[3.0] Phy/Chaos BV Gladiator (540k+ dps, budget friendly, super tanky)

Introduction

Hi everyone. This is my first PoE guide ever.

This character was result of wanting to try a Gladiator but not wanting to use weapons. Since Gladiator has a bunch of general physical damage boosts and depends on being close and personal with enemies so to get damage buffs Blade Vortex was a perfect combination.

My other personal requirement was that it is not a critical hit based build as I played enough of those and they are irritating to play with need to upkeep power charges or have diamond flask up most of the time.

What you get with this build is a decently cheap league starter that uses cheap non popular uniques in a smart way that gives you both DPS, survivability and fast clearing (or how ever fast you can be with Blade Vortex). Only expensive required unique is
but you don't need that before you start mapping anyways.
Just to let you understand how good this is, I was a map tier 13 Tabula rasa warrior without much problems. I only switched to real armor because I got enough chaos to buy a 6L.

So let's get to the meat of the build.


Pro's & Con's


+ Huge DPS vs map bosses (540 000 with any 6L)
+ Very cheap to get started and farm high maps or Uber Lab for your GG gear
+ Fast movement around the map with Whirling Blades
+ Max block/spell block(78%) and MoM (6500 life+mana) makes you able to survive easily even with a Tabula
+ Can run almost all map mods without problems
+ Max Chaos resistance makes you basically immune to any chaos or poison attacks from anyone
+ Unlike standard multiple elements Blade Vortex builds this one does not suffer when fighting enemies with multiple elemental resistance stats and boss and guardian/shaper resistances vs phy/chaos are lower than vs elemental

- You will never do 1 million dps or more
- You can get one shot by a few boss attacks but those can be avoided if you know about them


Gear


Current Gear
Only truly expensive item in the list below is my 6L body armor but I ran with a normal Tabula Rasa until I got it and did Uber Lab full key runs and up to T13 maps without any problems. I would even say you should try to get a Tabula Rasa ASAP as it provides a lot more DPS than anything and lets you farm and clear maps so much faster.

If you have problems capping resists you can run with one Ming's for a while (or use a rare belt with better resists). Be sure to buy Ming's with 5% or 6% reduced max life, any more and it will hurt you.



Flasks
You will really really want last 3 flasks (with Rumi's being required), do whatever you want with first two. I rarely even need to use those.




Skill gems


Main skill

Blade Vortex - Controlled Destruction - Spell Echo - Void Manipulation - Efficacy(does not need quality) - Increased AoE

Switchables: Concentrated Effect instead of Increased AoE for boss fights.

Movement skill

Whirling Blades+Faster Attacks+Fortify(+Frenzy)

Other links
Tempest Shield + CurseonHit + Warlord's Cry + Chain

Spell Totem+Wither+Faster Casting

Immortal call + Arcane Surge(lvl9)+Inc Duration+Enduring Cry

Summon Flame Golem+Culling Strike+Cast when damage taken (currently underleveled so not doing much).

Leveling skills


Passive Tree

Planned lvl 90 tree

Leveling tree
Same as above but you don't need to get all jewel slots until you got good jewels to put in them. Also you don't need MoM during leveling but be sure to take it once you hit lvl 69 and you can equip Ming's rings and Broken Faith. As for Ascendancy you go for spell block ASAP and "Outmatch and Outlast" last. When you get Spell Block after finishing Cruel Lab you will notice a huge jump in usefulness of Tempest Shield.


Explanation of mechanics of the build

Build uses recently buffed uniques
that are not popular in combination with max block that Gladiator can achieve to add a lot of chaos damage on top of base physical damage.
Then when you got such good block it also uses
to get 120% inc spell damage as well ability to use whirling blades and bonus to cast speed and life gain per hit from spells (and BV hits 5 times per second).
We use
to help max out block and its penalties don't affect us that much.

Since this build cannot possibly have huge HP pool I used another recently buffed thing - Mind over Matter. We reserve no mana so we can also use Clear Mind jewel for a really nice DPS boost.
And since we do need Warlord's Cry to life and mana leech we use Tempest shield to apply that curse each time we block anything (and that happens often).

Playstyle

Playing this character is super easy and fun. You just activate your Tempest Shield and summon 10 stacks of BV then whirling blade around the map while murdering everything while having easy upkeep of BV with spell echo. If you see a harder pack you also activate your last 3 potions. You use Increased AoE support for map clearing.
During clearing maps when you get 3 Endurance Charges (either through Warlord's Mark or with Enduring Cry) you activate Immortal Call that gives you Arcane Surge for 26s (yes you read that right).

Vs Bosses you switch to Concentration Effect support, summon all 20 stacks of BV and enter the arena. You move next to boss, activate all defensive pots and hit the boss 3 times to get frenzy bonus as well and just upkeep 20 stacks of BV. You can also activate Enduring Cry and then Immortal Call to get Arcane Surge as well. I love doing this first when fighting Uber Izaro as it makes you immune to his first attack.

So far I done T14 maps, full key Uber Izaro runs and normal Atziri. I was not close to dying on any of these. Plan to tackle T15 and above soon.
I have done up to T13 and full key Uber Izaro with Tabula.

Map mods you cannot do are physical reflect. I tried even with anti reflect pantheon and still died. It could probably be done if I replaced my right ring with Sybil's Lament unique ring but why bother.
Otherwise I done them all. No leech maps are a bit harder but doable.

Media

No videos so far but I will try to get some.
Screenshots are mostly useless as real DPS values cannot be seen in game. You have to use PoB for that and link to that is below.

PoB link

https://pastebin.com/1ZjaNB25


If you got questions be free to ask. And if you try this I hope you have same amount of fun like I did.

Nice build, using broken faith and cybil's on a gladiator is pretty clever :)

some videos would really help!

the synergies are brilliant!

great idea what were the bandit rewards please

can this build run biscos?

"

HannahJacob2015 wrote:

great idea what were the bandit rewards please

Hi, I took 2 passive points. Alira is useless for this build. Kraityn as well.
Oak might be useful but I think 2 passive points are more useful in the end.

"

Vortexas wrote:

can this build run biscos?

I suppose it can. You will lose some defense and damage as anvil gives 8% block. I supposed you can get another Reckless Defense instead, that will keep your block rate at decent levels. PoB says you lose 10k dps, 8% normal block and 3% spell block and a bit of life if you just put Bisco instead of Anvil.

But you will sure get into more trouble with Bisco instead, how much I don't really know.
I noticed that map mod that gives you 40% less block chance makes enemies hit much more often and life and mana go down often, probably for those maps I would recommend Anvil instead.

Also first time your character gets hit your base block chance goes up by 8% (from gladiator ascendancy) so I guess that counteracts loss of Anvil.
I like using Anvil because it lets me not use Rumi's flask for normal mapping and only when fighting really dangerous enemies or map bosses. Without Anvil I would probably need to have Rumi on more often.

Sup, one question about this build, did you have any non budget gear version of this build?

"

bukiet95 wrote:

Sup, one question about this build, did you have any non budget gear version of this build?

Well you can always upgrade rare items into better version. You can get GG jewels. You can corrupt armor to get +1 to skill gems, rings can get 6% of damage taken goes into mana and claw can get culling strike. There is 4% block chance corrupted Anvil for 200c for sale. You can get Taste of Hate as well if you want for more dps.

If you are asking for some special uniques that can get you 1000 more life or 200k more dps but cost 200ex, I don't know about any such items. Maybe some of the new Harbinger items can be useful for this, I have not looked into their stats much.

Did you fight this build against uber atziri/shaper etc?