[1.3] HC Templar Arc - Tanky and powerful hardcore build from scratch

This build is simply so strong, tanky, easy and effective, not to mention cheap as hell, I knew I had to share it.



So after taking a break from PoE for over a year, with ZiggyD's EK/MoM scion as my last character, I came back and jumped straight into the new Hardcore 1 month. I tried out a Flameblaster with the MooSBlasterRF build and ripped a level 50 to an ele reflect insta-gib. I found Flameblasting boring, slow and ineffective, especially for levelling hardcore. I re-rolled and it was the best thing I ever did.

Pros:
∙ Tanky, over 200% increased HP
∙ Arctic Armor to compensate for Phys Dmg Reduction
∙ Powerful, high DPS available with a flexible tree where and when you want it
∙ Fast clear speeds and huge AOE
∙ Easy, quick, reliable and safe while being highly effective
∙ Low skill cap, and yet the most fun I've had in PoE
∙ Cheap, this build was made in a new league 100% solo
∙ Flexible tree to work in any league for whatever you crave (HP, DPS, Crit etc.)

Cons:
∙ Low armor
∙ Hard to maintain high dex to run Arctic armor (you'll need +40 on equips)
∙ Single target can make certain bosses hard
∙ Hard to single out individual targets in a large pack since the AoE is so large as arc chains
∙ Can't do Ele Resists maps (unless you go Vaal pact)

∙ SKILL TREE ∙

This is the build as I would hope to progress into.

My current build at level 80 (4.7khp, 7.7k DPS with lots of room to improve)


EDIT: OPTIMISED LATE GAME BUILD WITH CRIT


Earlier on:
The path you should take while levelling up to 30-40

And later into

I actually managed to run this build using Arc as soon as it was available, although worthwhile posts were made in a Reddit thread where I asked for feedback.


∙ GEAR ∙
I want to make this crystal clear: this character requires no gear other than the standard +Life and resists as is standard for any Hardcore character, and enough Dex and Mana regen required to run Arctic Armor. That's it. No frills, no fancy uniques, no 5exalt to get started. This was started in a brand new league i.e. no funding. I ran with selfmade and rolled with dual Lifesprig unique wands to level with until I was level 60+ where I swapped them out for Moonsorrows. You can obtain these with the currency you gain from simply levelling up. Everything else was self found and upgraded when needed usually for 1c per piece of gear, stretching a little further to 5c ish when my requirements were less flexible (like balancing hp, resists and mana regen into the late game haul of adding damage on top of everything).

Current gear:


This is your best friend:



Its hard to roll a Lifesprig on 3 blue but its worth it. I duel wielded two of them until 60+ where I straight up swapped them for moonsorrows. You can get this wand for 1c and it makes your levelling stage a breeze.

You need to start running a Cast when Damage Taken when getting into merciless with Enduring Cry, Immortal Call and Increased duration. This build is only weak against burst physical damage but it is really weak to it (hence a huge HP pool). You need this setup because pure and simple it saves your life.

I'm usually at half hp from a really bad pack of Ele reflecters and my staunchings make that an instant fix, which is why my flasks were so important (see flask section). The build was made flexible to go into Vaal Pact to nullify Ele reflect if you think you should need it (credit to WillyWonkaHC for the Vaal Pact ele reflect solution), but so far I haven't needed it.

I ran Arc in 3 sockets until around level 60. From there it was 4 sockets until around 73 where I splashed out on a 5L because I could afford it. I did get lucky with finding a Spell Echo but I was going alright without it (until the end of Cruel Act 3)

∙ GEMS ∙

Ideally:

Arc > Spell Echo > Faster Casting > Lightning Penetration > Life Leech

Lightning Warp > Reduced Duration > Faster Casting

Reduced Mana > Clairty > Herald of Thunder > Discipline

Conductivity > Increased Duration > Increased Area of Effect

Cast When Damage Taken > Immortal Call > Enduring Cry > Increased Duration

Arctic Armor

Decoy Totem (or Rejuvination or Skele or whatever you want that creates another target to help keep you alive).


