[3.27 HC] Grey Wind Life Stacking Consecrated Path Totems [Video]

Can confirm this to be my opinion for two main reasons:

1. Scion gets more benefit than any other class out of the central jewels. After much experimenting, determined optimal set up to be a life light of meaning bottom center, a 75% foulborn might of meek in the left center and a foulborn unnatural instinct that deletes only notables in the right center.

2. Scion can both get an extra totem via hierophant and either:
a. Totem based taunt on hit from champion or
b. 25% extra block chance and more damage in longer fights with gladiator
while still having a slot left over for the Aul ascendancy to be ele and crit immune.

Tried the build as hiero and it was not nearly as strong because it did not scale life as efficiently and had to spend -MANY- more nodes to max out block/spell block. Also tried as a 'zerker, which was definitely fun, but also much more fragile as I focussed on maximixing effectiveness of rage rather than block. Zerker probably had similar overall damage, but nowhere close to the raw life or tankiness. No other class seemed like a reasonable candidate to even try.

I ran a not-quite-optimized Ascendant version all the way to 100 for the first time this past league. Definitely recommend, will likely play again.

-O

Thanks for the reply!
I used this build after i tried 2 others which i didn't like and this was a really cheap way on getting a strong build.

My level 98 has 21.6k life which in it's own is already very tanky :)
If I play this again coming league I may go for a little less life and take the totem life nodes as they tend to die too quickly in higher content. Resists are all above 80 and when taking reduced cursed effect on some jewels you can basically be immunte to curses as well.

Only downside in my view is that the damage scaling is limited. You can get perfect rolls on the required items but after that I am not sure how to further improve damage.

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JohnnyV76#3764 wrote:

Thanks for the reply!
I used this build after i tried 2 others which i didn't like and this was a really cheap way on getting a strong build.

My level 98 has 21.6k life which in it's own is already very tanky :)
If I play this again coming league I may go for a little less life and take the totem life nodes as they tend to die too quickly in higher content. Resists are all above 80 and when taking reduced cursed effect on some jewels you can basically be immunte to curses as well.

Only downside in my view is that the damage scaling is limited. You can get perfect rolls on the required items but after that I am not sure how to further improve damage.

Regarding damage improvement: A later iteration of the build, which I did not end up having the time/energy to write up, took the damage much further by scaling back the life some and adding a 4 link perforate generals cry on autoexertion. This requires some changes to the tree to get nodes making sure warcries grant at least 2 power and warcries grant rage. Because the cooldown on generals cry is very short, this results in walking around with maximum rage at all times if you use the warcry cooldown reduction wheel. You will also need a manually cast desecrate, mostly for boss fights. My recollection is that adding this tech can more than double the damage for boss fights, as perforate in blood stance does tremendous damage even in a 4-link. With unlimited budget, you might scale this even further using Apostate for a 6-link generals cry to go with the totems in the boots. That will get into very high budget territory, not just for the chest, but because you will need very high ES gloves & boots to make up for the loss of Kaoms. It will also sacrifice some defenses (Or require you to get them in a different way) because the Aul ascendancy will no longer be useful. Nevertheless, it sounds like the sort of thing you want to be looking at. Specifics are beyond the scope of this guide, but I don't mind brainstorming/answering questions here if you wish.

Luck!

-O