[3.0] Battlecookie's MaxBlock IW BV Gladiator [BeginnerFriendly, Cheap, UberLab, Shaper, Guardians]

The basic Idea was to create a tanky build that uses a high Strength pool to increase life and damage. Therefor I ended up with a MaxBlock strength based Blade Vortex character with following core gearing:


Doon Cuebiyari and Repentance are for utilizing the high streangth pool. Both items give us a lot spell damage increase via strength.


Astramentis gives a high amount of stats to increase the strength pool on the one hand and giving also a lot of int to reach the requirements for Repentance. Alberon's Warpath is just an incredible boost of more than 150 strength, which is about 50% increased damage and 75 life.


The Surrender is just a pretty damn good Shield for MaxBlock chars. It gives you 250 HP on every block + tons of armor, due to increased defenses from shield in the passive tree. Furthermore Reckoning let us trigger curses with CoH and we just need a 2L instead of a 4L or Blasphemy to apply curses.


The Covenant gives Blood Magic to our Main Skill. Therefor we don't need to run any reduced Mana nodes and no Clarity. Furthermore it proves an additonal Link with Level 15 Added Chaos Damage. It's just pretty good in our setup.

https://pastebin.com/7M8ivc7p

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.0.1/AAAABAQCAADuAdwB5wPuBLMFLQY5BosJMwomDPcOQxQgFE0VIBVQFm8YkRm0GjgaPhpVGmwb-hzcHb4g4ySqJd8nLyj6Kk0s6S2DLlMvzDGeM4c1kjboNuk62DwFPQ8_J0CgQYdHfkrITeNRYFZIWW1fP1-YX9phIWSjZU1mVG6qdO15OXrvfLt-4oKbgseE2YTvhXuGs48akFWS95o7na6ezZ-jn8uf36IApBmmV6cIpzCnn6mVrK-18rc-uJO5HbyfvTa-p8BmwL_Bgs1fzzLRNtNv1abYJNi92sHiLONq5CLp1evu7DjtPO8O73zzBvgC-ej7qvxL_gr-jw==?accountName=Noaphiel&characterName=Battlecookie

5L/6L: Blade Vortex - Spell Echo - Controlled Destruction - Concentrated Effect/Increased Area of Effect - Physical to Lightning (- Elemental Focus/Empower)

4L: CWDT (lvl 1) - Tempest Shield (lvl 7) - Immortal Call (lvl 3) - Increased Duration

4L: Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Fortify - Culling Strike/Leap Slam

4L: Hatred - Herald of Fire - Arctic Armour - Enlighten (LvL 2 is enough)

3L (Weapon): Summon Flame/Chaos Golem - Minion Life - Minion Resistances/CWDT (Take whatever you're comfortable with. Either selfcast with more golem resi or put it in a high level CWDT)

3L (Shield): Curse on Hit - Curse - Increased Area of Effect (Take whatever you're comfortable with. Warlord's Mark is decent for additional Mana/Life leech. Ele weakness is good to boost DPS. Enfeeble is good to reduce damage from enemies)

worst Map Modifiers
- Ele-Reflect (it is playable, but expect to have a hard time. I usually reroll this, cause it can happen to die out of nowhere with this)
- reduced Armor/Block Chance (super annoying, since it reduces our HP generation from The Surrender and increases Damage taken. Would reroll that on high level maps)
- low/no reg (annoying, cause you need to flask a lot to sustain blood magic)

1 Inertia near Command of Steel to convert all this Dex to Str (70 Dex get converted + 24 Str of the jewel itself).
3 Rare Jewels with either of following stats (Priority from top to down):
- increased maximum Life
- increased Physical Damage
- increased Spell Damage
- increased Spell Damage while holding a Shield
- increased Area Damage
- increased Damage
- increased Lightning Damage
- Attributes

I suggest using the following Flasks:

1st slot: Saturated Eternal Life Flask with Freeze removal (if you don't wear The Brine Crown) or Blood of the Karui

