Scion - [3.22] Hidden Blade Corrupting Fever Ascendent: Automated Fever Stacks, Tanky and minimal Clicking! - Forum

Hay All! I wanted to post some current information on my current WIP experimental build focusing on Ascendent applying Corrupting Fever as quick as possible - enter the Hidden Blade! We got Build of the Week :) Thank you for those who have shown interest! I've been working IRL a lot so haven't updated the guide as much but some new information is below including specific ordering for which gear to acquire as you are pushing endgame and this build! I've also updated the PoB with a LOT more information on potential trees and how I worked upto the build in its current form including ALL of the gear I have in game Like Vampire Survivors? You'll like this build :) The build concept is simple; Stack projectile speed and added projectiles ( where possible ) into a Corrupting Fever build and Map with ease! Utilising Returning Projectiles support we have no downside of the 'reduced damage' element of the skills as the focus is to apply CF stacks as quickly as possible which Returning Projectiles massively assists with! We can zoom through a map focusing solely on applying Vulnerability Curse and occasionally using Reap / Vaal Reap on more tanky Rares / Uniques / Bosses. ------------------------------------------ Currently my build works as follows ~5 - 7 million DPS through Corrupting Fever Stacks + 3.5 - 7million Reap ; scaling upto 12 million DPS CF Stacks through endgame investment Unseen Strike has 9 additional projectiles from GMP and Greater Volley Unseen Strike Projectile Speed is currently at 180% 81% Max Resists and 60K + Armour for good defensive layers Use of Frenzy charges and Endurance charges Some general gameplay - only our self cast curse being clicked! And I've recorded some quick T16 Wandering Path Gameplay you can check out on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diA9o9SID4c ------------------------------------------ The Mechanics We rely on the Unseen Strike Skill that comes from the Heist Unique :Hidden Blade! but we don't actually care about scaling its damage. It's main focus is to cover the screen in blades to apply our corrupting fever debuff onto enemies by maximising the number of projectiles and speed of these projectiles ( including returning ) to get to max Fever stacks ASAP! We utilise Reap / Vaal Reap for additional boss damage and cast our flame dash / vulnerability curse while supported by lifetap to spend enough life to maintain the Corrupting Fever skill effect. The playstyle makes for a relaxing and Console / Steam Deck friendly playstyle even in juiced maps as we solely focus on our curse and movement abilities; letting our unseen blade apply our CF stacks! The goal of this build was to provide an alternative method of the traditional Corrupting Fever style build not solely relying on Exsanguinate and Reap combination and to leverage some of the changes from the patch notes. ------------------------------------------ In term's of scaling the build. Initially we focus on scaling DoT and Physical Damage across our tree and fitting in enough Auras. We path across two axis in our passive tree so we can get the relevant Armour and Physical / Life Cost Wheels and also to reach Eldritch Battery. We utilise EB on tree until we can acquire a Skin of the Lords with the correct links and EB on it. From here, we can then do a major respec of our tree and focus on Physical and Physical Damage over Time and Auras / Curse Clusters / Megalomaniac to push this builds damage further! Further details on how to scale this through item acquisition can be found later in the post. The final question... why Ascendent. The Hidden Blade relies on perma phasing and through Ascendent we can take the Ranger and Gladiator ascendancies first and then opt into utilising Forbidden Flesh & Flame jewels for the Berserker class. As we do Attacks we can gain Rage and add this as an Eldirch implicit on our gloves to enhance this for some extra QoL in terms of Movement Speed, Leech uptime, Stun Immunity with higher rage and, ofc, the flat 15% more damage! The benefits of being an Ascendent in the endgame of this build without it just being typical PoB ticking all of the things Perma Phasing: Thanks to Raider Ascendency Access to Frenzy Charge Generation: Raider Ascendency gives us 10% change to gain Frenzy OR gain as Weapon Corruption Access to Endurance Charge Generation: Inexorate gives us 25% chance for Endurance charge on hit High uptime on Onslaught: Through getting max frenzy charges from Ascendency and/or weapon corruptions Easy Blinded Enemies: Through Gladiator getting 25% and high number of 'attacks' from Hidden Blade High Armour: We focus on gaining high armour and can easily get 50 - 80k armour through investment Easy Lifetap: Easy to upkeep Lifetap as we