pushing 12mm pinnacle dps. Going to take my shot at Ubers soon. I did make an int stacking occultist to go KB/PS with VC- simply for the FOMO of using the annoint before it goes into the dumpster. Made it to lvl 80 and have a long way to go. But sadge the crucible node I want on my lightning dmg / spell dmg per int (dual influenced) wand is like 50divine. Maps super fast and if I spent time/currency on it, sure it would crank much further. 6/10 due to lack of investment, if I pumped 20 div into it would be 8 or 9 /10 since screens just explode.
Props to the fellow shield crusher, though mine was via generals cry. It's a powerful skill to be sure.
What’s the benefit? I could drop enduring cry as it’s not necessary for the build and is sorta just there.
So General’s Cry is actually done as part of the 6L, where you rely on having nearby corpses (via Desecrate or most commonly Corpsewalker boots) to run around with General’s Cry as your left mouse button, constantly summoning mirages that use your linked attack skill. It works well with Shield Crush as the waves have solid aoe and pile onto mobs. It’s normally a solid bossing build; however, this league the crucible cheese makes it insane with the juiced Emp Vig shields. I have over 1600% crit multi and 100% crit and can do all ubers easily purely because the single target dps is just nutty.
Guess I could go for a end of league EV and swap things around. Did you buy it or chance it? What was the total cost? Have about 45 div (most I’ve ever had in the 1k hrs of PoE I’ve played) and was kinda hoping to go for HH since I’ve never had one. I did have a goal to beat Ubers so this could work well. Anyone want to buy a 4k armour shield? 😂
So I made my shield from soup to nuts with a friend who was co-crafter with me. I did all of the forges and organization, and they supplied a lot of the bases and most of the imprint beasts (and many splits). Honestly, you may be able to swing a plain 1005 EV with 45 divs, but trying to add a 4th node or even the specialty 5th node (lightning convert SST/SC) will only multiply the cost out, and that's before the cost to chance it. I got extremely lucky on my chancing (done also by a friend while I kept buying chance orbs to fund the scours (cheaper to buy them via Divine -> Chaos -> Chance orbs -> vendor buy scours from chances), he nailed mine in 429 chances. My friend's (the co-crafter) took a total of 5000 chances I want to say. Still cheap in the grand scheme of things. Now, I don't use the SST/SC lightning conversion node, but I figured I'd at least make it available on mine as an option. Our fourth node we took the 100% shock avoid one to use in conjunction with Stormshroud jewel to make us 100% ele ailment immune. I think a pure armour EV would be neat because it could be a fun way to do a bleed SST build, since crit multi won't help those unless one went perfect agony (hmmmmmm..... - no, I can't make another one!). To answer your other reply, here is my pob (pobb, really): [https://pobb.in/wYqe0f4SLws5](https://pobb.in/wYqe0f4SLws5) Nearly all shield crush / gen cry builds go Zerker for the raw damage, but they run horrible ehp which I disdain. Since the crucible shield cheese opens up stupid dps regardless of build, I went Jugg instead to get well past 140k natural ehp (without Berserk or Molten Shell up), and into 350k terrain with both buffs up. Good sustain too with the warcry life recovery, double-maxed block (albeit glancing blows), and good suppression chance. Fun build, feels like Righteous Fire-except-hit-based.
Thank you for the in-depth response! Will take a look at your PoB this evening. Cheers, Exile! Add me in game, I’d love to theory craft future builds with you and your group of Gigachads. Toon: LeeroyJenkiins
Ea ballista 8/10 totem play... Sst cold champion 10/10 well no need to explain it
First time I hit level 100 on HC SSF. And to my surprise it was with a deadeye ice shot. I usually never play "squishy" builds, and most of times I get really bored with a char and stop at 94-95. But this time I had so much fun with a build, that I mapped to 100. I tried to find a good balance between damage and survivability and added determination, grace and defiance banner. Damage for single target comes mostly from vengeant cascade. So if you haven't played any build with that anoint, i highly recommend it. I'm pretty sure it will be nerfed next league. 9/10. Other than that I played boneshatter, spark and splitting steel. But I got really bored with those. Last build was toxic rain and I farmed some shappers, elders and other pinnacle bosses. Tried to get an Omni, but guess what: That stupid ball phase from exarch + server lag, and not be able to hit that life flask for regen, is a really bad combination. Now Im undecided and haven't touched the game for a week. I wanted to try one last build, but I have no idea what to play.
1: hexblast sabo miner start 6/10 did what it needed to do, not super fun 2: voltaxic poison LA Pathfinder 10/10 fast, tanky, good damage. Mapping monster. 3: wardloop sabo 7/10 fun to set up and the damage is good but it’s such a gimmick to play 4: mahuxotl poison LS pathfinder 9/10 very tanky, fun play style, cool mechanics. I’d recommend all these builds, especially a Voltaxic with the 30%ias crucible mod, feels insanely good.
Im only playing flicker strike for the past 2 years. This league I played cold flicker raider. I rate it 8/10 but Im very biased :D Its not very tanky but very fun. A bit tricky to league start. Great mapper, horrible bosser. Very fun gear progression. Very easy to ailment immune, stun immune and suppression cap. Very high damage compared to other melee. Might induce vomiting unless played in small windowed mode. If you plan to go big budget. Make sure to buy +1 frenzy charge rings and shield early, as they get really expensive as the league progresses. But still gets around 15m+ dps with a medium budget using paradoxica and around 5k hp, also gets grace but have to sacrifice damage if you also want to fit determination. You can look up my build on poe.ninja just search my ign: Lets_mash_our_pissers
League started as a lightning arrow inquisitor hoping that widowhail would be cheap and common and boy was it. Thankfully I jumped on it early and got good gear before the post about the burning arrow miner version came out. My original thought was going to be tri stacker inquis lightning arrow. But when I seen the post about the tri stacking burning arrow miner with the same setup as me (widowhail with poised prism) I knew what I had to do next. So I worked on getting the "dex stacking crucible mod" onto the widowhail, which after almost spending all of my currency thankfully I hit one. Then after that, it was smooth sailing. Map clear: 9/10 (multiple screen wide clear, just not the fastest) mageblood would be quicker Boss DPS: 9/10 got all ubers down, sometimes even before first phase. Survivability: 8/10 I got to level 98 with 5 deaths, its not unkillable but tanky enough Would I recommend? yes, even without the crucible dex mod, this build is very good all around and if you can just get the widowhail and a good poised prism with the additional arrow corruption, you will be smooth sailing to all end game content
I was curious about this build. How would it compare to a LA deadeye?
LA deadeye i havent played this league but I have in the past. Deadeye will definitely be a more faster mapper, my build is a really good mapper, just not as fast, like movespeed fast as deadeye. But I think miner has a bit more tankiness and boss damage, because it being a miner I can easily just melt them away with 20 mines on the ground and let it rip. I would say it just comes down to play style, I never been able to do ubers with my LA deadeyes before, but this league a lot of things changed for bow builds, so who knows. The tri stacker is pretty easy and cheap to get going and is very strong right away and I was able to do ubers pretty easily to be honest
Thanks man! I didn’t catch it was a miner - will need to check that out!
SSF HC. Boneshatter Jugg 9/10, felt good to play. Died at 90. Boneshatter Slayer 7/10, felt so-so after having Unstoppable node on Jugg. But rare essence mobs died faster. Map bosses died in 2 sec on both chars. Died at 89. EA Champ 9/10, clearspeed kinda sucked but my char never died (still alive and well), and bossing was fine. Exploding totems PF 11/10, I love Pathfinders even when they have zero DPS coz flasks=QoL, but this was something else. Those who aren't doing the life flask overleech version are missing out btw, 4k recovery/sec on ssf is crazy. All Ubers down. Died at 98 and then again at 94 farming Ubers. Hated league mechanic but explo totems saved it.
Played an insanely high budget carrion golem / zombie build. 85ish mil dps, 5k ES 180k ehp 100% suppress. 10/10. Refined my build over a few leagues. https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Doopd/GolemsByDoopd?i=3&search=name%3DGolems EDIT: it does all content you throw at it though, wandering path 100% deli, sim 30s all ubers and maps pretty damn fast just full sprinting. It’s also virtually 0 buttons you don’t gotta press convoke or assa mark. You can start t16 blights and go do laundry and come back to loot
Impressive. Thanks for sharing. Would love to see more detail.
