[3.3] Hipster Melee Elemental Hit Champion - Melt all Content with low Budget! - With Video

I really like Melee builds that go face to face with everything. When GGG released information on the new Elemental Hit, I was sure that I would try to come up with a build about this skill.

Elemental Hit is a skill that only chooses ONE element for a single attack. Every hit applies a small AoE explosion that gets a 80% more radius buff, when you have an elemental ailment active. This means, that if you have flat
- 100 phys damage
- 100 fire damage
- 100 lightning damage
- 100 cold damage
and the skill chooses fire damage for its next hit, the skill will only do 100 fire damage. Other damage types will be ignored.

But all conversion takes place before the skill chooses an element. This means, when you are able to convert all damage to fire, you will do 100+100+100+100 = 400 damage during the fire hit, but no damage at all when the skill chooses lightning or cold damage.

With 3.3 GGG introduced the unique jewel Combat Focus that allows to block one or two of the elements for your hits. This means, we are able to force Elemental Hit to do ONLY fire damage with its hits.

When playing this build, you will combine those jewels with items that convert all of your damage to fire: 50% of your phys damage, 100% of your cold damage and 90% of your lightning damage.

Since Elemental hit is always added as flat damage, you will use two very fast weapons with high base crit damage, so we hit and crit a lot.

The Playstyle is pretty straightforward. Since we use claws with a very high attack speed, whirling blade is the best (and only) option for movement. You will whirl into the next pack, hit your Elemental Hit button and see everything burn.

It is very important that you hit an enemy with your whirling blides so you´ll have permanent Fortify. Your first hit will also taunt and intimidate the enemies, so they receive 10% more and 20% more damage AND they can´t evade your hits, means you have a 100% hit chance.

On tougher enemies you can drop your totem for additional attack speed, drop a vaal lightning trap for shock and drop your vaal grace for more defense. So far I didn´t find an enemy that was able to survive for more than a few seconds (including Lichs, Uber Izaro, Elder Guardians, Atziri).

Pro
- Very good damage (far more than 1 million trash dps with budget gear, 4+ million with great gear, 2 million shaper dps with <10ex)
- Very fast (11+ attacks per second, fast movement)
- Instant leech with Vaal Pact and additional 1.000+ flat life leech per second
- Hipster Skill (not much builds out there)
- Cheap Build (6L, every other item <5C) but also huge potential for upgrades (Belly, Xophs Blood)
- Very easy to equip
- Looks very cool
- You only have to switch one single gem for hard bosses
- True melee! (although it has an inbuild aoe mechanic)

Con
- Mana might be an issue in mid game
- You have to aim a little with your movement skill (no hit-one-button-blindly build)
- Not the safest build out there so probably not hardcore viable (though I died only a few times to my own mistakes)

Tree Links
Ascendancy
Bandits

6L (Body Armour): Elemental Hit - Multistrike - Weapon Elemental Damage - Combustion - Cold to Fire - Ancestral Call (Trash) / Ruthless (Bosses)
4L (Helm): Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Fortify - Blood Magic
4L (Gloves): Blasphemy - Assassins Mark - Flammability - Herald of Ash
4L (Boots): CwDT Lv14 - Blood Rage Lv 17 - Immortal Call Lv 16 - Inc. Duration Lv 20
3L (Weapon 1): Vaal Lightning Trap - Vaal Grace - Inc. Duration
3L (Weapon 2): Ancestral Protector - Lightning Golem - Blood Magic

Quality Priority: Elemental Hit > Cold to Fire > Herald of Ash > Blood Rage > Rest of 6L Gems > Blasphemy > Rest (keep in mind that some of the bonuses are useless, so dont waste your currency on having 20% quality on all gems)

Since Elemental Hit scales like a spell, I recommend trying to get a Lv21 version or better Lv22 with the new double corrupt from the Temple.

While playing as a 5L you should remove Cold to Fire.

There is not much room for changes here. You can switch Immortal Call with Molten Shell, you can try to only use one curse or you can try to use Warlords Mark for additional survivability. If you prefer even more damage, you can switch Vaal Grace for Vaal Haste.

Necessary uniques:
Windscream Boots: Since we use two curses (Assassins Mark & Flammability), we need +1 curse on an item. You can also try to get it on your ring, but I feel that this is the best solution. For super rich guys, you can try to get a Xophs Blood with +1 Curse corruption.
Later in the game you can try to upgrade for a Windshriek via prophecy. It will add some flat armour, 10% movement speed (that we dont need) and 60% increased area of effect.

Call of the Brotherhood: This Ring converts 40% of lightning damage to cold and the cold damage converts to fire. This is a huge damage buff, alongside some resistance, int and mana regeneration. If you have problems with filling your resistances, not enough life or if you need other stats, you can also swap this ring for another item while suffering a huge damage loss.

Crimson Combat Focus & Viridian Combat Focus: Without these two jewels, we would not be able to only choose fire damage on our Elemental Hit. You will have four jewel slots when the build is finished and only one slot has the necessary attributes in radius (near Templar and near Duelist starting area).

Recommended uniques:
Belly of the Beast: A Belly is always a good solution. It adds lots of life, up to 45 resists and it helps with your flasks.

Starkonjas Head: If you manage to get the resistances, this helm is a very nice buff for our build. You can also go for a rare helmet that adds Int and life.