use Vulnerability / Movement regularly to refresh CF stacks Perma Adrenaline: Through Death's Rush instead of a circle of Guilt we can maintain high Adrenaline Increased Damage while Leeching: Take advantage of damage while leeching with Watcher's eye, Jewel affix OR Berserker Ascendency Late game perma Rage: Easy uptime on Rage with Berserker Forbidden Flesh / Flesh setup Increased Max Elemental Resistances: Options to have your Max Elemental Resistances over 80% through various options ------------------------------------------ I'll be adding a fully endgame setup shortly and alternative tree is WIP in the PoB ( at the bottom of the post ) with the goal of being a fully tattoo'd tree for additional damage, defences and QoL benefits! This will be added to one of the reserved posts for true Endgame targets ------------------------------------------ I'm also working on a levelling approach for the build which follows a similar progression to traditional Exsanguinate / Reap / CF style builds so it is straightforward to switch into this build once you can acquire the Hidden Blade which will be added to one of the reserved posts Current Pro's and Con's of the Build PROs Fun and easy gameplay ; spending 290 life after the initial Corrupting Fever skill cast resets the skill duration so simply run and cast vulnerability / reap as required. Fast Mapping Smooth Gameplay : No need to position or target directly as Unseen Strike handles this for us Easily hit Max CF stacks on enemies : multiple projectiles / projectile speed and returning projectiles Hand Friendly! No need to super spam buttons.... Automated Flasks : Just run and gun! Cheap Build with Hidden Blade / CIP / Death's Rush and Dying Sun being the main unique components. All other items focus on resists, Physical Skill Gem Scaling and armour Use Lots of Tattoos! All Spare Dex nodes? Turn into Projectile Speed! All Spare Int Nodes? Curse Effect / Max Life / Aura Effect! All Spare Strength Nodes? Explody! Can do any Reflect map ( don't cast Reap on Phys reflect! ) ANNOINT BEEF ------------------------------------------ CONs DoT skills aren't effective as bossing Characters Regen Maps can feel rough but do-able Damage Scaling comes through gem levels so becomes more expensive to scale long term Major Tree stretch to get best advantages of multiple options and Auras Auras or Clusters to scale in the future Less Damage than Champion CF build but more automated Hidden Blade / Unseen Strike MTX when!? might need to turn down sound effects! ( I use a weapon swap in Hideout! ) as it can't be turned off Endgame Gearing The build isn't too difficult to gear up in the first instance but it does REQUIRE the Hidden blade in the first instance. All other Weapons First and foremost the key item in this build is The Hidden Blade Support the Unseen Strike skill with Greater Multiple Projectiles == Greater Volley == Returning Projectiles This will fire an automated barrage of projectiles around the screen in a Nimis style effect! Making applying our Corrupting Fever Stacks practically automated! ------------------------------------------ Cold Iron Point Cold Iron Point is a great weapon for this build until you can self craft a BIG dagger upgrade that can replace it. The easier and cheaper early option is to self corrupt CIPs for the Damage Over Time Corruption ------------------------------------------ Offhand Weapons It's heavily recommended to have some basic offhand wands / daggers with another flame dash or movement skill socketed in so you can turn 'off' unseen blade when sitting in hideout :) ------------------------------------------ Late Game Self Crafted Dagger Later in the league it may be possible to craft something like this as a theorycrafted item to replace Cold Iron Point Another possibility is to leverage something like the Infernal Blade from Heist base due to the following implicit " Trigger level 30 flame dash when using socketed spell where flame dash level 30 is automated and link it with the following Vulnerability == Lifetap == Increased Area of Effect / Enhance So you cast your Curse and you automatically move and it lets us support our Curse with AoE or Additional Quality! Jewellery Amulet Current option on this item is a +1 Decent Helmet with DOT suffix and space to craft 'increase Damage while leeching' We can Annoint Beef or go for a +30 strength node and utilise the Honoured Tattoo of the Warlord for +1 to all Strength Gems Other Options may be the new Replica Dragonfang's Flight unique to boost Corrupting Fever levels and gain some Reservation Efficiency to save on some passive tree points ------------------------------------------ Rings Our first ring is a resist ring. Help us cap our resists Our second ring could be a self crafted ring OR a great option is Death Rush as it caps our Chaos Resist and provides almost perma