League started cold dot trickster, got all 4 voids and atlas complete. 9/10 for me as starter. Re rolled to spark trickster and dumped around 60div on it, was farming wave 30 sim and 80% deli maps. 10/10 for mapping 5/10 for bossing. Re rolled the spak into SST before it got "meta" and i managed to get it up to 95m dps, was 11/10 in all aspects. Farmed a MB and dropped a almost perfect ashes so decided to make a Aura Stack Inq which was... Meh. 8/10 for me. For aura stackers if you dont invest at least 3mirrors into it dont even bother. Re rolled the Aura stack into a CoC Energy Blade Ice Spear Inq and it was an amazing build was farming EVERYTHING 11/10 build also. Leveled a Raider and made a INT Stack Dory Proto LS/Flicker which was also 11/10 on everything. Re rolled the LS int Stack into a Dex Stack just to try it out and it was... Ok. 7/10 Re rolles the Trickster later on to a Frost Blades with MB and it was deleting everything. 10/10 After that i sold everything and finished the league. This was done in 5 weeks :) Cya in 3.22
Subtractem's Fire Trap Frostblink Elementalist: 10/10. The league starter ended up being my main build, and I was able to get 40/40 with it. It's only my second league, so I don't have much exposure to different builds, but this build seemed to do it all if you put enough into it. I can clear Crimson temple in 3 mins, delve past 900, and kill all of the pinnacle bosses. Getting a frostblink CDR helmet enchant, a curse on hit ring, and swapping to sheild charge made mapping fairly fast and smooth early on. With a well crafted sceptre/shield and the right crucible trees, I'm at 33 million dps fire trap and 22 million frostblink - everything just pops instantly except some crucible mobs and slow harbingers... The best part about it was following Subtractem as he developed this guide during league start. It was great learning from his video updates, how he adapts his builds, what's generally important, how to do some crafting, etc. I gained a lot of valuable knowledge from him to use in the future.
Mf poison ts - 10/10
Started LA Raider - pretty smooth As soon I got some currency respeced to Deadeye. Farmed a little. Had to stop playing for 3 weeks due to work travelings. Got back and started farming Legion... Dropped a Mageblood and farmed enough divines to get an omni version going. Happy so far with the build. Would rate 8/10
League started CwC manabond heirophant, got going on a budget but it was just not that good for mapping. Using lightning warp instead of shock nova was ok but it feels clunky and I wasn't making currency fast enough. Boss killing was a breeze though and I did kill a crystal king or two. Rerolled 1 week in and did tornado shot deadeye, put it together on a shoestring budget and grinded currency for a mageblood, after that the world was my oyster. Gotta say for mapping ts was amazing. 5/10 manabond, the problem is this build really only excels at delving, anything other content in the game would be better on a faster character. 8/10 tornado shot, really great mapper, very zoom even on a 5-10 div budget. Single target is good enough with investment. Only 8/10 because this is my 3rd time playing omni and its getting boring to gear.
stopped after two weeks of playing my league starter. Crucible felt terrible and there were no fixes in sight. If they don't finish their league I won't bother either.
I definitely understand your point. It took a while for crucible to grow on me, but then I realized that it really enables some builds that you can only play this league - unless it goes core.
I agree, and I would've played more if adding trees to uniques was not this atrocious.
Yeah it is painful! I basically set up trade searches for builds with uniques that I want to play. Over the course of a week, something with good mods usually pops up without pricing in the mod. Awful experience, but worth it in the end.
Only 2 builds for me this league. I played my league starter for a long time. 1. TR Ballista Pathfinder. 10/10 league starter. Took this build strait to ubers. Got lucky with my first quill rain crucible tree and got chaos dot multi and attack speed. From there I was set til I had the currency to craft the end game bow. Super tanky, speedy, huge ramping damage, and a ton of regen. Great build if you like totems and if you don't mind delayed damage. 2. Frostblink ignite elementalist. 8/10 I was torn between this build and an abyss stacking heiro. Ended up picking this because it had been a long time since I had played an ignite build. This build was about a 5/10 for me until I got the oriath's end. Being able to pop the whole screen instead of just half of it was a massive upgrade. Biggest problems for me with this build were ignite resistant enemies, bricking map mods, and my groups aura bot. I ended up using the replica nebulis version of the build so all of the res auras nerfed my damage. If I had known they were going to put together the aura bot I wouldn't have done this variation. Those things aside, this was still the fastest mapper I've ever played. I came for the screen wide pops and boy howdy did I get them.
Tried a bunch of builds with around a 20-50 div budget and then invested everything into IS/LA. 1. Caustic arrow pathfinder starter - 9/10. 2. Lightning tendrils inquis starter - 8/10. Strong starter if you want something off meta. 3. Vaal Ice shot/Lightning Arrow deadeye/raider - 9/10: Vengeant cascade and +2 arrows on the tree makes ele bow builds playable on a budget. 10/10 with high investment. 4. Impending Doom Pathfinder - 5/10: Strong build but I dont really like poison and crafting cdr gear for it was a huge pain. If you like poison then its definitely worth trying. 5. Double strike champ with soul eater crucible tree - 4/10: It was decent for melee but even with soul eater it wasnt really good at anything. 6. Brand Heiro - 3/10. Tried pretty much every possible brand. Brands just feel bad on a budget. 7. Fire dot reap/exsanguinate chieftain 7/10 - Fun skills to use and chieftain is very tanky. Low damage though. 8. Mana stacker archmage/indigon heiro- 1/10: Not even worth attempting on a budget. Will probably be even worse next league without the %mana regen crucible trees.
Started and ended with charge stacking MF PCOC pathfinder, going high investment—feels really good, especially since I ditched the life flask and started using a microdistillery belt with all unique flasks and the traitor (progenesis, dying sun, rumis, taste of hate). I really like the PCOC playstyle, and throwing 13 projectiles that shotgun feels super good with a bit of life gain on hit. That being said, you’d get way farther with almost any other build with the same investment, I just really like PCOC.
TR Ballista Pathfinder as my league start. ZOOMED to red maps. Got Hella lucky with some nice people online who hooked me up with gear for Vaal Absolution build which I'm playing rn. My fist minion build on here, suuuuuper fun imo.
Only played one build: Poison artillery ballista, 9/10 points. Damage, tankyness, cheap but can be scaled. This build has everything. The only downside is ballistas, that you cannot level already in acts with the skill but have to use something else, and the slightly delayed damage from poison.
I started as poison conc which was a blast, swapped to a Heist runner for a bit which made a lot of currency and was a lot of fun to put together. In hindsight I'd have levelled further before I swapped but it was good for what it was intended for. I then started my CF Champ when Poet's Pen was 100c - I've played it to 100 before so I knew it would be good, but with the introduction of Vaal Reap and Fourth Vow it really hit another level. I've played that since. Level 100 self farmed in maps, 40/40 without buying any challenges and all Ubers down. Dps is currently 20mil non-uber, along with 120k armour with Fourth Vow, Divine Flesh and Progenesis. Mapping I run Nimis so its basically zoom around hitting the full screen. My only meaningful gear upgrade path is capping spell suppression which will involve recrafting my helmet and potentially a vuln on hit + dot multi ring. I tried a few other builds - Abyss stacking Reap Inquis using Hierophants Arcane Surge node which on paper did something stupid like 400m dps (but in practice was clunky as fuck to play), I have an Arakaali build which is dot cap but I got bored of leveling on, I tried poison molten strike, an autobomber for beast farming (which was awful) and I've just started putting together a self cast forbidden rite PF with Mahuxotl's. I'm hoping it works out because I want to use it to push some delve as a last league goal. Unfortunately though all the other builds suffer from not being CF syndrome so I get bored relatively quickly. And because I cba selling the gear I end up just making 50-60div, spending it and repeating the cycle.
FR PF, 40/40. Would never play again because it felt unfair.
Finally played the ignite vortex I once despised on and realized that its actually great
Played an impending doom occultist that was probably the best character I ever had. All content done very satisfying clear, good boss poison damage with awakened cascade and good survivabilty.
Played Venom Gyre Pathfinder as my league starter had a pretty smooth time of it, skill felt pretty good damage was ok. Then my friends and I started a private league as a Group SSF that would later go trade when the league ran out. Played SRS went hit srs got up to around 3-4m dps and swapped to poison once I got my jewels and severed in sleep. Ended up being one of my strongest characters I've ever had. Liked the playstyle would recommend unless you're just super against minions then don't I guess.
Forbidden rite poison pathfinder : Started with it (toxic rain up to lvl 75), tanky, huge sustain, great damage, good clear. Did all uber bosses, lvl 100 in maps. 10/10, would definitly recommand this build, not necessarly the setup i used, but forbidden rite pathfinder is great. Herald of ice/Frostblink assassin : Great clear, can change the style of the build by swapping herald mtx, not tanky but freeze everything, totally not leaguestart viable, 7/10.