I actually got to level 70+ before using life leech, although I don't know how. After going into life leech I don't know how I could have done without it. I was very greedy and ran Arc in 3 slots through until the end of Merciless when I should have just went into a 4L and got life leech, it was more important than DPS. You need to prioritise getting a cheap 5L than getting end game gear, because life leech is now, in my eyes, essential and although your tooltip doesn't give it a hard-on, lightning penetration is the biggest increase to your DPS after Spell Echo, above and beyond all Wand or Staff upgrades.

Most enemies are resistant to magic and most of them again are resistant to lightning. Piercing their armor of resistances, in an AoE, with a chance to shock pretty much doubles your damage and speeds up your levelling by a huge amount. I was starting to feel underwhelming until I got lightning penetration but I still think Life Leech is higher priority before that, which is why I suggest a cheap early 5L as soon as you can (something with a little life and res always help, go with your budget).

DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR TOOLTIP E-PENIS. LIGHTNING PENETRATION IS MORE ESSENTIAL TO THIS BUILD THAN A 2EXALTED WAND. I PROMISE YOU.

You get enough damage from Arc itself when it levels up and from the plentiful damage nodes in the skill tree, which are close enough to take whenever you want. Please, please remember this. At my level 80, 10% spell damage translates to ~100 DPS. This is not much, at all, its a luxary when you have everything else, its only necessary when you start to map. Trust the build and trust arc as a skill, you don't need frivolous DPS. You power through almost everything in this game with ease and the effectiveness is silly, don't be greedy, just trust the build. You stay alive and do a lot of damage. I know I sound like I'm babytalking but some people are too childish in the way they think with big numbers. Its not expensive and you'll get to end game content without doing much, that is the power of this build.

∙ FLASKS ∙

Please take note of the flasks, they are important. Almost all of my alts were spent rolling flasks whenever I had the chance to upgrade because you are playing hardcore. Staying alive is your top priority and flasks helped that. I rolled everything with staunching if I could get it but I would take Bubbling if I couldn't get lucky. Then I made sure I had bleed flasks and unfreeze flasks as they are the two most important. I think you need a shock flask later into the same, especially when you start running Piety after Level 70+. Granite flask was a must for me. I upgraded into a 5L because I had ~150 armor up until level 70 and it was starting to show, vulnerability and a good hard melee hit would take from 1/3rd to 1/2hp, so I started rolling a granite and got a bit of armor on my chest piece and all was fine. You can run a Topaz flask if you're really scared of ele reflects but honestly as long as you're paying attention, with the combo of life leech and staunching flasks I haven't needed a Topaz (yet). You could swap out one of the life pots for a Topaz and early on you will need a mana pot but a hybrid works just fine, Get a granite as soon as you can. Trust me when I say that once you try an Ample Quicksilver of Adrenaline, you will never go back, ever.

∙ SKILL TREE IMPORTANT NOTES ∙
Early on you want to be going towards Celestial Punishment and Judgement since there are enough nodes on the way to help with all areas. From there you can grab Light of Divinty and get the Purity of Flesh cluster, its OP. A very important note that going the specified way with result in an extra +40 dex which is essential being a Templar trying to run Arctic Armor, you simply do not get those nodes anywhere else so try not to deviate from it. It also sets you up to go down into Quick Recovery, Shaper and the huge life circle south west of Scion starting point. This path for levelling gives you a good balance of damage, raw HP and mana regen which all balances out very nicely. Don't take Ash Frost and Storm early on, its unnecessary and there are much more powerful damage nodes to come later on, however I do recommend speccing into it when you take the long route of int nodes on the way to Eldrich Battery since its just an effective way to help levelling over that period. You can do this late game with the spell damage nodes on the way down to Witch whenever your next level means taking a stat node.

