[3.5] League Starter W.O.E Sund Slayer / 35c Day 1 Cost / U-Lab Sprinter / High Damage Mitigation

Build guide updated. Have made some amendments and am now happy to say this is indeed viable for the 3.5 league starting tomorrow. Good luck to everyone this league, hope you reach your goals no matter what builds you end up settling on.

3.5 Patch Notes are out. Build guide updated again.

Build is viable still and more tanky with a bit more DPS after the patch changes. Our effective move speed from leap-slam in the alt-weapon setup has been reduced by about a third (or possibly less?) due to leap slap and offhand nerfs. Instead of a Brightbeak & Prismatic Eclips in the alt-weapon setup, you now just equip two Brightbeak's.

Bit of an FYI about how the 3.5 patch changed this build and things you should consider before using the build as a league starter:

Buffs:
- The BOR helm now has upgraded L18 faster attacks and blind supports in-built, upgraded from L12 and L6 respectively. L18 Melee phys damage stays the same.
- The BOR helm now has a whopping 200-220 flat life, up from 120-160 (that's a while item socket worth of additional flat life).

Nerfs:
- Leap-slam was gimped across the board. About an effective 5%-10% reduction in speed.
- The unbelievably short sighted stat-stick nerf extended to all off-handers as well, cutting our effective movement speed by a third while using the alt-weapon slot swap for fast leap-slamming through zones.
- The alt-weapon setup will need to be changed, I'm not sure what too? Probably two Brightbeak's, now.

Possible Nerfs?:
- No info provided from GGG on what maps you can farm the div card for the BOR helm.
- No info provided from GGG on what the reduced drop rate or increased rarity is going to be for the BOR helm now.

It's still workable, it's still doable, it will actually do more damage and it will ultimately only add about an extra 1min30sec to 2min to your Uber Lab clear time. The thing is though, I have no clue how available the upgraded BOR helm will be now, or how expensive/cheap it will be either?

So having said that, just a head's up guys, if the BOR helm is now rarer or suddenly more expensive on day 1/2 of the new league, just run the 6-link Sunder setup for this build in a 16c Tabula Rasa chest and equip a 1c value Ahn's Contempt helmet - you can pop in what ever 4-link "Cast When Damage Taken" defensive setup you like (CWDT L3 / Cold Snap L8 / Temp Chains L7 / Increased Duration L20 - is a good setup for example) to the helm. You'll end up closer to being back at 5100 overall life but you'll have more phys damage mitigation, more armour and a huge QOL boost to us in 50% reduced extra damage from Crit's, which is almost in itself enough to just facetank a fully buffed Uber Izaro.

Basically TL/DR, we get a 2% base DPS boost (which amounts to more when scaled up with Frenzy/Maim/etc boosts obviously), extra 200 to 250 life to the total life of the build - but our effective move speed through the lab via leap slam is reduced by about a third. So the build is more tanky, does a bit more damage, levels the same, but just has a slower leap slam speed until you get a pair of Elder gloves with the Faster Attacks / Increased Attack Speed suffix on them & you can put the leap slam gem setup in them & move the totem gem setup into the WOE weapon.

**Note about this build for 3.4 Delve League onwards:**
Delve mining for crafting mat's is straight up now the most ridiculously profitable farming method in this game. Way WAY better than Lab farming. It looks to be unchanged for the coming 3.5 league now as well, given the media and release info put out about it. This build is great for low level Delving as it's very quick and has a good persistent leech rate & length of time that overleech applies for. You should be good for sustaining anything up to about 100-150 stacks of delve darkness before you die in L70-75 equivalent Delve mines. So feel free to just go absolutely ham Delve mining if that's what you want. However just like mapping, T10 equivalent level Delves is about the limit you are going to push this build too in the mine on basic or budget gear. So keep this in mind now going forward, as this build's primary function is Uber Lab farming for strongboxes (mostly currency drops, divination cards and high quality skill gem drops) and Lab enchants. For those wondering about the value of Lab Enchants on helm's, there is about 45 different enchant's at any given time through the entire length of a league that are worth at least 1 Exalt or higher (some way more than 20 Ex's, even). You can keep track of enchant value's here: https://poe.watch/prices?category=enchantment&league=Delve - just change the drop-downs to be applicable to the current league and mode of league you are playing.



Welcome to the build guide.

First off and foremost, I’d like to state explicitly that this guide is simply a written and far more in depth and fleshed-out guide to a quick video build guide created and posted by Lab speed runner and Youtuber “Nathan Boulton”.

You can find the basic build guide video right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ChC0wFUl3A (I’ll link to it again later in the guide).

You can see the full sub-5min Uber Lab clear at level 70 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IClg6j0Ujg (I’ll link to it again later in the guide).

