[3.27] Torchoak Step Shrapnel Ballista Chieftain (HC Viable)
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My name is Topotante and this is my build which tries to make the most of Torchoak Step in a hardcore viable way. I took this build to level 100 in the Keepers of the Flame HC trade League.
Damage is hard to calculate on this build but it's roughly 1-2 mil dps on bosses. For clear it's about 10-15mil dps (you get a lot more damage when you have more targets to hit with pierce).  How does this build work? We build everything around affix on the unique boots Torchoak Steps which states "Totems Reflect 100% of their maximum Life as Fire Damage to nearby Enemies when Hit". With the unique amulet Eye of Innocence affix that states "Take 100 Fire Damage when you Ignite an Enemy" this causes our totem to take a hit of 100 fire damage each time they ignite an enemy (with 100% ignite chance this is equivalent to every time they hit an enemy they deal 100% of their maximum Life as Fire Damage). Note that this damage from Torchoak step does not scale with any modifiers to damage or AoE or anything really so we need to be creative on how we scale damage (that just means make our totems hit a lot with pierce, additional projectiles, additional totem, etc.). We can also lower enemies resistances to scale damage too. We try to make our totems hit as many times as we can and furthermore we use Empire's Grasp to cause totems hit to pulls enemies in with reverse knockback. If that kind of meme build interests you then read on. Path Of Building
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Pros and Cons
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Pros
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+ Very Tanky (90% all elemental resistances, chaos resistance, 7 endurance charges, ~50k armour) + Blends the screen in meme style. + Off meta and has a lot of room for customization. + Cheap uniques mean you can easily corrupt gear and get some strong corrupt implicits. Cons
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- Unique heavy so not HCSSF, although the uniques are cheap. - Not doing Ubers in HC but maybe do them in SC with some build magic. - Single Target is a pain when there is only one mob in the area (there are some ways to build for single target but even then it is pain. - Have to look away when the blending action begins (it will melt your frames). Gear
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Weapon:
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Attack speed scales how many ignites we can do, projectile speed scales the distance Shrapnel ballista projectiles travel, the less damage does not affect our damage output at all (win-win-win). We also use a Foulborn version of Quill Rain which lets us use bow attacks when we have insufficient mana. ------------------------------------------- Body Armour:
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We use so many uniques in this build so we don't have many places to get flat life. If you are in Softcore you can opt for Dialla's Malefaction as you can get +4 to the level of Shrapnel ballista (red sockets on shrapnel ballista). If you are lucky and can get a double corrupted Dialla's with +2 proj and +1 level of gems, this will be +8 to the levels of shrapnel ballista as the +1 affects empower and shrapnel ballista (but it's not very HC viable then). ------------------------------------------- Helmet:
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This bad body can fit so much totem life in it. This is a big reason why we go chieftain. More overcapped fire resistance = more totem life = more damage. Note: Look out for disgusting cluster jewels like which give a lot of fire resistance as they can make you build very strong. ------------------------------------------- Boots:
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It's in the name of the build so yes we need. ------------------------------------------- Gloves:
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We need these for the reverse knockback to pull things into totems to blend them. ------------------------------------------- Quiver:
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A penetrating quiver that we slam an essence of insanity on for (1+2)=3 addtional pierces for projectiles. More pierces = more ignites = more eye of innocence procs = more torchoak step procs = more damage. Additionally getting maximum life, fire resistance, and projectile speed help as well. The lightning damage is a must a we need to have our hits from shrapnel ballista ignite (with stormfire), but we don't want any fire damage (for Elemental Equilibrium to inflict enemies with fire exposure. You can also get the lightning damage from an abysal jewel instead of from the quiver so that mod isn't needed on a quiver. ------------------------------------------- Ring 1:
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We want to deal lightning damage to ignite and ideally no fire damage so we can use Elemental Equilibrium to inflict enemies with fire exposure, since torchoak step does fire damage. ------------------------------------------- Ring 2:
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This is a generic max life and chaos resistance ring but the other mods are nice too. The intelligence saves us having to take a +30 int node as we do need some intelligence for Flammability. ------------------------------------------- Amulet:
