[3.15] Spectral Shield Throw Bleed Gladiator - tanky & fast mapping - good scaling - all content

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darticus wrote:
Would Anomalous Vicious Projectiles benefit this build since it adds on that extra bleed chance or is it overkill? Or does it even work?

I just got one from a heist and I'm curious if that bleed chance would be worth it to switch it out for the normal one.

Also question, which would you pick if you only had to pick one for this build:

1. Pride
2. Malevolence
3. Blasphemy + Vulnerability

I'm not sure if Pride is worth that 50% mana reserve, the only place I feel like that has a chance at helping in any real way is bosses I can stand directly next to or circle and or Rituals since I'm locked into close quarters anyway.

Malevolence seems weaker but it's turned on all the time for me and I can off screen with it in more dangerous situations.

I dunno how far Blasphemy reaches when it turns something into an aura, I'm assuming Vulnerability would be amazing for ritual though since again, I'm locked in and bosses would probably hate it.

I don't have the mana for all of them, and I don't have that special ring you suggested in the PoB that has vulnerability on hit on it.



I swapped pride for malevolence and use blas/vuln at the moment until I can get a good vuln on hit ring since u can off screen with it and not with the aura also I’d just use awakened gems
Last edited by Pines123#4411 on Feb 24, 2021, 5:57:29 AM
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zVisior wrote:


Made this one yesterday. Now I want to roll suffixes until 5%HP/block :)


How did you do the 18% to quality? I feel like its so huge for shields to get higher armour. I need to learn crafting :(


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darticus wrote:
I'm not sure if Pride is worth that 50% mana reserve, the only place I feel like that has a chance at helping in any real way is bosses I can stand directly next to or circle and or Rituals since I'm locked into close quarters anyway.

Malevolence seems weaker but it's turned on all the time for me and I can off screen with it in more dangerous situations.


I was thinking the same thing. How much weaker is Malevolence? Pride has somewhat of a ramp up time, and even though this is a tanky build, is the Pride damage that much higher that its worth the risk?
Last edited by murkYuri#0575 on Feb 24, 2021, 7:19:27 PM
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darticus wrote:
Would Anomalous Vicious Projectiles benefit this build since it adds on that extra bleed chance or is it overkill? Or does it even work?

I just got one from a heist and I'm curious if that bleed chance would be worth it to switch it out for the normal one.

Also question, which would you pick if you only had to pick one for this build:

1. Pride
2. Malevolence
3. Blasphemy + Vulnerability

I'm not sure if Pride is worth that 50% mana reserve, the only place I feel like that has a chance at helping in any real way is bosses I can stand directly next to or circle and or Rituals since I'm locked into close quarters anyway.

Malevolence seems weaker but it's turned on all the time for me and I can off screen with it in more dangerous situations.

I dunno how far Blasphemy reaches when it turns something into an aura, I'm assuming Vulnerability would be amazing for ritual though since again, I'm locked in and bosses would probably hate it.

I don't have the mana for all of them, and I don't have that special ring you suggested in the PoB that has vulnerability on hit on it.



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FuriousYurious wrote:
I was thinking the same thing. How much weaker is Malevolence? Pride has somewhat of a ramp up time, and even though this is a tanky build, is the Pride damage that much higher that its worth the risk?



Pride is absolutely not worth it, and arguably blasphemy vuln can be weak as well. Pride's aoe is TINY. Like, ridiculously small. If you aren't forcing yourself to constantly stay basically on top of the boss, it will not provide any damage boost. Further, even if you are forcing yourself to stay on the boss, consider if you will ever lose any of your bleed stacks due to time to move or dodge out of mechanics from the boss. Overall, both for mapping and bossing, while pride will provide higher PoB numbers, it won't practically provide as much damage as malevolence.

That is my same argument to use Herald of Purity over FLesh+Stone/Maim combo. One of SST's strengths is its long range - forcing yourself to move closer to trigger additional damage. Blasphemy has a longer range than any of these other auras, though, so you will have a higher uptime on it, especially in more enclosed fights like Sirus.