Using the early level skill trees provided, after getting your first 40 levels or so (and the huge life circle) you need to go to Eldrich Battery, on the way picking up Cruel Preparation and Deep Thoughts, getting the Heart and Soul cluster immediately after Eldrich Battery. You leave all of those damage nodes alone until afterwards. All of them. You can spec into them when you're grinding through int nodes since its more effective if you have enough respec points to allow yourself to do it, but you want damage AFTER survivability. This is a hardcore build, play like a hardcore player, not a casual kid concerned with tooltip DPS. If you do this, you get to enjoy almost everything after level 70 or so being pure damage building, picking up a couple of life nodes with Written in Blood.

Options:
The Soverignity nodes left of Purity of Flesh are optional but I felt them necessary to help before (and after) getting Eldrich Battery. You will stuggle to run a decent level of Clarity and in turn Arctic Armor without it and that physical mitigation is essential. You can opt however for the increased mana and reduced mana nodes below Elementalist near the start point, along with others south with Unrelenting cluster and the Dynamo nodes near the huge life circle. Do whatever you want but i still recommend Soverignity.

Obviously, crit is fairly straight forward to take but you won't get it until later on if you want it. I don't think you need it. There are 4 good free nodes which don't require any extra nodes on the way by Elemental Dominion, and there are others to be had around the Witch tree.

If you are concerned with Elemental Reflect, 3 nodes south of the large life circle is Vaal Pact. Skill it along with Life Leech and a Topaz flask and voila, you are immortal.

There's a really nice 3 cluster of Alchemist flask nodes on the way to Eldrich Battery that more experienced players will know how effective it can be.

There's plenty of Elemental Damage nodes around both Templar and Witch that allow you to freely pick up as much damage as you want if you're insane and want it instead of HP (if you're in Standard or something). I don't recommend it but its a freedom.

Theres a +30 Dex node below Eldrich Battery which is on the way to other skills if you're struggling to find gear to support Arctic Armors high requirements.

∙ HOLD RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON AND WIN THE GAME ∙
Honestly, I have never had so much fun playing a character, as well as feeling so downright effective and powerful while being sooo tanky. There are plenty of times I've facetanked something by mistake that in any other situation should have killed me (desync Brutus ground slam in extra damage Dungeon map, huge phys damage that would 1 hit most characters but even with tiny armor, huge HP pool prevails and I potted up) (Croaking Chimeral in level 71 map with monsters fire 4 additional projectiles leap slammed and arctic breath all 5 projectiles point blank into my face, took off 4K HP but I was alive and potioned up yet again). You just rip through packs of mobs when Arc gets above level 11 and the aoe makes map clearing so damn fast. When you're doing enough damage and leeching enough, especially if you go into Vaal Pact, you can quicksilver and warp around an entire map not worrying about a thing. You don't have to target the monsters everything is done for you, but you still do it effectively and quickly while being able to get very powerful and precise for those more experienced players.

If there's a way Path of Exile should be played in 1.3, I think this build is it.




Quick build update: After getting a Pledge of Hands you start to turn in for a lot more power as the item simply frees up so many necessities that you couldn't live without before hand.



Right now the 5th link is Empower but if you had enough crit and were able to run romiras (pending you're happy with life and res) you might opt for increased critical damage or elemental proliferation, or even added lightning damage but for now I will settle with empower and look to add quality to faster casting after losing 20% cast speed from switching to the pledge from duel-wield moonsorrows.

As much offensive power as the Pledge has, what it really provides you with is freedom. Having two 5links and the 100% mana boost allows me to stop using Discipline and still mantain enough mana pool/regen to use my 5L chest for auras:



Swapping out discipline for haste, including speccing out of about 35% worth of spell damage nodes, still managed to increase DPS by about 700 and haste is still levelling. Cast speed does much more than spell damage now with the pledge so I am looking to try to upgrade my rings and amulets accordingly while still maintaining dex/life/res and bare minimum mana regen. In turn, Cast Speed > Spell Damage.

Now hitting 10.6k dps at level 82 and lots of room to improve on gear when I recoupe my losses (spent 8ex on fuses for the pledge!). Next defensive options are a Lightning Coil or a Cloak of Defiance, but with the addition of a Pledge the build is really starting to hit its potential going into late game.