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If we don't have this we can't reliably hit our totems so this is a must. Rolls on this don't matter at all (implicits are nice for stats though so blessed as needed). ------------------------------------------- Belt:
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We use this because getting a gem that has "30% increased armour if you haven't killed recently" on a build where "we" don't kill at all due to totems kills not counting as "our" kills, we can get 120% increased armour plus some extra states on top of that. Too hard to pass up. ------------------------------------------- Flasks:
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------------------------------------------- Extra projectiles (damage multiplier) and additonal fire resistance (increased damage). :) ------------------------------------------- Armour Good :) ------------------------------------------- Faster Better ------------------------------------------- Instant life when low / panic flask. ------------------------------------------- Just topping flask off. ------------------------------------------- Gems and Links
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6Link (Main Skill - Shrapnel Ballista)
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Shrapnel Ballista - shotgunning is good as it's allows for more ignite procs on a single target. It also saves us a link so we don't have to use ballista totem support and some other bow skill, also if we did that we couldn't scale the totem life using empower as it would scale the bow skill and not the ballista totem support where the life comes from. Empower - More levels of ballista totem = more totem life = more damage. Combustion - gives us some chance to ignite as well as lowering the enemies fire resistance which is one of the few ways we can scale damage. Barrage Support - More projectiles = More ignites = More damage Multiple Totems - More totems without having to worry about the less damage modifier is a win. Faster Attacks - More hits per second, this one is not as impactful so it can be flexed (I had not tried it but maybe GMP is good to flex in here, idk) 4Link (CWDT - Molten Shell Setup)
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CWDT - Self explanatory (downlevel this as you want to suit your needs). Molten Shell - We build a lot of armour so this is our skill (you can vaal it to if you want to self cast it when in a pinch as well as benefitting from it when it procs on cwdt). More Duration - Self explanatory. Lifetap - We reserve almost all of mana so we don't want to have mana cost on this or it won't proc. 4Link
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Our movement skill of choice (I don't like blink arrow but charlize theron). Endurance Charge generator if we don't generate them by Inexorable (25% chance when hit). Lifetap - We reserve almost all of mana so we don't want to have mana cost or we can't cast the linked skills. Flammability - Our curse of the build, lowers fire resistance of enemies and Torchoak Step deals fire damage. 4Link (Aura setup, ideally you have +2 to socketed AoE/Aura gems corrupt on this piece)
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Vaal Rejuvenation Totem - Drop this on your totems if you stack up a lot so they don't kill themselves as fast. Determination - Armour good. Purity of Fire - Fire resistance and maximum fire resistance! We need this right here! With a level 21 gem and +2 to socketed AoE/Aura gems corrupt we can get 1% additional max fire resistance so keep that in mind. Haste - This is your choice 50% aura, I guess you could do purity of elements here, actually now that I think about it maybe purity of elements is better idk. Ascendancy Points
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Tasalio, Cleansing Water: This allows us to scale fire resistance to the moon without an issue that we are sacrificing other resistances. Valako Storm's Embrace: We get a lot of maximum resistance easily since we don't have many useful stats on jewels so we can get +2% maximum fire resistance on jewels to hit 90%. Hinekora, Death's Fury: This is nice since due to reverse knockback pulling everything together, we get a lot of value from this node. Ngamahu, Flame's Advance: The +4 strength component of this node means we can tattoo all our +10 strength nodes with the following tattoos: This will cap ignite chance and save us having to take any chance to ignite nodes on the tree. This can scale our knockback all the way up to 100% if you want. This can be used to add a bit of maim which is nice to slow mobs who pull away from getting pulled in by the reverse knockback and the slow is just good in general for defense. Bandits
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Kill all or Alira. Alira is nice because fire resistance is damage but if the +1 points makes a difference go for that. Disclaimer: There is still a lot to add to the build. This build took some inspiration from Ydoum's "The definitive Chieftain Torchoak Step reflect galvanic arrow ballistas guide" so you can see that guide below: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3431407 Last edited by Topotante#7765 on Dec 9, 2025, 8:01:39 PM Last bumped on Dec 9, 2025, 7:59:51 PM
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