[3.20] The Winds of Fate Smite Champion
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Hey folks!
Welcome to my Winds of Fate Smite Champion guide, built around this sweet new unique staff from Sanctum league! Video Guide https://youtu.be/4AGKD-r5GPg Path of Building https://pastebin.com/LC5KEfWQ This staff has super high pdps, over 1000! +100% to global crit multiplier, 75% conversion to a random element making easy use of trinity, 25% to chaos and lastly a big downside of setting your crit cap at 50% and non-critical strikes dealing no damage, so you could say this build "might" smite :) (thanks to one of my youtube subs for the sick pun) As you can imagine this makes for some fun "jesus take the wheel" RNG type of action, but despite being somewhat of a meme/fun build centered around some pretty nieche mechanics, it has managed to take on quite a bit of endgame content including The Feared and clearing the Sanctum at monster level 83. Pretty much all content in the game other than Uber Pinnacle bosses and sim 30. Although it did take some investment to get to that point, around 15-20 divines. And it's definately not a suitable league starter or something I would recommend to newer players as it can be somewhat of a punishing playstyle especially until you have all the necessary components. With non-crits literally dealing no damage, it goes without saying you need to be close to crit capped before you start using The Winds of Fate. Before that I would just recommend you use a rare staff with Smite or using the leveling Boneshatter setup from the PoB until you are situated. First off to mitigate the downside of being capped at 50% crit chance, we need to get the lucky critical strikes mod which we can get from a Asenath's Brutal Restraint jewel keystone called "Dance with Death".
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 You can also get this as a focus mod on belts, but I decided to go with this approach for permanent uptime, despite the major downside. Cool guys don't wear helmets anyway. This mod puts us at 75% effective crit chance as long as you can reach your cap of 50% making the build feel a lot smoother. Getting a Watcher's Eye with Hatred base crit mod helps a lot with this but will set you back ~ 6 divines. Other than that most major components of the build are pretty cheap in the current market. Being a Champion we get permanent Fortify, and through Brutal Fervor Forbidden Jewels from Slayer we can get overleech paired with Vaal Pact. This really helps out our survivabilty since atleast 25% of the time our hits completely whiff and don't deal any damage, making leech and fortification stacks pretty inconsistent if we diddn't have access to these ascendancy nodes. In the video guide, I briefly go over how you can hit with both the area damage and initial hit with Smite by having the "Strike Skills target 1 additional nearby enemy" and aiming your Smite next to the target instead of right on top of it. This is still possible despite the new wording on Smite. Uniques
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Dawnstrider helps our attack speed out a lot aswell as making it very easy to keep 100% uptime on our Ancestral Protector totem. Yoke of Suffering gives some useful resists as well as some damage since we apply all ailments and makes our shocks stronger. Perseverance gives us permanent Onslaught with the Fortitude ascendancy aswell as a lot of increased attack damage due to our high armour and evasion. You can operate with a rare staff but using Winds of Fate is kind of the whole point ;)
Rares
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Here you're mostly looking for life, resists and to cap out your spell suppression, having an unset ring is nice since we lose out on 4 gem sockets from not having a helm. Having one -mana cost craft helps smooth out your mana.
Flasks
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Here you have quite a bit of freedom, the new progenisis flask is a bit expensive but a nice defensive addition but can easily be replaced with a Jade flask, or a Diamond flask if you're low on crit. Taste of Hate gives both damage and phys/cold mitigation and Starlight Chalice boosts your ailments and gives all exposure types which goes well with the Elemental mastery on the tree. Using a quicksilver flask is pretty nice since we don't have room for leap slam with faster attacks for movement, relying only on flame dash. Get bleed removal on an instant divine life flask and curse mitigation on one magic utility flask.
Jewels
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Forbidden Jewels gives us Brutal Fervor from Slayer so we can get overleech and pair it with Vaal Pact, Brutal Restraint gets us our Dance with Death keystone and Watcher's Eye helps out with maxing our crit chance with the hatred crit mod.
Gem Links
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Grace, Determination and Hatred are your major auras, needs enlighten to fit in all. Precision and Defiance banner are linked with arrogance since Banner is free anyways from Inspirational and precision reserves a flat amount making it not too impactful on your life total.
Flame Dash is our only movement skill since we are a bit restricted with gem slots. Ancestral Protector gives a lot of attack speed thanks to Dawnstrider boots and is easy to keep 100% uptime on. If you are having mana issues you can self cast Assassin's Mark. Molten Shell setup is huge for survivability since we have a lot of armour, and Blood Rage gets us Frenzy Charges, lastly Ancestral Cry helps out with clear giving some extra strikes. Bandits
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Kill all, helping Alira is fine but generally you're gonna be able to spend 2 points to better effect.
Pantheon
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Soul of the Brine King and Garukhan for ailment mitigation in most situations.
Leveling
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There are some leveling trees in the PoB, I recommend using Splitting Steel then Boneshatter, but leveling with Smite can also work. Personally I leveled this character before we knew this unique existed so I leveled as Explosive arrow, but if I were to make it now I would go with Boneshatter using axes and just spend a couple of regrets to transition once I have ~ 40% crit chance to make Winds of Fate useable and then switch to Smite.
Ascendancies
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Unstoppable Hero > Fortitude > Inspirational >First to Strike Last to Fall.
Passive Tree Let me know if you have any other questions and I will try to answer! Last edited by Frost666#2593 on Jan 20, 2023, 5:11:15 PM Last bumped on Jan 2, 2023, 11:09:50 AM
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Interested in the build because I think it's a fun concept to leave dps to rng and I'm buying items to play this build. A few questions I have are;
1) Are there any map mods that should be avoided 2) In terms of upgrades for the rares, what would be considered upgrades worth pursuing. Thanks for your time :) |
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"Sweet! Well as long as you have level 5 awakened elemental damage with attacks you dont have to worry about reflect, but no leech is really bad and reduced effect of auras is tough aswell. For upgrades I would mostly look to get elemental damage with attacks on my rings, also some more chaos res and better life rolls would be really good. If you got more accuracy and crit on rings/gloves you could possibly respec some points in the tree like the Eagle Eye wheel to get Vitality Void and leech mastery instead. |
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Awesome! Thank you! I will definitely look out for these things, looking forward to playing the build!
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