Hardcore Hidden Potential Gladiator | Self-craft gear, facetank Guardians

I built this character to deal with an internet service which provides consistent 1% packet loss and frequent lockstep-freezes as a result. This is not a build that dies the instant you look away or lose control. It is intended to be accomplished on a restricted budget, and would serve as a good league starter with lower ilvl gear and a 5 link.

Build Criteria

* Resilient to misplay, lag, and loss of control of character in HC
* No extremely rare chase uniques, jewels, flasks, or gem levels
* Viable Guardians facetank in HC
* Passive instant healing
* Good physical damage mitigation
* High attack/spell block
* High sustain
* No reliance on temporary and unsustainable buffs such as Flasks, or Charges
* > 6k life pool
* Decent mobility and clear speed for general mapping
* Strong single target

POB

Level 92: https://pastebin.com/VeTuivNK

Gear



All of this gear is easily achieved even with casual game play time, I've added some notes where warranted next to specific items.

Uniques:

There are certain uniques that simply outclass blue items even for Hidden Potential:



Boots require two prefixes to be acceptable, Movement Speed, and Life, thus ruling out a magic item. I find Redblade Tramplers to offer good damage, move speed, and armour. A good rare boot is also a fine choice. The belt should be self explanatory. Unshattered Will is purely optional, but I like it for the 50% uptime damage mitigation and the damage buff it provides.

Arguably an equally good shield (and absolutely a better option for Uber Lab and certain Guardian fights) is Lioneye's Remorse. It is also cheaper.



Weapon



Any sword, claw, or dagger will work and there are many strictly higher DPS options than Bloodseeker, however I find the instant leech (and substantial leech %) to be extremely synergistic with this build, especially with reckoning. With Bloodseeker you will leech your entire life pool back each second against a single boss target, which provides astounding sustainability.

Blue Items



Costs for the bases of these items @ their ilvls are as follows:

i84 6L Astral: 230c
i84 Helm with BF enchant: 10c-30c depending on AOE or Damage
i81 Steel Rings: ~22c
i84 Agate Amulet: 1c
i82 Spiked Gloves: 15c

I was able to roll all of the properties you see in the above gear for a little under 400 alts, 50 or so augs, about 10c in master crafting fees, and a small number of annulment orbs. The general strategy here is to roll T1 life, annul the suffix if it exists, then master craft a resist. Exceptions to this are amulet where flat phys is too good to give up, and gloves where you absolutely want a high chaos res roll and sacrificing ~20 flat life with a master craft is acceptable. I was only "lucky" with my amulet, the rest are not exactly min-maxed results.

Jewels



You want one instance of mana leech, some intelligence, and resists on your jewels. The rest should focus on speed and damage, in that order. Overcapping res with Unshattered Will is not difficult, however it is not practical with Lioneye's.

Pantheon

Soul of Solaris is by far the strongest Major for this build.
Soul of Ralakesh is an excellent option as it patches up one of the build's deficiencies, dealing with DOTs.

General Considerations

* CWDT Molten Shell is fun, and provides reasonable damage thanks to Hidden Potential.
* Reckoning linked to Onslaught procs surprisingly often as the gameplay style is generally to shield charge into packs and blow them up. I also like AOE and Chance to Bleed as other links to reckoning in order to more quickly kill monsters if you DC. AOE allows Reckoning to hit all ranged monsters.
* Lioneye's Remorse is a better shield option for Lab, Chimera, and Minotaur.
* A rare boot with chaos resistance is an excellent swap for Chimera.
* Punishment is an extremely underrated curse for physical melee characters. The benefit of this curse is that it applies a buff to you, which extends beyond the death of the monster(s) you're dealing with. It also provides the absolute highest amount of damage of any curse for a physical attack build, and it procs on blocks which provides great synergy with this build.

Videos

Damage/Life/EE/something Unid Chimera

This was one of my first Chimera runs and I've later determined that Grace is unnecessary, that running Hatred is overall a better option to more quickly deal with adds.

More shit to come..

=o looks great. starting the tree with the +speed nodes gives more DPS in path of builiding, is there a reason why you chose the other nodes? (kinda new to the game btw)

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5m0k1n wrote:

=o looks great. starting the tree with the +speed nodes gives more DPS in path of builiding, is there a reason why you chose the other nodes? (kinda new to the game btw)

Because it's a hardcore build.

i mean starting with the speed nodes instead of the +phys dmg ones. unless you mean its because of the +17 life? i guess it can be worth it since the DPS difference is minimal anyways

Hey Muir. Been out of the poe loop for a couple leagues and am going to be playing the upcoming incursion league. I remember playing your EA witch way back in the day and thoroughly enjoying it. So when I saw this build I thought it might be worth giving a whirl as a league starter. Any tips for a smooth leveling process and what are priorities to get with this build?