So full credit go’s to Nathan for the idea of this build, it’s creation and design. Nathan’s POE videos on his youtube channel are pretty good, so feel free to leave him some positive comments. I’m basically publishing the guide here as I’ve had discussions with a lot of users over at Reddit about it, and noticed a few users really go into specifics about what can be done with this build - one of the very few actual real low-budget builds floating around that does what’s advertised and then more. Much much more.


Intro:

This is an easy to use Duellist character with the chosen ascendancy of Slayer. It requires minimal effort to use, won’t give your wrists RSI and only needs a few keys or buttons to press. It’s easy on the eyes, can do most content easily and won’t melt your FPS. It’s noob friendly, it’s fantastic for casual gamers and the more experienced will be able to min-max the bajeezus out of it. It’s a unique mix of high defensive capabilities across the board, with decent DPS and faster than average move speed. It’s the strongest and easiest starting build I’ve used in the 3+ years I’ve been playing this game. The build has the ability to solo the Uber Lab with ease by the time you hit level 70 and still have lower levelled gems – you can still do this relatively easy even without any of the 4 cheap unique’s that the build uses. It’s basically an excellent all-rounder that will allow you to speed-farm the Uber Lab, farm map’s up to T10 and all other mid-tier content in the game at a very fast rate. It decimates breaches, can tank exiles, beyond mobs and invasion bosses, as well as survive explosive strongbox and ghost encounters – making this one of the best all-around cheap builds there is.


The Path Of Building pastebin link's for the build:
Spoiler

The base "Wings of Entropy" 2-hand Axe version
*Now with 20/40/60/80/100pt levelling skill trees and then the L91 and L95 skill tree options included too.
https://pastebin.com/d6a7hKyR

The "Sinvicta's Mettle" 2-hand Axe version:
*Exact same as the base build and levelling process, just with 5 skill point changes to the skill tree. End result is 1% more DPS, 1% less leech. This is just an optional extra build option tossed in, for the unlikely scenario that you can't find a WOE axe on day 1 of the new league or you by chance drop a massive 450+ pDPS rare axe.
https://pastebin.com/3SXuJWBZ

The Doomsower 2-hand Sword version using Vaal Double Strike:
*Exact same as the base build and levelling process, just with 15 skill point changes to the skill tree. End result is 10% more DPS but you'll have less area of effect and reach as you'll be using double strike. Setting off the Vaal Double Strike boyz will be a huge temporary DPS spike obviously, but you don't often gain enough vaal soul's in a Izaro fight to set them off, so I haven't included that in the DPS calculations. Having said that, being able to trigger VDS and VAW after killing a bunch of Izaro's spawned white trash will kill him in less than a second on the off chance the Uber Lab buffs on any given day allow him to spawn a heap of white trash. This is just an optional extra build option tossed in, for the unlikely scenario that you can't find a WOE axe on day 1 of the new league or you by chance drop a massive 450+ pDPS rare sword.
https://pastebin.com/BhHzSFv4


3.1 Abyss League build diary for progress, results and economic tracking of gear prices:



3.2 Bestiary League build diary for progress, results and economic tracking of gear prices:
Spoiler


3.4 Bestiary League build diary for progress, results and economic tracking of gear prices:
Spoiler

- Day 1 to 30 Build progress and Economic update:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2032624/page/56#p15942586


Please Note:

Any and all related questions to this build MUST be asked here in the build guide thread. If you start hitting me up with messages in the in-game chat box, I will ignore you. If you send messages to my inbox here at the forum, I will ignore them.

Don't ask questions about why your build/character isn't working or doing what the build is capable of, if you haven't actually read and followed the build guide, then taken the skills / tree / ascendancy / Pantheon powers / geared your character accordingly. Because 99% of everyone's problems are caused by trying to take short cuts, or not following the build guide.

Important Q & A's:
Spoiler
Q: What will happen if I chose other gear/gem's/skills/tree-nodes ?
A: Try yourself and see. Come back and let us know.

Q: Can you please theory-craft or tell me what happens if I use "XYZ unrelated item to this build".
A: No. You'll need to learn to use Path of Building like everyone else. Come back and let us know if you find better options & can show it though.

Q: How do I take this to the end-game and beat Shaper?
A: You don't. The build guide is explicit in explaining that's not what this build is designed for. Take him on at your own risk.

Q: Why are the Guardians wrecking me?
A: The build guide is explicit in explaining that's not what this build is designed for. Take them on at your own risk.

Q: Why is Argus 1-shotting me in the Uber Lab?
A: Because Argus is a monumental wanker who seems to have the ability to smash through every last bit of your defensive mitigation, with every strike he hit's with. In order to avoid this, you need to make sure you have over 5K life and attack with a strategy where you circle around him when not attacking and avoid him when he charges at you. When he's finished charging, he always stays on the spot motionless for a second and it's at that point you leap slam on his fat head, Sunder him down a bit, then move away and begin circling/attacking him again.

