Builds Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

3.26 Build Thoughts

June 10, 2025 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends. The Settlers of Kalguur league is finally over… and I have never been so happy to see a league go. Don’t get me wrong… I loved the Settlers league, but also did not expect it to last over 300 days. It also had some really hype league events like the Phrecia league, which honestly should have been its own thing. During this one league I competed in two different Pohx leagues, a Sir Gog league, and the Phrecia league… so when I just attempted to wrangle my stash it was pure madness. I did the traditional thing of just shoving all of those remove-only tabs into a tab labelled “Settlers” but even that felt insufficient given that there were four different event leagues that got lumped into that same banner. I’ve been out of Path of Exile just long enough… to now be feening to get back into it and tackle a brand new league when it launches on Friday.

The new league looks amazing, and while it is very much focused on additional pinnacle content… there is more than enough other things going on that someone like myself who is traditionally not bossing motivated can enjoy. I will miss Atlas Memories a bit, but honestly… unless I needed a specific resource I never ran them. My favorite one was the one that made Alva spawn adds in the map instead of forcing you to dip into her incursions. I’ve always wished that was an Atlas keystone, that then just caused Alva to drop random temples. Traditionally I skip that mechanic entirely in most leagues because I hate the time pressure aspect of having to dip into the temples. What we are getting instead looks even more interesting and hopefully the new gear that comes with it will be worth the effort. Let’s not get it twisted however… I am more than likely going to be running Delve like normal, and the fact that we no longer need Betrayal to get crafts means I can start with a comfortable crafting Niko and Harvest Atlas.

There has been enough of a shake up in the meta that I am interested in looking at some other builds. I am doubtful I will actually league start anything but my beloved Righteous Fire… but I do feel like this is probably going to be a league where I have a bunch of alternate builds. The first one that seems interesting is Explosive Trap Trickster. During the first Pohx League I started an Ice Trap of Hollowness Trickster and had a heck of a lot of fun with it. In truth it was a damned good build and while the Trickster ate some minor nerfs it should be just fine. It did however make me interested in exploring some of the other Traps on Trickster concepts and Explosive Trap is already fun on its own. The original Ice Trap Trickster build was from Aero and if you are interested in it I suggest checking out his video. This is where I ended up with my POB on that build if you are curious.

Wintertide Brand got some buffs with the patch notes, and it has once again made me consider playing something around that skill. I love the Brand gameplay and Wintertide is probably my favorite of all of the available options. Storm Brand of Indecision is pretty fun, but there is nothing more comfortable than the chill and freeze lifestyle. This morning I saw the above build concept float across my feed on bluesky, and it seems like a reasonable option for a Wintertide start. The concept here is to use the new major buffs to golems and Elementalist node to pick up some survival and damage output for cold dot. I am not really sure if this is the sort of thing that I would want to league start, but I can absolutely see myself trying to make something around Wintertide brand work during this league as an alt build.

Champion got some massive buffs and I have been trying to sort out what I would want to play with it. There are a few options floating about, but this one from Woolie is basically just a true Cyclone build… not a cast on channeling Cyclone. I’ve never actually played Cyclone in any form, and I have always loved spin to win builds in other games… specifically Whirlwind in Diablo III and Warpath in Last Epoch. On some level I feel like I might owe it to myself to go down this rabbit hole and see what it feels like. Champion is already an ascendancy that I have built many different characters on over the years and they switched it away from generic damage to focused more on banners and melee hit damage… so with Lightning Strike eating a massive nerf you have to figure out a better vehicle for that. This is probably the closest thing to getting me to start something other than Righteous Fire. The only thing keeping me from doing it… is this is not a resolute technique build and I hate fucking around with accuracy bullshit.

