3.21 Champion of the Armageddon brands

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FMCspriggan wrote:

A staff is definitely possible, I tried going for one last league but a staff with decent stats was nearly non-existent then so gave up on it again.

If you can get something nice there with some + levels or something like socketed gems are supported by stuff then you might even be able to bump the dmg even further.

Sporeguard works reasonably well. Overall I feel like its a 5, maybe 10% upgrade in defenses and damage compared to the chest I used and that is in the PoB. Keeping in mind I've got the 2max res eldritch mod on there the sporeguard (about 2.5div to buy and 6l it) Was cheaper too and I switched to it completely.

aargh. i didn't notice those mods on your sporeguard. so i'm using it, and only 5L because RNG was mean to me.

however i think it's cool so i'll see how far along i can get on a 5L. if it really need a 6L and RNG doesn't cooperate i can always just buy a cheap 6L.

so far i'm having pretty good success just running ES for brand even with anger. there's that glitch when you turn on anger that you have to watch out for, but i just keep firestorm rolling until ES is back to normal.

build is just great to level. i'm crushing through white maps and moving into yellow. i'll see how it goes :-)

as for the staff idea, there's a couple on trade that look like they could work. but i'm just going to keep rolling with dual wands. in fact, i might go for a shield instead of a 2nd wand at some point.

i'm now getting to the point where i'm a little confused about where to go next. the obvious thing is cluster jewels, but with cluster jewels i'm never sure if it's worth it to use them without having a "perfect" , i.e., really expensive one.

have i mentioned that i'm cheap ? lol

Haha, well it's easy to reach t16 maps on a budget so at the start it doesn't matter that much.
In short, the only thing you really want from the clusters is something to get life leech going and a the 2 jewel sockets it provides. The rest of the notables on them can be adjusted for price and your needs (dps, tank, or utility).

What I did was get the cheapest large cluster jewel I could find that triggers Arcane surge on hit as that's a cheap 10% more damage so it's the best jewel node for us out there given that other nodes give around 7% or less. On a budget you could go with one or more of those lesser nodes though as all the arcane surge does is grant more dmg, it doesn't enable any mechanics we need so any other source of damage is fine too.
Right now I am using a 1div megalomaniac on top for the fire damage leech (blacksmith) and the +1 max all ele res nodes (prismatic carapace) but you can also find the blacksmith node for life leech on small armour or small fire res jewels and those don't even cost 10c

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FMCspriggan wrote:

Haha, well it's easy to reach t16 maps on a budget so at the start it doesn't matter that much.
In short, the only thing you really want from the clusters is something to get life leech going and a the 2 jewel sockets it provides. The rest of the notables on them can be adjusted for price and your needs (dps, tank, or utility).

What I did was get the cheapest large cluster jewel I could find that triggers Arcane surge on hit as that's a cheap 10% more damage so it's the best jewel node for us out there given that other nodes give around 7% or less. On a budget you could go with one or more of those lesser nodes though as all the arcane surge does is grant more dmg, it doesn't enable any mechanics we need so any other source of damage is fine too.
Right now I am using a 1div megalomaniac on top for the fire damage leech (blacksmith) and the +1 max all ele res nodes (prismatic carapace) but you can also find the blacksmith node for life leech on small armour or small fire res jewels and those don't even cost 10c

thanks for the advice !

I'll let you know how it goes :-)

Today I've added a updated PoB link.

Updates:
- Added endgame passive tree so there are now 2 variations of the build
- Added endgame gear for the second variation so variation 1 is now around 5 to 10 divine investment and variation 2 is for around 50 divines
- Added some notes that should summarize most of the Q and A in this thread.

Overall a very nice build, playing it now and it's well rounded for most content.

Only thing that it lacks (for me) is it feels pretty slow in terms of movement speed when flask is not up, so if there is anyway to get some more MS even at a loss of DPS i'd take it tbh.

Yeah, the movement speed is a bit on the lower side.

