inquisitor

3.23 Builds in Review

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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.

Trying to Care About DPS

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Penance Brand of Dissipation might be one of my fastest-leveling characters ever. I started it pretty late on Monday night, leveled it through Kitava on Tuesday night, and then geared it yesterday and started mapping. The skill is not the best thing in the world for map clear, but it does a phenomenal job at deleting anything that is even the littlest bit tanky. This build has become a bit of a bossing meme during this league and given that I have never really played anything with a serious bossing focus… I decided that I would give it a shot. I had around 20 Divines left to spend and I think as of this morning I am sitting at 8 left, so I spent quite a bit gearing this character out. The challenge is that because this is so popular it means all of the optimal gear for it is also wildly overpriced. A Replica Dragonfang’s Flight for Penance brand with max reservation efficiency runs around 20 Divine Orbs for example.

The biggest challenge for me is that I do not know anything about gearing characters for damage output. I know this is a bit of an irony given how many characters I have leveled… but for the most part, my focus has always been on survival and defensive layers leaving the damage that I dealt as a bit of an afterthought. My “kink” if you will for games is being able to take the maximum amount of punishment without falling down. I mean I play almost exclusively tanks in MMORPGs for example… so I am big into being a chonky juggernaut of meaty goodness, and could give a shit what I am dealing for damage output. Bossers, however… are about dealing as much damage to a single target as they can in as short of a period as they can. So I have no clue if I am even dealing enough damage to the boss successfully and even more so no clue how to set up POB to accurately display my damage output. In theory, if I am even vaguely close I should be somewhere around the 8 Million DPS range currently.

Right now I am mostly focused on leveling and running a bunch of the random t14-t16 maps that I have laying around in the bank. I would really like to get this character to the level 90-95 range before I deal with focusing on bossing. I might start dipping my toes into the water with some Guardian maps soon as I can seemingly handle t16s without any real issues. One of the most annoying things about shifting from a private league to the trade league is that it reset all of my master missions. I had around 80 Kirac missions that just poofed when we left private league, and this would have been the perfect opportunity to utilize those since I don’t really care about the output of the map and just care about the experience gained.

The biggest thing that I am trying to get used to is not spamming my brand ability. In theory in a perfect scenario, you only want one brand on your target at any given time, and you want it to tick for the maximum number of pulses because each pulse ramps the damage. I am so damned used to spamming abilities that this is requiring a bit of a rework of my brain. On a boss fight you would be spending most of that downtime moving around and avoiding things so that seems doable. I need to get better at keeping up my Hatred as well which I have on Divine Blessing. I am contemplating dropping some of my defensive layers to stack on additional offensive auras and MAYBE go low life with this build. Taste of Hate and the damage conversion that I have on my chestpiece along with good resists and maxed spell suppression go a long way toward helping with incidental damage. If I take a bit hit though I am going to die regardless of how much Evasion and Armor I have.

I am so out of my depth though because again… the thing I care about most is NEVER dying. So playing a squishy character that cares about damage output is just completely outside my wheelhouse.

Bel Does Penance

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Good Morning Folks! I talked about this plan in yesterday’s blog post, and last night I actually started down the path. During Crucible League there was a wildly overpowered build that involved exploding totems that could face-roll pretty much all content in the game. I had somewhat been kicking myself for never building that out while it was a viable build. In this league, there is a wildly overpowered boss killer centered around one of the new gems, Penance Brand of Dissipation. I like playing Inquisitors and I like playing Brand spells… and in theory, this ability will probably be reworked by 3.24 so I thought I should get on that bandwagon while the getting was good.

Normally speaking trade makes everything easier and I thought I would be able to pick up a level one Penance Brand of Dissipation Gem for relatively cheap and level it with the character. That was wrong. Right now a level 1 version of this gem with no quality is going for over 4 Divine Orbs. This opens up an interesting arbitrage system for someone who does not hate Labyrinth… but a rough situation for me who is just a cheapskate. While I have the divines to buy this… I just can’t bring myself to spend so frivolously when there are relatively easy options to acquire it myself.

