Good Morning Folks. One of the side projects that I have been working on is a Toxic Rain Champion. I’ve played Toxic Rain before and I have played so many Champion builds… but I have never played Toxic Rain ON Champion. Mostly I am going down this path because I am somewhat tired of Lightning Arrow, yet I also seem to be drawn to creating at least one bow character each league. Clearly, I am doing this wrong because I should be playing my normal Lightning Arrow set up with the new Elemental Hit of the Spectrum instead. I may respec at some point and do this because so many perfect elemental bows are being crafted with the league mechanic that nearly perfect bows… are dirt cheap. However, I am a weirdo and seem to crave doing a thing in spite of it not necessarily being the optimal scenario.
I am loosely following some templating with the tree that ends up creating a wildly different structure than I am used to. I have plenty of regrets to respec this later, but for now, I am going with it so that I can learn the whys of this particular pathing structure. Specifically, I think it is due to this weird snaking column of nodes that do damage over time instead of the normal pathing which puts you down a path of scaling additional arrows and crit. There is a lot of devoting nodes to flasks… and I might remove all of that because I am not sure it is actually worth it. My goal in life is to never have to hit my flasks… and a lot of the scaling is specific to life and mana flasks which I hope to reach a point of never actually having to hit.
I am already off the path because one of the things I have always hated about Toxic Rain is managing wither stacks. I hate withering step full stop. So instead of running toxic rain in both a Mirage Archer setup and a totem setup… I am shifting things up a bit and mixing in Toxic Rain of Withering which went in as a transfigured gem last league. The idea is that the totems debuff while dealing damage and then my Mirage Archer setup deals the bulk of the damage output. Alternatively, I could swap my main link to Withering and then swap over to a Manaforged Arrows setup instead of running totems. Similarly, I have seen folks play this as a full totem build with a link devoted to manaforged arrows to apply culling strikes and withering.
One piece of tech that I am playing with that I have never done before is using Despair as a Blasphemy support aura. I am only going down this rabbit hole because I picked up this necklace and wanted to play around with it. Essentially it gives me some damage over time, chaos damage scaling, decent life, and makes it so that Despair has no reservation if cast as an aura. Since I run around a lot dropping totems and proccing Mirage Archer I am often touching pretty much every mob with this aura. Which means I am stacking withered easily and also rebuffing them with despair… causing a significant escalation of the chaos damage I am dealing.
I am also playing around with a chestpiece that I have contemplated using a few times in the past, but never actually used. Basically it has really high armor and evasion, increased flat chaos damage, decent life, and some buffs to life leech. Unfortunately that last bit is going to require a rework of my tree to make functional, but I feel like it is going to be worth it. I am also desperately needing some mana leech so that I can drop clarity at the moment. I am in a very raw state with this build because I just finished off the second Kitava last night and have yet to do anything to fix my gearing woes. Basically I am going in a direction but it is going to take a lot of fiddling to see if this direction is going to pay off.
I have a number of issues to resolve before I really figure out how well this is going to work. Right now I am running Purity of Elements and I would like to stop doing that at some point. This means I am going to need to cap my resistances through another means as well as figure out a way to deal with elemental ailments. I am too low-level to swap over to the onslaught belt, and am wearing Tanu Ahi to make up for not having that at the moment. I would love to use a Death Rush, but I am not sure if I can make the gearing work out as I need to make up for a lot of resistances and spell suppression and might need that ring slot. Anyways… it is going to be a bit of fiddling around before I can get this build into a workable and stable state.
Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the official end of the Affliction League in Path of Exile and with it comes the quarterly job of shoving all of those “Remove Only” tabs under the bed. My strategy for the end of each league is to group all of those tabs into a folder named after that league so that I never have to deal with them again unless I am specifically fishing for an item. I do the same for the Guild Stash but unfortunately, it does not prevent me from having to log in on the day of a new league and set everything back up again. During Sanctum I started this tradition of talking about the various things that I built during a given league, and I have finally coalesced this into a blog feature that I will probably start doing for Last Epoch Cycles as well. This morning I will talk a bit about the happenings of the Affliction League.
Innaugural Bel League
With the start of the Affliction League, we decided to try something different. Up until this point I had participated in a few private league events, but had never really considered starting our own. Kodra and I were able to drum up enough support for the notion that we managed to have nine different people participating in the league, most of whom made it well into mapping before calling it quits. Quite honestly this is probably the ideal way to play this game. It allowed us to completely bypass what was apparently a pretty rough start to the league with bugs surrounding the goblin band mtx. We already are known for pooling our resources in the guild stash, but this took it to an entirely new level with folks actively hunting for build-required uniques for other folks.
