[3.22 update] Ethical Crit Impending Doom + Hexblast Occultist: The 6699 Build

Ethical Crit Impending Doom + Hexblast Occultist: The 6699 Build
6 Power Charges, 6 Curses, 99% Reduced Duration curse (3.22)



3.22 Update: Sanctum uniques are back! This build is viable again.

Build Overview:

This build is a fast one-button mapper with screen-wide explosions that scales very well with pack size. Damage is over 10 Million Guardian DPS and excels at speed mapping, farming boss fragments, deathless pinnacle bosses, and maven invitations. Easily clear Sanctums with powerful freezes on guards and damage reduction on Lycia via Enfeeble. Defenses are not insane; the build is uber-pinnacle viable, but you need to be proficient in the mechanics to be successful.

This build uses two six-link damage skills: Anomalous Impending Doom Support with 99% reduced duration of the supported curse alongside Hexblast totems (only for bosses). Both skills are scaled through our ascendancy passives, Wither stacks, a fast cast rate, and power charges (6+). Since we are stacking power charges for crit, we will also use Anathema to scale our curse limit and enable constant application of 6 curses with one cast.

In this build, we achieve reduced duration on Impending Doom Support using quality stacking on a Cane of Kulemak staff rather than using the Dialla’s Malefaction chest piece. This allows us to use the Loreweave-Eternal Damnation combination for extreme reductions to elemental damage taken. Physical mitigation is achieved through a combination of armour from gear, Determination, and flasks. Life recovery is achieved by using a leveled Vitality for ~10% life regeneration per second and capped life leech.

Pros and Cons
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Pros:

· Screen-wide chaos explosions for deleting endgame map packs
· One-button mapping (with an additional setup cast for bosses)
· No fussing with positioning for overlaps like with the more popular Spell Cascade/Impending Doom/Vixen’s Entrapment setup
· >10M DPS for deleting map bosses and clearing endgame invitations
· No insane rare gear crafting required
· No T1/T0 uniques needed (I assembled this in SSF)
· Ethical triggering of Doom Blast instead of overwriting with Vixen’s Entrapment
· Provides +3 gem levels to Impending Doom unlike with the Dialla’s Malefaction setup
· 6 curses applied more than 5 times per second enabling Hexblast to always have a curse to remove for huge damage
· Easy ailment immunity and gearing with Purity of Elements
· Don't need Dialla's chestpiece so you can use offensive options like a Hunter's crit chest or defensive options like Loreweave

Cons:

· Not possible to level using this setup (though you could start with the more traditional Vixen’s setup and transition in endgame)
· Requires level 90+ for enough skill points to enable all mechanics
· Needs a very specific set of rolls on Cane of Kulemac
· Needs 23% quality on an alternate quality gem
· Getting a reliable source of leech can be difficult in SSF
· Vulnerable to big physical hits and “firing squads”
· Using a staff, so can’t take advantage of very powerful defensive mods on shields
· No stun immunity




Path of building: Pobb.in Pastebin
Note- PoB does not properly calculate Doomblast DPS. To find the true DPS of doomblast in this setup, verify that your cooldown rate of doomblast is lower than your cast rate of the linked curse skill, then multiply the average hit damage of doomblast by the cast rate of the curse skill.

Build stats:
~11M DPS, ~5k life, 74/54 block (glancing blows), 32k max ele hit, 10k max phys hit, 21k max chaos hit, elemental ailment immunity.


Mechanics Explanations:
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99% reduced duration Impending Doom:
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Impending Doom is popular this league because of the very high base damage of the skill and the large (370%) effectiveness of added damage. The skill is unique in that you do not cast Impending Doom directly; rather, it is linked to a curse skill which then triggers Doom Blast when the supported curse expires. In the most popular Impending Doom / Doom Blast builds this season, Vixen’s Entrapment is used with three socketed curses and a curse limit of three so that upon cast, the supported skill is immediately overwritten using the triggered curses in Vixen’s Entrapment. (As an aside, it is unclear if this behavior is intended as the skill is being overwritten, not “expiring,” and I suspect this behavior may be corrected or nerfed in future leagues.) There are several downsides to triggering Doom Blast this way:

· You are only able to reliably have two curses on the enemy
· Spell Cascade is required for one of your 6-link gem slots
· Impending Doom is a support skill and therefore does not get + gem levels from traditional sources such as weapons and amulets
· You need specific positioning to get “overlaps” with spell cascade and reach your cooldown limit on Doom Blast.