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FuriousYurious wrote:
How did you do the 18% to quality? I feel like its so huge for shields to get higher armour. I need to learn crafting :(


First off, that shield has 3 prefixes. It has Essence'd flat armor (Deafening Essence of Dread used on a shield can give it up to +440 flat armor, which is 40 higher than T1 flat armor roll normally). Then he has the T1 Hybrid Block Chance/%Armor roll, along with a standard %armor roll. The values are the top end of T1 possible rolls, it looks like. The item was gotten to 30% quality initially, most likely by using perfect fossils (but it is possible to drop them with 30% quality from certain places like delve). Then essence spammed to get that point. Not sure how he got double T1 with the essence hit, either luck or some harvest shenanigans. Then he crafted the hybrid Intelligence/+quality craft, which is a veiled craft you can unlock. That's how you get the +48% shield. The warlord influence allows for some valuable block based suffixes which he plans on trying to continue to get, likely by using Harvest "Keep Prefix Reroll Suffix" craft or some other method.
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Jenos wrote:
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darticus wrote:
Would Anomalous Vicious Projectiles benefit this build since it adds on that extra bleed chance or is it overkill? Or does it even work?

I just got one from a heist and I'm curious if that bleed chance would be worth it to switch it out for the normal one.

Also question, which would you pick if you only had to pick one for this build:

1. Pride
2. Malevolence
3. Blasphemy + Vulnerability

I'm not sure if Pride is worth that 50% mana reserve, the only place I feel like that has a chance at helping in any real way is bosses I can stand directly next to or circle and or Rituals since I'm locked into close quarters anyway.

Malevolence seems weaker but it's turned on all the time for me and I can off screen with it in more dangerous situations.

I dunno how far Blasphemy reaches when it turns something into an aura, I'm assuming Vulnerability would be amazing for ritual though since again, I'm locked in and bosses would probably hate it.

I don't have the mana for all of them, and I don't have that special ring you suggested in the PoB that has vulnerability on hit on it.



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FuriousYurious wrote:
I was thinking the same thing. How much weaker is Malevolence? Pride has somewhat of a ramp up time, and even though this is a tanky build, is the Pride damage that much higher that its worth the risk?



Pride is absolutely not worth it, and arguably blasphemy vuln can be weak as well. Pride's aoe is TINY. Like, ridiculously small. If you aren't forcing yourself to constantly stay basically on top of the boss, it will not provide any damage boost. Further, even if you are forcing yourself to stay on the boss, consider if you will ever lose any of your bleed stacks due to time to move or dodge out of mechanics from the boss. Overall, both for mapping and bossing, while pride will provide higher PoB numbers, it won't practically provide as much damage as malevolence.

That is my same argument to use Herald of Purity over FLesh+Stone/Maim combo. One of SST's strengths is its long range - forcing yourself to move closer to trigger additional damage. Blasphemy has a longer range than any of these other auras, though, so you will have a higher uptime on it, especially in more enclosed fights like Sirus.


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FuriousYurious wrote:
How did you do the 18% to quality? I feel like its so huge for shields to get higher armour. I need to learn crafting :(


First off, that shield has 3 prefixes. It has Essence'd flat armor (Deafening Essence of Dread used on a shield can give it up to +440 flat armor, which is 40 higher than T1 flat armor roll normally). Then he has the T1 Hybrid Block Chance/%Armor roll, along with a standard %armor roll. The values are the top end of T1 possible rolls, it looks like. The item was gotten to 30% quality initially, most likely by using perfect fossils (but it is possible to drop them with 30% quality from certain places like delve). Then essence spammed to get that point. Not sure how he got double T1 with the essence hit, either luck or some harvest shenanigans. Then he crafted the hybrid Intelligence/+quality craft, which is a veiled craft you can unlock. That's how you get the +48% shield. The warlord influence allows for some valuable block based suffixes which he plans on trying to continue to get, likely by using Harvest "Keep Prefix Reroll Suffix" craft or some other method.


Thank you for all this info! Care to explain the Herald of Purity vs FnS+maim argument?

Oh and one more thing. Which watcher's eye malevolence mod do you think is best for this build? I dont have a lot of experience with bleed/malevolence
Last edited by murkYuri#0575 on Feb 25, 2021, 12:02:31 AM
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FuriousYurious wrote:
Thank you for all this info! Care to explain the Herald of Purity vs FnS+maim argument?

Oh and one more thing. Which watcher's eye malevolence mod do you think is best for this build? I dont have a lot of experience with bleed/malevolence


Basically, the idea behind the auras comes down to this:

50% for Malevolence (or Pride, but I strongly think Pride is bad here)

Then, you have 50% to play with to choose out of the following options:

Flesh+Stone+Maim (28% mana reserved, enemies take 30% increased physical damage, relatively small aoe)

Herald of Purity (25% mana reserved, 12% more physical damage, can be supported with maim as well to have minions apply maim for enemies take 14% increased phys for 3% mana reserve)

Aspect of the Spider (25% mana reserved, medium aoe, enemies take 15% increased damage)

Blasphemy+Vulnerability (Either 35% without impresence, or 0 with it, medium/large aoe, applies vuln curse)

War Banner (10% mana reserved, large aoe, enemies take 12% increased damage)

Precision (variable reservation, only if not using Resolute Technique)

Vitality (variable reservation)





I'm of the opinion that out of these options, the best combination is Malevolence+HoP+War Banner (for a total of 88% mana reserved). Aoe limitations mean that even if other options provide more damage, you will end up losing out for the periods of time you spend out of the aoe.