Build update:

Hi, just wanted to say nice writeup. I'm doing something similar as a Witch in HC. One suggestion: instead of Immortal Call and Increased Duration, what about CwDT + Molten Shell/Frost Wall + Warlord's Mark + Enduring Cry? Immortal Call really isn't necessary.

That Arctic Armour is nasty to get going. At what level did you start using it? Luckily Dark Arts gives +20, then there's Agility, and plenty of mana regen nodes, at least as a Witch. I'm planning on using HoI instead of Discipline, but that might change as I reach higher levels.

Also, I wouldn't really call this character tanky. Sure, it has a lot of life, but lots of characters can get that, and AA + a little armour as the main defenses after life don't go that far. It totally works in HC since this is a ranged character, I just don't think "tanky" with those defenses.

Why don't u advise reverb rod for the free echo? It's the same price as lifesprig and it gives u a free 4 link.

With a lightning coil as I'm considering next that tanking becomes much better, you just need to spend a bit to get decent Armor/ES rolled gear because armor is very low. With a granite flask and enduring cry its about 35% damage mitigation which is really good for burst surprise melee like devourers or leap slammers or archers with crit.

I really recommend immortal call since there's countless times it has saved my life. 1-1.5 seconds of invulnerability against a pack of blue devourers in any map 68+ is absolutely lethal, add in desync and unseen enemies etc. that 1 second of invulnerability will give you enough time to react and warp away or pot up (seething op).

I liked the lifesprig just for having a bit of mana and hp to sustain the character more since I didn't really feel lacking damage or clearing ability for most stages until act 3 merc and I prioritise everything over damage when in hardcore. Its personal choice play with whatever you want, I don't value wands very highly until you're 80+.

The build should be pretty legit to also run as a witch I just liked the early availability of things in the templar tree to help out with early game since elderich battery is unrunable until at least level 50 so I didn't need that part of the tree. Witch felt like a better place to end up at, rather than start at, since its a squishier area with less freedom and focused too much on damage and mana over utility and hp,

I wanted to edit into the build that I increased my mana pool a little bit which meant taking a couple of nodes, as I suggested as an alternative option, down by Dynamo and managed to run Purity of Lightning while still never running out of mana with my 240 regen. This protects so much against ele reflect since lightning penetration shreds your res if you're not overcapped light res which also makes it much more viable to run a Lightning Coil if you're rich but with the high hp and tri res on my 5L I don't think its economically viable for me to replace it. Please note adding this aura is only possible by taking Sovereignty.

Thanks for the feedback guys as I said its a flexible build with where it branches to.

@Tempada re: Arctic Armor, you want to use it as soon as you have the mana regen to use it, since you went witch you will be even squishier than I was early on. I got lucky in cruel finding which you might want to invest in for ~10c but since its percentage based it won't make a big difference if you don't have the inherent nodes. I think I started running it around level 40 but you have EB already so there is no reason you shouldn't have it at a decent level. I had it at around level 10 or so at level 70 but you upgrade it every possible chance that you can viably use it without running out of mana, otherwise its dead weight. Optimise your gear and get mana regen on rings and amulets go for 40%+ they are not as expensive as you think as long as you balance your res on your other gear, get es rolls so you can add to your mana pool via EB which also increases mana regen. As explained in my write up you took the wrong path to soverignity and purity of flesh and are not taking the dex node. There is +40 dex there and AA is highly demanding of it and you've got +0. By going the other way as shown in my tree you pick up a dex node for free; when you have 300 int and 70 dex, which +10 node do you think you need more? Also by Celestial Punishment and Judgement to the west edge by templar you spent 2 points on 12% ele damage when the same 2 points can be instead spent on 24% lightning damage. Why? And what is the point of getting elderich battery without using discipline, your mana pool will be too low. HOI will do literally nothing for you. Discipline gives you mana to level up clarity and add another aura, not to mention a shit ton of mana regen. Currently activating discipline gives me +50 mana regen, that's 4 levels of arctic armour for free.