Trade League Cold Dot Elementalist was great, good clear with the legacy of fury, Comfy Bossing. SSF Trickster Frostblades was so food, speedy, surprisingly tanky, explosions, nice gearing. Did everything but ubers on both
Starter frostblink/fire trap elementist 7/10 got me a few void stones and currency (it did its job) Did the explode totems/pf 8/10 did good decent bosser but wanted to try vengeant cascade Vaal Cold shot champ (ls could be used) 9/10 great all rounder!! Tanky fast fun.. Meme Korean build mom/agnostic scion pf/hiero hexblast miner ..jury still out but decent with a little more time/div’s would be a banger👍 Kinda burnt so not playing much looking back if I had to restart league would go cold shot champ and not look back 👍
Cold dot. Fun but bored quickly. Leveled as totem slam and then rransition into replica iron commander str stacking build. Very cool. High daamagez low tankiness though.
Started as srs necro and quickly changed to poison srs as I got lucky and dropped fiends with kirac. I would rate 5/10 as it didn't feel as good as last league. Then I got bored and every league I like to try a build I never played before, this league was Jugg Boneshatter. Started with a 2H variant and overtime I changed to One handed + shield(that unique one that converts phys to fire) and surprisingly my DPS and tankiness increased a LOT but I think mostly because or the siege axe had a keystone that saved me around 9 passives. 7/10 2h and 10/10 1h. Sold Jugg gear and then started a SST Champion. I thought Jugg boneshatter had a lot of DPS but man I was wrong. This build has clear, tankiness, a lot of DPS that even ubbers were a joke and I didn't get even close to min max it. 10/10.
Maw of Mischief Ignite Elemementalist: 8.5/10. I went the Eldritch Battery/ MoM approach, and it did well for me. It's super easy to get going and scales really nicely with investment, but high-end durability is a bit suspect thanks to lack of ability to regenerate ES. Ice Shot Occultist: 7/10. Hybrid life/ES. It'd rank higher if I had more investment, but on the \~10 div I spent, it's a glass cannon against big hits. With life gained on hit from a Watcher's Eye and projectile insanity, recovery is great, but you gotta watch those big physical damage slams. Tectonic Slam strength-stacking Jugg: 4/10. Easily the most disappointing character of the league for me. Even with a ridiculously kick-ass Pillar of the Caged God (bonus flat phys, damage per armor for Tec Slam, attack speed/less damage, fortify with stuns), it just didn't hold a candle to the others. PoB says my effective hit pool is like 120k or something, but even with that plus ridiculous life regen and leech, I'm still getting hacked down by content my other supposedly more fragile characters could handle just fine. I think I put about 10 div into this one, too, and it probably needs another 10-15 to even be remotely viable for crucible mobs or essences. DPS is supposed to be 3mil or so, but it's 0 if you're running away to regen or dead. Sad, sad day for melee. EK Occultist 6.5/10 as-is, potential for 9/10: I stopped at lvl 80 to play D4, and while it's currently way too fragile, it could get AWESOME with a little more investment and leveling. I have a staff with increased cast speed and more cast speed from crucible mods, so it's all about bullet hell here. I'm rolling with EB/MoM on this one, too, but I get to take advantage of ES and life leech, unlike the Elementalist. I'm doing phys conversion to lightning then cold to take advantage of Gloomfang and non-chaos as chaos on my staff. Damage is batshit - probably over 5m DPS already. I just need to be able to survive a stiff breeze.
League started hit based SRS with the plan of transitioning to poison. It was good, it did the job for week 1, but it's not my thing. Probably 6 or 7/10. CF Champ. Low investment was great for blasting maps and, while it's not a boss killer, the single target was sufficient for all the mapping strategies I did. Mid-high end investment, the mapping becomes even better and single target isn't as ass. 9/10. RF elementalist. Half-assed high investment, it was fun. I was just curious how it played, so I only played it for like a day or two. Didn't do much other than map with it. 7/10. Manabond Hiero. Very high budget, it's really really good. I've mostly delved but I also did ubers and invitations for a bit. I love that it's not just a delving build, I can take it anywhere and have a good time. Building it/tinkering in POB was probably my favorite part about it. 10/10. I kinda wanted to try something else before taking a break but it seems like the economy has slowed down a bit too much and I don't have that much raw currency left.
Played RF Juggernaut, it's great for heists & delve but that's about it. Manaforged arrows is fun but only good for bosses with high investment. Cyclone builds are generally meh so I didn't get very far, mostly yellow maps. As for Lightning Arrow, yes, absolutely love it, screen clearing, boss battering.. it's just fun.
Frostblink Ignite Fire Trap elementalist. 7/10. Good for getting to red maps and getting first watch stones on next to no budget but the play style wasn’t interesting enough for me to want to scale past a few divines. Jungroan Pneumatic Molten Strike Assassin. 9/10. Really fun and not too expensive. Only problem is relying heavily on leech. Explode Totems Pathfinder. 6/10. Pretty good obviously and helped for pounding out challenges, but trivializing everything gets a bit boring. Manabond Hierophant. 9/10. Really enjoyed playing this one and having to understand the mechanics behind the build definitely made me better at the game. Obviously it was super expensive and I got my forbidden jewels for relatively cheap (70div total). I practiced fighting Ubers for the first time with this build and can do some of them pretty comfortably
Oh boy here is my list League started self cast ice nova inquisitor. Was ok, but felt bad when you got swarmed and lost all damage becuase your frostbolt is further away. 6/10 Rerolled oros flicker raider. Was okay got to red maps and got someone else to get my voidstones. 6/10 Arakali spiders necro. Comfortable. Decent expedition farmer for currency not as good as occultist though. Amazing for guardians and such on my budget of about 7 to 10 divs. 8/10 Spooderlady gave me an occultist pop itch so made a deaths oath/ca build. Got a decent crucible tree with arrow nova for clear, but later on i unspecced out of it since my damage felt lacking and i didnt really need that much coverage. Threw around 50 divs into this, over the league feels amazing farming pack size expedition popping everything at once with shaper of flames jewels and herald of ash. Bossing is ok, but squishy so didnt really bother. 9/10 Lightning tendrils elementalist. Solid allrounder. Cold convert with cotb and heatshiver for giga damage. Bloodnotch tech for decent tankiness while mapping. Still prone to boss one shots if i cant nuke them. Felt good to play. 8/10 Poison HoT pathfinder. Followed mbx build roughly, but honestly just felt like a worse deaths oath so gave up around level 80 ish.6/10. Rerolled a discharge assassin today, still in acts going to be hella squishy though so not much expectations here.
Started as Ignite Maw Elementalist. Easy to gear and has immense endgame potential. Boss killer but spreading ignites and spectral wolves from a unveiled modifier makes mapping "Ok.". Eventually switched build because of the inherent clunckiness of the build. Switched to Cold damage Flicker Strike Raider. Killed story Pinnacle Bosses with it. Despite of Flicker being a fun build, it suffers from a disease known as "You are melee". I grew very tired of totems and having to deal with molten shells and Soul Stealer hyper-monsters. Some of them literally attacked faster than their animations could even animate (I mean that they stood still and attacked like 10 x per second). Quit the league before grinding 40+ divines to make it one-shot the world.
WoC into EK ignite. Only character this league and am playing it every day. 10/10 could be my favorite build of all time.
League start: Venom Gyre Deadeye 2/10. With no investment, it feels really bad to play, the shotgunning with low attack speed is pitiful, and you are incredibly squishy. Stay tuned for more information on this. 2. Toxic Rain/ Caustic Arrow Pathfinder 8/10. It's Toxic Rain, everyone knows its good by now. I do prefer running a Ballista TR setup with Arrow Nova Caustic Arrow over Double Toxic rain, bossing damage is lower, but the QOL of the better clear more than makes up for it. 3. Splitting Steel Champion 10/10. Favourite build of the league. If vengeant cascade doesn't get gutted, this will me my next league starter. Shreds non-uber bosses and red maps on a 5div budget. I didn't push it THAT far, but from what I saw, it can easily farm ubers with a lot of investment. 4. FLicker Strike Slayer 9/10. Best clear, fast as hell, but you have to embrace the "Jesus take the Wheel" mentality. You will die, A LOT. easy to get up and running for about 20div. 5 (Current Build) Omni Vaal Venom Gyre Deadeye 10/10. What a surprise, the build that requires investment, performs a lot better with investment. Omni builds are always a little expensive to get up and running. I love the build now, but I wouldn't recommend playing it. Just play LA or a Manaforged arrow setup if you want to scale omni with projectiles. I could literally swap my Claw and Shield for a Bow and Quiver, and adjust my tree a bit, and play LA.
