[2.1] The spikes of Ground Slam are poisoned, upto T12 maps, fun yet cheap and easy build

This build came to be when I found a great two handed mace and started to think about what to use it with. I decided on using Ground Slam but the usual Hatred/Herald of Ash/Added Fire Damage scaling seemed a bit too boring so I decided to see how the new Poison gem would work with it.

I did not think it would be that good but it ended up being one of the most fun builds I have played. It's the first build I've made that has been decent for even T10+ mapping.

The Area of Effect per level scaling that Ground Slam now gets also makes leveling with Ground slam quite fun, which I did and it worked really well.

I only play on Standard leagues so I wouldn't recommend it for Hardcore.

Build Overview

I am using Ground Slam with the Poison support gem and from the skill tree I get the Shadow Physical/Chaos damage nodes to scale both the initial hit and the poison. Poison damage is scaled by passive tree with Fatal Toxins and Entropy skill clusters. Abyssal Cry is used for pretty purple explosions of entire monster packs, it is also supported with Poison which works nicely against rares and bosses if they are in the middle of a monster pack.

While I've been using a very good two handed mace this build seems to work fine with a Marohi Erqi for example, which I tested the build with, or any other decent rare two handed mace. Both options should be quite cheap. No uniques are necessary for this build.

The only Aura used is Warlord's Mark with Blasphemy. Arctic Armour is the other skill reserving mana. Since linked Abyssal cry can use 100+ mana having atleast 200 unreserved mana is pretty much required. No extra added Elemental damage was used here.

Tooltip of Ground Slam without frenzy charges.


Videos
Tier 14 Conservatory
Tier 12 Arsenal with a Zana of same level
Tier 9 Gorge
Tier 6 Dry Woods
Merciless Malachai
Short video where I talk about the build, gear etc
Hopefully the quality is fine. First time recording a video longer than 30 seconds. Videos of Higher tier maps will be added if I ever find some higher than tier 6.

Skill tree

Ascendancy 2.2 skill tree: Berserker/Raider 109 points


106 Point tree

Only keystone used is Resolute Technique.

The build would work as Shadow too but you'll lose the two jewel sockets at Scion start but gain Profane Chemistry cluster.
Shadow Tree

Bandit choices

Oak in normal, Oak/Kraityn/passive point in Cruel are all good choices, pick whichever you feel like you need the most, Kraityn in Merciless for Frenzy charge.

Skill gem links

Ground Slam: Multistrike - Melee Physical damage - Poison - Concentrated Effect - Increased Area of Effect

After some testing leaving out melee phys damage for 5-link is most effective atleast in higher tier maps, in lower level content poison doesn't really have time to do anything so it's not that important to have conc effect (which certainly seems to scale the poison damage as well). The poison stacking is most noticeable against high health monsters so higher level maps and bosses.

Tooltip dps may seem low with just conc effect/aoe/poison but when I was testing I was killing tier 7+ map bosses faster with this setup than with an other character that has 35k+ tooltip dps. You just have to trust that the poison actually does damage since it's not possible too see the stats of it anywhere.

Abyssal Cry: Increased Area of Effect - Poison - Void Manipulation
Leap Slam: Faster Attacks - Fortify(unless linked with ground slam itself)
Blasphemy - Warlord's Mark
Cast When Damage Taken(lvl 5): Increased Duration - Immortal Call(lvl 7)
Blood Rage is best placed with the CWDT setup so it also gets the increased duration support.
Arctic Armour and whatever Golem you want to use.

Gear


Except for the weapon my gear is quite average. For the jewels see my character profile(Character's name Psamion_Tal) but mostly you're looking for Jewels with increased maximum life and some damage. Area Damage would be great on the jewels.

The Le Heup of All is surprisingly good, more damage than a ring with good added physical damage roll. I don't really see what I could replace it with unless I really need more life for some reason.

As far as the rest of the gear goes pure armour bases are best. Stats on gear should be Life/resists/armour. Rings and Amulet should have the same but also some damage rolls would be good.

With a bit of mana leech from gear you'll also be able to run those curse immunity maps without problems.


I have not done a build guide before so I don't know if this is any good but hopefully this will be useful to someone. If you have any ideas on how to improve the build or the guide I'd really like to hear them. Thank you and I hope you enjoy the build if you decide to use it!

Updated the gear and supports linked with Ground Slam. Added a new video and Ground Slam tooltip. 6-linked the mace when I tried to 5-link it :D

Just an update on how this build is going. I've been doing upto tier 12 maps so far it's still going good, clear speed isn't that great anymore in high tier maps but still decent enough.

Two more videos also:
Gorge
Arsenal

can you update the 2.2 link you edited in cant be opened

The 2.2 passive tree should be updated to the post now properly. I just tried the build with my old character in Standard and still is the most fun build I've played. Didn't even notice the poison support gem nerf. This was without ascendancy points, will do that later once the free points are given. The combination of berserker/raider should make it really fun to play.

I'll update the rest of the post later and I'll also do a video or two.