[3.9] Facebreaker Cyclone Champion | Deep Delve | Depth 2000, #1 deepest tank in league

First impressions from reading 3.10 patch notes.

Cyclone: No nerf

Impale: No nerf

VMS and Soul Ripper: VMS is untouched but Soul Ripper kinda got gutted. Currently we have VMS for 20s on a 31s soul gain prevention. So a feasible defense rotation looks something like this: 20s of VMS, 6s of normal MS, 5s of Dread Banner mega-Fortify. At 31s immediately after soul gain prevention wears off, pop Soul Ripper to get full VMS charges and repeat.

Fossil crafting body armour: Has to be fossil crafted on a Warlord-Redeemer base which is considerably more expensive, and can't slam Phys taken as Ele afterwards. Can still get lucky and naturally land phys taken as fire/cold during fossil crafting, but highly unlikely unless using 4-socket resonators with jagged fossil added.

Fossil crafting helmet: Similar story here. Best bet is to fossil craft on an Elder-Crusader base which is considerably more expensive. Reduced mana reserved mod is no more, and can't slam phys taken after fossil craft. Some chance of naturally hitting phys taken as lightning since we're using jagged fossils already.

Overall, the build is now more expensive to start up. We're somewhat weaker to phys dmg due to less conversion. But all our flat physical dmg reduction, and chunky armor is still intact. Soul Ripper nerf hurts, but I did delve to 1100 before I started using Soul Ripper. So not having 100% uptime on VMS is not the end of the world.

Worth noting that, hoag mana guardian, and zombiemancer, both received way more massive nerfs. So this build is a clear frontrunner for deep delving as a tank, and also great for HC (with chaos res gear).

Will start with this build in mind, I am interested to see how it will evolve, especially with the Cluster Jewels and different crafting.

Could you take a quick look at my gear/gems?

I know its way from perfect, some gems are not 20/20, suboptimal chest and no good corruptions.
He is tanky, but the damage output seems incredible low.
I can barley kill any rare mobs at depth 350, mapping yellow or even red maps are in best cases just slow.
Maybe i missed something in germs of gems or gear.






Since i don't own a ring with a curse corruption, i thought of using purity of elements and a curse on hit/vortex setup in my gloves, if i have the resistances for it.

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Camatoo wrote:

Could you take a quick look at my gear/gems

The biggest thing I see is that you only have 72% increased Herald of Purity buff effect: one ring has very low roll, the other ring doesnt have biff effect at all. You should really have close to 200% increased buff effect since thats where majority of our damage comes from.

Other than that, getting 20/20 gems, cyclone enchant on helmet, "nearby enemies take 9% incr phys" on helmet, and an onslaught flask, should help a lot.

The chest should be slightly easier to craft since you can now deterministicaly combine the -cost and aura mod without having to rely on rolling them. Slightly more expensive per craft but overall a lot easier to hit the mods you want - the ability to slam on phys taken.

Still looking forward to building this as my expensive character of the league.

I will most likely be league starting this or a variant of this to get started as this probably recieved the least nerfs out of my potential builds

What about bandit and pantheon ?

I started with the build and am now into Maps. Leveling with facebreaker was nice. Bought one early on and did not really have Problems. Will now start to get some Map-Start-Gear and thinking about getting a cluster jewel. The channeling ones look nice, Endurance Charges, curse immunity while channeling, blocking, all nice, maybe also an impale one. Hope some more people go into the tanky Champion direction and write their experiences.

I'm trying it right now, but I'm noob when it comes to leveling.

The experience so far has been okay.

Just having a rough time because leech doesn't seem to be working very well, atm.