[3.5] Alpha and Omega, Molten Strike Raider. League Starter and End Game Finisher

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Jettco wrote:

I just finished act 10 and am gearing up for maps. Is there any sort of benchmark I should be looking at for life and evasion rating? I know I need to cap resistances, but was curious about evasion and life. I felt like going through act 10 I was getting hit really hard really often. I have both beltimbers and 6L chest, so I’ve really been focusing on offense. Need to toughen up a bit.

Generally defens looks like this: resist>50 life on every piece of gear MINIMUM(and pick up as much life nodes as u can)

If u want some mitigation of incomming damage u can easyly take granite flask with increase armor.

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Jettco wrote:

I just finished act 10 and am gearing up for maps. Is there any sort of benchmark I should be looking at for life and evasion rating? I know I need to cap resistances, but was curious about evasion and life. I felt like going through act 10 I was getting hit really hard really often. I have both beltimbers and 6L chest, so I’ve really been focusing on offense. Need to toughen up a bit.

everything will be low. hp comes with levels and stuff. you should be good with evasion though. as long as you have cruel lab and have gotten avatar of the chase (onslaught) you'll have massive evasion.
to trigger such massive evasion you need a jade flask, and/or run grace aura. you can also get a jewel with % chance to blind. once things are blinded and your jade flask is active you'll have 95% chance (max) to evade even without grace aura.

my hp when i started maps was about 4500. its 5k now and im doing fine. im now running my blasphemy enfeeble and dropped the banner. might try to pick it up back up if i can get an enlighten but maybe not. its more of a luxury than anything.

the biggest thing is evasion. you need it. not much on gear or anything, but just onslaught jade flask and blind. or onslaught jade flask and grace. if you don't have evasion you'll get hit. getting hit hurts a lot.

you should have fortify up basically 100% of the time which helps, and once i get a daresso's defiance you'll basically be able to have endurance charges up 100% of the time except on bosses (get it on kills).

overall the late 70s early 80s in levels is definitely the hardest. more levels equals more hp equals better time.

keep in mind there is a TON of chaos damage this league. from syndicate members and since incursion is back. the incursion chaos constructs do physical and chaos SPELL damage. so spell avoidance is best vs them.

Thanks for the detailed response. I’ve only gotten a few characters to high levels and this has definitely been the most fun. I for sure need to upgrade my life pool, but i spent all my chaos on my 6L and the swords.

finally hit what i consider a decent power spike

things are still pretty expensive surrounding molten strike, unfortunately. like 5ex for a helmet enchant on a rare helm. hell you can get a xoph's blood for that kind of money now.

i've gotten 2 exalts dropped and had a few stacks of chaos but decided i needed to upgrade some things. this is what my gear looks like right now in betrayal


i found my belt, which was a pretty big deal. anyway got the daresso's for 60c and the helm for 1ex. its a big jump from where i was.
the onslaught effect on daresso's is fucking incredible. it feels amazing.

next upgrade will probably be upgrade my gloves/boots/rings to have enough int and resistances where i can save up for a xoph's blood. after that i'll probably be trying to 6L my chest so i can then upgrade to a helmet enchant helmet and craft that as i wish.

i will probably try to skip out on atziri's step this league.

Started with this last league and it was awesome. Would like to try the 2 handed version with Ngamahu's this time. For a bit of a change, do you think consecrated path would work in place of cyclone? And any suggested tweaks to the build? Thanks!

thats an interesting suggestion!
i imagine it would work, yes.

the main reasons why i use cyclone is #1 it hits fast. this is important for me when i have combustion and increased critical strikes linked to it. this effectively will guarantee to ignite an enemy so they will proc the immolate support linked to molten strike.
#2 smooth movement. cyclone is very controllable how far you travel and such. leap slam is good but i personally hate that skill in general, including its trigger. sometimes when you stand still not leaping because your cursor is on an area it can't go to. nothing pisses me off more.

i imagine consecrated path would be decent when it jumps, but when it doesn't it may feel bad.

fully realizing that consecrated path is in fact a movement skill (regardless if it jumps or not) makes me very curious how well it would work with bronn's lithe with a CP build. maybe i'll try that some day

Really enjoying the build, thanks for the guide and updates in here. The nerf to Wild Fire jewels was definitely noticeable in the beginning but the suggestion to use Ngamahu's Flame to get things started worked out well.

Nice change of pace in comparison to the MS Jugg I finished last league with, looking forward to trying Daresso's as well at some point to see the maximum clearspeed. Definitely looking to finish my Atlas with this and get another couple of levels.

My gear:


Finally, after having killed my first Elder of this league just now (only yellow, was a breeze damage-wise) I wonder how well this will fare against Uber, though... Did you kill him with this build? The Tentacles already hurt a lot without Immortal Call, the slow/degen will be a pain in the ass without Kaom's Roots.

i have killed uber one time with this build out of two tries. my first try was the first time ever attempting the fight. the 2nd time was the 2nd time ever attempting the fight and i did clear it tho can't remember how many times i died.

i haven't done the fight against since. im personally not keen on farming uber at all or anything, but im sure it can be done.

i was doing absolutely fine survival wise for uber's side of the fight. he just couldn't hit me. the biggest danger is definitely the slows and shapers spells. those combined will murder you.

you can tailor the build to be more specific for that fight, like using whirling blades as movement to get out of the way of things faster while slowed than any other method, running arctic armour or herald of ice or sapphire flasks or things to further mitigate shapers damage etc etc.

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ShawnGood wrote:

Really enjoying the build, thanks for the guide and updates in here. The nerf to Wild Fire jewels was definitely noticeable in the beginning but the suggestion to use Ngamahu's Flame to get things started worked out well.

Nice change of pace in comparison to the MS Jugg I finished last league with, looking forward to trying Daresso's as well at some point to see the maximum clearspeed. Definitely looking to finish my Atlas with this and get another couple of levels.

My gear:

Finally, after having killed my first Elder of this league just now (only yellow, was a breeze damage-wise) I wonder how well this will fare against Uber, though... Did you kill him with this build? The Tentacles already hurt a lot without Immortal Call, the slow/degen will be a pain in the ass without Kaom's Roots.

You can change Combustion to elemental focus and add combustion mb for a Ancestral protector, it will give you more damage, isn't?

Great guide!
I started playing POE two weeks ago and this really helped me getting started!
Two questions:

What jewels do you go for for the passive tree? With wildfire nerfed i feel like there are tons of possibilities and i am very uncertain which stats are most valuable for my char. So far i looked for fire damage, area damage and phys damage with swords.

What upgrades would you recommend for my char right now?

I'd love to save for a Kaom's heart as syndicate encounters are very RIPy for me. But that would require a proper 6 link helmet i guess? I was thinking to go for Xophs blood instead. But it's so expensive and i only have 150c available right now.

Once again: thanks for sharing your knowledge! I found this games community to be really nice so far :)