You could sacrifice 2 talent points to put into Art of the Gladiator to remove the penalty from the armour which gives 5% increased movementspeed and another 2 for Versatility. Apart from that there are no sources from the tree and as of yet I didn't look in to gear/potion/cluster options to fix that yet so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Especially with my current budget which is the expensive gear in the PoB I can safely sacrifice a million or 2 of dps (got 5.1) without getting any issues on maps. Or sacrifice some EHP as it's tuned to not die at all now but a death or 2 every so often isn't a issue if you don't play HC :P

Playing this second time, great and fun build!

Hi! build is going pretty well.

damage is good ,not great, but i still have improvements to make in my gear for sure. i'm really running this build on the cheap, probably less than 2 div at this point. so considering that, i think it's doing quite well and more importantly i'm having a lot of fun with it.

however, the real problem is i'm dying a LOT in t15/t16 maps. t13s are pretty solid , unless i unlock a nasty essence, t14s are a bit iffy, but t15/t16 are quite tough to run.

i'm wondering what i should prioritize for defenses and if there's anything "sneaky" that i might be missing.

for example, i've noticed the armor allocates hematophagy (how ?) which looks quite strong for defense as it allows faster leeching.

any help appreciated.

thanks !


edit: got my damage cranked up quite a bit. i had a WTF? cluster jewel slotted, i don't remember why (i think it followed your old PoB). anyway, put in the new fire damage based cluster and things are noticeably better.

The only sneaky mechanic for defenses in my current build is the overleech ascendancy provided from the forbidden flesh/flame jewels in combination with the timeless jewel that converts leach in to damage reduction which does help a lot. The Sporeguard chest is actually 1 of the blight league items that allows it to be annointed even though it's not jewelry. This setup costs around 10 divine though.

Possible reasons you die are lack or physical damage reduction or chaos damage reduction, those 2 are weaker parts of this build.
I reduce the physical damage taken by having some of the damage taken from converted to fire damage instead. Also having more Armour helps a lot.

As long as you don't have the currency for the leech ascendancy you could take the banner/increased aura effect ascendancy instead so that you can run the armour banner. Using a body armour with a flat reduced physical damage taken roll, or a craft that converts physical damage taken to fire/cold instead also helps.


Addition,
We get most of our armour and a lot of resistances from our aura's so running "%reduced effect of aura's on you" maps can be painful. And if you've got the leech ascendancy + timeless going a no leech mods means you take a lot of extra damage too

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FMCspriggan wrote:

The only sneaky mechanic for defenses in my current build is the overleech ascendancy provided from the forbidden flesh/flame jewels in combination with the timeless jewel that converts leach in to damage reduction which does help a lot. The Sporeguard chest is actually 1 of the blight league items that allows it to be annointed even though it's not jewelry. This setup costs around 10 divine though.

haha. i did figure out that you could anoint sporeguard. that shouldn't be too expensive but the ascendancy is several div so that's a problem.

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Possible reasons you die are lack or physical damage reduction or chaos damage reduction, those 2 are weaker parts of this build.
I reduce the physical damage taken by having some of the damage taken from converted to fire damage instead. Also having more Armour helps a lot.

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As long as you don't have the currency for the leech ascendancy you could take the banner/increased aura effect ascendancy instead so that you can run the armour banner. Using a body armour with a flat reduced physical damage taken roll, or a craft that converts physical damage taken to fire/cold instead also helps.

i don't have the currency, so that's what i'll do.
my watchers eye is the one that has some phy to fire conversion, so that's useful.

i'm very suspicious though that most of the time i'm dying due to spell damage as the build has no block and no spell suppression.

most of the deaths i remember are usually large mobs firing all at once (a GGG signature move), usually from offscreen.

and my chaos is definitely low. i'm running an amethyst flask right now . i know that when i was running poison on hit maps i was getting hit hard until i took the pantheon that limits poison stacks.

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Addition,
We get most of our armour and a lot of resistances from our aura's so running "%reduced effect of aura's on you" maps can be painful. And if you've got the leech ascendancy + timeless going a no leech mods means you take a lot of extra damage too

of course. i had thought about that in terms of maintaing RF and PoF, but i didn't think about the fact that determination will get reduced too.

also this is PoE. in high level maps if you don't have the damage cranked you're screwed. unless maybe you are max block...

i just ran some t15/t16 with the upgraded cluster and things went more smoothly. killing stuff before it can hit you is the only way to win at PoE. LOL.

Thank you so much for your help !