The size of the aoes matter - for example, Flesh and Stone is radius 28, whereas war banner is radius 46 (50 with default quality), which is a very big difference.





Regarding Malevolence Watcher's Eyes, Faster Dot Damage or Dot Multi are both good choices, the relative strength of them depending on your current stats. Anything beyond that is just whatever is useful to you, i.e Vitality or Precision mods to enable a specific watcher's eye effect.
Last edited by Jenos#5437 on Feb 25, 2021, 2:26:36 AM
Can someone explain to me how SST works? I see that this build has 800k bleed dps on the endgame version which is far below any other endgame version builds. Do the shards increase your dps by a lot? Or will the damage always be bad?

Kinda wanna try out sst but because i have limited time i dont wanna lvl a build only to find out that it takes 10x as long to kill things as any other build.
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Jenos wrote:
Basically, the idea behind the auras comes down to this:

50% for Malevolence (or Pride, but I strongly think Pride is bad here)

Then, you have 50% to play with to choose out of the following options:

Flesh+Stone+Maim (28% mana reserved, enemies take 30% increased physical damage, relatively small aoe)

Herald of Purity (25% mana reserved, 12% more physical damage, can be supported with maim as well to have minions apply maim for enemies take 14% increased phys for 3% mana reserve)

Aspect of the Spider (25% mana reserved, medium aoe, enemies take 15% increased damage)

Blasphemy+Vulnerability (Either 35% without impresence, or 0 with it, medium/large aoe, applies vuln curse)

War Banner (10% mana reserved, large aoe, enemies take 12% increased damage)

Precision (variable reservation, only if not using Resolute Technique)

Vitality (variable reservation)





I'm of the opinion that out of these options, the best combination is Malevolence+HoP+War Banner (for a total of 88% mana reserved). Aoe limitations mean that even if other options provide more damage, you will end up losing out for the periods of time you spend out of the aoe.

The size of the aoes matter - for example, Flesh and Stone is radius 28, whereas war banner is radius 46 (50 with default quality), which is a very big difference.





Regarding Malevolence Watcher's Eyes, Faster Dot Damage or Dot Multi are both good choices, the relative strength of them depending on your current stats. Anything beyond that is just whatever is useful to you, i.e Vitality or Precision mods to enable a specific watcher's eye effect.


Thank you again. I actually used this logic yesterday when looking for a good cluster jewel to use, after you mentioned the downtime Pride comes with for this build. For that reason I decided to go against Riot Queller, as I would need to get up close to taunt the enemy in order to proc the 6% increased damage. Taunt also lasts only 3 seconds, and the warcry has an 8 second cool down, so there's a down time of 5 seconds where I'm not maximizing my damage... If I even land my taunt properly(with dodging, running around and whatnot). Another one was Feed the Fury, which provides great damage increase and attack speed, but only while leeching.

While those two options provided more damage, I agreed with your logic, and decided to not get them due to their buffs being conditional and having down time. It is something I will look for in the future, now.

I've been wondering if the Aspect of Spider gloves are the best option or if I benefit more from rares. Thanks to your aura combination, I can look at other possible options for gloves, like the new ones that came out this league which offer increased damage to off hand... Those should work on SST right? If they don't that's poop.

Anyway, thanks again, great info for me. But I want to keep picking at your brain, because I really want to maximize this build. I'm a big fan of SST but never could make a strong one on my own. And I've ran so many squishies that I really wanted a max block shield that was strong.

My next set of questions, if you don't mind:
Do you not go Resolute Technique? Or are you only using precision for a possible watcher's eye buff?

Also, which weapon do you like here? I like the block on the claw the build mentions, but I've actually been using Jack, The Axe. I wanted to try it out since you get increased bleed damage, and a ton of life regen in big packs... It honestly feels great, but I was wondering if you had something even better.
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FuriousYurious wrote:
Thank you again. I actually used this logic yesterday when looking for a good cluster jewel to use, after you mentioned the downtime Pride comes with for this build. For that reason I decided to go against Riot Queller, as I would need to get up close to taunt the enemy in order to proc the 6% increased damage. Taunt also lasts only 3 seconds, and the warcry has an 8 second cool down, so there's a down time of 5 seconds where I'm not maximizing my damage... If I even land my taunt properly(with dodging, running around and whatnot). Another one was Feed the Fury, which provides great damage increase and attack speed, but only while leeching.