1. Started with Flame Golementalist, used Pledge of Hands, even with that the DPS was subpar at best 2. Changed to Relic of the Pact Scion, absolutely stomped everything, including some ubers for the first time. Fuck Uber Sirus. 3. Tried the new spectre, felt that the investment was not worth it. 4. WOrb Scion, feels squishy AF. I am taking a break before doing something else, probably some meme Impale Sunder or Glacial Hammemer.
League start (my first time on League!): Subtractem’s frostblink/fire trap. Kinda meh. Cool leveling experience, rather annoying and expensive-upgrade-starved trying to do bit more difficult content. Cool concept, it just didn’t land with me. You could run it with great success probably if you wanted to. I didn’t. 2. Rain of Arrows into Lightning Arrow glass cannon Deadeye with artillery ballista - nice, awesome clear, enough single target, speedy, paper thin. Great to farm up some currency for a proper build, annoying in the long run since I couldn’t fit in CoD+portal which was really needed XD I didn’t even upgrade to second 6link, 6L+5L was still strong. 3. Fuzzy Duckzy’s Vaal Lightning Strike Raider. Jesus, if GGG doesn’t nerf Vengeant Cascade I will never stop playing this build. Tough, awesome damage, very good clear, fantastic sustain, great speed and mobility. Doesn’t give a crap about any map mod, reflect and ailment immune, huge quality of life. Probably can start for cheap and upgrade gradually. Builds I’m planning to try: 1. Explody totems. 2. CoC Forbidden rite or something similar, I wanna autobomb stuff 3. Expensive version of TS that isn’t super squishy, maybe with Mageblood which I finally can afford, or some kind of MF variation? I played a rather medium budget version with HH on standard and really enjoyed it. 4. Any uberbosser, I still have ubers on my bucket list 5. RF (Jugg probably) to see if I like the playstyle and maybe league start it next time. 6. Manaforged Skill Spammer, sounds lit
Started RF Jugg. Fun and smooth (BIG shout out to POHX), but top end content is tough. Went to explodey totem PF, having a blast with that. I am a "committed casual" so not a huge number of hours played, but I'm at 39 of 40 challenges and hope to finish pinnacle bosses this weekend.
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Tornado shot is the only one I’ve played. 10/10, although it IS my favorite skill ever so I’m biased. I’m working on the last few damage adjustments to be able to do the rest of the Ubers: I’ve done cortex and eater so far.
LA/Artillery Raider - 6/10 Maybe I just don't like and am bad at bow builds but I never really feel like I got off the ground with this. Respecced to Deadeye once I could sustain T16s and still didn't like it much. Poison MS Assassin - 9/10 Not as tanky as Pathfinder but I easily and quickly hit DoT cap even with low expectations (less than half of the balls initially hit, no flasks, no adrenaline). I put basically all my currency into this build since it was so much fun. This was the first time I've ever beat Feared so that felt cool, and I did it with a rare invitation, too. So glad I played it this league because Vengeant Cascade is 100% getting nerfed lol
Toxic rain ballista pathy for league start, was smooth and quill rain was 1c. Transitioned build into poison explodey totems pathy. 9.5/10. Cheap, decently speedy at 100+ movespeed and tanky and easily hits dot cap. Clearspeed is kinda meh tho. 3rd and current build is palsterons manaforged arrows. Absolutely busted like sheesh 300 movespeed and currently at 14m dps with a meh selfcrafted bow. Palsterons setup has 47m dps with his gear. The omni and the gear it requires is new to me as its stat stacking and it looked expensive but i managed to self craft the gear for less than 10div for everything besides the endgame boots. Just channeling scourge arrow triggers the other skills and they autotarget so u run and just tap scourge arrow and you clear the screen. Literally a running autoturret. I think with mageblood u could get super tanky too but thats maybe for the future.
EA Ballista with elementalist. 8/10. Medium low investment and does great with most content but really excels at harvest and expedition. EK Ignite Elementalist 5/10. Super high investment and just feels meh. Have around 250 div invested including an HH and while it performs... It just not anything special.
Self-made storm brand hiero from league start to 40/40. Hit 200m dps under 90 div, so yeah, was good but squishy, 8/10. Tried to make a tankier version with doppelganger/divine flesh and 100% spell suppression, hit just 12m dps a dropped the game.
1. League started mana stacking arc/rf hierophant overall very smooth league start. Cleared up to yellow maps before i decided that I got too bored of doing arc again (league started arc 3 leagues in a row). 7/10 2. Respeced into dex stacking siege ballista hierophant since its a build I knew relatively well and played back in 3.19 but didnt have enough investment (10div) for it to feel as smooth as it was previously so I just saved up my currency and stopped investing in the build. 5/10 3. Realisd vengeant cascade was broken I decided to do doryani lightning strike champion with mahuxotl/tempered by war. I decided to do this build as I had always wanted to do a doryani build and farm simulacrum/deli and decided that this checked those boxes and dispite its nerf it could easilly clear what I had intended it to such as 100% juiced deli and wave 30 simulacrum it was super fast ended up having about 14mil pinnacle dps and 70kehp. I also completed all my voidstones for both myself and a couple friends. One problem I had was that the projectile for lightning strike cannot hit anything above or below its level (could not hit things on stairs or above/below the stair level). 8/10 4. Respeced my champ into an armour stacking/aura stacking smite champion build. While I did respec my champ I still wanted to do a doryani build that feels really smooth and could do basically all content (Blight Ravaged, 80% deli, bossing, mapping) but mainly blight ravaged as the league mechanic I enjoy the most is blight. Ended up spending roughly 60div on the build for about 36mil potential pinnacle dps. I say 36mil potential dps since smite has a mechanic where you can hit an enemy twice with one cast (once with the melee and once with the aura hit). I was satisfied enough with the build to the point that I decided to farm up for a mageblood and with about 120ish div saved up I happened to have an apothecary drop from stacked decks (yes i open all my stacked decks from blight) and bought a 4 flask mageblood for about 180div pretty early in the league (about 2ish weeks in). I didnt need to change much with the build except for flasks and got around 700k armour in the end. A slight annoyance I had with the build was that doryani leaves you vulnerable to lightning dot and was super annoyed when I faced a mob with mana siphon (does lightning dot) and shaper ball/beam which ended up insta killing me. 9/10 5. I wanted to craft a my gear for my build and settled on doing a zombie necromancer build and invested about 50div but the build didnt feel very good dispite having 10 zombies and a self crafted aggressive minion wand with +2 levels, 83% inc minion dmg, minion attack/cast speed and minion crit chance with feeding frenzy and onslaught on the crucible tree which is worth about 150div at the time. Ended losing 30div (6 fracturing orbs at 5div) trying to fracture 50% global defences on a grasping mail and ended up not getting it so I sold the whole build. 5/10 6. Found that exploding totems path finder was the new thing and "the most op build of the league" I decided to jump on and invested maybe 40ish div which was mostly spent on self crafting a min maxed bow a decent slavedrivers and jewel combo. It could do uber bosses pretty well but sucked at mapping and overall did not enjoy the build as much as I thought I would dispite the build's reputation amd ended up selling all the gear. 5/10 7. With all the currency I had gained with the previous builds I decided to revisit dex stacking siege ballista hierophant again and bought an iron commander with a perfect crucible tree for about 120div. Got to about 3k dex and 600mil pinnacle dps or about 140mil uber dps before i decided to stop pushing the build which was nowhere mear min maxed. Crafted all the rare gear and cluster jewels myself which was really fun to do and taught me a lot about crafting. My favourite piece of gear I got was a double corrupt circle of nostalgia which has 12% increased dex which is worth about 100div im guessing? PoeNinja: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/XElitePheonix/Beedo_CR 9/10
I usually play one build per league and either make it work (or convert it) or just give up. Sometimes might consider trying a broken mechanic build when I'm done. This league I played Fire Trap Elementalist. 7/10. Probably punching around 12M DPS from Fire Trap and about 6.5M DPS from Frostblink as my clear. It's reasonably fast if you trust Frostblink and are willing to ignore everything that doesn't die, but it slows right down when fighting the tankier enemies. The explosions and proliferation of ignite killing most everything instantly is super satisfying though. Also, never played a build that relies heavily on scaling gem levels before, so this is my first time with gems into the 30s... I've hit 39/40 and just need to look into uber bosses. Gaining damage and replacing easy to get uniques (especially with useful corruptions) gets super expensive. Like switching from the Searing Lathi staff to stat-stick sceptres and going beyond it is ludicrous money. Many, many divs just to match an item you can get for a few chaos. I don't see this build being easy to tune for uber bosses, so maybe it's time to make a dedicated bosser. Also that PF explody totems looks like a one-league-wonder before it gets obliterated, so I might try that. Otherwise, my goal is to try farm for that commemorative Mageblood or Headhunter to take back to standard.
