BladeWall — A Self-Cast Bladefall/Blade Vortex Experiment — <Clickbait Goes Here>

Pros:
--More powerful defenses than builds with passive defenses
--At a high level, can achieve over 200% increased life with jewels (as a caster) with MoM further increasing your EHP pool
--AoE blind, stun, knockback, culling, tri-cursing, and charge generation
--Massive AoE dps without the need for penetration
--Three curses, each of which is desirable for many other builds (good for party play)
--Reflect-resistant thanks to Immortal Call
--Really good for opening strongboxes thanks to delayed teleport (Lightning Warp), Immortal Call, and strong AoE defense
--Insanely high gear ceiling with very low gear floor—it can be your first build of a league or your tenth

Cons:
--Gameplay involves a lot of casting defenses outside of combat which will lower clearspeed a touch
--Requires attentive play and punishes mistakes harshly
--It is NOT a one-button build. If you enjoy “hold Q to murder”-style builds, I would honestly recommend skipping this one.

Enter a map and cast Blade Vortex once or twice. Run around, casting Blood Rage, Rallying Cry, and your Golem when necessary. Kill a pack with Bladefall and cast Blade Vortex once or twice per pack. Ideally, you will have 4-6 stacks of Blade Vortex up at all times. Blade Vortex provides AoE blinding/stunning/knockback/culling/etc., depending on your choice of links while Blasphemy’d curses generate charges for damage and defense. To make use said Blasphemy’d curses, you will have to play closer to enemies than most Bladefall builds do, which is where Blade Vortex is at its strongest.

You can cast Blade Vortex out of combat and it will still hit enemies while you are in combat. On top of this, it hits very frequently (similar to Incinerate or Ball Lightning) which makes “on hit” effects very potent.

I have two Blade Vortex setups, one for pack-clearing and one for bosses. My pack-clearing setup is Blind + Stun + Knockback, with Spell Echo and Increased Duration increasing the number of blades that are active at any given time. I have opted to use a secondary 3L setup of Power Charge on Crit + Culling Strike to maintain charges and cull bosses.

What you choose to augment Blade Vortex with is up to you and there exists a plethora of options. You can use a Curse on Hit setup if you lack gloves with a Vulnerability on Hit corrupt. Other potent options include Mana Leech for curse-immune maps, Added Cold/Lightning for EE in parties, Increased AoE for a larger “defensive zone,” Physical to Lightning to shock weaker mobs, or Increased Critical Damage for bigger hits and more stun potential since your crits will stun whereas other hits will have a harder time doing so. Your Blade Vortex setup (or setups, as in my case) is the most customizable portion of the build and really should be tailored to your playstyle and/or playgroup.

Blasphemy’d Warlord’s Mark provides passive life leech and mana leech for MoM, enhanced stun potential, and endurance charges for a standard CwDT + Immortal Call setup. It is as important to this build’s defenses as Blade Vortex.

Note that your flasks completely change your defenses. With Taste of Hate and Immortal Call up, you will take a small amount of damage from physical attacks (as attackers deal cold damage instead of a portion of their physical damage). On the other hand, Taste of Hate and Atziri’s Promise increase the stun chance and stun duration of your Blade Vortex. Generally, it is better to have flasks up than down, though there are corner cases where this isn’t true.

As another trick, since Blade Vortex doesn't do a lot of damage, you can use Blade Vortex alone to kill smaller packs to regain flask charges for Surgeon's flasks. This won't pop up often but when it does, it's really good.

Bladefall does a ton of damage. I use Poison on Bladefall which more than doubles the physical portion of your damage. Overlapping AoEs provide immense single-target damage and the knockback from Blade Vortex can be used to “push” large packs into one smaller cluster for Bladefall to eliminate in a single cast.

Vulnerability and Assassin’s Mark increase your damage significantly. An Animated Guardian provides a large increase in damage because of how much double-dipping Dying Breath does—both of your offensive curses double-dip on curse effectiveness and since the build uses Poison, generic % damage increases double-dip as well.

With five frenzies/four power charges up, level 20/0% quality gems, average gear, flasks, and curses, the build hits a touch over 100k dps before Poison. Tossing in Poison, this climbs to over 225k. With mid-to-high end gear consisting of a 6L Pledge and a standard Animate Guardian setup, this goes up to almost 375k from the first volley alone. On top of this, Blade Vortex will be hitting and dealing some damage, though it will only be a small fraction of Bladefall’s damage, as with ignite.

If three volleys of Bladefall hit at this mid-to-high ground of gear, this ends up being over 1m DPS. Yes, this is correct, even without Maligaro’s, legacy crit amulets, or anything of the sort, this build is capable of seven-digit dps. At the highest-tier of gear, the build can *theoretically* achieve a three-volley dps over slightly over 3m, 4m with on shocked ground.