2nd slot: Seething Divine Life Flask with Bleed removal

3rd slot: Atziri's Promise with 20% Physical Damage as extra chaos Damage

4th slot: Taste of Hate or The Wise Oak (Wise Oak only if your resis are aligned. Taste of Hate is anyways the better option)

5th slot: Flexible. possible options would be Sin's Rebirth, Overflowing Chalice for Damage or basically any resi/armor flask for defense

Gear





current stats
Average Damage Tooltip (without any Flasks): 34,2k (171k DPS)
Average Damage Tooltip (with Atziri Flask): 40,8k (204k DPS)
HP: 6100
Mana: 770
Armour: 12700 (63% reduction/67% with chaos golem)
Block: 67% (75% after hit recently)
Spellblock: 67% (75% after hit recently)

Leveling should be pretty straight forward. Anyways, here are some keys.

LvL 1
Start out on EK or Freezing Pulse + Arcane Surge from LvL 1. If this is your first char move a Witch/Shadow to town to drop these gems into the stash and start out on a Duelist then. Get a Driftwood for +1 Gem LvL if possible and socket your gem inside. Move towards Bravery in the Passive Tree.

LvL 12
Switch to Blade Vortex. A 3L in the Driftwood with Added Fire and Arcane Surge is sufficient for the Moment. Move in the passive Tree towards Golem's Blood and Unwavering Stance.

LvL 18
If you're running a Tabula add Physical to Lightning, Controlled Destruction, Elemental Focus and Faster Casting to your gem setup. If you don't have a Tabula switch out Arcane Surge for Controlled Destruction in your 3L Driftwood. Move further to Heart of the Warrior in the Skilltree. Afterwards move up to the Scion through the Dex nodes. get your first Inertia. If you have mana problems equip Atziri's Foible. Enable Herald of Ash. Kill all Bandits.

LvL 24
If you can afford them equip two Le Heup of All Iron Rings. They give a lot Attributes, Damage and Resistances. Equip Astramentis if you got one already. Move up the Dex nodes further towards Exceptional Performance.

LvL 38
Equip Spell Echo for Faster Casting in a 6L Tabula. If you don't have a 6L Tabula put Spell Echo in a 4L together with Blade Vortex, Controlled Destruction and Added Fire/PtL. Do Normal Lab and take Painforged as your first Ascendancy.

LvL 49
Get The Covenant and equip it if it's already a 5L. If not you might want to take some Mana nodes with Tabula to sustain the mana costs. Take the Constitution Wheel and start taking all Block dependant nodes. Move up the Int nodes afterwards.

LvL 55-60
Equip Alberon's Warpath. Do Cruel Lab and take Versatile Combatant. Move further through the nodes near the Templar starting point.

LvL 64/66
Equip Doon Cuebiyari & Repentance. Tanke a major Int cluster if necessary. You should have a decent amount of Int through Astramentis, Le Heups and the Int node pathing from tree already to wear them.

LvL 70
Do Merciless Lab and take Violent Retaliation. Equip The Surrender. If you can't afford The Surrender equip Lioneye's Remorse and try to farm currency. From now on take the remaining skill nodes on your own and upgrade gear on your own.

Equipment Order
If you lack currency get equipment in the following order:
1. The Covenant (High int roll preferred. It's really cheap, less than 5c)
2. Le Heups (Focus on high Attributes and Resists. 5-10c each)
3. Doon Cuebiyari (should be quite cheap as well. less than 10c)
4. Alberon's Warpath (super cheap. like 1-5c. only get 18% str roll)
5. Astramentis (quite expensive at season start, but mandatory for this build. 30c-80c)
6. Repentance (cheap again. try to get one with low reduced spell damage. 1-30c regarding on the roll)
7. The Surrender (quite expensive. It's your last item to fill. 2-5ex)

Atziri

T16 Minotaur Facetank Clip from Twitch Stream

T16 Guardian of the Minotaur
T16 Guardian of the Hydra
T16 Guardian of the Phoenix
T16 Guardian of the Chimera

T15 Core Map
T15 Chaos Warbands, Daresso & Kaom (Recorded with a 5L and low level Gems still)

Adding more Videos soon