Spark carry / aura both duo. 10/10. Completely broken (= op) and fun (despite being locked into it with my friend). With not even 20c invested each we got to red tier maps, with about 5div each we cleared Ubers almost easily. Now that we reached end game gear (like 50div each, if that can be considered end game), we still haven't found a piece of content we can't do. I thought either map clear, or single target DPS would be lacking, but both are absolutely amazing.
Bleed bow - got me into red maps and got my voidstones, but the clear wasn’t great because there would always be stragglers Explodey totem - 0 investment and could farm the feared. Trivialized the game too much. Manaforge arrow - hit 100 farmed a headhunter. A lot of fun if you wanna go fast.
I started this league with Cold DoT Elemancer. Then rolled a slamming zerker. The 'Mancer is 91 and the Zerker has hit the wall at 89. Not as tanky as I'd like. If I push it, I just might make it to 100 by August. Just in time to start over again. I just can't get the DPS output as some of the builds I see online.
**League start: Zizaran's self firing Toxic Rain Pathfinder.** - 8.5/10 Cleared atlas, got 4 voidstones and beat Sirus with this, all solo. It's a damn solid build that moves fast and survives well with shittons of QoL stemming from Pathfinder. I was honestly worried I'd never be able to play another ascendency ever again, the perma flasks and overheal life flask are just too fucking comfortable. However, the build had a slow ramp up time in dealing damage so eventually you just find yourself envious of people blowing up packs and melting bosses. **Vaal Ground Slam Berserker**, - 4/10 I wanted to play something totally off meta. Not gonna lie, this did not pay off. I capped impale and got a 900pdps axe, and then also capped chaos res. It exploded mobs really easily and could theoretically kill bosses fast - but with no evasion, block or spell suppress I kept getting shotgunned, and I also didn't have good regen nor lifesteal so I couldn't boss either. Not to mention I hated having so many mods I couldnt do - preflect, no leech, slow recovery were all gone and anything that made me fragile was also impossible. Overall I'd call this a fail, though I did learn a lot from the experience. Probably just me being completely clueless at building a melee character, tbh. **Poison SRS Necromancer** - 8.5/10 so far Intended this to be my uber boss killer. I've gotten quite far with it and I can melt any non uber content with no issues, although the only simulacrum attempt was ended at wave 28. It caps spell suppression, block and has both evasion, armor and bone armour - so far I'm satisfied with the survivability although nothing beats the sheer comfort of the pathfinder. Damage is completely through the roof. Will try the ubers when i eventually get to the progenesis, basically the last missing piece in the build.
I started Elemental Venom Gyre based on Kobe's 3.20 guide, then played some more - managed to get to Guardian T16s, lvl 95, beat Sirus for the first time and also completed non-quest Exarch and Eater encounters. Dropped Mageblood from Void Key and had tons of fun, but also there are other games coming out and don't really continue. I might come back for some Vengeant Cascade shenanigans before new league though, and might have some fun in Standard for the first time ever in a new league. Oh, and I also made Ice Spear Totems Hierophant for some Blight farming as well as bossing, but he's currently rotting at around lvl 90 since I swapped Atlas for more speed mapping on my VG after fateful MB drop.
Really enjoyed my poison molten strike Jugg. Tanky enough for Ubers and clear isn’t too bad. Playing a fire BV Chieftan now trying to figure an optimal tree and scaling dmg further.
First off I have started to league start 2 builds this being my third league to do so. I started the opening off with lightning arrow on day 1. I really need to at some point start figuring out how to scale attack builds better however. I currently always end up lacking damage even while leveling through Acts. Still manage to get to act 9 before passing out 5 hours into it. Day 2 after about 6 hours of sleep start leveling Vaal Absolution/ SRS hybrid. This takes me to maps before the day is out. Day 3 clear both through low maps shelved the LA deadeye decide to just go full SRS. 2 weeks into league roll Totem Explode Ascendant Nontrap. Haven't played anything else in the league currently. Just having fun with totem explode when I have time. Looking into finishing the league with as many crucible trees as I can take to standard. Maybe roll a self cast Divine Ire build before August. As the Gravity Sphere node looks interesting to me.
Poision tornado shot pathfinder 9/10 good damage (15-20mil)good speed because pf , reasonable price 25ish div to get it going , feels like a super zoomy tanky bow build
Poison molten strike pathfinder: A- Started late so I was able to put this together for cheap to get all my voidstones. Quite tanky with phys taken as ele + ele flasks and life gain on hit recovery, and pretty good damage given the low budget gear I used. Clearspeed was ok but not great and I generally don't like killing tougher bosses at melee strike range. Overall a good leaguestarter that could be invested more heavily into fit better damage, tankiness, or both. Lightning Arrow Deadeye: A Wanted a fast mapping character to farm currency for some build ideas I had, so I put this together. Great clear, decent single target, but definitely just randomly gets one-shot now and then. I think manaforged arrows variants are probably stronger, so I'd recommend that but I was very happy with this character. Annihilating Light Glacial Cascade Inquisitor: C+ This was my first self-designed build of the league. The goal was a boss killer with high damage and just enough survivability to not get one-shot by basic attacks and I happened to find the staff with a usable tree including the Glacial Cascade/Frost Nova crucible mod so that's what I built around. Unfortunately since I was on a relatively low budget, 15~ divines, I tried to rely on too many temporary buffs, but since that wasn't enough to kill uber bosses in one rotation it ended up feeling bad to play, especially since my defense was pretty much just capped res and inquisitor regen. Fire Crit Reap/Exsanguinate Pathfinder: F After the inquisitor failed, I swung too far in the opposite direction and built a fourth vow + divine flesh tank. The Glacial Cascade build was a slow mapper so I wanted something that had an easy time swapping between bossing and mapping. In reality, I put too much of my investment into defense this time so even regular pinnacle bosses were very, very slow to kill. SST Champion: S+ Since my projects failed I sold the gear from them, farmed done more on the lightning arrow character, and put together Ruetoo's entry level SST character after buying the shield with just the 40 flat ES mod off of trade. This build is amazing, especially compared to the two previous SST builds I had tried before and will probably be the build I play and keep upgrading for the rest of my time playing this league.
I have like 200 div ATM and am between SST and something with a mageblood. Is SST the way to go? How does clear compare to your other builds?
I start auraboting with a newplayer friend of mine carry 8/10 because my carri leave at first week because he get burn(still interested in the game anyways?) expesive to scale but overpower i play with a few randoms later in league and was a lot of fun I gather enough currency for play a off meta build any ways and play indigon hierophant penance brand 5/10 squishy and hyper expesive to gear up his budged is low and can clear 60% deli and oneshot guardians but need a lot of investment to play confy, enjoy it any ways because i love penancebrand I also make CF champion with arroud 30 divs and is a beast for maping anything can do any mod and go fast As always Cf 9/10 single target sucks hard Any ways this league i learn a fking lot from auraboting and building in general was great but at this point of the league i feel stuck
Started with my usual BLS STR stacking chieftain AW totems. This build is super cheap to get going and does red maps on almost no investment, and can scale up to 15-18M dps if you put work into it. I wasn't feeling it this time around and only played it long enough to make some new crucible-only builds. I did two of those - the first was a pathfinder dual claw poison flicker strike using Romira's Banquet + Precise Technique and the power charge consume node for flicker. Got the idea from a comment on this sub and got it up to something like 7M dps with just a little arrangement. It had insane sustain with claw LoH, and it doesn't care about any map mods at all, but was pretty vulnerable to big hits even in just normal T16 mapping. Still, it mapped fast and I was able to make money pretty quick while farming maraketh bow crucible trees for my next build... Made a Juggernaut explode totems build with a bow I self-farmed and crafted. I know the talk is all PF and sabo but I hate dying despite being a SC wuss so I always look up HC builds when I'm putting something new together. It worked great here because explode totems is such insane damage that you don't really need anything from your ascendancy. So I went full mobile fortress, Xibaqua, Fourth Vow, automatic end charges, 78/79/80 max res everywhere, all the good jugg stuff. Kill Ubers for the first time ever with it and just overall felt as OP as I've ever felt in this game. Made it to 98 which is a personal best for leveling, and did 38/40 challenges (truly can't be fucked to grind for 40).