Unfortunately with the launch of the Necropolis League on Friday, it does not look like we have much support. It might even just be me playing, so we won’t be attempting another “Bel League” this time around but it was still a lot of fun. There were a few negatives, however. The first is that we made the league last 40 days… which was honestly way too long. The default 10-day time limit for a private league is probably ideal if we were to do this again. The second negative is that without access to trade, it really negatively impacted the power level we could realistically achieve in this “Semi-SSF” gameplay mode. I was however surprised at just how functional all of my builds were that I created during this league and that was a bit of a pride moment for me personally. I would absolutely do this again but most of the AggroChat crew is down on Path of Exile post launch of Last Epoch 1.0.
Boneshatter Juggernaut
Would you believe that this was my very first time playing Boneshatter in any form? With the severe damage to Righteous Fire that 3.23 caused… it left me reeling a bit trying to figure out a new build to main. Boneshatter has traditionally been one of the most tanky Juggernaut builds, and as such I decided to give it a spin after both Ash and Kodra seriously suggested I try it. I enjoyed it quite a bit but it also didn’t feel quite as sturdy as Righteous Fire did. This was especially true for Delve, my favorite game mode. I am sure there are things that I could have done to build this differently for Delve but without access to trade, I had to basically wing it with what I had access to at the time. Sadly I didn’t dump a POB at the time I recorded the above video, but when we merged the private league into trade, I ended up reworking the character and even putting on a Mageblood for shits and giggles since I could afford one.
Personal Rating: S Tier
Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain
3.23 was the birth of the Transfigured Gem, and with it came a bunch of interesting-sounding options to play existing skills. The one that stood out the most for me was Volcanic Fissure of Snaking, which causes fissures to form in the ground and cause explosions that heat seal targets. As soon as I saw this… I had a MIGHTY NEED to try and create something with it. Sometimes… a build just does not work out the way you want it to. I really wanted to focus on Mace and Shield for some assorted defensive and offensive layers of “while shield is equipped” passive nodes, but in truth this seemed to either need some sort of stacking that I could not provide on SSF or a switch to a well-rolled Two-Handed Weapon. It was one heck of a fun build to level, and honestly, I wish I had recorded a video of the state of the build before pivoting away from it. Truth be told I just did not record anywhere near as many videos this league as I did during Ancestor League. It did a really good job of clearing maps but was painful to kill anything even slightly tanky like a boss.
If I were to do this again I would probably pivot into armor stacking and go with some sort of setup that would allow me to convert that to damage. This just wasn’t something I could realistically do in the limited access environment of Bel League. If you are curious this is the state of the build before I tore it down to become something else.
Personal Rating: C Tier
Lightning Arrow Champion
Originally this was going to be my second build of the league, but Snaking got in the way. I like having some sort of a map blaster to play around with and for the last two leagues that has been some sort of Lightning Arrow build. I’ve played this as Raider and Deadeye before, but by far my ascendancy of choice is Champion because it feels significantly more sturdy. I really do not like to die. Lightning Arrow just feels comfy and playing it with as many defensive layers as Champion feels even more comfy. This is the state of the build that I managed to get during Bel League, but once we merged into the trade league I upgraded it significantly even eventually taking it to a Magic Find build with a Headhunter. I never found a mirror like Kodra did, but had a lot of fun blowing up maps while juicing them.
Personal Rating: A Tier
Righteous Fire Chieftain
Since Snaking was not working like intended, I wound up pivoting my Chieftain into Righteous Fire. I had given this build a few attempts during some of the limited-time events from last November and never really could get it into a comfortable place. The problem I think was that I kept trying to gear it like I was going to gear the Juggernaut variant. This time around I pivoted into 90% all res combined with converting as much physical damage to elemental damage as I could. Because of the juicing level of this league, we were getting Lightning Coils to drop like candy, so I colored and linked one of those to get RF up and running on it. I had to wildly overstack Fire Resistance to make up for the -60% Lightning Resistance penalty but it was worth it because damage conversion was the piece I had been missing in previous attempts. This is the state at which I got the build during the semi-SSF Bel League, but I later on upgraded pretty much every slot once we moved into trade. It was comfortable enough that I am very likely going to start this for Necropolis league on Friday. That said it is still nowhere near as good as the previous incarnation of Righteous Fire Juggernaut felt so I am downgrading my rating a bit. This time I am going to build with a Cloak of Flames and see if that improves my opinion at all.
Personal Rating: A Tier
Penance Brand of Dissipation Inquisitor
Penance Brand of Inquisitor was absolutely cracked this league. There have been other wildly overpowered builds in other leagues, that I never really threw my hat in the ring on… and then ultimately later wished I had. I remember the broken state of the totem explode builds during Crucible and wished I had made an attempt at creating one while the “getting was good” as it were. I love brand builds, so when a brand build was wildly overpowered… you know I had to at least try it out. I had so much fun playing this build and I will mourn its loss, because it was just stupid amounts of fun to watch things evaporate. We all knew however that there was no way this build could last any longer than one league. This is the state of the build at which I recorded the above video, and this is the state I got it to at the end of the league. Penance Brand of Dissipation you will be missed.
