2.3 Pistol Whip Stunlock Champion (Izaro Stunlock, and more!)

This is my first guide so please be nice. I made the intro / outro for this video before I tried recording on OBS. Then I realized my potato computer couldn’t really handle recording on a decent resolution without lagging to hell and creating stuttered footage. So I cut the actual build guide section of the video in favor of just a written guide. I know it looks like this video was made in 1994- I thought it was still entertaining which was the major point anyway.

https://youtu.be/4DHy0F6LTWA

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQDAAHcA3UEswUtBg4J9gthDF8S4RQgFm8YVhkuGmwbRhynJKon7SyULlM1kjbpOuE8BTwtQYdHfk3jUEdTpVW1VkhXDVh3XwRfP2EhYhdko2VNaGVodGjybzt07Xasd-N5aHrvfA6CB4Kbg1-DzITZhO-LppErkc6WbJgKmjudrp7Nn6Ofy5_fogCi6qZXpwinMKdVp5-pbq2Nr2y2pLc-uR277b02vqfAGsBmwQTEWMS4xPbGrs9-0iHTb9R81abV-Ngk2L3ZYdpi2sHeh96W42rkIu087w7vfPAf8CbyQfJF85v2SPno_gr-jw==?accountName=Kinch45&characterName=Whipits_in_TheBreakroom

Leading up to the ascendancy expansion I was researching builds and wanting to do an unconventional caster. I found this guide and became interested in spell stunning. A long time ago this guy was trying to stunlock stuff using arc. He eventually ended his experiments by saying the major thing holding him back from reliably stun-locking bosses was being able to shock them. I thought with flame surge doing higher damage, vinktar’s, and the fact that GGG has been handing out more multipliers like subway coupons, there was a good chance to advance the build further.

With the teaser photos of the new scary lab boss I thought it would also be a fun goal to set out to stunlock him.

Read MinstrelShadrak's thread for a detailed explanation about how stun works, but you’re basically working with the damage you deal vs. monster health = stun chance. There are 2 other places (that I know of) to get +stun chance- which I think is just added onto the final total. Warlord’s mark curse and champion ascendancy. As a caster I was also able to stack reduced stun threshold from the following sources:

-15 from tree
~15 from belt
~15 from weapon
-50 from stun gem

If you look at the stun chart you’ll start to see that it begins to fall off in usefulness at around 80-90% anyway, so this was pretty good and made me think ground slam wasn’t necessary when trying to stunlock.

There are so many factors that go into stunning, especially when you start working with map mods, I never bothered figuring out the exact points you start stun locking, but I’ll mention a few things I did to try to keep stun chance high.

-Tri curse warlord’s mark / ele weakness / flammability
-Quality blasphemy for my warlord’s mark (shoutouts to Ghudda for showing how important quality on curses can be)
-Stacking more multipliers(3 support gems / RF / Ele overload / Flame Surge inherent)

To say more about that last point I found I stunned more reliably using a higher damage single hit rather than casting faster or using spell echo. Tooltip damage will be much higher using either of those supports but I found I would break stunlock chains using those as opposed to the supports I chose.

Also worth noting I didn’t really focus on stun duration at all. Even with a very slow cast speed you can keep things locked down with the little stun duration we have, and the few experiments I did with increasing stun duration all seemed pretty worthless. It’s just all about whether or not you actually trigger a stun.

Possible directions to take the build:
So in the current “gotta-go-fast” meta this build doesn’t really amount to much. I had fun but honestly why stun things when you can just kill them? There might be some application in a 6 man party to have one person be a stunner if the meta ever slows down. You could also use arc with some +chains business to lock down most of the white monsters on the screen instead of bosses. I really don’t know anything about high level party play though so I’m basically talking out my ass.

If you want to make the build better you can obviously keep everything the same and just do the other branch of the champion ascendancy for permanent fortify. You’ll be a lot tankier, and you’ll still stun the shit out of almost everything. You can also drop the stun gem and just melt shit. Even with the gem I estimate I’m at around 140K tooltip damage.

Lastly there’s probably a way to build this on another ascendancy. I think you could drop some stun threshold and go crit for crazier damage and keep the stun chance high and then not have to use Flame Surge. It would be more expensive but EK could probably do it and be ranged clearing / AOE stunning.

Notes on Izaro:
Even completely stun-locked this guy is still a total bastard. His green flames still shoot out because it’s a separate entity. The green teleport ring will also teleport me out of range to keep him locked down so he can still get away and try to kill my friends. Lastly, even if I push his health over in phase 1 and 2 very quickly, he stops taking damage before he goes down meaning I can’t stun him anymore, but stays active for a short time depending on the lab mechanic that day. GGG managed to make a stunned boss still quite dangerous so rats off to them for that.

-Able to trivialize many difficult bosses.
-High Life Pool. I hit 5600 while using doedre’s damning / windscream, and no life rolls on most of my jewels.
-6 endurance charges, stun immunity, fortify, 88% Fire res, and life leech make you pretty tanky
-Great lab build. High life regen, safe on all Izaro phases and difficulties.
-Cheap. All you really need is a tabula / RotP
-Very high single target damage. You one-shot most rares. Bosses also melt while being stunned.
-Taunt?

-The build is a little gem hungry since you're running the stun gem. Probably requires a 6-link to stun bosses.
-MAP MODS. Like most RF builds map mods can often be a problem. -max is basically a no-go. Vuln is pretty rough. I did reliably stun through most fire res mods / enfeeble / ele equilibrium. Immune to Stun also negates basically the entire purpose of your build, although it’s an easy mod to keep. Curse immune is also annoying because you have to swap in a mana pot.
-Ranged clearing, or clearing spread out monsters. Flame surge has a very narrow field of attack. Melee monsters clear quickly because of RF but having a bunch of spread out archers can actually be more scary than a difficult boss because you can’t stun them all at once.
-You have to give up 15 reduced stun threshold to use a dagger / whirling blades, but it is possible.