So as a result… most of my evening was spent rocketing my way through the first lab all for the purpose of flipping fireball gems into transfigured gems. The very first lab seems to have a guaranteed instance of the craft that turns any gem into a random transfigured version of the same color. The problem with this is that there are more Blue gems than any other color… so when you flip a gem you are presented with a choice of three different gems from a pool of roughly seventy possible gems. As a result it honestly takes quite a bit of time to luck into the specific gem you are wanting. For me, it took roughly twenty labs in order to finally get Penance Brand of Dissipation. However, along the way I did pick up Storm Brand of Indecision which I leveled for a bit with and is a phenomenal ability.

So when I finally got started, I had about an hour and a half until I normally head to bed. I managed to speed through the first three acts of the game in that time while also spending a lot of time in the league mechanic trying to unlock the Primalist ascendancy. I’m currently on the step where I need to kill 500 of the blue juice monsters which always takes a while to whittle through. I don’t care enough to stop my forward progress and just grind out a single zone over and over until I finish it, but I am going to drop into the league mechanic in every new map. I gotta say this is maybe the fastest I have ever killed Dominus because I cast a brand on him… then frost blinked over to the spot where he spawns during the second phase and by the time I got there he was spawning there. Then before he had a chance to cast anything he was dead and I was talking to Diala and moving into the aqueduct.

I am loosely following the Manni/Zizaran guide and have a pretty sweet six-link WWWWBB Thousand Ribbons that I am using as a twink chestpiece. I’m using the leveling unique suggestion and just ripping through the levels and content with 57% movement speed and permanent onslaught. If I actually get some playtime at lunch, I might legitimately be into maps by bedtime. This is a truly silly build and what it lacks in clear it makes up for just deleting anything that is even the slightest bit tanky. This would have been an amazing boss rush/essence/beast farmer. Mostly I am hoping to get enough levels to be able to comfortably start deleting Guardians with it and eventually start farming bosses. I need to do some research into how folks are playing this build. I might pick up an Oriath’s End just to make big explosions and help with the clear.

All in all, I’m having a blast and this has breathed some new life into the game for me. I really do like the leveling game honestly. I also know that today is the launch of Diablo IV Season 3, so at some point, I will probably be checking that out as well in the coming days.

Storm Brand Feels Mid

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Good Morning Folks! Given that I have mostly polished the rough edges off my Minion Guardian, this means I have once again turned my attention to Storm Brand Inquisitor. The why of this build is I wanted to give Storm Brand Inquisitor a bit of a redemption arc, or at least a chance at one. I had played this build in Kalandra League and struggled with it quite a bit. In the last league, I spent some time sifting through my old characters and re-evaluating them with my current level of knowledge and that poor Storm Brand Character was a mess. Essentially I had nothing vaguely resembling proper defensive layers and had nowhere close to capped resistances. At a minimum, I could at least solve that last problem with the build. As a result, I have had this build in the back of my head as something I wanted to revisit, and almost did last league but instead decided to make my “brand build” of the league Wintertide.

Once again I started with Velyna’s guide as a template and then tweaked that a bit to suit my tastes. Namely, I dropped the dual wield nodes and pathed down to pick up shield nodes. I question if this was a good decision because honestly… so far I have not really been able to get enough block chance to make that a viable defensive layer. More than anything I wanted to be able to use shield charge, which requires a shield. So far… the build feels sorta mid. That isn’t necessarily bad, but compared to my other options it doesn’t feel amazing. It also feels far worse than Wintertide Brand did last league. That said… I am very very low level and want to give this build until maybe level 90 before I pass proper judgment. For now, it is perfectly fine and I am able to clear yellow-tier maps with ease… which isn’t amazing considering how much currency I have spent on this stupid build.