Personal Rating: S Tier +++
Cold Blade Vortex Elementalist
There are a handful of builds that I have always wanted to try, but never quite got around to building. Blade Vortex is one of these abilities and this wound up being the very last build I made during the league. By the time I set down this path I was already losing steam and as such I never really made it very far with this build, only managing to get to level 76 which for me is barely past the campaign. The playstyle was enjoyable with you essentially freezing entire chunks of the screen at once while your blade vortex rips them to pieces. The problem that I have with the gameplay style is it requires you to maintain stacks of Blade Vortex to be effective, which means every few seconds you are hitting a button to keep a buff up. While not necessarily a bad thing, and no different than repeatedly casting a primary attack… knowing that it was a buff that I was maintaining made it mentally feel like more of a chore. If I had given it the love and care of some of my other builds… and if they had not been quite as fun as they were… this might have been something. I would consider revisiting at a later date, but for the moment it satiated most of my curiosity.
Personal Rating: B Tier
Affliction League
I feel like Affliction League is going to go down as one of the player-favorite leagues, in part just for the sheer amount of loot that it generated. I thought the forest mechanic was really interesting, but more than that I really enjoyed the three new meta ascendancies… though in the end I wound up swapping all of my characters over to the same one because it was very clearly the best option. I will greatly miss my Rucksack because having that little extra bit of swap space was just too damned good. Weirdly though it feels like I was nowhere near as active in this league as I have in previous ones. For Trial of the Ancestors I wound up building nine different characters, and in Crucible I played six different builds. During the entire league, I only recorded three videos which is also a bit off-pace for me. While this was the most manic league for most players… it felt like I checked out a bit earlier than I would have expected.
I am really hyped about the Necropolis league, but also a bit bummed because it seems like I am going to be going into it largely solo. Not that I really played much with my friends, but it was fun to be feeding them gear during the guild bank. Ultimately this will probably mean I just go harder on the trade league since I won’t be specifically saving anything for folks. I am also really interested in the scarab changes and the new crafting mechanic. I feel like combined those are going to lead to a wild league… but admittedly probably one a bit more austere than the previous few have been. I am legitimately okay with that because in truth I don’t really love magic find strategies that much. I would rather quietly toil away in the Delve mines to get my currency.
Anyways! That is the last league and its builds in review. Did you enjoy Affliction league? Are you going to be playing Necropolis league? Drop me a line below.
Since I spent some time yesterday talking about my Righteous Fire Chieftain, I figured I would talk this morning about some improvements I have been making to my high survival magic find mapping character, my Lightning Arrow Champion. I had first played a version of Lightning Arrow at the end of Crucible as a test for a league start and then started a Raider variant for Ancestor league. I just did not like how little survival the character had and wound up retooling it late in the league into a Champion variant. When it came to rolling a second character in our private league I went with the Champion variant again because I knew I could make it work on almost no gear and that it would have quite a bit of survival. Since it only really needed two unique items it would be extremely flexible when it came to whatever gear I happened to find. As soon as we found our first Perseverance and a pair of Shadows and Dust I knew I was good to go and just needed to half-ass my way into a tri-element bow.
The biggest change that I needed to make was getting a better bow and more specifically a bow that fired an additional arrow. Similarly, I wanted to get a quiver that also fired an additional arrow… which would then in turn allow me to drop Greater Multiple Projectiles from the support gems and get a significant damage boost as a result of that alone. I found a reasonable 1200 dps bow from trade that had pretty much everything I wanted on it and given the prevalence of folks doing magic find lightning arrow the price was only 10 Divines. The quiver was significantly cheaper but I specifically needed a couple of resistance hits on it to maintain elemental caps. Essentially dropping GMP I still fire 6 arrows and said arrows pierce 4 targets… making the entire process feel pretty great.
The other major thing that I needed was to swap Artillery Ballista into my chest piece and get an actual six link for that. By the time we were swimming in six-links, my appetite for fiddling with gear on this particular character was at a minimum. Basically, I had been running Artillery Ballista as a four-link in my gloves and had a whole series of nonsense Mana Forged Arrows abilities firing off in a five-link chest. In the final form, I moved the rest of my utility abilities to the gloves and used that opportunity to pick up a good corrupt with some additional attack speed, and then added Culling Strike to my Artillery Ballista link since I was losing access to it via Mana Forged Arrows which now only fires Frenzy.