Another thing that I am really interested in is some of the reworks for Saboteur. Essentially they can now get an ascendancy node that is effectively a weakened version of the Nimis Ring. Shrapnel Specialist causes projectiles to have a 50% chance to return to you, and projectiles to be fired in random directions. So essentially you need a mine or a trap that throws out projectiles… but that you would not care about them firing in unpredictable directions. From the Trap side of things I am thinking Lightning Trap might work well. From the mine side I am thinking either Rolling Magma converted to a mine as seen above or potentially Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage. This is a little too fringe for me to ever consider starting it, because quite honestly… I want to be able to look at POE.Ninja and see how well this is working and what sort of concoctions folks end up doing with it. It is still an interesting concept that I can’t seem to dislodge from my brain. The biggest problem that I have is that I have never really liked the Mines play style.

Being perfectly honest with myself… I am 99.9% likely to just start Righteous Fire again because it is comfortable and reliable. I’ve done it in trade and in an SSF environment and can pretty much get up and running without any issues and be capable of doing around 200 depth in Delve quickly. The main thing that I will be doing differently is that I hate muling a witch to get Rolling Magma as Pohx suggests, and am just going to do slams until I can turn on Righteous Fire in Act 2. During the SirGog Gauntlet league I went with a strength stacking slam character and my early tree was almost indistinguishable from the general RF tree up until the point you can take it. It felt way more comfortable to slam and shield charge my way around the zones than trying to get perfect bounces from rolling magma and fire wall. So instead I will do Ground Slam to Sunder and then use Crushing Fist with retaliation procs for single target damage. I will have to be on the look out for the correct colors on bases for the swap to Righteous Fire in early Act 2, but that should not really be much of an issue. My first pick ups will be an Cloak of Flame and Immortal Flesh and then hopefully I get some good fire resistance drops to see me cruising into maps and delve depths.

I am soooo ready to be back in Path of Exile and excited for a new league. I’ve missed this and I am pretty amped if Grinding Gear Games can really hit the target schedule that they have planned. Essentially every four months a Path of Exile league and the between months… will be a new Path of Exile II league. Hopefully given enough time POE2 will turn into something that I actually enjoy. Right now it just isn’t there for me, but given enough time cooking there might be an enjoyable game there. I think the challenge for me is that I am a mapper and delver… and just do not care about boss fights. POE2 is a game for people who care about boss fights. I like playing near immortal characters that can steam roll content and collect the shiny loot. I will always optimize the difficulty out of whatever games I play… and I am hoping that at some point there is a path for me in that game. For now though… I am looking forward to getting back into Path of Exile and grinding.

I have a whole slew of audiobooks lined up to listen to while I grind. Are you going to be checking out Path of Exile 3.26? If so what are you looking towards playing? Drop me a line below. Kodra if you are reading this… I really think you need to go down the projectile mines path with Saboteur so I can see how that works.

Last Epoch and Skill Tags

March 5, 2024 by Belghast

Good Morning Friends! I’ve been playing an excessive amount of Last Epoch. With it I am playing a slew of different characters that all have their own different demands. At least in part, I am “yoloing” my way through gearing and speccing most of the characters, and it made me think about some of the skills key to that process. Path of Exile and Last Epoch have a specific tagging system that indicates how abilities, gear, and passive points interact with each other, but coming from Diablo it was not necessarily something that I was super familiar with. In Diablo you generally think about how to scale a Barbarian, or a Demon Hunter, or a Crusader… and less so about how to scale one individual ability in their wide array of abilities. In Path of Exile you could play any ability on any base class, and while this is not exactly the case with Last Epoch… you can make every class perform in wildly different ways based on your specific choice of abilities and how you support them with the talent tree and your gear.

Ultimately it is the skill tags that will dictate how this interaction is going to work. If you mouse over any ability in the game and hold down the alt button, you are going to see an extended amount of information about how that ability is interacting currently. I chose a wide number of abilities and specifically what we are going to focus on the most is Scaling Tags. For example, Static is a Lightning Spell, and as such has both the tags “Lightning” and “Spell”, but it also has the tag “Instant Cast” and “Intelligence” indicating that it scales based on your current Intelligence stat and counts as an instant cast for anything that interacts with instant abilities. Summon Thorn Totem is a Minion but more specifically a Totem and will scale based on those tags but also indicates that it scales based on your Attunement ability score. Every ability in the game has tags that map out how they are going to interact with other abilities, the gear you equip, and the sorts of passive talent points that you invest in.

