The Modular Tank Build

My goal in path of exile was to make a build for any class, using any type of defence.
I'm the kind of person who's played path of exile for years, but still doesn't have that 6L Shav's.
Chances are, so are you.

We are the type of player who might be able to snag a 5L or two once every few months, who have other things to do and can't play like a racer and who don't RMT and don't have those crazy exalts rolling in, and who can't ever seem to maintain a map pool. We're the type of player who hit a rut at around level 80 and will never see any of our characters hit level 100.

We're the type of player who doesn't have that high-end or even medium-end laptop who will freeze often and can't rely on player skills or micromanagement to survive. We NEED to be able to AFK almost all content to not die.

And that's okay.

So, your builds have crashed and burned. They keep dying. They can't map. They can't handle Merciless. They get wrecked by Dominus and Malachai.

Well, I'm going to change that for you.

I've devised an efficient build system that will enable you to create a character from any of the base classes.
This system works because Path of Exile is actually Path of Tank. You won't ever be able to get super far with that uber-crazy DPS build because you'll die, over and over again. But if you build pure tank, you can.

And luckily for us, offense in path of exile isn't very important compared to defense. With a pure tank spec, we can still clear 99% of all POE content, including Atziri.

To date, this concept has been used and has worked with the Marauder, Shadow, Ranger, Duelist and Scion. All builds revolve around level 70 to 80-ish characters, the level range around which is readily attainable by casual players.

Variants of each build are taken from hardcore-viable builds, except they are even tankier (for their level), so they should all be hardcore viable. It should be noted that on many of these characters I have not died to anything a player would normally encounter. My few deaths are from AFK tests on very hard bosses (which as a non min-maxed level 80 without uber gear is suicide) or from very stupid mistakes. I made it to merciless A4 only dying once or twice or not at all on many of these characters. A better player should be able to make it work easily.

The way we build our characters will depend on their distance to certain passives.

In path of exile, there are several key methods of tanking:

Life regeneration

High Life/ES

Armour

Evasion

Block

Dodge

Damage conversion

Elemental Resists

Trigger Gems

Of these, for the player who does not have the uber endgame gear or a high end computer, both life regeneration, High Life/ES, and Elemental Resists are mandatory.

On top of that, at least one of either armour or evasion are required.

And on top of that, at least one of either block or dodge are required.

Trigger gems are also capable of adding so much more tanking potential that they are also required.

Additional damage conversion to elemental on top of that is also very good to have, being just shy of being required.

Any second 5L/6L for attacks would use mitigation or CC supports such as Ice Bite, Hypothermia, Blind, Knockback, or Life Leech and LGoH.

Thus, for each character class, we go directly down this decision tree to build our modular tank, 100% in alignment with the attribute persuasions of the classes. We're the underdog poor players. We can't afford to be creative or fancy. That means no hybrid, no worrying about mana.

We will have several variations:

1H Melee + Shield

Dual Wield Melee

Bow

This type of build is also workable for 1H Wand and Shield builds for the Witch, as well as Staff Block builds for the templar. The Ranger build is identical to the Shadow build.

We will not be discussing the specifics of the Staff or 1H Wand builds here, as those builds are still in progress. However, I can tell you that they do work! Just follow the principles I've outlined here.

I do have an arctic breath caster and a summoner which are both modular tank builds.

The modular gem setup is thus called because in all of our significant links, we will have gems that support our tanking and are compatible with all iterations and permutations of our build.

Small tweaks are required for one or two facets of the gem links that will not be compatible with different weapon setups.

Our ideal 6L Chest would contain:

CWDT + Immortal Call + Molten Shell + Enfeeble + Chaos Golem + Tempest Shield/Cold Snap

For a 5L, we would be cutting Tempest Shield or Cold Snap (most of you will use this setup).

One of our 4Ls would contain:

CWDT + Cold Snap/Tempest Shield + Arctic Breath + Frost Wall

Another 4L would contain two defensive auras or more if the build can run it.

We will also include Enduring Cry.

Where possible, we will include fortify and melee trigger gems.

When necessary, we will use high base damage spells such as flameblast and firestorm to do our damage to compensate for zero offensive investment.

Before we can afford 5Ls and the like, we can separate our CWDT chain into 3 separate CWDT groups, which we put into 4Ls in our helm, boots, and gloves. In addition, we limit our attack skills to 3-4 links whenever possible for as long as possible to maximize our defense.

For the Marauder, we have easy access to life, armour, and shield block nodes. Therefore, efficiency dictates that we head in those directions, using blood magic support gems for active abilities. We will be going 1H Sword + Shield.

The marauder build is a nod to Mortezzah's build. Future iterations of it will focus on maxing out block. As it stands I made this one out of a tree similar to Oro's RF build, so there is more life regen and less block. It was still able to clear content just fine and was pleasantly surprised.

The scion has easy access to early life regeneration. In a nod to Dy'Ness, I've found that the most effective setup is a CI ES/life regen tank with some armor and some block as well as some damage conversion. This is because it's much easier to stack tons of ES than it is to stack tons of life. Since we're CI, we will be mana hungry as we cannot use blood magic, but we will also be tanky.

The Shadow/Ranger is neither blessed with bountiful life regeneration nodes nor life or ES nodes. Neither is armor readily accessible. It does have access to nearby bow nodes and plenty of evasion Thus, we solve the issue of a lack of high innate tankiness by going ranged evasion and dodge.

We are forced to go for some DPS nodes due to the shadow’s squishiness. We get some crit nodes to allow us to freeze enemies and prevent them from reaching us.

This version is a nod to Grocery’s Physical Bow Shadow, although we differ greatly. Namely, we go for the life regen cluster near the duelist, while he does not.

For the Duelist, we are very clearly life-focused, but are split between armor and evasion nicely. We have easy access to dual wield block nodes, and will focus there. The Dual Wield block maximization has issues without a large source of additional block, and so we must either sacrifice our chest to use BoR or use a Wings of Entropy, or both. If we lose the chest, we must shift the Modular Gem Setup to other pieces of gear.

This build is a nod to FuryofWar’s duelist build, but we do not take any of his suggested DPS nodes, instead moving further up into marauder territory for the life regeneration nodes.

Not that much. These builds all have around 3-5k DPS. It's enough to kill anything, just really slowly. Still, in a party your DPS can get doubled with a good auramancer and make it actually kill things decently quickly. Still better than dying over and over and over again, IMO.