As far as Magic Find goes…. I am really not going too far off the path to make that happen. During my copious amount of farming, I lucked into two relatively well-rolled Ventor’s Gamble rings. Apart from that I just happened to roll a helmet with +19% rarity on it giving me a total of +15% Quantity and +70% Rarity. It is not a ton and nowhere near as much as the folks who are sacrificing damage and defense to stack every last drop of it… but enough to feel like you are sticking your thumb on the scale from time to time. Since my Lightning Arrow Champion is a mapper and does nothing else, it seemed easy enough to integrate this much into the build. The biggest change I would make to the character would be to drop perseverance and pick up a Headhunter… but I doubt that will happen unless I get a windfall.
As far as the character goes, here is what the stats look like. You can also check out my POB over on POE.Ninja. I am pretty happy with the current state of this character. Last league, I attempted to make the Tornado Shot shift and I just did not like it anywhere near as much. I might try that again given it is mostly just swapping some gem links around, but I am not sure I will like it any better than I did previously. For now, this is the character that I use to burn through maps and get sulfite so that I can feed the delving on my Righteous Fire Chieftain. While I can do juiced T16s… the bosses end up taking longer than I would prefer so I am probably going to keep sticking to the t11 Cemetary and t12 Tropical Island sequence that I have been doing up to this point.
Morning Folks! Yesterday I wrapped up my third character of “Bel League” and this is ultimately the one I originally planned as my “first alt”. Essentially, I wanted a low-pressure map blaster that I knew I could make work on minimal or easily obtained gear. Essentially the idea is to go Champion for survival and Lightning Arrow for ease of getting off the ground. I am more or less following the template of Belgladius, with some items that I used in the original Raider version of the build that was my Ancestor league starter. Primarily the build uses Shadows and Dust for rampage and unholy might as well as some additional Mana Leech, and Perseverance to turn my permanent fortify stacks into permanent Onslaught as well as a bit of Attack Damage since I am stacking both Armor and Evasion. In this specific build I am throwing in a Poised Prism because it is just a generically good quiver with some resists on it and The Taming which similarly fixes some resists and offers up a bit of elemental damage.
The biggest challenge that I find myself in currently is getting enough levels to finish out my tree and I am one level away from 78 which will allow me to actually equip the belt. I also need to sort out my Pantheon and at a minimum get the freeze immunity. One of the huge benefits of a character like this is that it slides into maps extremely easily. I’ve been grinding tier 5 maps to get some levels and am about to transition up into yellow maps. By the time I am in my 90s I should be ripping through Red maps without much issue and hopefully running red/blue altars for drops. Between now and then I really need to find myself a new bow because while I found a lucky six link along the way 566 dps will not cut it for long. Realistically I need something more in the range of 800-900 to really rip through the t16 maps.
I also probably need to find some better gear, because right now after raiding my vault… I am in an “aggressively fine” state. When I ding 78 I will be able to equip Perseverance, and then with a little harvest crafting, I should be able to balance out my resistances. This will still leave me far in the red as far as Chaos goes, but pending I am careful with map modifiers that should not really impact me heavily even in red maps. I would really like to see my armor and resistances a little bit higher, somewhere in the range of 20k so I will need to be on the lookout for good replacements to slot in. If I find two amazing rings, I might be able to keep the resists while also pouring on some chaos. My amulet is also pretty crappy but I am mostly using it to get some attributes I need to equip other items. If you are curious here is a POB I dumped this morning with the current state of my gear.
None of this really matters though because this is what it looks like to play this build… admittedly with a MTX that makes the Lightning Arrow a bit more vibrant. The biggest challenge is how much I need that Mana Leech because there will be times when I run out of mana while mapping and have to wait for the Leech to catch up. In theory, I should have -7 mana on my Amulet and Rings to make this build feel a bit more stable. It works well enough while you are rolling but definitely suffers from the “never stop killing” problem because when there are lulls in the density I start to bottom out my reserves. While I enjoy Boneshatter quite a bit and it feels good to map on it… this is really the gameplay I want when I just want to delete a bunch of surplus maps for goodies. I need to finish out the fourth lab at some point today, but I don’t figure I will have any issues with it.
So with Lightning Arrow coming online, I am very likely to fall into the old familiar pattern of zipping through maps quickly to gain sulphite and then spending that sulphite while delving on the Boneshatter Juggernaut. For the past several leagues I have preferred to have some sort of fast mapper character and then a delve character and alternate back and forth between the two. I am hoping to get my Lightning Arrow character at least to around 95. I am doubting that I will make the pivot into magic find like I did last league, but If I just happen into a couple of extremely well-rolled Ventor rings and a very well-rolled Goldwyrm I might alter those plans. I mostly hope to be able to juice the maps through the league mechanic and see what all I can get doing that and maybe blending in some delirium.
Anyways! I am off to get ready and go do some shopping. I hope you are all having a great week as we slide forward towards Christmas. I am technically “off” now but I had to pop in and deal with some work this morning. I am looking forward to the long break and finishing my fiftieth book of the year and hopefully having a bit of a much needed mental reset.