It is that last bit that becomes very important because sometimes a skill talent tree can impact the tags associated with a skill. They can either add new tags, remove tags, or sometimes change a tag completely. Let’s look at Warpath specifically as I am currently running two different builds that use that ability in different ways. By default, Warpath has the tags Physical, Melee, Area, Channeled, Movement, and Strength and you can scale the ability based on any of those interactions. If you choose Apocalypse Whirl in the skill tree it causes that ability to lose the Physical tag and instead gain the Void Tag. Similarly, if you choose Earthscorcher it will cause the ability to lose the physical tag and gain the Fire tag instead. These two notable passives are mutually exclusive, and change how you would begin to gear for that ability. Most abilities in the game have some sort of version of this interaction that allows you to lean into a specific playstyle or damage type, allowing you to more efficiently scale.

If you look at gearing, the affixes that are on an item will more or less map directly to the tagging system. For example, the Two-Handed Mace above scales Void Damage, so it would work well with an ability that either starts as dealing void damage or one that you have shifted to void damage in the above Warpath example. The Bow has Minion Melee Damage and Minion Bow Damage, and as such would scale the damage of any minions you create that either do Bow Attacks or Melee Attacks, but would not scale Thorn Totems that we talked about above because they have the Spell tag associated with them and not Bow or Melee. Harthenon’s Vow scales Melee Physical Damage which would work great with Warpath in its original form, but does nothing if you shift it to Fire or Void. Things get a little more tricky when afflictions interact with items… for example, Warpath shifted with the Earthscorcher talent can inflict Ignite, which itself does fire damage over time. Knowing that means that Firestarter’s Torch will specifically scale the damage if the Ignite you are inflicting on targets, but not necessarily the Fire-based Warpath damage directly.

You can in theory limp through the campaign on almost any combination of abilities, gear, and passive points. However, if you want a build that feels exceptionally good, you are going to want to pay attention to synergies between abilities, the tags that scale them, and the gear that you were equipping. Shifting everything to a single damage type, for example, makes it much easier to gear your character and makes every interaction that much more powerful. On my Void Knight that I am pushing towards 100, I have shifted pretty much every ability that I am using towards Void Melee damage so that I can scale effectively off either pure Void Damage, Void Melee, or pure Melee scaling. For the Ignite character that I have been tweaking, I have been focusing more on Fire Damage Over Time and Ignite Chance so that I don’t have to worry too much about whether or not my abilities are critical attacks. I need to take a step back and rework some things because right now I am having survival issues… but knowing my core focus on that character will allow me to shift some things around to create a better functioning total package.

The awesome thing about Last Epoch is that the interactions between abilities, gear, and talents are extremely straightforward. In Path of Exile, there are a bunch of edge cases where something might be tagged as this but scales in a very specific way when it comes to the damage that is being dealt. I am sure there are probably SOME edge-case interactions here, but most things certainly feel more clearly outlined. Mostly I wanted to talk about the concept of tagging because I know at this point Last Epoch is interesting to a lot of players who have not gotten down in the weeds when it comes to character builds. When I was playing Diablo, I was not necessarily paying attention to the nuance of every ability and trying to glean their finer interactions because I didn’t need to. Skill Tagging however is one of those concepts that will help you go a long way towards making more enjoyable characters without following a guide.