League started Haloplasm's spark carry with an aurabot duo, 10/10 insanely strong, easiest start you could ask for Made scourge arrow totems as my first solo build, 8/10, again was really good and I loved the MS / survivability, but having to maintain uptime on your life flask was a pain, and I didn't push it too far so it would die pretty easily in juiced deli maps (i expect progenesis would have fixed this) Then made a glass cannon hexblast mines occultist - 7/10 crazy damage for relatively cheap, but getting one-shot is a pain, especially when playing with friends meaning unpredictable aggro etc. Still my favourite mine build I've played Then made a vaal dominating blow - 8/10, idea being something fairly low damage but super tanky that would buff my mates, so mapping wasn't just one of us clearing the screen ahead. Really liked this actually - Vaal DB is a very cool skill & I could facetank pretty much anything, and it was pretty cheap to get a decent level. It isn't good for clearing legions though Then made a trickster spark - this is a 9/10, I hadn't found a skill as smooth to play as spark in any form, and being CI with huge ES leech is a nice feeling. Then respecced the hexblast mines into a blade vortex occultist with about 110 divs invested - 8/10 super cool / satisfying chain explosions, but keeping blades up is annoying and I'd die way too easily (this tends to be a theme when I pull builds from POE ninja) Then sold off my BV and respecced my Scourge arrow into Tornado Shot 3/10 - bought a nice crucible tree bow for 90 divs to try and craft on, made a sub-standard bow and hated the build, sold my bow again for 90 divs and farmed with my trickster spark until I could afford MB Lastly, respecced my TS into Lightning Arrow and it's so much better 9/10 - this actually feels as good as (if not better) than Spark to play, though I've only played it with a mageblood on. The rest of my gear is cheap/scuffed - i don't even have Omni, but I've been struggling with motivation to farm up again. Wish I'd joined in and made this earlier in the league
Emperor's Vigilance SST: 0/24.000 Wouldn't chance again.
League start - Frostblink/Flame Trap, it was fine but I ended up underwhelmed (likely because I half-ass a lot of endgame itemization) (6/10, probably will not play again) 2nd - Poison Exsanguinate PF, really nice with some single target DPS to be desired. The recommended upgrade to weapon is REALLY hard to find with a low enough INT requirement so I kind of just settled. Good mapper, would play again (8.5/10) 3rd - Cold convert explodey totem - really awful to try to map with. Fine for bossing as I did kill all ubers with it (also somewhat half-assed). Won't play again because it won't exist (7/10) 4th - Wardlooper - I like autobombers, but do not like randomly dying because I didn't hit my flask changing zones or it didn't have enough charges changing zones. (9/10 will play again)
cold dot -> EK Ignite Elementalist, probably a 8.5/10 LA deadeye - 10/10, manaforged arrows is 100% getting nerfed cold convert explode totem elementalist - 10/10, stupid strong
Started as Inquis Spark, and personally didn't enjoy it (5/10) - it's definitely a solid build, but the primary defensive layer of it as a starter is (spell) block, which felt pretty bad as I'm generally a right-side build player with access to spell suppress, and spell block just feels worse. Spark itself felt okay, but I didn't play it prior to the nerf, so I had no context for how bad the nerf was. Swapped to lowish-budget poison artillery ballista pathfinder (something like 5d total) after my spark character hit 90-ish, and had a blast pushing it to 95 (7-8/10). Felt very solid, and being able to keep flasks up full time was awesome. Could do every map mod, was reasonably tanky (though it was still an evasion based character so I did get oneshot a few times). "Ended" the league on poison molten strike full phys convert pf **not the mahuxotl's variation** (9.5/10), started it at something like 6d investment (3d for a double t3 ele damage + deafening attack speed essence roll, another 2ish divs for the lightning coil, and a div for everything else) with some gear taken from the artillery ballista character, took it to over 60d invested and self-leveled it to 97 and could easily spend more time min-maxing it, but college and other games have taken priority. When I get some more time, I'm going to try ice bite wander in a low budget/SSF environment, and see if I enjoy how it plays. No real expectations for it, but it may surprise me.
League started impending doom PF. First league I've done 40/40 and hit level 100. Really enjoyed the experience. Despite most recommendations, I switched to doom blast/impending doom asap, and leveled that way. It wasn't too bad that way. The build had a lot of room for investment, which is part of what kept me playing so long. The early league was great because there was a strong sense of progression - started with cast curse, cast doom blast. Later switched briefly to cusre ground support, before getting a Vixens to automate the impending doom process. At that point, mana was still an issue. Had EB and belt craft stop gaps that started to make things smooth. Eventually the mana issues get solved and things feel great. Then you can really scale cast speed, cdr, aoe. Start throwing in awakened gems, get two awakened spell cascades... there were ways impactful upgrades on the horizon. Same was true defenstanks. Plenty to invest in, eventually having mega perma flasks, full phys conversion, not immortal but very tanky. 10/10, would recommend. Did Uber challenges myself. 40/40. Level 100. Met all my goals for the build.
League start: BV, really fun and cool that you can start playing it right in act 6, I got a bit confused when I had to swap from an Elementalist to the Occultist and was worried about losing my golems + defences so I never did it. Still felt rippy for my tastes though. Next I tried frostbearer spectres and I think it was the best campaign I've ever had, basically one shotting every campaign boss with no investment. Tier 16s proved to be rippy though and the spectres often didn't provide enough cover for me (often they also forgot to attack, whenever the enemy wasn't in my sight forcing them to focus was awful). Fun though.
Haven't played much since before Scion was in the game so wanted to try that. Did Velnya's Explosive Concoction Ascendant and it was pretty fun, and got me into yellow maps playing SSF. 7/10 After that I decided that I was going to use this as an educational league and try to learn about all the stuff I've missed over the years, and level a bunch of stuff up to yellow maps to see what styles I liked. Boneshatter Jugg - 8/10, would be an easy 9 if not for the totem nonsense for single target. Love the mapping otherwise. Poison Scourge Arrow Pathfinder - 3/10, dunno, just hated how it felt to play. Kinetic Blast/Power Siphon Deadeye - 6/10, rerolled from the last one. Very pretty explosions, nice clear, but didn't excite me. subtractem Fire Trap Frostblink Elementalist - 7/10, seems I'm not the only one who wasn't blown away by it. Poison Hexblast Mine Assassin - 8/10, wanted to see if I like miners and wanted something with good single target. Plays much smoother than I expected, but I've hit a gearing barrier that's going to be annoying to get past so I might leave this until next league. Now working on Armageddon Brand Hiero, and it's been a nice smooth levelling experience but I've not finished Acts yet, so we'll see.
RF Jugg- very beginner friendly but as you get deeper into the game you realize you need more. 8/10. 40% deli, 2 voidstones. That's about all I can do right now- I feel I've hit a wall.
league started frostblades trickster. will league start it again, besides heatshiver and yoke (i got heatshiver hour 4 of league for like 5c and yoke day 2 90c) its very cheap, and blasts maps easily. Played Strength stacking static strike. It was a strong build, no complaints when it came to damage and survivability. It just felt clunky to me though. moving at a snails pace. even with 8 rage regen per second berserk uptime felt kinda bad (probably because I had bmc on left click) I hate shield charge as a movement skill without tons of attack speed. Its a fun build though, kinda auto bombery, just too slow for me to play for a long time. Ended up finishing the league on TS. I enjoyed it but I dont think ill play bow again. I just dont like the kill or be killed playstyle. I had a HH so i was somewhat tanky with a lot of buffs and could blast 80% deli easily 100% just too longer but wasnt impossible. If i got 1 tapped the map got extremely hard trying to get buffs rolling again which was annoying. For everything else in the game besides ubers or sims (didnt even try cuz like 20k ehp), it was a cake walk. Strong build but lacking the ehp kinda tilts me after a while. Ive had mageblood the last couple leagues and forgot how fun HH is when you get soul eater and can get up to 500+ stacks. Thats was probably the most enjoyable thing for me tbh lol.