"

Lachesys wrote:

By going the other way as shown in my tree you pick up a dex node for free

It's not for free; it costs 1 more point than if you just went through the int node above Light of Divinity. I'd rather get dex on gear than take a lone +10 dex node when I can save a point by avoiding it.

"

Also by Celestial Punishment and Judgement to the west edge by templar you spent 2 points on 12% ele damage when the same 2 points can be instead spent on 24% lightning damage. Why?

Those same two points are actually 1 extra point (3 points total). I don't take the lightning nodes while leveling in order to be as efficient as possible (it saves a point). Late in the game I might take the two lightning nodes instead of the 1 elemental node.

"

And what is the point of getting elderich battery without using discipline, your mana pool will be too low. HOI will do literally nothing for you. Discipline gives you mana to level up clarity and add another aura, not to mention a shit ton of mana regen. Currently activating discipline gives me +50 mana regen, that's 4 levels of arctic armour for free.

That's sort of an old mentality. In the one month sc race, I was running a lvl 16 AA with no Discipline and Inner Force by the time I hit lvl 80. No, HoI doesn't give much damage, but every bit helps, and I had room for it, along with HoT, Clarity, and Haste. No Discipline necessary if you get decent drops.

I am level 57 on HC now with this exact build so far so good. Do you run Clarity + HOT always? I have no auras yet as Mana regen was tight to start but I am using HOT

Updated main build with late game crit tree.

"

dkowalch wrote:

I am level 57 on HC now with this exact build so far so good. Do you run Clarity + HOT always? I have no auras yet as Mana regen was tight to start but I am using HOT

Glad to see you are enjoying it. Always ran clarity and HoT as I recall, you just keep your clarity as low as your mana pool will allow it, stacking a bit of +mana or even +int on your gear (especially helmets are easy to get that mod and rings/amulets) always helps. Clarity is a unique aura in that it reserves a set amount of mana rather than a percentage so its really easy to help it out by just getting some +mana gear or by not levelling it up. If you do level it too far you can vendor it with an Orb of Scouring to get it reduced a level (handy with arctic armour too).

Soverignty ring nodes helps mana pool for auras. I'm running 4 and if/when I get a Pledge of Hands I'm hoping to add a 5th aura (herald of ice/fire).

Feel free to message me in game if you want more advice.

"

Lachesys wrote:

Soverignty ring nodes helps mana pool for auras. I'm running 4 and if/when I get a Pledge of Hands I'm hoping to add a 5th aura (herald of ice/fire).

Just a note that Herald of Ash won't add any damage to Arc. Ideally you want Clarity + HoT + HoI + Haste (+ maybe Purity of Lightning).

Quick build update: After getting a Pledge of Hands you start to turn in for a lot more power as the item simply frees up so many necessities that you couldn't live without before hand.



Right now the 5th think is Empower but if you had enough crit and were able to run romiras (pending you're happy with life and res) you might opt for increased critical damage or elemental proliferation, or even added lightning damage but for now I will settle with empower and look to add quality to faster casting after losing 20% cast speed from switching to the pledge from duel-wield moonsorrows.

As much offensive power as the Pledge has, what it really provides you with is freedom. Having two 5links and the 100% mana boost allows me to stop using Discipline and still mantain enough mana pool/regen to use my 5L chest for auras:



Swapping out discipline for haste, including speccing out of about 35% worth of spell damage nodes, still managed to increase DPS by about 700 and haste is still levelling. Cast speed does much more than spell damage now with the pledge so I am looking to try to upgrade my rings and amulets accordingly while still maintaining dex/life/res and bare minimum mana regen. In turn, Cast Speed > Spell Damage.

Now hitting 9k dps at level 82 and lots of room to improve on gear when I recoupe my losses (spent 8ex on fuses for the pledge!). Next defensive options are a Lightning Coil or a Cloak of Defiance, but with the addition of a Pledge the build is really starting to hit its potential going into late game.