3.22 Builds In Review

March 27, 2024October 16, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! While I still have quite a few things that I want to tick off before I am completed with it, I feel like the 3.22 Trials of the Ancestor League is starting to wind down a bit. You can see this in the community as the various streamers detach from the game and start playing other things. I know personally I plan on giving Diablo IV Season 2 a shot tomorrow, and seeing how I feel about that game. As far as objectives go, I have 4 pips of experience to go from level 100 on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut which will be a first for me in a season. Apart from that, I want to knock out at least one more objective so I can get a sad little totem pole for my third league in a row. So I know that I will still be playing quite a bit, but I am finding my desire to build new builds waning.

As a result, I thought I would spend this morning reviewing my builds for this league and talking a bit about them. This is mostly going to be me posting links to videos that I have recorded throughout the current league, and talking about my feelings regarding the build and how successful it was. This grading will be governed by my own personal feelings about how best to approach Path of Exile. I like tanky builds and I am learning that even when I play a successful build… if it feels too squishy it ruins the experience for me.

Vaal Lightning Arrow Raider

Toward the end of last league I did a brief test to see how it would feel to league start Lightning Arrow, and honestly, the leveling process and early maps felt extremely solid. This prompted me to commit to league starting this build for Trail of the Ancestors and for the most part it went smoothly… until I hit a wall around red maps. Knowing what I know now… this is the point where I should converted my tree over to the critical strike variant, but I did not… and floundered greatly. This built felt amazing when it came to clearing maps… and then struggled significantly with map and atlas bosses. I thought that Raider would give me some additional defensive layers that would make it feel better… but it just was not enough.

The positive of the build is that it allowed me to farm up enough currency to pay for my swap over to Righteous Fire. The negative is… I could have easily just league-started Righteous Fire. This build would essentially color my league experience because I spent a lot of time frustrated that this did not feel good to me. I am not a map blaster and I do not love playing builds that feel like they have paper-thin defensive layers. For those who are curious, this is what the POB looked like at the time of recording this video.

Personal Rating: C Tier

Righteous Fire Juggernaut

So after the feelings of failure regarding Lightning Arrow Raider, I rolled right back to the old familiar and comfortable in the form of a Righteous Fire Juggernaut. With this build it is a cakewalk to finish your atlas and get your first two voidstones, and it also allowed me to set up shop in delve and start producing raw materials in bulk. I think I have come to the realization that I am going to want an RF Jugg in every league given how much I have bonded with the playstyle, and given that it enables me to spend a large amount of time down in Delve. I did not record a video on this build until fairly late in the league and after I spent some currency on getting a Hinekora, Death’s Fury setup with Forbidden Flesh and Flame jewels. Once I ding 100 hopefully this week… I am going to shift over to trying to knock out all of the bosses with this character. I get into this pattern of not wanting to risk a death when I am gaining experience given that it slows down so much after level 95.

You can find the POB over on the POE.Ninja Page for this character.

Personal Rating: S Tier Plus

Summon Raging Spirits Guardian

The Trial of the Ancestors League saw significant reworks of two Acendancies, the Templar Guardian and the Marauder Chieftain. In a desire to play with these, I decided to roll a Summon Raging Spirits build as I have often done in past leagues, but play it instead with the new Guardian Ascendancy. This build… is a miraculous powerhouse. This entirely rests upon the shoulders of the fact that the Guardian unique minions are so damned strong. From the very first Labyrinth, you end up getting something with the relative power of a Righteous Fire Juggernaut, and it can essentially carry you from that point forward. There is a reason why Guardian is the most popular Ascendancy in Ruthless League, making up over 14% of the player base and even higher if you get into the hardcore modes.

What I was not expecting necessarily is how good this felt mapping, because essentially you are using Convocation to keep dragging your pet RF Juggernaut as you shield charge through the map. Summon Raging Spirits always feels great when it comes to killing bosses, but the Sentinel of Radiance pet really makes the map clear in general feel so good. If this does not get nerfed… it is a strong contender for starting “Bel League” because after playing this in the Toucan Treasure Hunt, it can be functional with zero gear.

You can find my POB over on the POE.Ninja page for this character.