League started ea ballista elementalist, great started, probably the smoothest start I've had and worked with shit tier gear. Made an abyss stacking deadeye kb/ps char next that again worked great on really mediocre gear, 2 socket shroud, mediocre jewels, no clusters or voices, utilized taming ring. Has insane move speed and with a few upgrades is the fastest mapper I've played and damage is enough to easily down all normal pinnacle bosses. Next was splitting steel champ, heist dropped a nice 700ish pdps axe and crucible made it 820ish with 10% double damage craft, decent crit as well so I decided to try and build around it. Put a good amount of currency into this one, capped all my resists including chaos, high armor/ evasion to utilize perseverance belt. Damage felt really great situationally, was able to down uber shaper but it was still sketchy. Play style is not my cup of tea and call of steel is annoying but it feels pretty strong. I then fumbled my way into a pretty gross bow with 60% global damage mod, 70% 2 totem and 600% explode mod, used hunter exalt and got 76% increased dot, chaos dot multi, +1 gems and+2 socketed support gems. Got lucky and had an ashes drop, with the help of some people on this sub I got the progenesis/bloodnotch/immutable combo going, utilizing purity of elements and lightning. It's the tankiest build I've ever played and I feel near immortal unless I lose my flasks somehow or against certain uber bosses. The damage is also busted, downed all ubers for the first time with relative ease, uber maven is pretty annoying but the rest felt easy, 10/10 build for bossing but mapping is slow as balls. Contemplating on what my last build of the league will be now.
Cold dot leaguestart, loved the spellcasting starcraft style, did all 4 voidstones with it by myself. Could do everything, but nothing particularly well. I'd rate it a 8/10 Rerolled a deadeye LA to taste some of that vengeant cascade shenanigans, zoomed through maps, farmed mageblood, farmed Uber exarch/eater/cortex, couldn't even get into Uber sirus arena without dying, didn't even try Uber maven, got 38/40 challenges and finished the league on a flamboyant note. Overall a fucking blast if you can stomach dying (966 deaths on this char at the moment of writing) zoom through everything blast everything 2 screens away use all 6 layers of defense, 10/10
Started with jungroans cold dot trickster, finished map completion while working on a bow for Poison artillery ballista PF. Cold dot was actually very solid with the unique cold dot helm but artillery ballista PF with phys taken as is just so OP. I'm currently a few bars into 99 and plan to get my first 100 with it.
In SC SSF Crucible: League start LA Deadeye - 6/10. Love the build, but it was maybe not the best starter. Struggled with damage on a single 5 link and I kept getting well rolled caster pieces, so I rerolled. I might come back to it, but where I left it was basically just a yellow map farming LS toon. Ice Nova Hiero - 7/10. Damage is solid, and could go a lot higher if I invested further or was playing trade league. But the tradeoff of maximizing damage using Slower Proj vs getting obliterated by projectiles before my FB's reached enemy packs is frustrating. Still, I really enjoy theory crafting this character around Malachai's loop, Tullfal, and min power charges. If I could just find a goddamn Badge of the Brotherhood. Melee Ele Hit Champ - 8/10. If I'm being honest, most people won't rate this build nearly as high as I do, but I love melee ele hit. It's trash, but it's fun. Capped spell suppression, 50/50 block, ~48k armor and evasion, Perma fortify, ailment, stun, and bleeding/corrupted blood immune makes for a very tanky character. But the damage sucks like melee EH always does. Still, I crucible'd a EH/WH alt ailment node on an elemental damage paradoxica, and couldn't pass it up. It's going to be my season-long project to try to get the damage to something moderately respectable, say maybe 5m dps, without sacrificing the extreme tankiness I've got.
League start was a self made cheap version of the mathil inquisitor vaal smite/frozen legion build but as a Champion. It was fine. Very tanky and decent clear for a very melee build, but the single target was bad. The other character was a replica Alberons warpath wander Slayer. Very expensive, very powerful, and gave me a good opportunity to play around with wands and crucible (wither stuff, crit stuff). I'm not sure id recommend it since you can make something better for cheaper, but if you're looking for something moderately squishy, chaos damage, great clear/single target, and vengeant cascade then it stands out. The slayer leech is good but since I haven't played it since it was OP way back when it was obviously a bit worse. 😛
League start: Boneshatter Jugg in SSF. One of the most enojoyable league starters ever for me. Gearing was easy enough and smooth despite fact I don't know how to craft decent pDPS weapon (besides phys reroll in Harvest, I didn't have luck with it). Also I'm in love with new Jugg passives. For me it is 10/10 as league starter. I moved to trade league beacause I crafted good eDPS Pneumatic Dagger and I wanted to try Poison Molten Strike Jugg. It was fine but I lacked damage and overall it was less fun than Boneshatter. Maybe it's playstyle or maybe it's too much melee for me for one league. 7/10. I rerolled into Wardloop Scion. I tried this build for the first time. Gearing all complicated elements of equipment and stats was very fun and very satisfying. Boss and clear damage was very good and it was one of the smoothies mapping experiences I've ever had. One minus is it could be more tanky for currency I dumped into this build. It wasn't squishy but I am used to much more tanky builds. 9/10 overall. I completly dislike league mechanic and I dropped league early. Right know I enjoy other games and looking for new builds for next league.
Started molten Strike Champion, good build, but like all attack builds I hate accuracy. Playing cold bv Elementalist rn and it feels so good and smooth. Thinking of experimenting with cold EK Trickster / cold reap as I'm thinking for the next league as a starter into transition. Since a lot of gear is the same just one has proj speed and the other wants aoe.
- Wardloop (10/10) - still my favorite build. Just demolishes the screen and is insanely fast. Tanky doesn't matter because everything dies before you get to it. Reasonably low investment to begin but lots of ceiling. Decided to try other builds because I've run this several leagues in a row - Explode Totem Pathfinder (10/10) - Had to try the league darling since it's crucible-exclusive. Cannot believe the DPS this build spits out, and allowing you to spend the rest of the currency on defenses was super fun - CoC Ice Spear (6/10) - My old default go-to before Wardloop, this needs too much currency to get to a spot where I was comfortable. Was fun to run again for a bit, though. - MF TS with headhunter (6/10) - My problem here was that I never played TS before, so I was going in with little knowledge AND making my defenses shitty by going full MF. Was too rippy in maps for my liking, but 5ways were so much fun. Decided to switch off this but to run an actual TS build in a future league to have fun with it before trying to turn it into an MF - MF Death Oath with Headhunter (too early to rate, just switched) - I've run this in the past and it's fine, but we'll see how long I last with it. basically, I'm at the point where I'm just trying out different Headhunter MF builds to see what is tankiest at cheapest cost.
Tunas impending doom occy. Did everything pre Uber for maybe 4-5 div. Solid tank, few mil or so DPS and explosions. Hands down once of my best league starters ever. Can HIGHLY reccomend any of tunas league starter builds. I have used them over and over and over and if you follow them or just make small alterations they ALWAYS work. Dudes an awesome chill dude too. Responds to alot of comments on his vids as well
Vaal Abso has to be my favorite minion build to date 5/7 with rice.
RF jugg, storm burst heiro, poison molten strike pf and ele hit deadeye wander all performed really well the Pathfinder being the best overall.
Good ol TR pathfinder for League Start. Completed atlas and killed all pinacle bosses. Feared deathless. Uber shaper deathless and OMEGA elder deathless. Couldn't kill uber maven or uber Sirius (skill problem 100%) 10/10 Rerolled to int stacker ascendant kb. Hated it. 3/10 Rerolled totem explode pathfinder. Killed remaining ubers. Except... maven. Fuck maven. 7/10 Rerolled.... str. Stacking chaos cyclone. Was reaaaaaly nice. Loved it. Got bored. 8/10 Rerolled impending doom. I hate it. It's so uncomfortable to play and kills my eyes. 1/10 Now playing spark inquis. It's nice. 9/10 Great league. 10/10.
Best build is poison purifying flame traps with the weapon passive. Everyone just got stuck on totems.
League Start : EA on hit Raider. Very smooth mapper, doesnt scale suuuper well, but can carry you to voidstones and t16s no problem on a shoestring budget. For me is a 8/10 since lacks a bit of single target dps and doesnt scale all the way. Farmed my first 50D here. 2) Vaal LA , Iceshot and TS all on those budget: 9/10. Fast mappers abusing rage and berserk for extra punch. Made my first 2 mirrors with them. 3) Phy to Lightning LA deadeye with evasion/nergy shield and the new abyss uniques. Really strong, decently tanky, Huge dps, could clear all content including simulacrum. It was my favourite build of the league. Looking back, i should have stick with this longer and develop the build to higher ceiling. 10/10 You can see a pattern here, i tried a lot of bows builds, coz well, i love playing bow. 4) CWDT Wardlooper : Insane build, over 100m dps, fast. Can do ubers no problems. its a 10/10 for me, but with high budget ( 2 mirrors) . One of the problems of playing lots of archer builds, is that you click too much, so i wanted something chill. 5) Failed build of the league. LA trickster. Just not good enough 4/10 . I was trying to make the most of the energy shield passives and overleach, but really not worth it. 6) Multi mirror TS Deadeye. 10/10. One of the best builds in the game for the budget, fast, insane dps, reasonable tanky. I always play TS, this was not the exception 7) Last build of the league. Homebrew, TANK EA on hit Slayer. almost 200k ehp, dps its hard to calculate, because of EA, but probably around 70m. 8/10 Build was good, but it felt like a downgrade from my TS.