Xophs Blood: This is a very nice upgrade for our build, but it is very expensive (6ex right now). It frees up two skill points for Avatar of fire, it adds a lot of life, fire penetration and a very nice situational buff that buffs our defense and offense. It permanently covers anything that hits you in ash, resulting in 20% more fire damage and 20% less movement speed.

The Wise Oak: A pure damage buff, but your fire res needs to be the highest of your three elemental resistances. Depending on your gear, a simple Sulphur (40% inc damage) or Silver flask (Onslaught) might even be better.

For you super rich guys:
Xophs Blood with +1 Curse corruption: This would be the BiS item for sure. But it will ge crazy expensive. It would free our boots slot and give us 250++ life, up to 20% movement speed and less pressure on our resistances.

Frostferno with double +2 gems corruption (+2 cold/fire/light and +2 AoE): This would five us about 40% to 50% more damage compared to a 6L setup. But it will be crazy expensive, too.

Weapons:
For your weapons, there is only one choice: Rare Gemini Claws!
Gemini Claws have a very nice base crit chance, good attack speed and a perfect implicit mod, giving us 38 life and 14 mana on every single hit. Keep in mind that we use Ancestral call so we have up to 36 hits per second resulting in flat life gain of more than 1.300 life per second, not including the life leech from vaal pact. But more important, the flat mana gain solves our mana problem since we will only have enough mana to cast Elemental Hit once. Therefore we need a lot of mana leech and flat mana gain on hit.

Try to get Gemini Claws with 8+ crit chance and 1.8+ attacks per second. The other mods are not very important. Since we need a lot of int, you can try to craft Int on them. For offense part, try to get crit multi or weapon elemental damage. Flat elemental damage can help, too.

I bought these two for <10C:

Other Items:
Rares with life and resistances. Try to get a high weapon elemental damage roll on your belt and an IAS roll on your gloves. Since we are a bit low on life for true melee builds, always try go get as much life as possible and maybe even a high strength roll on your ring and belt.

Attribute Requirements:
Str: Easy, you get enough from tree
Dex: Easy, you get enough from tree
Int: Hard, 121 Int for Gemini Claws. You will get 79 int from tree and a perfect Call of Brotherhood Ring. Means you need at least another 42 int from your weapons, gloves, jewels or ring.

Important mods to look for:
Offense
Attack Speed
Crit Multiplier
Weapon Elemental Damage
%inc Fire Damage
Crit Chance
Flat ele damage

Defense
Life
Resistances
Flat Armour/Evasion
Flask mods (reduced charges used, more charges gained, increased life flask effect)

Lab Enchants:
Helm:
Any Elemental Hit enchant, though I prefer 15% Increased Attack Speed.

Gloves:
Go for fire AoE spells/attacks that are triggered when you hit something. The damage doesn´t matter, but it will help you taunt and intimidate enemies from range, so they´ll take more damage and can´t evade our hits.

Boots:
The best enchant by far is increased attack speed if you´ve killed recently.

More defensive:
8% chance to Dodge Spell Damage if you've taken Spell Damage Recently
10% Chance to Dodge Attack Hits if you've taken a Critical Strike Recently

For boss kills:
Damage Penetrates 10% of Enemy Elemental Resistances if you haven't Killed Recently

My gear in Incursion Softcore (11/06/2018)

The Pantheon Powers add another layer of defense to the build.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Pantheon

The powers are situational so you might want to switch them around, but I guess those are my favourite powers for this build, both fully upgraded:

Soul of Lunaris
Soul of Ryslatha

Since the build stretches from far left side to far right side, you should start early to move your way away from the Duelist starting area. I suggest you use this as starter build and then just take whatever you need (more damage or more life).

Starter tree around level 22: http://poeurl.com/bYWE

At early stages, you can also start to level with a two hand weapon and a skill like cleave or ground slam. In this case, you can use the two handed passives instead of going around the wheels directly below Duelist.

Elemental Hit doesnt start to shine very early unless you have means of conversion, so just try to play whatever feels good for you. Sunder, Reave, Ice Crash, Earthquake are also good choices.

I switched just around level 70 but I changed the build at this moment, so switching might also work earlier.

I think this build is able to do all the content, at least everything I tried so far (including Shaper, but no uber atziri and uber elder). The defense is not very strong but you leech a lot and the damage is very good.

So far I did maps up to T15 and I killed Minotaur deathless. I will try to do shaper as soon as I have all the fragments and post how it went.

With reasonable equip and only one expensive item (Xophs Blood), with all situational buffs applied that the char offers (so no aura bot), with 20/20 gems and an 21/20 Elemental hit, Path of Building says the build has about 4.630.000 dps.



It is very realistic to reach at least 1 million dps on a budget, with a very high potential to get much more. With my current equip and just 19/0 gems, I already have 1,3 millions dps on trash.

With my current equip and maxed out gems (20/20 on all relevant gems + 21/20 on Elemental hit), PoB says Id have about 2 million shaper dps.

...

Iam Level 89, did Atziri and Uberlab on Lv 82 with a 5L. The damage feels great. You can check my Char Babausar (shared).

T9 Twinned Moon Temple Map: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/272158674
T9 Tower Map Boss Fight: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/272868870
T16 Minotaur first try this league, deathless: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/274286958

Version 1.1 - 12/06/18 - Added a picture, gif and video. Will add more videos later (e.g. incursion, harder bosses, etc.). Also added some gear options and my current gear.
Version 1.0 - 11/06/18 - Basic version of the guide. Will add more pictures and videos later.