[3.10] From League Starter to Shaper – Cheap, Tanky, Fast and Fun Physical ST – Very Detailed Guide

386 is almost half the life you get from a perfect Belly. Of course it's worth it.

Loving the guide, i'm a little bit lost on which are my next important upgrades though. I struggle the most with incursions at the moment because I can't kill the boss quick enough in higher lvl maps without swapping to slower projectiles after I clear trash.

If someone is playing the build this league your feedback/advice would be appreciated.

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Kalbuir wrote:

Loving the guide, i'm a little bit lost on which are my next important upgrades though. I struggle the most with incursions at the moment because I can't kill the boss quick enough in higher lvl maps without swapping to slower projectiles after I clear trash.

If someone is playing the build this league your feedback/advice would be appreciated.

You gear it pretty good (although it's lacking life). For damage you can get a Sin's rebirth. Also remember that with point blank you still need to be right next to the boss even when using GMP. The right strategy is to first kill mobs to get a lot of time then go for the boss.

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SumoFlorist wrote:

Hey man, this is a response to your FAQ about Vaal ST.

Unless i'm mistaken with the T3 gemlab thingie in the temple you can corrupt a gem TWICE, meaning it would be possible to get the following variations (provided you use a 20/20 ST as the base):
21/23 ST
21/20 Vaal ST
20/23 Vaal ST

Haven't got a 20/20 to test with yet but people on reddit are saying 21/23 is a possible outcome. Haven't see one linked yet though.

Hey man, would you mind providing us with a priority for Quality on the gems?
I mean ST is prolly the first we want q20 on but what do we spend gcp / chaos orbs on after that (incase we cant get all supports to q20 in one rush).

Hello,

I didn't play the last two leagues.. came back, looked for a build an since the new league started i am using your build.

It started kind of slow... but in the 60's the build took off like a rocket.
No i am almost 80 and i was just able to buy 2 x the scourge and the damage was buffed in a new dimension. I really love this build.

Once in a while i do die, because i get some hard hitting spikes (don't have uber lab yet, so the last asc is missing) ... and if you check my gear you will see that it is far far away from being good. Since i don't really have luck with drops/currency this is all i could afford, after buying the scourge's i am broke :D

Anyway, could you maybe check my gem links ? i have the feeling that blood rage isn't working anymore. Haven't seen it proc for a while now. Don't know why!

Also: Should i get VP now or wait till i have my last asc? I do have some problems with traps.



And at last: I LOVE this build, very fun to play!

There's really no priority. They all give pretty much the same damage increase. 10% increased with the exceptions of ST and GMP that give attack speed and some crit from increased crits. I'd say go for attack speed and increased crit (if you have a 6L) first.

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Clayton1403 wrote:

Hello,

I didn't play the last two leagues.. came back, looked for a build an since the new league started i am using your build.

It started kind of slow... but in the 60's the build took off like a rocket.
No i am almost 80 and i was just able to buy 2 x the scourge and the damage was buffed in a new dimension. I really love this build.

Once in a while i do die, because i get some hard hitting spikes (don't have uber lab yet, so the last asc is missing) ... and if you check my gear you will see that it is far far away from being good. Since i don't really have luck with drops/currency this is all i could afford, after buying the scourge's i am broke :D

Anyway, could you maybe check my gem links ? i have the feeling that blood rage isn't working anymore. Haven't seen it proc for a while now. Don't know why!

Also: Should i get VP now or wait till i have my last asc? I do have some problems with traps.



And at last: I LOVE this build, very fun to play!

Yeah blood rage is 1 level over (66 with 64 CWDT). Just check the gem level requirements on the tooltip.

As for VP this is entirely up to you. Do you need it while mapping ? If not then wait. If you do then just be careful in lab and get an extra health flask. Don't forget to take out BR too.

Hi. I would like to share my thoughts on this build. I am not a strong player, so take anything I say with a grain of salt, but I've seen some other posters here that might have benefited from this information.

You write that your build is a great league starter and suitable for SSF. I'm not sure about great starter, but being relatively cheap, with decent clear and boss killing, it certainly seems decent if not good (and it is perhaps unfair to compare it to the current meta builds). And while the claw situation is a bit painful in SSF, this isn't really any different from any other build that relies on having decent weapons. What I would say is that the build isn't both of these things at once. Starting in SSF with this build was honestly a bit painful. The leveling from about 30 to almost 60 was dreadful. A 4-link and vendor recipe claws simply didn't provide enough damage to make it smooth. Once the claw nodes get filled out, though, it does start to feel a lot better, and the second ascendancy makes a massive difference (obviously).

After some poor luck farming my Tabula (I almost hit 75 before I had it!) I have now started mapping. My rare claws are currently around 230 and 180 pDPS, which is pretty dreadful, but the build is still a lot of fun to play. At this point I can do early maps with ease, and I've been able to clear the whole room in an incursion. For now I haven't needed to swap gems to kill these early bosses, except for the last boss in the temple. Dashing around with Whirling Blades is a lot of fun, and the auto casting of Blood Rage and Ice Golem are nice QoL additions. As an aside I highly recommend the Reaper Spectral Throw effect.

Some tips:
- While leveling be diligent about swapping your GMP for bosses. It was honestly better to do this and then port out and swap back for add phases than sticking to GMP. Slight pain, but it helps a lot.
- Doors are the bane of my existence with this build. With your character obstructed by the wall its easy to miss that all your projectiles are hitting a wall or something, and without doing damage and getting your leech going you are very vulnerable.
- I take the Blood Rage gem out of the CWDT link when I do content involving traps. If you aren't paying attention this damage can easily kill you when you aren't leeching.
- Tooltip damage with this build has been more unreliable than I've seen with other attack based builds. Check with PoB!
- Mana hasn't been a big issue even when I didn't have a claw that gives mana. When you hit a big pack of mobs you get enough mana back anyway, and for bosses I've been hitting hard enough with point blank to get the mana back most of the time. I do carry a mana flask still, because once in a while I need a top-up after missing some attacks or attacking a boss from afar.

For now I'd rate the build: 2/10 for starting/leveling in SSF, 6/10 for early mapping and 8/10 for fun. I'm planning to stick to the build for a while and see how far I can take it (somewhat depending on claw luck), so thank you for the build and I hope you didn't find this post offensive -- and that it is useful for others who are considering it.

- maglame

Updated the info on the vaal skill gems in the FAQ.

Vaal ST has been buffed in 3.3 and can now be used instead of regular ST as the gem grants both skills. Vaal ST (while better than before) is still not great. If you get a 20/20 gem then use it otherwise stick with the regular version. You can now even get 21/20 Vaal ST through the Atzoatl temple double corruption.

First of all thank you for the great build write-up. I've wanted to play ST for several leagues now and finally went for it this league. The phys ST + slayer leech feels great.

So I'm now kind of getting the better pieces of gear together, and today I found something interesting myself in the temple (at the boss):



I wonder, I know that "gain % phys damage as X damage" is obviously good, but is "convert % of phys damage to X damage" bad?

Yes of course it's bad because we don't scale elemental damage at all. And now that elemental part can be resisted by bosses since we don't have any pen either. So you don't do any extra damage but also now some of it gets wasted.