[2.6] Berserker Brutus' Lead Sprinkler: Zerking Balls

Pros
- Currently Inexpensive (~1 Exalted to get going)
- Very High Damage
- Insane Life Leech/Survivability due to Berserker/Vaal Pact combo
- Smooth play/clear speed
- Can do all map mods except for Elemental Reflect
- Can do Guardians (As long as they aren’t rolled for insane damage (Haven’t tried Shaper yet))
- In your face Melee Action

Cons
- In your face Melee Action
- Life based Vaal Pact (Uncomfortable, especially if doing Labyrinth)
- Still prone to One-Shot/Chaos damage

There are a couple choice to be made for this build’s Class and Ascendancy.

Templar Inquisitor
Pros
- Complete elemental penetration with Inevitable Judgement
Cons
- Have to scale Critical Strike Chance
- No inherit defenses

Marauder Juggernaut
Pros
- 8 Endurance Charges for 32% Flat Physical Mitigation (and 6% reduced Elemental Damage at Max Charges)
- High Life Regeneration (7.8% Regen from Tree and Charges)
- Lots of Accuracy and Attack Speed Scaling
Cons
- Life Regen is weak in endgame
- Endurance Charges wont mitigate massive Elemental Damage

Marauder Chieftain
Pros
- 10% Strength Scaling with Tawhoa, Forest’s Strength
- 10% Fire Penetration
- Fire Damage Life Leech
- Base Life Regen and Life Regen per Endurance Charge
Cons
- Life Regen is weak in endgame
- Unmodified Life Leech Cap is weak in endgame

Marauder Berserker
Pros
- 40% More Damage multiplier with Aspect of Carnage (This will double dip Ignites)
- Lots of Attack Speed
- 100% of Life Leeched with Cloaked in Savagery
Cons
- Take 10% increased damage
- Requires Vaal Pact to make use of Cloaked in Savagery
- Must be dealing damage to survive

Ranger Pathfinder
Pros
- Gain 10% Elemental Penetration with Veteran Bowyer
- Increased Flask Effectiveness and Charges Gained
- Attack Speed, Movement Speed and Increased Elemental Damage
- Elemental status immune with flasks up
Cons
- Rely on flasks for defenses and offenses
- Weak/Uncomfortable in long boss fights

Ranger Raider
Pros
- Easy sustain maximum Frenzy Charges (8 charges without special gear), with extra bonuses
- Elemental Status immune while flasks are up
- Increased Elemental Damage
- Phasing and Dodge chance
Cons
- No inherit defenses

Now I wanted to be able to take this build to endgame scenarios, facing guardians and eventually Shaper. After looking at all these classes, I chose the Marauder Berserker. This was because, not only do we get a massive 40% more multiplier to all damage sources, but we can abuse the 100% of damage leeched with Vaal Pact. This means after every hit, our life will be instantly replenished, so we will only be defenseless to complete one-shot damage. It also means we can survive elemental reflect auras on Rare monsters! But will still have to avoid doing Elemental Reflect maps :(. The Marauder also starts with, and has the best access to strength nodes in the tree. The other classes did not offer much in the way of defenses, with the same offensive gain, that could beat running this Berserker combination, especially in the high and fast damage output of endgame scenarios.

The next closest competitor would be the Ranger Raider class. Now the Marauder gets 40% more damage, while the Raider gets a total of 32% more damage multiplier from maximum Frenzy Charges. The Berserker gets a total of 62% increased attack speed, while the Raider and gets a total of 66% increased attack speed. For both builds we will ahve to take Vaal Pact to survive and the 100% damage leech the Berserker can get is much stronger than the 2% Leech that Raider can get. The 50% Damage from the Berserker and 40% Elemental damage from the Raider are mostly insignificant due to the more damage multipliers they have.

Luckily, the Ranger Raider class can be played with a similar passive tree, just picking up leech near the Duelist area and Frenzy Charges! This tree has also been included in the Guide.

The Marauder Juggernaut Also provides a good alternative for a more tanky approach, stacking Life Regen and Endurance Charges. The tree for this class has also been included!

Now to make sure that we do as much damage as possible to delete enemies and stay alive, we just have to stack massive amounts of strength, fire penetration and as many ‘more’ multipliers as we can possibly get!

Here are the passive trees for leveling the build and the final tree. Now we will wanting to be pathing to keystones, while alternating between defensive and offensive nodes.