In this build we solve these problems by using alternate quality Anomalous Impending Doom Support to ethically trigger Doom Blast without overwriting curses. The alternate quality provides “supported curse skills have 2% reduced skill effect duration” per 1% gem quality. This build sockets Impending Doom and a curse of your choosing in a 6-link Cane of Kulemak with the Caterina’s Veiled mod which is scaled by a well-rolled unique modifier (60-90% increased effect of unveiled modifier magnitudes) to grant +3 levels and +14% quality to socketed support gems. Using a 23% quality corrupted gem, we have a total of 37% total quality on Impending Doom providing 74% reduced duration on the supported curse. We then allocate the “Window Of Opportunity” wheel on the skill tree to get another 25% reduced duration for a total of 99% reduced duration. This makes the duration of our curse skill VERY short; I use a level 1 temporal chains which has a total duration of 8 ms. You can use whatever curse you would like, provided that the total curse duration is lower than (a) the cast time of the curse and (b) the cooldown rate of Doom Blast. Note that depending on your gear, you may be able to tolerate 1% less quality from your Cane of Kulemak but if you are really pushing the build, you can get 15% quality for instant expiration. You will likely want to use Temporal Chains in your Impending Doom setup to take advantage of the cooldown reduction on self-cast buff from The Balance of Terror.




Six Curses:
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Since we are scaling power charges to build our damage and area of effect, we may as well take advantage of Anathema to increase our curse limit to six. This allows us to use several defensive and offensive curses with flexibility both in gearing and in playstyle and gives us a VERY reliable source of power charge generation since we are constantly casting a curse. I suggest using the following curses:

· Despair: reduces enemy chaos resistance which increases the damage of our Doom Blast

· Frostbite: reduces enemy cold resistance which increases the damage of our Hexblast and adds additional chance to freeze on non-critical hits from Hexblast. Cold resistance reduction is the best option to scale since it synergizes with our Void Beacon ascendancy passive.

· Elemental Weakness: reduces enemy elemental resistances (only cold resistance is relevant to us) which increases the damage of our Hexblast.

· Enfeeble: gives the enemy damage reduction to make us tankier.

· Assassin’s Mark: increases base critical strike chance against the enemy which is a much-needed stat on this build and provides another source of power charge generation.

· Temporal Chains: the action speed reduction from this curse is a powerful defensive layer, but this will probably be your Impending Doom curse and so it will likely not always be on the enemy.

These six curses will all be applied in a single cast: you will self-cast the curse linked to Impending Doom, four of the others will be socketed in Vixen’s Entrapment and will trigger when you self-cast any curse, and the final curse will be triggered on-hit from either a corruption implicit on Vixen’s Entrapment or from a ring affix. Choose which curse is triggered where based on availability of on-hit items, and which curse buff you would like to use from The Balance of Terror. Depending on what Balance of Terror you acquire, you can socket an additional unlinked curse skill in your boots and self-cast it (at nothing) every ten seconds to gain an additional buff. I have chosen to self-cast Enfeeble occasionally for an additional chunk of crit multiplier.




Hexblast Totems:
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Since we are using a staff for our 6-link Impending Doom setup, we have another 6-link available with our chest piece. Here, we look to use a skill which scales well with our ascendancy choices, the availability of several curses, and our power charge scaling. Hexblast is a perfect choice. Hexblast is a spell skill which deals bonus damage when it is able to remove a curse from the targeted enemy. Since we are applying 5 curses at least every 0.2 seconds, there will always be an available curse for removal. Hexblast also is resisted by the enemies lowest elemental resistance rather than their chaos resistance so we can take advantage of our high curse limit to greatly lower the enemies cold resistance in synergy with our Void Beacon ascendancy node. We choose to apply Hexblast using totems with Multiple Totems Support to allow us to maximize its cast rate while still being able to focus on casting our Impending Doom setup main skill.

Hexblast is able to ignite, freeze, and shock – the shocks from hexblast are an excellent source of increased damage for both of our main skills and the freezes provide good quality of life against tanky rares, map bosses, and Sanctum guards. We increase the effect of shocks applied through use of the critical strike mastery “50% increased effect of non-damaging ailments you inflict with critical strikes.” We would also like to use the cold mastery node “enemies you freeze are chilled when they unfreeze” but with limited passive points, this had to be dropped. With a level 100 character, you would use this mastery for quality of life.