While those two options provided more damage, I agreed with your logic, and decided to not get them due to their buffs being conditional and having down time. It is something I will look for in the future, now.


So your logic behind the riot queller and taunts is a bit off. Or rather, you are completely logically consistent and sensible, but PoE has decided to just say you're wrong. The idea behind taunt is that the way to taunt in this build is via Enduring Cry+Call To Arms, for instant Enduring Cry. Enduring Cry only hits nearby enemies. That means that logic is consistent, right?

No, you're wrong. Welcome to PoE. Enduring Cry's nearby radius is a whopping 60 units - its literally the entire screen. The word nearby in abilities is COMPLETELY ARBITRARY when it comes to determining the range, and you have to look up each ability specifically.

However, you are also correct about the value of the duration. The increased damage node will be up for less than 50% of the time. This is part of the problem with PoB, which doesn't handle partial uptime abilities properly. It assumes full duration, and makes it seem like the superior choice as a result. Its probably not worth the skill points. I don't see any small cluster jewel except maybe a Fettle(best life node) 3 pointer with good rolls to be worth it. Block chance is important, so if you wanted it, its not a bad choice. But I think I'd be a lot more supportive of the block cluster jewel if the small nodes were 2% base, but 1% is so bad. You're going to be spending 3-4 points and a jewel socket to get ~5-7% block, which is very point inefficient, so its more of a desperation move to cap out block.

Regarding Feed the Fury, it can be decent. The reason for that is Bloodrage. There are ways you can make bloodrage always consider you leeching, most commonly by using ES. The most common way for that is via the Soul Tether belt, which provides a good chunk of EHP and enables always leeching bonuses (Feed the fury is one, another is the damage while leeching craft on gloves, etc). However, if you're not utilizing these mechanisms, you're absolutely right about the intermittent uptime of leech damage effects.


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FuriousYurious wrote:
I've been wondering if the Aspect of Spider gloves are the best option or if I benefit more from rares. Thanks to your aura combination, I can look at other possible options for gloves, like the new ones that came out this league which offer increased damage to off hand... Those should work on SST right? If they don't that's poop.

Anyway, thanks again, great info for me. But I want to keep picking at your brain, because I really want to maximize this build. I'm a big fan of SST but never could make a strong one on my own. And I've ran so many squishies that I really wanted a max block shield that was strong.


Regarding gloves and aspect of the spider, there are a couple of discussion points around it. First, divorce the gloves from aspect of the spider. You don't NEED fenumus weave to use it, its an easily crafted suffix on any real piece of gear that has an open suffix. Fenumus weave provides a hefty damage boost if you're keeping the stacks up. But if you separate it, you can see that Elder Gloves can provide a comparable value. Elder gloves can roll the combination of Physical Damage Over Time Multiplier + Bleeding Damage, which will be more damage than the Fenumus Weave Damage, along with more HP and other useful mods. So if you are investing in this build, you wouldn't need fenumus weave. And if you're not using the weave, is aspect of the spider good enough? It comes down to your playstyle. The radius of aspect of the spider is probably close to blasphemy range, so it comes down to how consistent you are at keeping blasphemy up. I'm not, so I would say its a poor choice, but unlike Pride/Flesh+Stone, the aoe of Blasphemy/Apsect of the Spider is a good chunk larger so its much more reasonable for it to be up. It also depends on the arena - for example, Sirus is a very contained fight so its very easy to keep it up, but Maven is a larger arena and you can lose it as a result.

The new base this league isn't very good. It does work for SST perfectly fine, but its specifically attack damage, which does not apply to bleed damage. Its much better for builds like phys->cold conversion SST or Impale SST, but not bleed SST.


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FuriousYurious wrote:
My next set of questions, if you don't mind:
Do you not go Resolute Technique? Or are you only using precision for a possible watcher's eye buff?

Also, which weapon do you like here? I like the block on the claw the build mentions, but I've actually been using Jack, The Axe. I wanted to try it out since you get increased bleed damage, and a ton of life regen in big packs... It honestly feels great, but I was wondering if you had something even better.



So I do go resolute technique. Its rare to have enough accuracy on gear that with precision RT isn't a big damage increase. However, it is possible for that to happen, and if it does, you can drop the 2 points for RT, which is nice.