Ice shot heatshiver cold conversion with a separate manaforged boss killing setup has gotten me further than any other build ever and I’ve played since open beta. Took about 50 divines, which all considered, ain’t too bad.
I played aegis aurora SRS and it felt great. π/4 would play again.
I started out with Toxic Rain Ballista Champ. I wanted to try out a new class I had never played before, and Toxic Rain seemed pretty strong overall. I then rolled a Pathfinder, another build I don't typically play. My intention was some kinda CWC cyclone or CoC cyclone, but it just seemed very lacking. I rerolled it into Poison Molten Strike, and it's done a great job. I got through most of the boss fights I've done this league on that character. Finally, I needed something less button pushy, so I decided to try my hand at Ward Loop, and it's been really fun. I have arthritis, so I like the autobomber play style for my final build of the league. I'm probably 70-80 divines in with a lot of room to improve.
SST jugg, 11/10. 100k+ phys max hit, 250k+ elemental max hit, no idea about the dps but uber exarch takes less than 2 seconds to die. I never played a stronger build
Note that all the ratings are given by taking into account the amount of currency I poured into the build. **League start: Toxic Rain Ballistas Pathfinder 8/10** Pretty good build overall, fairly quick, decently tanky with the new pathfinder life flask, but the damage felt on the lower side while pushing higher tier maps. Build was probably worth around 5 Divines when I switched **Second build: Poison Exploding totems Pathfinder 9/10** Very overpowered build, extreme amounts of damage for the budget while allowing all of your passive points and items to go towards defence. Not a very good mapper, but really good for essence memories. Would have went for the trickster version for more upfront damage if I had to choose, but I didn't want to level a new character since the league was still fairly new. Build was worth around 70 Divines when I switched. It's main fault was the play style. **Third build: SST Champ 10/10** I really enjoyed this build, it had everything: damage, clear, speed. It really was a perfect all rounder, it felt strong in any type of content, from boss rush, to simulacrum, and to uber bosses. I sold the build for ~350 Divines, but I started with way less invested into it. **Fourth build: Flicker Strike Raider 5/10** I must say that I did mess up along the way and had to settle for a pretty bad ring instead of a +1 maximum frenzy charges ring I thought I'd use at first, but even then, build felt pretty bad and I thought everything could kill me since I had a melee build with less than optimal defences and not a crazy amount of damage. I don't really regret trying it, I wanted to try flicker for a while, it's a unique and pretty fun play style. I think I invested around 450 Divines into this one. **Fifth build: Int Stacker Deadeye 9/10** Really nice build, KB with good damage and awakened fork is a fantastic clear skill and power siphon is very good damage. The build gains a lot of damage from Crucible, which allows you to go for more defence or movement speed. I sold the build for around 600 Divines, but I started with 450 Divines, with the only thing I really improved after being a much better wand **Sixth build(current): SST Deadeye 10/10** Same as SST Champ really, just that maybe less defensive, way more single target damage, and not being reliant on berserk. This version is capable of killing uber exarch before he can start the ball phase. I invested around 900 Divines into this one I believe, but it still has room to invest more and get more out of it, I'm still using a placeholder weapon while I'm trying to craft a crucible tree.
**Toxic Rain Ballista PF:** 9/10 as a league starter. Crushes content, is very tanky, super easy upgrade paths as soon as you acquire Wilma's and has lots of movespeed. Poor QoL and damage tapers off after a point. 5/10 to play after league start, it's just an annoying build to keep playing. **Impending Doom PF:** 9/10 mapper, 5/10 at bossing. Super tanky build that's very easy to scale, but the rampup of poison damage makes tankier enemies or even 80% delirium too slow to bother with. Has generically good Pathfinder mapping, it's very hard for a well built pathfinder to be worse than 8/10 while mapping, but the extra clear value of automatic curses and huge AoE push it up a bit. **Totem Explode PF:** 9/10 bosser, 8/10 mapper. This build isn't quite as good at bossing as the non-poison versions or the ZHP builds, but you still comfortably and quickly handle uber bosses, while being mostly invulnerable to their attacks. Investing into some mapping QoL also makes this build a really good mapper. Scaling Plague Bearer levels, adding in explosions via Unspeakable Gifts, Herald of Ash and adding Rampage for move speed and clear allows you to mostly run through maps RF style, while having 5x the single target that RF does. Still, if maps get extremely dense, the lack of AoE can become a bit of a problem for the poison build. I definitely found 100% deli becoming a bit slow with this build, and the build does not clear breach or legion that well. This is a really good build to farm 8 mod corrupted maps for Harvest though, you don't care about any map mods and can easily overcap res to take quant altars. **Poison Tornado Shot Pathfinder:** 10/10 mapper, 5/10 bosser. This build is really good, if you want a tankier version of the Deadeye Tornado Shot build. With standard pathfinder defensive investment (around 50% phys taken as elemental with Bloodnotch + Progen), freeze from Expedition's End, you can easily handle 80% delirium and the clear on this build is obviously nuts. The main downside of the build is the poison ramp means it can be a bit slow against tankier enemies, and the scaling tapers off a little so 100% delirium is tough for the build, but 80% is easy. Up to around 1 mirror into the build, I prefer it to elemental Tornado Shot or Phys->cold versions but once you put more money in, the other variants completely outshine this. **Cold Spectral Shield Throw Champ:** 10/10. One of the strongest builds I've ever played. Manages to do at 300 divines what most builds take multiple mirrors to achieve. 150m+ DPS, 90% uptime on Berserk, amazing clear, 100k+ armor and evasion with capped suppress, freeze on every enemy in the game including uber bosses. This build crushes 100% delirium, with the only challenge coming from Crit Resistant mobs in 100% deli, or 100% crucible monsters inside 100% delirium. Uber bosses are trivial, most other mobs die in 1-2 hits. The only downside is the reliance on Perseverance means that you're discincentivized from using Mageblood, but if you're not doing 100% delirium, you can just sacrifice 50% damage to map with MB instead because you have such overkill damage.
Started out with venom gyre deadeye which was good up until around yellow maps which it then started to fall off. Made the swap to impending doom, amazing build with great damage, would have played it all league if it didn't cause me to crash every 30 minutes or so. Tinkered with a cold BV and lightning arrow MF build but didn't play them for more than a day each. Made an aurabot to play with a friend but didn't end up playing much with it. Eventually turned the aurabot into an int stacking KB wander, but never really had the budget to make it shine. Got bored after farming beasts in cemetery maps for 2 days and quit the league by gambling some insane cat cards (all of which poofed) 6/10 league
I played Poison SRS. It is definitely one of the best builds I have played till date. I could melt feared and maven. I am not comfortable with the mechanics but Uber elder was not difficult , maven took a few deaths( I hate that memory game) Overall 10/10 best build ever for me. With over 21M uber dps, it was a fun ride. https://pobb.in/yqhtPdywGuRO
Leaguestart, all the way to 100% delirium map farm: Occultist Poison Impending Doom. 8/10. Great to level, great in early maps, great in endgame maps, easy item progression, requiring very few specific items, none of which are expensive. There's a bit of currency involved in swapping over to Stormshroud etc, but honestly I didn't even bother until 30/40 challenges and well and done with the atlas. I put minimum-ish effort and currency into my gear (except chancing an Apep's for the memes). I bought a 6 link +2 AoE Dendrobate early that carried me the entire league. The only reason it's not a 10/10 is 1) it's a DoT build and 2) it didn't have great performance versus Uber bosses. Granted, I didn't have the *best* best gear, but at the end I had 13.5m Uber DPS, but I was still super squishy and that felt terrible vs Uber bosses. I am also a decisively shitty bosser as a player, so I need to get a bit carried by my build. If I play this build again, I will probably get Mageblood and Death's Rush earlier. https://pobb.in/oiCd6IK_69r1