[3.25 READY] Versatile Combatant Impale Shield Crush - Crush the Atlas - SSF Compatible

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Ruxxe wrote:

Hi! I'm been enjoying the build so far but have hit a bit of a wall in terms of survivablility. To be honest, I'm not that great of a PoE player and typically play high defense ranged/DoT builds so some of this could be chalked up to me simply not being a practiced melee player.

Right now I'm sitting around 6.4K life and 19K armor (pre-molten shell) but have been dying more than I'd like in red maps. I'm currently not using any small cluster jewels, but if that would help I'm willing to give it a try.

Below is my gear if anyone has thoughts on what I can improve. Thank you!

Hiya!

do you know what specifically you're dying to? Whether its random one-shots from big mobs, dot, or other things?

Mostly one-shots. TBH, it's mainly buffed runic mobs, but I have been one shot by bosses and the like too.

I did get an Enlighten, which I'm leveling up in my weapon swap, so that's an option if going Enlighten - Blood and Sand - Flesh and Stone - Pride would help

Is my armor low? I know my gear isn't great, but I feel like all of the builds I see on poe.ninja are running 24-29K, which seems high unless it's taking into consideration the Molten Shell buff.

Thanks!

Your stuff is very good, I have less life and dps than you and I don't struggle at all in red maps or expeditions.
I assume it is a gameplay issue.
The build is tanky but it is not a reason to facetank all mobs in the game.
Shield crush has a good range, use it against strong runic monsters to not let them hit you.
You should probably also choose wisely the remnant modifiers, some are too dangerous to take, especially the always crit modifier or physical reduction overwhelming combined to the culling strike one.

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Gromhouleux wrote:

Your stuff is very good, I have less life and dps than you and I don't struggle at all in red maps or expeditions.
I assume it is a gameplay issue.
The build is tanky but it is not a reason to facetank all mobs in the game.
Shield crush has a good range, use it against strong runic monsters to not let them hit you.
You should probably also choose wisely the remnant modifiers, some are too dangerous to take, especially the always crit modifier or physical reduction overwhelming combined to the culling strike one.

yeah their gear is better than mine and i'm only at like 5700 hp and I pretty much only die to boss fights that I'm new to

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Gromhouleux wrote:

Your stuff is very good, I have less life and dps than you and I don't struggle at all in red maps or expeditions.
I assume it is a gameplay issue.
The build is tanky but it is not a reason to facetank all mobs in the game.
Shield crush has a good range, use it against strong runic monsters to not let them hit you.
You should probably also choose wisely the remnant modifiers, some are too dangerous to take, especially the always crit modifier or physical reduction overwhelming combined to the culling strike one.

Thanks! If I'm being honest it most likely is my gameplay vs something else. I tend to facetank as I think a shield will make me super tanky by itself. I'm getting better at killing the runic mobs at range and kiting them around, which seems to be helping. I'll try and keep getting better.

And yeah, the bossing on this build is great. I completely bullied Sirus A5 - not the toughest boss ever, but he didn't last long. Expeditions have been giving me fits though, and it's probably because, as you mention, you have to be careful what you pick. I usually just grab all the juicy remnants and then wonder why I'm getting one-shot. I can't figure out what mod it is, but I keep dying to a bleed-like effect, but without any sort of debuff icon in the top left, so I don't know what's causing it. Any ideas?

What's the next step in terms of investment? Should I push for a 3K armor shield? Chest with better life/resist rolls? A rare helm with enchant?

https://pastebin.com/teTSws2k

Level 92, 6522 HP, 75% Block (attack/spells), 78% Phys Dmg Reduction that can easily go up to 84% if I drop a little DPS, 2.67M DPS with Vaal Haste, Vaal Ancestral Protector up (2.19M without), recently blocked a unique hit and just letting it avg out at 3 recent blocks. I have a CWDT setup for Molten Shell, Tempest Shield and Vuln.

Just a slightly different take on the build for people to observe.

[edit] already found a good upgrade, for me, between comparing builds. I have been using Flesh and Stone - looks like Blood and Sand is an immediate upgrade. Swapping to Pride and Blood & Sand is > Herald of Purity and Flesh & Stone!

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Ruxxe wrote:

What's the next step in terms of investment? Should I push for a 3K armor shield? Chest with better life/resist rolls? A rare helm with enchant?

I'd recommend looking into cluster jewels since you commented that you didn't have those. I bought a triple cluster earlier this week for only 1ex so it should still be relatively cheap. The Life small cluster jewels are optional, so you don't have to use them if you don't want to.

Fettle is best when it comes to health for clusters, but adrenaline gives good damage and slightly better life leech. It's up to personal preference.

I'd also recommend rolling Lethal Prides (buy and resell or divines) to get good modifiers like intimidate on hit or chance to deal double damage.

Watcher's eyes are also a good option as well. % chance double damage should be 1-2ex and 2 extra impales should be around 10ex.

Also a good tip for this build I've found in my own experience - if you're standing still for more than 2-3 seconds then you're not jumping around enough. You want to jump away and make sure that monsters can't wind up their attacks on you. Haemophilia is also a nice easy way to handle mapping and runic monsters too, but it does cost a glove slot.

Do the implicit on Sinistral gloves really work for this build?

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Lowlife555 wrote:

Do the implicit on Sinistral gloves really work for this build?

you mean the attack dmg offhand? yes it does

How did you get your Lethal Pride stats into the POB?

Nevermind just noticed you can right click and set it