Adrenaline ------------------------------------------ Belt Our belt slot is focused on finishing those resists and getting some life on a Stygian Vise. Later options would be a high rolled Darkness Enthroned with some great 6 mod, corrupted Abyss Jewels socketed in Armours In terms of Armour we focus on some key basics Life Resists Movement Speed And then we want to utilise Eldrich Implicits to get some general mods for the build. There are no specifics where links should go between Helmet, Gloves or Boots. Body Armour is just focused on high Armour ( Exalt Slammed +9% Cold Res KEKW! ) and life really. Endgame goal would be a Skin of the Lords with Eldrich Battery but these currently don't exist in league. ------------------------------------------ using Divine Blessing Malevolence in the build and Eldrich Battery so we can afford it! Defensive Implicits is useful here ------------------------------------------ Auras in the Gloves. Implicits, again have a lot of variety and I've settled on Increased Physical Damage over time and Projectile Pierce ( still testing this ) ------------------------------------------ Boots are just Movement Speed, Life and Resists. Ideally getting some sort of Tailwind or Spell Suppression would be ideal on boots if high investment Flasks Nothing too special with our flasks; we just want to automate them as much as possible! Jewels In terms of Jewels, Uniques, Cluster Jewels and others we have a few options we can apply in the build but these are not currently on my Character in game Some ideas which factors into the Future Testing Large Physical 8 node Cluster Jewels : Master the Fundamentals, Iron Breaker and Force Multiplier Medium Physical Damage over time 4/5 node Cluster Jewels : Blood Artist, Flow of Life Medium Aura 4/5 node Cluster Jewels : Introspection , Master of Command Small Curse 2 node Cluster Jewels : Doedre's Gluttony Megalomaniac : Evil Eye, Flow of Life, Victim Maker OR Wish for Death Watcher's Eye : Early on Vitality Leech mods but later go for Pride , Malevolence and Determination Mods Intuitive Leap : Save 3 points pathing to Charisma And some good rare jewels will be big DoT DPS Improvements also And some Uniques I'm testing Tattoos And some details on the tattoo's currently utilised on the build for some additional QoL :) Tattoo of the Ngamahu Warmonger Currently we have 10% chance to Explode but may experiment with up to 20% here Tattoo the Ramako Sniper Currently have 5 Dex nodes set as this Tattoo for 40% increased Projectile Speed Honoured Tattoo of the Warlord Anoint Beef for an additional +1 Strength Skills Scaling the Build The benefits of a Physical Spell Skill Gem in Corrupting Fever is we have a few main ways of scaling the damage in the build as we push further and further in the endgame in the following order of ease of access / impact: Gem Levels : Do more than any other factor in scaling damage Physical Damage % : Easy to get on the tree Physical Dmg spending life Mastery : Such an easy, BIG, DPS increase for one point! [li]Aura Effect : Thanks to Malevolence, Pride, War Banner, Flesh & Stone and Herald of Purity all being scaled with the effect Damage over Time % : Big DPS boost but mostly accessible via Cluster Jewels and/or timeless jewels Curse Effect : Since we curse so much Curse effect and benefits from Clusters / Megalomaniac for Curse Culling can be BIG ------------------------------------------ Upgrade Priority So a big component is how do you progress through your Atlas and ensure you are buying the right upgrades at the right time? Obviously, cost of these items is a BIG factor and entirely dependent on WHEN in the league cycle and the popularity of these items in the Meta so this is NOT a price based priority but more of a likely easy of access priority. Hidden Blade : Getting this Unique once in Maps it enables the entire build playstyle and can then let you drop Exsanguinate Cold Iron Point : Getting this Unique once in Maps is an easy boost to DPS Stygian Vise : As soon as i84 Stygian's hit trade as a reasonable price you should focus on essence crafting a good, high life, resistance capping belt to carry you to late game. Abyssal Eye Jewel : Some great sources of additional flat life and damage QoL. DoT while dual Wielding / + Life as the priorities here Big resist ring : Go ROG it out or pickup a BIG rare resist ring to relieve pressure from your armour and other sources. +1 Amulet : Get yourself a good +1 Phys amulet with a decent Life ROLL: bonus if it has an empty / craftable prefix to add 'damage while leeching' mod. Corrupting Fever 40% Inc Dmg Helm Enchant : Get yourself a new helmet or get your current helm enchanted with the CF DMG mod. Eldritch Implicits on items : Start Rolling for Eldritch Implicits across your gearing. Priotity on Vuln Curse Effect ( Helm ) , Phys Damage over Time ( Gloves ) and Action Speed ( Boots ) 21/20 Gems : Get those gems qualitied up and go for the corrupts for 21 on Corrupting Fever! Empower : Corrupting Fever / Reap can work amazingly on a 5L for a long period of time. Once you hit red maps the additional benefit of a 6th link can help lots. Initially you can start with lifetap on CF / Reap and then replace this with an Empower later. 