In general, we can sort builds into ones which are built around active/passive offenses and active/passive defenses. For example, on a summoner, you are not killing anything yourself, merely sitting back and casting buffs, many defensive (TempChains+Enfeeble and Bone Offering). As I play summoner, I would classify the build as having passive offenses/active defenses (denoted as PO/AD). On the other hand, consider a Reave character with CwDT+IC, Acrobatics, and Coil for defenses. Said Reaver obviously has active offenses/passive defenses. Many builds have mixes of these—for example, the Reaver probably has a spare Jade Flask (an active defense) and a Curse on Hit setup (a passive offense). The summoner has Flesh Offering (an active offense) and may run CwDT+Convocation (a passive defense). That said, despite possessing AO/PD aspects, this summoner is primarily a PO/AD build.

Successful builds merge both active and passive versions of each of these. Passive offenses typically provide QoL and clearspeed. Active offenses are usually where the bulk of damage comes from. Passive defenses likewise increase QoL and clearspeed as the player doesn’t have to cast defensive skills. Active defenses are commonly used preemptively in PoE to provide “defense spikes” to compensate for damage spikes or dangerous situations.

In general, I think that active play should be far stronger than passive play. Using a skill comes at an opportunity cost (in terms of time) of using another skill. Passive offenses/defenses also have the benefit of being “always on” over active offenses/defenses and thus should be weaker to compensate. I think that PoE does this balance fairly well, with a few minor exceptions (Immortal Call comes to mind—there is very little benefit to self-casting).

With this balance paradigm in mind, it is obvious that an AO/AD build will be the strongest. This is where BladeWall falls. The build has passive aspects to both offenses (passively cursing with Vuln and Assassin’s Mark) and defenses (Blasphemy’d leech and CwDT+IC) though the active aspects of the build are (obviously) the highlights—it is an AO/AD build that possesses PO/PD aspects as potent as those of the average build. This is where the build’s strength comes from.

I built this character out of a Witch on respec, though Shadow’s start is better (loses 2% increased spell damage for 50% increased chaos damage and some flat life). Level to 28 however you want and then start using Bladefall. I would recommend using either a Reverberation Rod or a multitrap setup in a Deerstalker. Bladefall should easily carry you from there on. Carry a Blade Vortex to burn down harder bosses.

Try to enter maps with at least a Rime Gaze (Bladefall + Poison + Spell Echo + Faster Casting) and a 5L chest for your chosen Blade Vortex setup (BV + Spell Echo + Knockback + Blind + Stun should be potent enough, though I would recommend experimenting). From there, you can continue to gear upwards.

I use a tier system for classifying gear for this build. My current gear is what I would classify as mid-end for a Standard character and mid-to-high for a new league. The gear ceiling for this build is insanely high so it’s a good choice for players who want to accumulate wealth to keep building up their character. On the other hand, the build can enter maps with just a Rime Gaze and a 5L. As you’ll see, the gap between successive tiers of gear tends to be on the high side.

More-or-less required gear: Atziri’s Promise, Pledge of Hands, 5L or 6L chest, +1 or +2 curses (options include Windscream, Doedre’s Damning, and a corrupted amulet).

Low: 4L Rime Gaze, 5L rare chest, +1 curse, Atziri’s Promise

Low-to-mid: 4L Pledge or 5L staff, Tabula Rasa, +1 curse, Atziri’s Promise

Mid: 5L Pledge, 6L rare chest, Vuln on Hit gloves, +2 curses, Atziri’s Promise + Taste of Hate

Mid-to-High: 6L high-rolled Pledge, 6L rare/unique chest, Vuln on Hit gloves, +2 curses, Atziri’s Promise + Taste of Hate, crit jewelry, 20/20 on important gems (Bladefall, Blade Vortex, Blasphemy, Stun, Faster Casting, etc.)

High: 6L high-rolled Pledge, 6L unique chest (Belly/Coil), Vuln on Hit gloves with damage (Voidbringer/Maligaro’s/Facebreaker), +2 curses, Atziri’s Promise + Taste of Hate , Animate Guardian setup, crit ring(s), (legacy) crit multi amulet, 21/20 or 20/23 on important gems

Ming's Heart is also an option though it might be hard to squeeze in.

I have done up to Tier 10 maps with low-end gear for testing purposes. Use Vulnerability and Warlord’s Mark on Blasphemy and devote one Blade Vortex setup to maintaining power charges to keep up your damage if you do not have links to spare for Curse on Hit+Vuln. If you do not have a Pledge yet, you may want to search for gear with +mana on it to increase your MoM pool as keeping up MoM proved to be the hardest part of running with weaker gear. One or two Spirited Responses may be useful as well.

I keep forgetting to 20q my flasks.

Bladefall + Poison + Concentrated Effect + Faster Casting + Controlled Destruction/Increased Critical Damage + CD/ICD/Added Fire
Added Fire results in higher per-hit damage (and sheet DPS) than ICD but lower total DPS after curses and Poison. This is because the physical damage of a hit is lower than that of an ICD hit so Poison hits for less. Poison amounts to almost 150% more physical/chaos damage but is delivered over roughly three seconds. Controlled Destruction provides the best increase to damage though I prefer ICD as the clear is more consistent due to the higher crit chance.

