[2.3.0] Bauer's "Son of Kaom" Oro's Sacrifice and Infernal Blow build (SC, endgame & Atziri viable)

Stand aside, puny melee physical damage builds. King Kaom of the Karui, the wielder of flames, creator of earthquakes and leaper of slams may be dead, but his legacy of pain and fire shall live forever in the hearts of those who believe.

This build was designed, worked and reworked with during almost two years. I've spent a whole lot of time trying to figure out a way to use Oro's Sacrifice that didn't just involve using the frenzy charge mechanic in the sword. I wanted to take those mind-flipping 550-600 damage from Oro's Sacrifice and transform it into something viable for endgame, even with the 20% (now 10%) extra damage you take when using it. Before we begin with the guide, let's clear some important points out:



THE BUILD

Our passive tree core concept couldn't be clearer and easier: go for the nodes that'll help you counter the problems cited above. I'll lay down my current passive tree, but this may not be the only or even best way to build the character. All I can assess is that this current build, along with my current gear, is able to clear Atziri and rare high tier maps with relative ease.

The key passive nodes you're going after are Resolute Technique, Unwavering Stance and Iron Reflexes. You should focus on getting Iron Reflexes along with those sweet new life leech nodes early in the game so you can rock that evasion-turned-armor ASAP, these will be your best friends concerning survivability.

Almost nothing changed from 2.1.0 to 2.2.0 for our part of the passive tree, I didn't even use the passive reset. But I've changed a few things nonetheless:


I won't explain how the build should be done step by step or for lower levels, since I hope this is not your first character in PoE and you'll be able to make the best use of the gear and passive points available to you at any given moment. Just remember that defense should be a priority over offense, since Oro's extra damage taken will be putting you a step back from any other melee tank. Once dying is not a problem anymore (which should happen sooner rather than later), you can start dishing out points in elemental damage and fire damage.

THE GEAR

Again, very straightfoward stuff: get yourself some nice defensive gear. Oro's Sacrifice is the only necessary unique, but Kaom's Heart and Devoto's Devotion are useful additions. Your gear should focus on life, elemental defenses and armor/evasion rating. I'm using only one ring with increased elemental damage with weapons, although you could go for more than that. Remember that you will have Iron Reflexes, so enjoy the crazy amount of armor you can get from hybrid armor-evasion gear.

I have done what no sane man should do and 6-linked an Oro's Sacrifice, since I'm using Kaom's Heart and the sword became my only hope for six links. You could take an alternate solution and link a good rare chest with armor, life and resists, but passing out on 500 life and 40% extra fire damage is not a very good idea, specialy now that Kaom's Hearts are selling for 3-5ex, instead of the old 20-30ex prices (what the fuck happened, by the way?). I would say that you can make a solid build with gear worth around 10ex, not counting the price of 6-linking, with which only RNGesus can help.

While leveling up the character you won't have access to your Oro's just yet, but don't get too fond of physical damage, for it is so much better than fire damage that it may take your mind and soul away from your objective. Yes, fire damage will hinder your hability to increase DPS later on compared to physical, but do not further yourself from the path of flame and glory. For if you do, Kaom's death will have been in vain.

Having said all that, here's what I currently use:



And the flasks:



As for the jewels, you'll notice I use a great amount of jewel slots on the passive tree, even going out of my way sometimes to get one or two more. I think jewels are unbelievably overpowered and should be used as much as we can. Craft your jewels while looking for Increase Damage, Attack Speed, Sword Attack Speed, Increased Maximum Life, and many other options. There's not many ways of doing this wrong.

THE SKILLS

Now this is where we all start crying. As you may very well be aware, melee elemental damage sucks a giant cock. Most skills and support gems for melee scale with physical damage only, so no matter what we choose as the primary skill, we will be giving up some damage bonuses that will never apply to Oro's fire damage. Having that in mind, I can say that I have succesfully played with a pletora of skills: Molten Strike, Cyclone, Spectral Throw, Ground Slam, you name it. All of them will work but all of them will also waste potential damage bonuses.

My current and by far favorite skill is Infernal Blow. With Melee Splash in its current 2.1.0 state, you can hit an enemy in one side of the room and everyone in it will feel the blow and die either by melee splash damage or Infernal Blow's explosion (which deals fire damage, ain't that sweet?). Single targets are a pain in the ass, but your kill speed is only as bad as your DPS. Once you get decent gear and 6 links, you can get Atziri herself down in no time.
My current skills and supports are the following:



CONCLUSIONS

There are very few builds using Oro's here on the forums, and most of those that exist claim that the build cannot clear Atziri. I though I should drop by and let people know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and the sword can be used at the very end of endgame. Before you decide to follow this guide, I should once again note that the build is not cost-effective at all, although I became surprise with the survivability and damage potential of this build.



It can, by the way, kill Atziri. With my current gear and passive tree, I'm sitting at 74% physical damage reduction without any flasks, 76% all elemental resists, 28% positive chaos resist, 486 life regen, 6.2k life and 50k DPS. As long as your flask charges last, you're immortal. Play your cards right and you can clear Atziri without a single death. I've also cleared all maps and its bosses up to tier 13 without problems and this build will face almost any map modifier, including elemental reflect (even though you'll have to slow down on the killing and keep your Ruby Flask running). On a normal farming day I just blindly use alchemies on maps tier 10+ and drop right in without even checking the mods.

FINALLY!!!

Something I can use the OOOLD 6L Oro´s that have been staring to me from my stash for over a year.

Ty so much. Will do this char right now.

Couple of questions:

1. How do you deal with reflect? Going pure fire IB on ele reflect...I don't know...

2. Single targets? Molten Strike?

1- If I'm not mistaken, IB's exlosion damage doesn't reflect on you. Either way, your only hope of dealing with elemental reflect is taking it slow and using your life and ruby flasks when needed. It's viable, but you'll take around twice as long to clear a map with elemental reflect compared to one without. While upgrading your gear toward the endgame, you'll be better off avoiding maps with ele reflect, though.

2- As I said on the post, single targets will slow you down, but it's not a nightmare. If you use Kaom's, there will be no room for a single target skill, so do the best you can with the gems you got on IB. Quality it, corrupt it, love and care for it.

I've used Molten Strike for a while before the upgrade. Works great, but I never liked its AoE. Unless you give up on some damage to increase the area of effect, Molten Strike can't beat IB's clear speed.

Hello, What bandits`?

"

RustyBall wrote:

Hello, What bandits`?

I would go with Oak on normal and Kraityn on Cruel and Merciless.

Hi Bauer,
Actually playing this build and enjoying it alot !

Strong and tankful, +1 !

Nice build.

Would recommend Leap Slam/Fortify over flame dash. What do you think? Obviously we won't have constant fortify uptime but it might save us every now and then.

I'm using leap slam + fortify too since we have a decent movement speed, flame dash isn't needed, imo.

"

blackcircuits wrote:

Nice build.

Would recommend Leap Slam/Fortify over flame dash. What do you think? Obviously we won't have constant fortify uptime but it might save us every now and then.

Absolutely, I've used Leap Slam before Flame Dash, it's better than Flame Dash, but I use the latter just because I'm fed up with Leap Slam for the moment. Combining it with Fortify is an amazing idea, I've never thought of it before, but I'll try it out.

Now that they've announced "The Chieftain" as a Ascendancy Class for the marauder, my expectations for this build in the next expansion have gone through the roof. We'll get some nice bonuses to fire damage, leech life on fire damage, armor and life regen.