[3.0 HC/SC] The ORIGINAL Hybrid HoWA ST Raider [ALL CONTENT] [2:45 Shaper Run][Vids Included]

Hey Invalesco, following your howa build in Harbinger. Was just wondering since I have 6L shavrone, any way to incorporate this into the build? Or high ES/life chest will always be better?

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Vyvanne wrote:

When I get home I'll try fiddling with the tree and trying your suggestions after some more levels.

And haha thanks re: 21 ST! The first one to hit 20 I just casually vaaled and got 21, yay! Maybe I can get another 21/20 and try to sell that for $$ !

The amulet I'm wearing now I was hoping to pair with another ring I bought for 44c, IF that annul didn't go badly :( Had 70 life, 50 int, 30 WED (I don't think I'd ever not think of it as WED...), and three trash stats. Was hoping to annul and craft another resist, buuuut rng is a cruel mistress and annul'ed the int. Oh well. Trying to sell it so I can at least recuperate some of the original cost. Still, it's not a bad neck and while it's a sidegrade compared to my old ammy, it does have more resistances and open suffix, so if I can find other ring upgrades, I can craft int on it, which would put it slightly above the old one.

Ring crafting is still no go, so far about 150c of alch/scour in, and maybe ten essence crafts. The search continues.

Will continue to farm guardians for the time being to get uniques for $$ to fund the crafting!

Ya WED just sounds better than EDAS. Good luck with the essence crafts and stay safe!

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Vandalain wrote:

Any leveling tips...espcially for HC?

Hey! I would suggest grabbing the HP nodes at the start instead of the attack speed nodes. You can level with a storm cloud bow in the initial phase before switching to the claws: hands of thought and motions. Instead of a fertile mind, you can also use a static electricity jewel in the socket to the right of ranger (it actually outdpses fertile mind by a bit).

Aside from that, just use the usual twink gear! ie tabula, wanderlust.

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Synchro69 wrote:

Hey Invalesco, following your howa build in Harbinger. Was just wondering since I have 6L shavrone, any way to incorporate this into the build? Or high ES/life chest will always be better?

Hey! The only bonus Shavronne's will add is to prevent chaos damage from bypassing energy shield, but the downsides will be a lower HP pool, less ES and less INT for damage. Therefore I'm afraid a high ES/life chest will always be better.

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Vandalain wrote:

Any leveling tips...espcially for HC?

HC player here. You have a couple of options. First one is what Invalesco suggested w/ Storm Cloud before switching to Howa. Usual twink gear like tabula/meginord belt/wanderlust/goldrim, Death's Harp. I might suggest swapping into howa maybe in the late 30s once you can pick up gmp/slower proj. THat will give you enough points to get to the jewel slots and hp and proj nodes in duelist and start making your way up to shadow.

Option two is what I did after I died stupidly a few times. Oddly enough in PoE I vastly prefer melee over casters, where in every other game I always pick mages, but anyway, because of that I've built up a bunch of twink weapons for leveling. Sunder is god tier for leveling, and on my current character (lvl 93) I did 1-70 as Sunder, then respecced.

General gearing tips - there are certain level benchmarks where you can find good low level rares that give you a lot of bang for your buck. Examples below.



-Highly underrated leveling uniques - Honestly up to act 3, you can ignore resists. If you are smart about avoiding and actively dodging attacks, you can get by without any problems. Tbh you can go to act 4 without worrying about resists, but a few moments in A3 will be hairy (sewer discharge guys can kill you in one shot), so to be safe I always swap to Goldrim once I hit the sewers, but before then use Crown of Thorns and Ondar's Clasp. This gives you a big enough ES buffer in the early game to keep up 30% attack speed, that makes leveling SO much easier. Crown of Thorns/Ondars/Onslaught gem + qs flask = you will ZOOM thru the early game. Very early on Meginord is better than Magnate, but if you can get 200+ str on a build, the all res is very nice and 50% flask charge boost means you will be permanently quicksilvering thru zones.



-lvl 28 - shop for rings with 40-50 hp and 50+ total res. Huge bonus points if you can get added phys. They shouldn't be too expensive, might have to keep an eye out for bargain deals.


-lvl 44-46 - Starting at lvl 44, you can find boots with 30 move speed. Search for boots that require lvl 44-46 with 50+ life and 20+ resist. Often these boots are wildly priced, but you can find some good bargains. Ideally you'll want 50+ res total, so if prices are silly, look for a pair of boots with maybe one resist and open suffix to craft another res.