Personal Rating: S Tier

Storm Brand Inquisitor

It took me a few leagues before I reached a point where I truly understood how to build a character in this game. During Kalandra League I tried Storm Brand Inquisitor, and apparently thought that things like capping your resistances were a suggestion rather than a requirement. Last league, I gave the Explosive Arrow Champion a bit of a redemption arc, as I revisited the character I attempted to play in the Sentinel League and made it feel amazing. So this league I really wanted to do the same for Storm Brand Inquisitor to see what that build could do if I actually built it correctly. The end result… was pretty disappointing. Can it do a T16? Technically yes. Does it feel good doing a T16? Absolutely not.

There is admittedly part of me that wants to poke this with a stick until I figure out how to make it work. I might revisit it in future leagues and try and build it out to be a bit more viable. That said… doing what I did with Explosive Arrow and taking the same build, but just fixing my resistances… did not solve the problems with this build. The disturbing thing about it is that I actually did spend quite a bit on the build to get it to the sorry state that it is in currently. I’m sure given enough time I could get it feeling better, but I am just not sure it would ever feel the way I want it to feel.

For those curious you can see the POB at the time I recorded the above video.

Personal Rating: D Tier

Fire Shield Crush Chieftain

Since there were two ascendancies that changed with this league, and Guardian was so freaking amazing… I decided that I wanted to create something with a Chieftain. The obvious choice would have been Righteous Fire, but I did not really want to recreate that and eventually, I just stole the best node with forbidden flame/flesh for my main RF build. Another build that I have been wanting to play for some time is something built around Shield Crush, so I crudely banged these two build concepts together until something emerged. The end result was an armor-stacking fire damage conversion build that focused on igniting things with Shield Crush and waiting for them to explode with Hinekora, Death’s Fury.

In truth… it is a pretty fun build hampered a bit by the fact that I refused to spend the currency to take it to the next level. The best armor stackers tend to be built around the Duelist class because they can double dip in both Armor and then also convert Evasion over to armor which produces bigger numbers. Stacking armor directly relates to additional damage. The other problem is that the ideal chest piece for this build starts around 20 Divine and has the ability “Armour is increased by Overcapped Fire Resistance”. As it stands my armor is over 100k with my flasks up, but with a chest like that, I could probably double that. All in all, it is a fun build, with a good map clear… but completely falls apart when it comes to killing bosses. If I were going to change anything, I would find a way to work in Vaal Breach as it would give me waves of fodder which would then hopefully proc Death’s Fury explosions helping me take down bosses faster.

My POB at the time of recording the video.

Personal Rating: B Tier

Vaal Absolution Necromancer

During the Toucan Treasure Hunt private league, I opted to level up a SRS Guardian, just because that seemed so strong without needing to rely on any gear. There was a period while leveling where I was messing around with the Absolution skill, which while technically a minion ability is mostly just a big lightning strike that spawns minions that do similar lightning strikes. This prompted me to want to give the build a shot so I rolled a Witch and leveled it with Vaal Absolution eventually turning it into a Necromancer. First comment… I played a Necro because after playing two Guardians… I was reluctant to roll another one. That said… I feel like Absolution would be so much stronger if played with a Guardian mostly for the free elemental buffs and the chonky tanky fiery boi. That said the Necromancer version is quite a bit of fun and felt extremely comfortable clearing maps. If I were willing to put the same level of investment in this build that I had in other builds in this league, then I am sure it would be quite solid.

That said… the playstyle of standing still while you cast Absolution with Spell Echo left something to be desired. I didn’t really have any problems with taking Deaths while I was casting, but it did feel a little awkward and went afoul of my “always stay moving” sensibilities. I am not sure if I would ever play this again, but I certainly found it interesting.

My POB at the time of recording the video.