3 / 4 passive Jewels : Getting some good Jewels to fill out your Jewel slots with 3 or 4 good modifiers can be big. Lots of sources of damage as well as % increased Life are good to look for! Alt Quality Gems : Starting to get your alt quality gems adds some additional projectile speed to your Unseen strike & QoL across the rest of the build Death's Rush : Getting this ring isn't as important early but can help once you push into Red maps with almost capped Chaos Resist & Adrenaline Dying Sun : You end up with 4 obvious flasks after a while and adding a Dying Sun with the 'Used when hit Rare or Unique' enemy helps with getting those CF stacks onto tougher enemies quickly Cluster Jewels : I didn't add any cluster Jewels till I hit 95 / 96. They are a nice DPS boost but not a priority early on. Go for large Clusters first as DoT medium Clusters can be expensive due to their use across multiple builds Corrupted CIPs : If the market allows, aim for a increased DoT corruption on your CIP! Its a nice DPS boost! Megalomaniac : This is an optional Cluster if you can get the right combination of 3 passives that benefit the build in some way! Forbidden Flame / Flesh : Adding Berserker Forbidden Flame / Flesh adds a nice DPS boost once you have the Armour to offset the additional Damage Taken! *Any Skin of the Lords : Especially true early league, we don't need to go straight for a SoTL with Eldritch Battery on ( especially with link colours / keystone cost ) and we can pick a less popular Skin if the link colours are correct! Wind Dancer, Iron Will, Lethe Shade, Divine Shield, Unwavering Stance and Resolute Technique all work with the build. Others can also be considered but might add a downside ( such as Eternal Youth ) or can be ignored by the build entirely ( Conduit ) Corrupted Hidden Blade : Due to the lower availability of Hidden Blade's this might be much harder / more expensive to get the DoT corruption but a Spell Damage OR Frenzy Gain corruption is also big! Eldrich Battery Skin of the Loyal : Pick up your Eldritch Battery Skin late to allow the final tree transition to double Cluster jewel setups! Stormshroud : Solve ailment immunity with avoid Shocked on boots and eye jewel Selt Crafted BiS Dagger : Crafted Dagger to replace CIP late late game - more detail to come! ------------------------------------------ Further Experimentation I'm going to be experimenting with some other options on how to Automate the build further. One option I've seen is to utilise a Mageblood to solve Resistances and then utilise Asenath's Gentle Touch with a Vulnerability on Hit mod and go for +1 curse to fully automate curse triggering. Another popular suggestion has been to leverage Vortex on left click for even easier Corrupting Fever stack refresh ( with links to lifetap and more ) and finally also potential to use Whirling blades rather than Flame Dash ( your preference here really! ) I also think this build could be very fun with a Head Hunter increasing our Projectiles and Movement speed / Survivability Also, with the new Keystone tattoo's it would be possible to replace the EB Skin of the Lords with another option. More DPS / Less Armour == Dialla's with +2 corruptions / +1 socketed, Tankier option would be Magebane or Wind Dancer Skin The endgame Circle of Guilt provides more DPS but at the cost of the Adrenaline boost in dense maps so your preference here. ------------------------------------------ Easy Trade Links To help with some of the late item acquisition where specific Cluster Jewels or items are required you can find the trade URLs for them here Where possible we have put options together on what combination of items you may ultimately choose. For the Clusters, we do need to ensure we get a source of intelligence to help with later usage of tattoos and final build scaling. For Megalomaniac usage; getting the exact passives is exceptionally difficult so we've created a list of passives that work with the build; you can choose which one suits your budget ( if any ) and preferred approach. Endgame Cluster Links https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/P9Y3QBgHL https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/nBm8vylu0 Circle of Guild Endgame Trade Link https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/XEz8LrbIP Megalomaniac https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/ZLGj5L6SQ Ideal Jewels https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/6Q5n69kSG Timeless Jewels