Leveling Trees
Level ~30
www.poeurl.com/bcVJ

Level ~50
www.poeurl.com/bcVL

Level ~70
www.poeurl.com/bcVN
You will want to pick up Vaal Pact once you get into Maps

Final Tree
Level 90 Tree
www.poeurl.com/bcVO

Marauder Juggernaut Tree
www.poeurl.com/bdjB
We dont get Vaal Pact, instead combining Life Regen and Regular Leech. Also do not get any jewel sockets for Intertia Jewels

Ranger Raider Tree
www.poeurl.com/bc7f
Gets all 8 Charges, Socket another Inertia directly right of Ranger Start. Little point heavy to get everything

Normal - Help Oak
Cruel - Help Kraityn or Kill All
Merciless - Kill All (Help Kraityn if Raider, Help Oak if Juggernaut)

Unwavering Stance
We of course have to get this so we never get stunned. This would be bad since we have to attack to stay alive!

Elemental Overload
We pick up Elemental Overload from the tree first as we get a 40% more elemental damage multiplier for 8 seconds after we land a critical strike. This is very strong since we are not scaling critical strike or multi and have pure fire damage. Since we have decent local critical strike chance on our weapons and attack so fast, we will proc this buff very often.

Point Blank
In the bottom section of the tree we grab Point Blank. This provides our Molten Strike balls a 50% more damage multiplier in the beginning of their travel. Since we don’t scale too much area and Molten Strike balls generally don’t travel their full distance, we will always be benefiting from the 50% more multiplier.

Vaal Pact
We of course have to get this Keystone since we want to make use of our 100% of damage leeched as life. This means we will basically instantly leech to full life from any damage we deal!

We do not get Iron Grip as we do not really have or scale any base physical damage. All of our damage is Fire damage, and if we do get a Xoph’s Blood Amulet, we will then half any of that physical damage anyways due to Avatar of Fire. We also do not get Resolute Technique as we need to perform some critical strikes to proc Elemental Overload.

Pain Reaver → Crave the Slaughter → Aspect of Carnage → Cloaked in Savagery

Leveling this build is incredibly easy and smooth since we get a lot of base life, we can use our endgame weapons very early and we don’t have to respec our tree at any point. We also do not have to worry about buying any expensive uniques to get the build working! If you have access to some currency already, you can pick up many useful uniques to level with. Here they are listed in the order of level able to equip:



For every build I level, I always use a Goldrim helmet for the +#% to All Elemental Resistance and Wanderlusts for the Movement Speed and Freeze Immunity. For offense, I wore a Meginord’s Girdle and simply dual wielded Screaming Eagles at level 6 until level 28, when I could dual wield the Brutus Lead Sprinklers. These weapons are great for speed leveling due to their movement speed modifiers. If you do not have access to any of these uniques, you can simply use any other gear you find, using a decent 2 handed rare axe, mace or staff until you can get the Sprinklers.

Now we get the Molten Strike skill at level 1, but I do not like using Molten Strike until we get at least one Wildfire Jewel socketed in our tree. We will instead start by using the Ground Slam skill until level 12, when we can get the Sunder skill. If you can use the Screaming Eagles, you can instead use Cleave from level 6 to level 12. Once we have the Sunder Skill, we will be using this to cruise through leveling until we can socket a Wildfire Jewel and get the Sprinklers. You can really use Sunder for as long as you like while leveling as it works really well. It will fall off towards the end of leveling against big single target enemies, such as bosses, where Molten Strike will shine.

At level 49 we can equip the Alberon’s Warpath boots, which will be our endgame boots due to the % scaling to strength they provide. At level 28 we Equip the Sprinklers and can get a Wildfire Jewel Socketed. Here you can either swap to Molten Strike or continue with Sunder, whatever feels more comfortable. At level 35 we can equip Meginord’s Vise gloves for the powerful +100 Strength they provide, and will remain our gloves through end game. These three uniques will be used for the rest of the build! From here, it is just filling out the rest of the passive tree, following the provided trees roughly, and getting gear with strength, life and resistances on it!

Here are all the Gem links, with supports in order of importance:

Main Damage Links (Body Armour)
Molten Strike - Weapon Elemental Damage - Fire Penetration - Multistrike - Elemental Focus - Faster Attacks

We can also swap Concentrated Effect for Elemental Focus on tough bosses. This will cause more overlap of our Molten Strike Balls, but will not scale our initial melee hits.