Personal Rating: B Tier

Magic Find Lightning Arrow Deadeye

Sometimes I get something stuck in my head, and this league… it was a general sense of frustration over my league starter not feeling amazing. As the league was beginning to wind down I decided to go big instead of going home… and poured roughly 40 Divine Orbs into converting my build into the Magic Find variant that so many players were having good luck with this league. The end result has been an interesting experience. Deadeye is in fact the best choice for this sort of build with the Ranger class… but it is way the hell squishier than I am comfortable playing. Sure I can do pretty much all of the content and stack as many eldritch altars as I want… but if I fail to kill something before it looks at me… I fall over rather spectacularly.

Magic Find is also way more subtle than I would have expected. While I managed to make back a ton of currency largely in the form of Blue Altars that handed out Divine Orbs like candy… I didn’t really manage to find any big-ticket items apart from enough copies of The Fortunate to turn in for a couple of Divine Orbs. While I have run many Crimson Temples… I have yet to see a single Apothecary and I’ve not pulled four Headhunters or Magebloods like the magic find YouTubers would lead you to believe. Is it worth running Magic Find with this sort of build? That is highly likely because I made back the 40 Divines Spent on the build in roughly a week. Is playing a squishy glass cannon character doing it for me? Not really.

You can find the POB over on the POE.Ninja Page for this character.

Personal Rating: A Tier

Vaal Lightning Arrow Champion

You would think that the whole magic find exercise would finally push Lightning Arrow out of my brain, but you would also be wrong. When I started my Raider version of this character, I thought long and hard about going with Champion. Champion is the “tanky” class for building a bow character, and I really loved my Explosive Arrow Champion last league. As the AggroChat crew is talking more and more about “Bel League” I decided I wanted to test a theory… that theory being that Champion would have made a much more drift-compatible version of Lightning Arrow than anything I had tried to date. So last week in a day and a half I leveled a new Champion character with Vaal Lightning Arrow and by Friday evening I had it geared and mapping.

This is a great character. It has all of the tankyness of a Champion with all of the killing power of the traditional Lightning Arrow builds. It suffers from the same challenge taking down bosses, but the sturdy nature of the build gives you plenty of time to dance around while waiting on your Artillery Ballista to burn the boss. Over the weekend I mapped with basically nothing but this character, and there were several times when I managed to run enough T16 maps to completely refill my sulphite without taking a single death. That in itself is huge, and I’m already sitting at level 90 and fully expect to be able to smoothly ascend past that level as though I were playing one of my Righteous Fire Juggernaut characters. I will absolutely build another one of these in “Bel League” pending there are no major nerfs to either Lightning Arrow or the Champion Class itself. I’ve also played this with Tornado Shot and Ice Shot… and while both are strong I just don’t enjoy them anywhere near as much.

My POB at the time of recording the video.

Personal Rating: S Tier

As I said at the start of this post, I think I am probably done rolling new characters for the rest of this league. I have a solid stable of characters and at least three of them that I enjoy greatly. I want to finish out level 100 on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut, and I want to knock out a few more achievements toward the league challenges. I’m currently specced heavily into Ritual on my Atlas, so it should not take terribly long to reroll 25 more favors or get 4 more Blood-Filled Vessels. I could just buy the latter from the market, but I never really like doing that. I know starting tomorrow I want to spend some time playing Diablo IV Season 2 and giving it a fair shake. After that, I still want to pop into New World and see what the expansion is all about, and mostly level the new Flail weapon. Combined, these will likely take me all the way until December when the next league starts and we properly begin the “Bel League” private league thing. If there is a lull in the middle somewhere I might pick back up Baldur’s Gate 3 or Starfield… or potentially even start a new Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough to see all of the changes.

This morning however I wanted to give a proper rundown of my thoughts on all of the builds of the league. If I end up doing anything further, I might steal the Magic Find gear from my Deadeye and see if I can make something that still feels sturdy with the Champion. Anyways! I hope this week is great for you all. If you have made it this far in the post, I thank you for reading because I am certain there are folks out there who get very very sick of my nonsense.