Power Charges:
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We pick up three additional maximum power charges, one from our ascendancy node “Forbidden Power” and two from the skill tree. We are able to very easily maintain our maximum number of 6 power charges during both mapping and bossing due to our “chance to gain a power charge when you cast a curse skill” from Anathema and from the effect of our Assassin’s Mark. Our six power charges grant 240% increased critical strike chance which is a massive boost to our average damage. We also get a decent chunk of % increased damage from “Disciple of the Forbidden” and the “Forbidden Power” ascendancy node. The ascendancy also gives us a huge 36% increased area of effect at maximum charges – this applies to the area of the Doom Blast explosions and the chaos corpse explosions. With all these combined, endgame map packs explode in a single cast, enabling a fast and satisfying map experience.

Additionally, we pick up a massive 18% more spell damage multiplier from our power charges using the “Inner Conviction” keystone node which comes from a Militant Faith Timeless jewel with a “High Templar Dominus” roll. This can be socketed in a couple locations depending on what specific number you’ve rolled – I’ve chosen to socket it to the left of the witch starting position which provides 85 devotion and replaces Mind over Matter.





Defenses:
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We use a large number of unique items, do not have access to a shield, and are predominantly in the top left of the tree so acquiring 100% spell suppression would be a significant challenge. Instead, we mitigate elemental damage using Eternal Damnation with capped chaos resistance which provides an additional >30% elemental damage taken reduction. We overcome the downside of Eternal Damnation by forcing our maximum elemental resistances to 78% using Loreweave.

We achieve reasonable physical damage mitigation through armour on our gear and scaling it using Determination, a granite flask, and the increased armour flask mod. This build is socket starved, so I have foregone a cast-when-damage-taken guard skill, but you could drop the second Eternal Damnation self-cast curse to use Molten Shell or Steelskin.

Damage-over-time effects outside of bleed aren’t a major issue; our capped chaos resistance mitigates poison and we are immune to ignites from Purity of Elements. Elemental ground effects are taken care of with the Eternal Damnation damage reduction. A bleed and corrupted blood immunity life flask is used to remove bleeds on demand and for emergency healing when we take large amounts of damage not covered by our recovery.

Recovery is achieved in the form of a reasonable amount of life regen (~10% life per second) from the tree and a high level Vitality. Acquiring a source of chaos damage leeched as life is a challenging but very useful quality of life upgrade. You can get a reliable source from alternate quality void manipulation (which is a small DPS downgrade but worthwhile for the quality of life) or as a Synthesis implicit on your rare ring slot. We hit hard enough with chaos damage and frequently enough to easily cap the base leech rate.





Gear:
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Uniques:
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The most specific piece of gear we need is a Cane of Kulemak with very precise rolls. We require as much support gem quality as possible; this is achieved with both a top roll of 8% on the Caterina’s mod and a high roll on the “increased effect of unveiled modifiers” unique mod. It is possible to roll 15% gem quality with perfect rolls in both slots, but the odds are exceptionally low to do so. 14% is sufficient to enable the mechanics of the build.

For the other two rolls, we need a combination of cast speed and damage. Cast speed + chance to gain arcane surge is the only suffix option. This provides a large chunk of cast speed which helps us scale the cast rate of our curse skill high enough to apply impending doom at a rate close to its cooldown. Arcane surge is a nice added bonus during mapping which grants an extra 10% more spell damage. The final prefix modifier has several options. Any of the spell damage options would be appropriate, but the best in my opinion is the chaos damage mod since it also scales the damage of the Occultist’s corpse explosions to more reliably blow up packs.



Devouring Diadem solves several problems in this build. First, it provides mana reservation efficiency for socketed skills along with a +1 to socketed gems. Using an Enlighten and socketing our auras here, we are able to run three 50% auras with leftover mana for Vitality and Precision. Additionally, Devouring Diadem solves our mana issues by providing Eldritch Battery which makes our skills spend energy shield rather than mana. Since we are frequently triggering several high level curses, this is a very mana-hungry build and so we require Eldritch Battery to sustain our cast rate.



Eternal Damnation is a new unique from Sanctum league which provides a large chunk of elemental damage mitigation with the downside that it reduces your maximum elemental resistances. To overcome this downside, we use a Loreweave which overwrites our maximum elemental resistances to 78%.



Anathema is another new unique from Sanctum: this ring provides two very important stats for our build. First, it gives a decent chunk of cast rate to our curse skill which further helps us get our cast rate close to the cooldown rate of Doom Blast. Second, it sets our curse limit to our number of maximum power charges. This is what enables us to run enough curses to make Hexblast effective, scale our crit chance with Assassin’s Mark, and provide the Enfeeble enemy damage reduction.



Vixen’s Entrapment is our source for delivering 4 of our 6 curses. It also provides a good source of flat energy shield which is effectively our mana pool for this build. Note that the increased curse limit does NOT apply to us because of Anathema.