https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/Y85XYlDFY Some build Specifics In 3.22; Hidden blade actually received a noticeable BUFF due to its triggering timer being changes in the patch notes https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3409617 " Unseen Strike, triggered by The Hidden Blade Unique Dagger, no longer has a cooldown of 0.5 seconds. While this doesn't seem like much at first it actually makes this build viable. Thanks to the Raider Ascendency we can now trigger Unseen blade every 0.5 seconds rather than every 1 second as previous. Essentially doubling our opportunity for applying Corrupting Fever stacks. Additionally, Returning Projectiles support makes a big change due to no downside ( returning proj dmg doesnt effect CF ) so we can take advantage of the 'pierce all enemies on returning projectiles' and them mechanically overlapping and providing multiple opportunities for applying our Fever Stacks. Finally we can take advantage of Projectile Speed sources to increase thie hits of our unseen strike skill. With an aim of doubling the projectile speed Anomalous Greater Multiple Projectiles (+10%) Divergent Greater Volley (+20%) Returning Projectiles (+10%) 50 Dexterity sacrificed for 40% projectile speeds on Tattoos! Changelog August 23rd 0.1: Initial Post August 23rd 0.2 : Added Multiple edits to gearing and initial YouTube demo video August 24th 0.3 : Further Context and additions August 26th 0.4 : Added a Description Section to better explain the fundamentals of the build for introduction & added changelog August 27th 0.4.1 : Added Why Ascendent List August 27th 0.4.2 : Added Updated PoBB tree information August 27th 0.4.3 : Updated Scaling the build explanations with clear item progression August 27th 0.4.4 : Added Stormshroud for Ailment immunity August 31th 0.4.5 : Minor Edits to guide post and formatting / added trade links to scaling the build section September 19th 0.5.0 : We got Built of the Week! BIG update to PoB, added sales links for items such as Megalomaniacs and added future opportunities for MOAR automation section. PoB includes potential levelling GEMS and more Trees too! Next planned updates Levelling Guide / Gearing and Gem Choices in PoB Endgame Goal Gearing Information More detailed YouTube Demo's of the build Megalomania Trade links for priority Passives Cluster Jewel Trade links Jewel Socket ( inc Abyss ) trade links Eldrich Implicit Priority vs Influenced items Crafting Guide for Endgame BiS rare dagger Address Questions / Feedback More Formatting to Guide Thanks very much for reading through the build showcase! I hope it encourages you to want to check out the build, provide some much welcome feedback or do some other fun things with Hidden Blade since it's update! The Path of Building is Being Actively Updated on my PoBB Profile here** Last edited by Guitaraholic on Sep 19, 2023, 8:07:36 AM Last bumped on Jan 5, 2024, 1:26:00 AM	Posted by Guitaraholic on Aug 23, 2023, 8:17:18 AM Quote this Post
Reserved	Posted by Guitaraholic on Aug 23, 2023, 8:17:36 AM Quote this Post
Reserved	Posted by Guitaraholic on Aug 23, 2023, 8:17:45 AM Quote this Post
I'm excited to see your updates. Keep this up!	Posted by Nobodyz on Aug 23, 2023, 9:39:01 PM Quote this Post
How do you level up on this character?	Posted by asskross on Aug 24, 2023, 9:37:21 AM Quote this Post
" asskross wrote: How do you level up on this character? I levelled this Character using Ethereal Knives till act 4 then as the traditional Exsanguinate Scion adding in Corrupting Fever and Reap. I dropped Exsanguinate once I had my Hidden Blade and went from there :) If you check my PoBB profile I have an Exsanguinate Ascendent I've used a few times for Infinite Heist and still utilise elements of this tree while levelling with a few tweaks like masteries etc. My plan is to see how far I can push this build and then provide an Endgame variant as well as leaguestart & twink style levelling to go with it! Cheers Last edited by Guitaraholic on Aug 26, 2023, 4:45:27 PM	Posted by Guitaraholic on Aug 24, 2023, 10:32:26 AM Quote this Post
Thnx for your reply. Good luck!	Posted by asskross on Aug 24, 2023, 11:04:28 AM Quote this Post
What support would you use while waiting to get empower?	Posted by Hawkspeed on Aug 25, 2023, 9:35:34 PM Quote this Post
" Hawkspeed wrote: What support would you use while waiting to get empower? Low Level corrupted Empower currently going for 50 - 60c which can be a good start once it hits level 2 but Lifetap is a good 6th link option. I waited till I had the 6L for adding empower Last edited by Guitaraholic on Aug 26, 2023, 4:45:09 PM	Posted by Guitaraholic on Aug 26, 2023, 4:22:48 PM Quote this Post
Please make more videos mapping and bossing, build looks good but needs more showcase	Posted by _BRS_ on Aug 27, 2023, 8:28:33 AM Quote this Post