#TSW Fun with Shotguns and Blades

July 27, 2012 by Belghast

It has been several days since I finished the main storyline in The Secret World, and I have neither had the strong desire to play an alt, nor any sense of boredom and lacking things to do. So far so good, if anything I feel even more fanboy-ish than I have been to this point. Today I listened to the second of the Secret World live developer streams, and I am really pumped about the 31st update.

So while I am geeking out as a fanboy, I am trying really hard not to do so in an offensive way. Honestly one of my biggest turnoffs with Guild Wars 2 in general, has been the army of militant fans that appear to bludgeon down anyone who might question that title. I really want the TSW community to be different than that, so I feel hyper conscious about how my current love of the title might translate to the “un-initiated”.

So while I might joke that not liking the game, means you have no soul… I completely understand that the game is not going to be for everyone. The Secret World is this awesome niche title, that a year a go I would not have thought could exist in the modern MMO market. It is this odd intersection of Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Clive Barker and James Bond. The world is almost tailor fit to the type of stories I love reading, but it will not be right for everyone.

Of Shotguns and Blades

There has been a lot of talk about builds lately amongst my group of friends. For the most part everyone is branching out and trying to figure out what works best for them. Overall the faction template decks seem nice, but in practice each of us ends up fiddling with things to suit our own needs. Each of us seems to be building towards the deck we want the costume for, while creating our own custom made mix of abilities.

Personally I chose both Shotguns and Blades for pure geeky reasons. I love using shotguns in any game that allows it, in Doom I made a beeline for the double barrel shotgun each time and never looked back. In fantasy games, I must have a sword in my hand, and I am never quite happy until I am wielding one. So giving me a game where I could do both, pretty much meant I knew exactly the build I would be going towards. Even if it sucked, I would likely be playing this combination… but oddly enough it works really well together.

How the Deck Works

One of the cool synergies between both Blades and Shotguns is that both have a good number of abilities that either increase your chance of landing a penetrating hit, or doing something really cool when you do. In addition to this, I have built pick up some claws abilities that make it really easy to drop a target into an afflicted state, which mixes nicely with a swords finisher that exploits this condition. So essentially this deck is all about landing a penetrating blow, that starts a cascade effect.

The build works around three abilities for the most part. First is Twist the Knife, that you will see below. Essentially when you penetrate your target gains an ability that stacks to three, that increases all damage dealt by 3% for 10 seconds. Each time you penetrate, it resets the stack timer. To make sure we keep penetrating, I throw in the next ability: Fatal Flourish. Each time you apply afflicted you gain +30 Penetration for 8 seconds, which stacks to 10. Finally I have thrown in the Bloodsport ability from the Claws tree, that sets and afflicted state anything you hit the mob.

Shotgun and Blades Deck

Blades Abilities

Four Seasons

Four Seasons is the epic ability I have chosen for this deck. Essentially it serves two purposes. Firstly since this deck is all about starting a cascade effect when you penetrate, this allows me to land four guaranteed penetrates. The second purpose, is this doubles as an interrupt, since the fourth hit stuns the target.

Bamboo Cutter

Since most of this build is AOE based, I went with Bamboo Cutter as my melee builder. This is essentially a low threat version of the Blade Torrent ability from the inner blades wheel. This is pretty much my spam button when I can be near a target.

Clearing the Path

There are multiple good AOE and single target resource dumps in the blades trees. I have friends that swear by Chop Shop, but for the purpose of this build, since I will be setting the afflicted state I chose this ability. If you notice, this attack will automatically penetrate any afflicted target. Which only services to keep the cascade effect going.

Flight of Daggers

Going along with the AOE theme, this epic passive causes 3 enemies near you to take a direct damage hit, and gain an affliction that deals damage over time. This ability procs on every fifth hit, so you will be throwing out a ton of “daggers” as you go.

Twist the Knife

This is really the ability that started the theme of the deck. When you penetrate, you gain a stacking buff that when fully stacked increases all of your damage by 9%. We want this stacked to three as quickly as possible, and to always maintain a full stack.