Balance of Terror is another new unique from Sanctum which grants buffs based on which curse skills have been self-cast in the last 10 seconds. Note that the curses that we apply by Vixen’s Entrapment and our on-hit source do NOT earn the buffs. Because of this, I add another unlinked curse skill in my boot slot to self-cast every ten seconds for an additional buff. By far the best option for this build is the cooldown reduction from Temporal Chains which is why we link it to our Impending Doom for 100% uptime of the buff. Good second options are:
· Double damage from Vulnerability
· Cold exposure on hit from Frostbite
· Critical strike multiplier from Enfeeble



We run five auras so there are many good options for Watcher’s Eyes, both offensive and defensive. Use whatever you can afford to plug gaps wherever you see fit in the build. I have chosen to get additional critical strike multiplier from the Precision mod.



Rares:
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Our only rare slots are one ring, our belt, and our boots. On these pieces we need to fill out our resists, add as much flat life as possible, and get a little bit of a damage boost in the form of onslaught, cast speed, and cooldown reduction. Note that it is mandatory to cap out chaos resist because of how Eternal Damnation works, so make sure that you have several large chaos resistance rolls.



Flasks:
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On flasks, we get a large chunk of flat armour and armour scaling with a granite flask and a huge movement speed boost with a quicksilver flask with a movespeed suffix. We really struggle to cap out our critical strike chance so a diamond flask and Bottled Faith are significant damage boosts that get our critical strike chance to respectable levels. Bottled Faith has good synergy with our the consecrated ground created by Zealotry. The suffix on the diamond flask is your choice: I’ve opted for curse effect reduction, but you could also go with a craft like life regen or more critical strike chance.





Gem Setups:
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Impending Doom / Temp Chains:
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Temporal Chains is our application curse for Impending Doom since it has good synergy with the Balance of Terror cooldown reduction modifier. I leave it at level 1 to minimize the duration of the curse and because it expires quickly anyway so we don't benefit from it's effect on the enemy. A 21/23 corrupted Anomalous Impending Doom support would be the best option but I've been unsuccessful on the alt-quality gem double-corrupts. The 23% quality is mandatory to minimize duration; the extra gem level is an ~10% DPS upgrade. Added Chaos Damage Support scales very well because of the high effectiveness of added damage on Doom Blast. Void Manipulation is a damage multiplier; you could use the alternate quality gem here to gain a source of chaos damage leeched as life. Note that Impending Doom does NOT benefit from the +1 gem level from Awakened Void Manipulation since it is a support gem. Increased critical strikes is used to scale our crit chance; if you opted for a more offensive Hunter base crit chest piece, you could use either Critical Damage Support or Power Charge on Critical Strike Support here instead. Finally, spell echo is used to effectively double our cast speed and get the application rate of the linked curse very close to the cooldown rate of Doom Blast.


Hexblast Totems:
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In our chest, we socket our Hexblast setup. Since we have so many curses available for removal, we use a Spell Totem - Multiple Totem setup to maximize the trigger rate of Hexblast. Awakened Added Chaos Damage and Awakened Void Manipulation are used to scale the damage and gem level of Hexblast. Increased critical strike support maximizes our critical strike chance and the chance for us to apply elemental ailments with this skill.


Auras:
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Our expensive auras are socketed in The Devouring Diadem for additional reservation efficiency along with an Enlighten Support. Additionally, we use a level 1 precision in the boots for a little extra critical strike chance and to enable the critical strike multiplier mod from the Watcher's Eye. We then add in as high a level Vitality as our mana will allow.


Vixen's Curses:
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Four of our triggered curses are socketed in Vixen's Entrapment. Curse order (left-to-right, top-to-bottom) will determine which curses are removed first by Hexblast, but this is a minor consideration since we are reapplying curses so frequently and since Hexblast snapshots the resistance reduction before removing the curse.


Movement / Utility:
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Our final two sockets are taken up by a movement skill (flamedash works very well because of our cooldown rate increases and our very fast cast speed) and an additional low-level Enfeeble that is self-cast occasionally in order to benefit from the second mod on Balance of Terror.



FAQ:
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Q: Can I substitute Ashes of the Stars / Enhance, etc. for the Cane of Kulemak?
A: No, those items apply quality to "skill gems" and Impending Doom is a support gem, not a skill gem.

Q: How should I level the build? Is this a league starter?
A: This build has several required uniques that will not be readily available at league start. I would suggest leveling as a cold DoT occultist but you could also use impending doom with cursed ground support to level but it will feel clunky compared to the final build. You can switch to the final version once you have access to the Cane of Kulemak, Anathema, and Vixens. You could switch before Uber lab; profane bloom is your last ascendancy passive and is unnecessary to make the build work, it’s only used to help with map clear.