Totem Links (Helmet)
Ancestral Warchief - Weapon Elemental Damage - Concentrated Effect - Faster Attacks

Aura Links (Boots)
Arctic Armour - Herald of Ash - Blasphemy - Flammability

Mobility Links (Weapon)
Leap Slam - Fortify - Faster Attacks

Defensive Links (Gloves)
Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 9) - Immortal Call (lvl 10) - Increased Duration - Ice Golem (lvl 5)

Ice Golem fills out some crit and accuracy for our build.

Assorted (Weapon)
Vaal Lightning Trap - Blood Rage - Rallying Cry

Vaal Lightning Trap for Shock on bosses and Rally Cry for Extra Damage!

Main Gear
Aside from the uniques we are already wearing, we will want to try and shoot for getting one last gear unique: Xoph’s Blood Amulet.

This will provide us with 10% increased Life and Strength, as well as 10% Fire penetration. This item is very strong and currently quite expensive, but fear not it is not required! I was able to do guardians and end game maps without it! For the rest of our gear slots, we will focus on rare strength based gear, so Armour or Armour/Evasion based gear. This is because we can more easily get the colors we want on the sockets and we don’t much care for stacking any implicit primary defense. We will take the following priorities on gear:

Offensive Affix Priority
+# to Strength
#%Elemental Damage with Weapons
Adds # - # Fire Damage to Attacks
+# to Accuracy Rating (Only need 1 to 2 good Accuracy Rolls on Gear)

Defensive Affix Priority
+# to maximum Life
+#% to Elemental Resistance
+# or #% to Armour/Evasion

Jewels
We will first want to socket the two Wildfire unique jewels into the jewel sockets to the immediate left and top of the marauder Start as soon as we can. We will also want to socket an Inertia unique jewel in the socket above the Ranger.

For the remaining Jewel sockets, we will have space for two rare jewels. We will want the following priorities for Rare Jewels:

Jewel Affix Priority
+# to Strength
#% increased Maximum Life
#% increased Fire Damage
+#% to Elemental Resistances

Flasks
For Flasks we will have a couple options for what we can use. We will for sure want at least one life flask. I use an Eternal Life flask for quick health recovery. For Defensive Flasks, we will want to make use of a Basalt Flask for the physical mitigations. For Offensive Flasks we will want to use a Silver Flask for the onslaught effect, smoothing out our attack speed. Depending on your gearing, you will want to also use the Wise Oak Bismuth Flask. This flask provides 20% elemental penetration for your highest uncapped elemental resistance (the #% number in the parenthesis on the character sheet). So if your highest uncapped elemental resistance is Fire, you will gain 20% Fire Penetration, which is insanely strong for a Flask buff. Now if you don’t have Xoph’s Blood Amber Amulet, you can use an Atziri’s Promise flask. You cannot use this flask if you have the Xoph amulet, as the amulet provides Avatar of Fire, which will not let you deal any damage other than Fire Damage and Chaos Damage is not converted with Avatar of Fire. In its spot, you can either make use a Stibnite Flask or use a Quicksilver flask for more mobility.

Here are the Offensive Stats for the Build Unbuffed:

Here are the Offensive Stats for the Build Buffed (Ele Overload, Frenzies, Savage Hits and Flasks):

Here are the Defensive Stats for the Build:

The playstyle is very simple and of a very fitting nature for the Berserker. First, we will want to enable Blood Rage. You are not required to use the Blood Rage gem as we have no life regen due to Vaal Pact, making your life quickly drain if you are not leeching, but I use it anyways. It nets us a gain of 26% increased Attack Speed and 12% more Damage. I have mine set up on a weapon, so I can quickly weapon swap to cancel the Blood Rage buff if required. After we have Blood Rage going, we simply keep up Fortify by Leap Slamming from pack to pack, keep our flasks up at all times and unleashing a fiery rain of molten hot balls. We are very safe to most all damage since we are always replenishing our health instantly, and only are in danger to excessive damage that can one-shot our entire life pool. This can and will happen in high tier maps, T16’s and such. However, I died very few times after getting to maps, only dying to simple mistakes or over extending myself into ridiculous damage maps. Overall, I found this build very satisfying and a definite boss killer!

- Added Marauder Jugg Tree
- Added Maruader Jugg Comparison
- Updated Ranger Raider Tree