Fatal Flourish

This is the ability that is going to make sure that you are penetrating by stacking a buff each time we apply afflicted. It stacks up to 10, and each stack grants 30 penetration. Since Bloodsport is making us apply afflicted each time we hit the target, by the 10th time we have struck the mob we will have +300 penetration.

Sudden Return

This is one of those no-brainer fillers. Each time I penetrate I deal a small bit of extra damage. Build is set up so that I penetrate constantly, so this is just free damage. When I need to swap things around for certain fights, this is one of the abilities I can easily drop without losing any real effectiveness.

Martial Discipline and Regeneration

You might be asking yourself… “Bel, I thought you were DPS in this game, why do you have a tanking ability?”. One mantra I have always lived by regardless of the MMO, is “Dead DPS do no damage”. While this combination takes up both an active and passive slot, it is completely worth it. Essentially every 45 seconds you can hit an ability that will greatly reduce the amount of damage you are taking, and heal yourself. This ability has saved my ass more times than I can count, and often times is the reason why I can solo nightmare content.

Shotgun Abilities

Striker

This is my shotgun ranged builder of choice. There are many builder options in Shotgun, but so far this feels like one of the better picks as it has a really good range. Raging Bullet seems like a great pick, but in order to get the maximum effect you have to stay close range. If I can be in range, I tend to be using swords attacks.

Sure Shot

This is my all purpose ranged dump. It does slightly less damage than Out for a Kill, the basic single target ranged dump. However when I am grouping it comes in handy, since it has the added benefit of purging 1 detrimental effect from you, and 1 beneficial effect from the mob if the mob is in a hindered state. I have other abilities that I can swap in and place the mob into a hindered state, namely swapping Flight of Daggers for Close Quarters that causes me to apply hindered each time I hit within close range. When grouping, someone is usually applying hindered.

Scattershot

This is my favorite AOE builder so far. Essentially it will hit your target, and 5 enemies within 5 meters of the target. This is really useful for packs of mobs, and often times I can have the pack dead before they reach me if I am kiting them. At the very least within a sword AOE or two they die. Found this super useful in instance fights where packs of mobs spawn that the DPS needs to handle.

Fist Abilities

Bloodsport

This ability is one of the three that really make this build work. Anytime you hit a target, it becomes afflicted with a DOT that stacks up to 3 times. Several abilities in the build rely on either applying afflicted or hitting an afflicted target. This is the easiest way to make sure this happens.

Salt in the Wound

This is another no-brainer filler ability. Bloodsport causes me to constantly be applying afflicted, and this ability deals extra damage when this happens. Once again this is basically free damage to the target. Just like Sudden Return however, this is one of those slots that I can freely swap in other abilities as needed without losing build effectiveness.

Why I Love This Build

Aside from simply liking both Shotguns and Blades, and the visceral feel of using both, this build gives me a good deal of both survivability and versatility. The Secret World is a game about constant movement, and during most fights I find myself shifting back and forth between needing to be close to the target, and needing to be at a safe distance from any point blank AOE. This build gives me the ability to shift back and forth between ranged and melee without every having to stop attacking.

I like the feel of the cascading effect of Twist the Knife and Fatal Flourish working together. As the fight goes on, I keep dealing more and more damage until the mob dies. This has allowed me to burn through many encounters I just should not be able to take on. I’ve managed to solo a good deal of the lair and nightmare content, so long as I take it carefully and stick to single and sometimes double pulls.

No amount of damage dealing however could really account for that. The fact that I put Martial Discipline in the build gives me enough survival to be able to stay up long enough to finish off the mobs. Last night in Elite Darkness War, I kited the boss for the last 50 seconds of the fight after everyone had died, and managed to pull out the victory. I had to hit Martial Discipline twice, and take a healing potion, but I was able to stay up long enough to whittle down the bosses health. Basically the build lets me tackle pretty much whatever I want to do, and with some careful planning survive.