However, there's an even easier way to lose those 2 points. And that actually ties into weapon. There are essentially 5 different weapon options available for this build:

1. Advancing Fortress/Replica Advancing Fortress - Dirt Cheap, lots of block, some life. This is an absolute budget defensive item
2. Prismatic Eclipse - Dirt Cheap, provides a lot of attack speed, good if your bleed duration is <5s, because you need a lot of attack speed to avoid missing stacks. 8 attacks in 5s isn't that hard, but the attack speed helps. What makes Prismatic Eclipse really good, however, is the ability to corrupt it with Resolute Technique. Its dirt cheap, so buy 2 dozen and throw vaals at it until it hits RT.
3. Jack, the Axe - Cheap, provides very high damage and sustain, but lowers your max HP by 10%. Personal preference if you value the ridiculous sustain or the higher max HP.
4. Warlords or Hunter weapon. Warlord weapons can roll >160% increased bleed damage (Warlord Bleed Mod, actual bleed mod, and crafted dot damage). Hunter Weapons can roll ~50-60% bleed damage along with faster bleeds (Actual Bleed Mod, Crafted Dot Damage, Bleeds deal damage faster).
5. Awakened Warlord+Hunter Weapon - get a weapon with both the warlord bleed damage mod and the hunter bleed faster mod. Will cost you several exalts.


While options 4 and 5 are likely your best bet (4 is comparable to Jack the axe, and 5 is better), they are much more expensive. The dream is to have a sword for 4 or 5 and corrupt it into RT, but that can be challenging. But thats how you can actually drop RT from the build and still have the effect.


RT is the superior damage choice, but do the math with precision. If you can throw precision into your build and only lose like 2-3% damage, its worth it to drop it. You can invest those points elsewhere to make up the damage and more. But its all about the balancing act. If your gear has 0 accuracy on it, a level 20 precision won't be enough because you'll likely have to drop another aura to fit it in.





I want to emphasize that the OP's guide is brilliant because he focuses on budget items. And I don't mean "tee hee 10ex is budget", I'm talking bottom of the barrel rock bottom prices. Its very refreshing to see a guide that gives item suggestions for a genuine budget build. But if you really want to push this build into the A8+ endgame, you'll have to upgrade a lot of his suggestions. For example, Fenumus Weave is something like 10c right now, and provides a lot of damage if you use aspect of the spider. An elder glove with 75+ HP and the 2 mods I mentioned? Probably 5ex+, if not more. But the item suggestions in the OP will cost you less than 2ex to get a 2k armor shield, a 6L, and everything he's mentioned. And with that, you'll be ready to tackle red maps.
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royvisser1990 wrote:
Can someone explain to me how SST works? I see that this build has 800k bleed dps on the endgame version which is far below any other endgame version builds. Do the shards increase your dps by a lot? Or will the damage always be bad?

Kinda wanna try out sst but because i have limited time i dont wanna lvl a build only to find out that it takes 10x as long to kill things as any other build.


So first off, the build isn't amazing at single target. I want to get that out of the way right off the bat. If you're looking for something that's going to go into A8 sirus and phase him in 3 seconds, this build ain't it, no matter how much you invest. The clear is going to be great through regardless of DPS, due to how bleedsplosion scaling will work - you'll find the clear is going to be solidly good even in harder maps.

But the OP's build that he's posted is fairly low budget. Other than the shield in his PoB, everything else is a dirt cheap item. To put in perspective, I'm sitting at about 1.8m bleed DPS right now without a huge amount of investment (<10ex). The build does have a cap - it will be very hard to get over 2.5m bleed DPS, but its not nearly as low DPS as the OP shows in the PoB.

The OP has a very good take on the guide and focuses on real, genuine budget items that make the build accessible, but there build absolutely has room to grow from there.
Last edited by Jenos#5437 on Feb 25, 2021, 11:34:52 AM
Thx Jenos really great answers.

Just some thoughts regarding the discussion.

I tested a lot of Impale SST this league and if you go close combat with point blank anyway, Pride is great. But Malevolence enables a lazier playstyle, which also helps if you run a ton of maps ;)

For the alternate Quality i think i mention some gems on the 3.12 Spoiler.

I must say, i really forgot about Herald of Purity changes in my last build updates. The build was created when Hop was still flat phys to attacks and not that great for bleed. But now with the more multi it's a good alternative i will add in the next update.

My intention for the build was to make SST available to a lot of people. So as already mentionend the 800k dps is really easy to achieve and will carry red maps without problems. I still think if you have a budget of hundreds EX you know your game and can improve the gear yourself with ease.

Otherwise you're always welcome to ask here in the thread or write me a PM with specific questions.
Guides:
Spectral Shield Throw Bleed Gladiator: www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2672813
Shattering Steel Gladiator: www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2839530

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