Blade Vortex + Spell Echo + Blind + Stun + Knockback + Increased Duration
This is my preferred setup for my main Blade Vortex, though as mentioned earlier, Mana Leech, Physical to Lightning, Added Cold/Light, Culling Strike (IIR/IIQ optional), Power Charge on Crit, Curse on Hit + Vulnerability, CritDmg, and Increased AoE are all usable. This is where you have the most room to personalize and I would strongly recommend experimenting. I run a second 4L setup (see my gear linked above)

Blasphemy + Assassin’s Mark + Warlord’s Mark

Cast When Damage Taken + Immortal Call (+ Arctic Breath + GMP optional)

Flame Golem, Rallying Cry, Lightning Warp, and Blood Rage should all be included where sockets permit

Optional Animate Guardian setup:
AG + Minion Life +Fortify (wearing Dying Breath/Leer Cast/Southbound/Cloak of Flame/boots with 50+% total lightning resistance via a Fire/Cold + Lightning Resistance craft)

40 points, walking from Shadow to Witch

60 points, getting MoM and some AoE

80 points, enough defenses to enter maps

100 points, starting to spec crit

Completed tree without jewel sockets

Grab stat nodes as necessary.
Bandits:
Normal: Oak
Cruel: Skill point
Merciless: Alira/Kraitlyn (power charge for consistency, frenzy charge for overall damage)

Jewels:
Your best jewels will be %life + %damage + %area damage since “x% increased damage” and “% increased area damage” mods double-dip on Bladefall hit damage and Poison DoT. I currently have only allocated one jewel socket and am not prioritizing them right now, though jewels the easiest way to massively increase your dps. I simply do not feel as though I need more damage.

For reference, after curses and poison, this is about 450k effective dps on the first volley.

For HC, I would recommend using PCoC on Blade Vortex to generate/sustain Power Charges. You can then drop Assassin’s Mark from your Blasphemy setup to pick up Arctic Armor and Clarity for enhanced damage resistance and recovery at a small cost to damage. Consider grabbing a few Spirited Responses for safer use of MoM.

Recall that the chance for a stun to occur is based on how much damage an enemy is hit for. A chance to stun of under 20% is ignored. With a level 20 Stun gem and belt with 10% reduced enemy stun threshold, we need to hit an enemy for roughly 4% of their maximum life to achieve this 20% chance to stun. At a bare minimum, stuns will last for at least 350ms, though they last longer if the hit was larger.

This is where Warlord’s Mark becomes awesome. Its “Chance to receive a Stun” adds a flat 15% to our stun chance once we’ve hit the minimum stun threshold. It also reduces enemy stun recovery which effectively multiplies stun duration.

Let us assume that we hit an enemy for 4% of their maximum life (the bare minimum to stun with a Stun gem and a 10% stun threshold belt). We also get 60% stun duration from a quality Stun gem and Studded Belt. Finally, we account for Warlord’s Mark’s stun chance and reduced recovery. Thus, without curse effectiveness, we have a 35% chance to stun for:
350ms * (1+.60) * (1 / (1-.3)) = 800 ms

In terms of gameplay, I like to have six stacks of Blade Vortex up at once to feel safe. Four stacks will be sufficient most of the time but six is safer and better for AoE permastunning.

Is Poison OP? Is Bladefall OP?
Yes, and I would not be surprised if one or both of them received a nerf next patch. This build will still be viable even if Bladefall’s base damage is halved or its ability to overlap AoEs is removed—its surplus damage is that extreme.

I don’t like playing builds which make me press a ton of buttons. How much of it can be automated?
Not much. CwDT+Blade Vortex cannot be built to stun reliably nor keep up a lot of blades at once for reliable on-hit effects. You can copy/paste my offenses to make your own build but as it stands, BladeWall is not for you.

Why does my tooltip dps differ so strongly from your damage estimates?
My damage estimates are performed with things like curses and Poison’s DoT taken into account. These will not appear in your tooltip but provide a majority of your damage.

Why does your gear suck so much?
I primarily play Standard but I’m not rich. I never set out to become rich, I don’t try to game the economy, I don’t have any of the juicy legacy gear, etc. I simply don’t enjoy playing the game that way and this build would be much better if I did. I would have liked to have posted this guide with at least “mid-to-high” gear but I simply don’t own it.

Your 3m dps number seems far too high. How is that possible?
Double-dipping, man. Double-dipping. Vulnerability and Conc Effect provide “more damage” bonuses at two points during the damage calculation. Frenzy Charges factor into dps three times. The build abuses synergies and double-dipping in as many ways as I could combine. To be fair, I’m also assuming that gear at the “high end” includes such items as legacy crit multi amulets and a +1 Frenzy Charge Windscream (which I DO happen to own one of) which are amazingly expensive pursuits.