Sunbro's The Big Ka-Boom Build (Endgame Shield Wall Nuker Warbringer)

Yes! You heard it right. We are using shield wall here!

If you don't like to read a wall of text, then here's a video explaining how the build works: https://youtu.be/xrmqklyI6VE

And check out this link (maxroll.gg) for the passive tree, items and skills used: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/8r158t01

So, let’s start first with a bit of refresher for the shield wall and how to get more damage scaling. Like I have said in my previous video, you will need to get attack damage, physical damage, and as well as melee damage to increase the explosion damage of shield wall. The area damage doesn’t give any boost to the skill though, but the area of effect stat does help big time, and you can get as much as 7 meters radius explosion with this build.

Another thing to note is that shield wall’s explosion damage scales with the armor bonus you have in your shield. It increases its physical damage per 15 armor so, the more armor you have in your shield, the better the damage.
Now, there are other methods to further scale the damage of shield wall, and this is by adding the rage mechanic in the build. Rage gives you more attack damage per 1 stack, and this build can give you 34 stack of rage which converts to 34 percent more attack damage. The best part is, you can maintain rage in mobbing or even during boss fights by simply using your shield wall ability and smashing it with your other skills.

Shield wall does have a support gem called font of rage which grants you rage generation while the skill is active. This helps you maintain your rage to maximum levels most of the time. Then, you can add the rage support in your mace strike to gain 3 rage per melee hit. The best part is, every time you hit your shield wall and destroy it using your mace strike with the rage support, it will then generate rage stack. Basically, this build allows you to gain 6 rage per hit on shield wall, but it gets better in missions since enemies that are also caught by the explosion will generate rage, allowing you to generate more rage in one single blow.

The font of rage, plus the unforgiving and prolonged fury notables in the passive skill tree allows you to maintain this rage stack, giving more boost to the shield wall explosion damage. But wait, there’s another way to further boost the explosion damage of shield wall, and that is by using the war banner buff which you can get from the mercenary class.

This buff grants you more attack damage which helps boost the explosion damage of shield wall also. And here’s the neat part about this skill, it seems like every time you break the shield wall, it will generate valor which is the stack needed to activate the skill. You can easily generate the maximum 50 valor and further boost the explosion damage of shield wall with this trick. This means that you don’t need to kill enemies, nor wait for a couple of seconds while facing a unique enemy to generate valor, as you can easily do that by destroying your shield wall.

While boosting the damage of shield wall, I also boost the damage of my other abilities like bone shatter, hammer of the gods, and then stampede. Probably, the weakest damage dealing skill I have here is stampede, but you can use this skill to break shield wall and do tons of damage to enemies while repositioning yourself or even getting out of dangerous situations. Also, leap slam is really not a damage skill, and I use this for escape, especially when I get trapped in dangerous ritual situations, or just need some breathing room in breaches. The maim and holy descent support also helps a lot when it comes to survivability while using leap in dangerous situations.

For my shield wall breaking skill, I usually use either the normal mace strike or bone shatter. This works so well also because I picked the war bringer ascendancy which gives armor breaking. Each time I destroy shield wall, enemies caught by the explosion will be susceptible the armor breaking. The only missing passive in my ascendancy class is the imploding impacts which will further boost the damage of this build because of the negative armor debuff that the passive notable gives.

Another thing that I should add is when you are breaking shield wall while using bone shatter with the break endurance support, it will then activate the support gem giving you endurance charges. Now, you can use this endurance charges to further boost the damage of your hammer of the gods through the seismic war cry, that grants additional attack to your big hammer per endurance charge consume. Basically, this is not just a shield wall nuking build, but it’s also tuned towards killing bosses in the game.

And finally, let’s discuss about the defense of this build. This is a tanky war bringer build because I have the turtle charm notable that allows me to block not just hits from attacks and projectiles, but also those dangerous area attacks that can also come from bosses. This is not just good for bossing though, as it’s a massive help also when dealing with swarm of enemies. The only problem though, is I got 53 percent block chance currently, and I want to scale it further in the future. Now, there are unique shields out there that grants life per block, or even gives block the lucky mechanic that re-rolls your block chance, allowing you to block more efficiently.

However, I don’t want to use it because it would cripple the nuking power of this build. Shield wall nuking needs a lot of armor from shield, and most of those unique shields don’t have insane armor values like the rare ones. That is why instead of using those unique shields, I instead make sure that I have maxed out elemental resistance, and as well as high physical damage reduction through armor. Probably, the survivability of this build will get better as I get more block chance from my passive, which I intend to do. However, do remember that there’s no real immortal build in path of exile 2 though, and always be reminded that everything can kill you in this game. My best advice is, stay away from those purple volatile plants and molten crags. Avoid any area damage as much as possible as it still has a 50 percent chance to kill you.

So, that’s all about it. I hope that you try this nuker warrior build, as it’s really an amazing build to play with. Leveling the warrior is kind of tough though at early levels, and I can’t deny this fact. However, once you reach endgame, mapping and bossing becomes trivial because of how insane the survivability paired with good damage this build gives to your war bringer. It may not be a zooming build and can clear a map in minutes, but it makes sure that you can clear any maps with any rarities while using this build. Also, the nuking part is really satisfying, and all of the skills does synergy well with one another, making this a great build for warrior.