One of the challenges with the build is that realistically it wants to use a bunch of uniques. The hardest part about that is the fact that I am using two Call of the Brotherhood rings which gives me 96% cold conversion. Rings are a really hard slot to give up when it comes to making your resistances work, given that there are a number of ring-exclusive implicits that add a bunch of value resistance-wise. The single most expensive item was a six-link Inpulsa’s Broken Heart and since I knew I was going to be running this build I shopped around for this for awhile and managed to snag a “cheap” one for 3 divine orbs. The Crown of the Inward Eye is just a universally good helm, and I managed to pick up one with a Determination Reservation Efficiency enchant for if I remember correctly only 40 Chaos. The Brotherhood Rings were 20 Chaos Each from the same vendor, which shocked me given that they had already spent catalysts on them to get the quality up to 20%.

I’ve also been spending some time playing around with using Heatshiver instead of Crown of the Inward Eye, and I think that might be the correct play. The negative is that I lose my Determination Enchant, and I dislike running Labyrinth enough to farm another one. What this has forced me to do is drop Zealotry and swap it for Discipline to make up for the loss in Energy Shield. Zealotry was mostly being used for the Crit aura as I am already generating nearly 100% uptime on Consecrated Ground. I think I can give up some crit chance for effectively doubling my damage output in some cases. The Heatshiver also has the side benefit of giving me some resistances which are nice, and could allow me to rework my resist gear a bit.

As it stands… I have to heavily utilize my shield, belt, necklace, boots, and gloves to be able to reach resistance caps. I think a lot of the challenge of this build is that I am gaining next to nothing from the tree itself and rings are worth so much freaking resistance. I could of course start slotting more gems into my tree as I pour on levels but I am already using up 3 possible sockets to solve another problem that I will talk about next. The biggest problem with this guild is that for whatever reason… it was ungodly expensive. I think I paid 120 Chaos for the boots, and 150 Chaos for the gloves. The Stygian Vise was 90 Chaos, and the shield I think was around 80 Chaos. We are dealing with some massive price inflation this league caused by just how much currency is being generated by the re-introduction of Sanctum.

Since I did not have a great way of dealing with elemental ailments, I had to eat up the abyssal socket in my belt and two jewel sockets on my tree in order to roll out the “Chance to Avoid Being Shocked” and Stormshroud combo. Essentially if you can get a “chance to avoid being shocked” to at least 100%, the Stormshroud Unique jewel will apply that avoidance to all elemental ailments. At a minimum, this requires either support on your tree or two abyssal jewels with a maximum of 50% on each. This was also not a cheap prospect as I gave around 100 Chaos for each of the Abyssal Jewels and 1.5 Divines for the Stormshroud. I’ve known about this combo for ages, but never actually had to buy my way into it. In theory, this is the way that I am supposed to be fixing Righteous Fire so that I can drop “Purity of Elements”. I’ve just never gone through the motions to make that happen.

So in the end… I have spent 8-10 Divines on a build that I am not really in love with. I have shit armor, shit evasion, bad block, and the only thing really going for me is consecrated ground which applies to both life and energy shield which when combined with petrified blood does a decent enough job at keeping me alive. I am having to change my instincts of trying to move when I am taking damage, to instead standing still and hoping that the consecrated ground will be able to keep up with the damage intake. I am deeply susceptible to being one-shot by certain mechanics because I just don’t have that much effective health. This is most obviously an issue with Physical Hits, because if POB is to be believed I can only soak a maximum hit of just under 7000.

Then again I am only 74… so I am giving this build time to come into its own. I am going to try and give it until level 90 before I pass judgment. I definitely think the state of the build is better than it was in Kalandra league but given my druthers, I would probably rather play Wintertide Brand Occultist. Switching to Heatshiver has definitely helped though, so I am going to run a bunch more maps to start to get the swing of how the build feels. As always my goal here is to give you all the honest assessment of how a build feels. If you are curious you can check out the POB that I dumped this morning of the state of where I am with my character.