-high 40s/low 50s- This is where you can also start looking for rares in your other slots to shore up life/resistance needs that will keep you over until the desired level to swap to your main build.



Here's my leveling weapons. Remember that Sunder only does main hand damage, so once you swap to sunder at 12, you only want to care about what bonuses your offhand gives and not the damage. Cleave from 1-12, 2x Brightbeak to 2x Screaming Eagle. At 16, swap mainhand to Dreadarc and offhand to The Princess/Tempestuous Steel. Swap mainhands as needed, rough benchmark levels for looking at weapons is around every 5-10 levels.


For leveling trees, this is what I did as sunder.


I also went up into the maurauder area and took Warrior's Blood, Heart of the Warrior, Born to Fight, and Life & Armor nodes in maurauder start. With twink gear and tabula, I was never lacking for damage.




Hope this helps!


One day I'll post a full on speed leveling guide, haha.

Thanks for the insight Invalesco and espcially Vyanne.


Thought about doing Sunder leveling but literally all but one of my characters this league I have leveled as sunder so I think I'm just going to do ST the whole way.

Currently 40 and shredding everything with a tabula

I just started this build today and have a ~15ex budget. Leveling is... plain awesome! Most fun I've had levelling in PoE thus far. Can't wait to start the shopping tour once I hit around 70.

Now, I have a question before I dive into shopping: How important is res balancing? Which rules apply? I tried searching, but I couldn't find a way to just search this topic.

Anyways - thank you T O N S for the build! Keep it up. And Vyanne, great info in your last post. I really would love to see a speed leveling guide composed by you (:

Awesome! One bit of advice, a lot of your survivability comes from your monstrous levels of instant leech, but you don't of course get that until you're properly geared out. W/ Tabula and twink items, you'll have precious little armor and nowhere near the attack speed, so fast hitting attacks or getting chunked in rapid succession is pretty dangerous for leveling as howa. I never died to Doedre before but did so on my last run through, got chunked for like 2.5k damage all at once in rapid succession.

Ah, the fun of hardcore. Good luck! Would love to see your progress.


Oh, I guess a general question I had was what might be the best method for crafting? Tried throwing another 100c of alch/scour into an opal ring, had a few possible okay outcomes but my annul luck is hilariously poor, and another 50c or so in spite essences with no good outcomes. Wondering if it might be better to just buy a ton of alts and try to do something like alt/aug life/int, then regal WED? Or maybe alt regal for life/wed, then multimod int/resists. Hmm. Multimodded rings were definitely more efficient when ES was the meta...

Im currently using a thiefs torment..initially got it for the mana sustain but the LGoH is pretty amazing. It's definitely making leveling pretty safe I feel like, highly recommend it even though its a bit overpriced IMO. I'll probably keep using it up until I can sustain 6l ST on mana and maybe have VP, or the lack of life on them starts to become an issue.


Ever since my first guy died on doedre sewers I've made it a point to add her to the "buy kills" list. Which for me is currently, A5 innocence and kitava, sewers doedre and A10 kitava. I'd rather pay the 1-2c fee for peace of mind rather than potentially have a frustrating rip.

Hope it doesn't deviate from the topic. But I respecced into the blade flurry changes recommended before. And been having a blast. Got a culling strike Howa off a corrupt too which is nice. Would a plus range Howa benefit me at all?

I have a question, running it with empower 3 and enlighten 3 wouldnt cause that much trouble right? or is the mana reserved actually too high and its gonna be annoying

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Vandalain wrote:

Im currently using a thiefs torment..initially got it for the mana sustain but the LGoH is pretty amazing. It's definitely making leveling pretty safe I feel like, highly recommend it even though its a bit overpriced IMO. I'll probably keep using it up until I can sustain 6l ST on mana and maybe have VP, or the lack of life on them starts to become an issue.


Ever since my first guy died on doedre sewers I've made it a point to add her to the "buy kills" list. Which for me is currently, A5 innocence and kitava, sewers doedre and A10 kitava. I'd rather pay the 1-2c fee for peace of mind rather than potentially have a frustrating rip.

I hear you on that, I always pay for Kitava kills. Too much of an annoyance to do jsut one mis-step, and oops ground explosion + throwing debris = instant rip


One more general question as well please. I'm prepping for Shaper, is it worth using Purity of Ice and losing MoM mana?