Q: I got a little bit more cast speed and it feels like my damage went way down, what gives?
A: This is a trigger build so there’s an optimization between cast speed and trigger rate. It’s similar to what happens in a cast-on-crit build or a ward loop build if you’ve played those before. What probably happened is that the increased cast speed raised your cast rate ABOVE the cooldown recovery rate of Doom Blast. This means that your curse expires which should trigger Doom Blast but it’s still on cooldown so it can’t happen. It then has to wait another entire trigger cycle for it to finally be procced. If this is the situation, you would need to either lower the cast speed a little bit or increase your cooldown recovery rate. You can check these interactions in POB. Make sure your configurations tab is set up appropriately, then look at Doom Blast in the Calcs tab. There’s a panel called “attack/cast rate”: this shows you your trigger rate cap and your cast rate. You want to maximize the number “skill trigger rate” through a balance of cast speed and cooldown recovery.

Q: How do I optimize my cast speed / cooldown / curse duration?
A: The important condition to satisfy is:
Curse duration < Doom Blast cooldown < Curse application time (cast speed)

To check curse duration in PoB, set Temporal chains as the active skill then look at the number labeled "skill duration" in the "skill-type specific stats" panel. To check doom blast cooldown, select Doom Blast under active skill then hover over the number next to "trigger rate cap" in the "attack/cast rate" panel. The number you're looking for is the one next to where it says "final cooldown of triggered skill." To check curse application time, set Temporal chains as the active skill then look at the number labeled "cast time" in the "attack / cast rate" panel.

As long as your combination of cast speed / cooldown recovery rate / curse duration satisfies the above inequality, you're good. If you want to improve DPS, you need to trigger faster which means cooldown and application time both need to go down but you still need to satisfy that condition.


My Other Build Guides:
The Sacrifice Pathfinder: super tanky self-cast Hexblast Ignite
Corpse Explosion Autobomber - Ignite Proliferation Chieftain
Eye of Winter Triggerbot Assassin: >5000 projectiles per second

Thank you for your interest in my build; if you have questions or suggestions feel free to drop them in the posts below. I try to check at least semi-regularly. If you would like to see more content of this type the best way you can support me is by subscribing to my Youtube channel. Thanks again!
Last edited by _Atollo_ on Nov 4, 2023, 2:14:40 PM
Last bumped on Dec 3, 2023, 11:04:01 AM
Reserved for additions by author

3.22 updates / suggestions:
- Honoured Tattoo of the Storm provides +1 power charge for the build. Since we can't use +1 Int Skill Gems (Impending Doom is a support, not a skill) this is best in slot. This gives a more multiplier because of our timeless jewel, increases the critical strike chance for both of our damaging abilities, and allows room for another curse if you're able to source a pair of double-corrupt 2 curse on hit Vixen's Enchantment.
Last edited by _Atollo_ on Sep 23, 2023, 3:13:55 PM
Will you be updating for 3.21?
Looking for a clan/guild? https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1889102

Discord Server: https://discord.gg/rh8FXgt
Guide updated for 3.22:

Sanctum uniques are back so the build will function again. Do not league-start; there are required uniques that will have low availability until week 2+
Howdy. Looks like fun. Ill need to make some currency. How do you level the build, without respecing to much? Can you starting using skill after you get vixens? Ascendancy order? Sorry if I missed something. Thanks.
You can level with cursed ground support but it will be clunky. I would suggest leveling cold DOT occultist then respecing once you have the cane, vixens, and anathema.

The least important ascendancy node is profane bloom, it is really only there to help with clear. You’re fine switching before Uber lab
Last edited by _Atollo_ on Aug 29, 2023, 10:18:43 PM
Thanks for the info. I will try this out.
Hello, I was looking at buying the Vixens. I looked it up, but wanted to make sure. Do the sockets need to be linked in the Vixens? or just 4 blue/white sockets? Ty
Hi, playing this right now and it feels good, thanks for the build!

Might I suggest using a Loyalty Tattoo of Kaom just for this league, it's an automatic damage mitigation against guardians/pinnacle bosses.

Also, the easiest way of obtaining leech for the build is a watcher's eye with the "% of damage is leeched as life while affected by Vitality".
Last edited by Klauthe on Sep 4, 2023, 8:26:38 AM
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Hello, I was looking at buying the Vixens. I looked it up, but wanted to make sure. Do the sockets need to be linked in the Vixens? or just 4 blue/white sockets?


The Vixen's sockets do not need to be linked

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