Q: Why is this version of Izaro today hitting exceptionally hard and fast?
A: Izaro's buffs in each phase of his 3 fights change every single day. When the moon's align and the GGG dev's feel like trolling us more so than usual, some days the combo of charges Izaro is granted will straight up cause havoc. He'll be spewing explosive damage like he's possessed by something and flying around endlessly. Your strategy on days like this are to abandon hopes of extra keys and just go ham killing everything in the Izaro boss room to keep up leech in-between leap slamming out of the worst damage coming in your direction which will keep up your fortify/defences. You'll still get some keys and an enchantment at the very least.

Q: How much currency do i need to invest in this build to take it to the end game & beyond?
A: You don't. The build guide is explicit in explaining that's not what this build is designed for. You use this build to generate obscene amounts of currency & wealth in the Uber Lab, to then afford to make specific builds for other purposes like Shaper/H.O.G.M's/Elder/Lich/Guardian farming builds.

Q: I don't have the recommended gear, items, base types, skill gems, correct jewels, I'm not resistance-capped & I'm quite low levelled. I'm really struggling to stay alive for some unknown reason? Can you check my character for me and tell me what's wrong?
A: Read the build guide. Follow it. Problem solved.

Q: I have this problem playing your build in the console version of the game.....
A: Get the PC version.


The Numbers:
Spoiler
What does this mean in terms of actual numbers though? Here's a run down of the absolute baseline numbers, with no boosts active or activated, set to "Shaper Damage":

DPS:
117K DPS for Sunder primary hit
+ 46K DPS for Sunder shockwaves
+ 49K DPS for when Ancestral Warchief active

Life / Defense:
5K+ life
625 Life Regen
1K Life leech on hit
127 Mana leech/on hit
45% chance to evade
63% Phys damage reduction
+30% Movespeed
51% Block Chance
9% Spell block chance
16% Spell dodge chance
Main Resistances capped, Chaos -25%



The Gameplay Style:
Spoiler
Assuming your starting in the hideout with nothing active:
Activate your Arctic Armour and Hatred, then summon your Stone Golem. Now enter the map.

Once in the map:
Activate Blood Rage and Leap-Slam your way immediately from pack to pack, into the first enemy of each pack, then Sunder them and watch as the whole pack explodes with gore in an instant. If you encounter a boss or hard hitting Elite/Champ enemy, then activate the Ancestral Warchief to help smash down the enemy quickly. As you move from pack to pack, you'll quickly gain Endurance charges and your killing and movement speed will just get faster and faster as all your other skill tree boosts kick in like Onslaught/Bleed/Leech/etc... Re-summon the Stone Golem as needed (will sometimes die in intensive T10+ maps or in the Uber Lab if caught in traps) and if you come across the rare map with nothing in it, Blood Rage will need to be re-activated again if you haven't killed anything for 11 seconds. It's pretty rare that the golem or blood rage need to be re-activated in a map, to be honest, because you just leap around and kill stuff so quickly with this build.

Once at the boss:
Smash them down in an instant if your buffs and charges are up. If they aren't, then you pop all your flasks and kill the two worms that pop out from the writhing jar flask - which gives you a charge or two and raises up your DPS and damage mitigation instantly and for at least the next 5 seconds, which should be enough to get you up and running again against any boss of a T13 map or lower. Killing the boss-add's should keep everything up, once your up and running. For bosses of T14/15/16 maps and Guardians/Shaper, you'll really want to make sure that you get a decent rare Unset Ring and have Enduring Cry slotted into it. Each click of Enduring Cry during a longer boss fight (Fight's that last 30+ seconds) will give you an instant 3+ endurance charges and an additional average of 150+ life regen per second, which will help you survive those consistent big hits and keep your DPS and buffs up against them. This is realistically though the only scenario where Enduring Cry or the Unset ring is of any benefit. I leveled to 90 easily without ever using it and killed 3 of the 4 Guardians deathless without it, too. The Guardian boss Chimera is the only one I'd say this is mandatory for, as with Shaper and maybe even Uber-Atziri too.

Attack style against late-game bosses with huge life health pools, who can hurt you:
This is a familiar adage for those of us with a combat sports background.... "stick and move". Stick and move is a fighting style where you stick the opponent with a quick jab or strike that distracts/unbalances them, then move around them to a better angle where you can hit them without being significantly hit back yourself. This style is actually literally the case with the Slayer though, as Sunder with multistrike physically sticks your character in one position while you hit multiple times, then allowing you to move again one the attacking animation has stopped. We can actually take advantage of this though using a stick and move offensive technique in combination with leap-slam against bosses who we simply just can't face-tank till their dead. The best way to look at this technique is put yourself in any room with a boss. Now put a compass face on the floor of the boss room, with the boss being dead in the middle of it and you being at "South". The way sticking and moving works in this scenario is as such:

From the starting "South" position, instead of attacking, you leap-slam on the boss in the middle of the room, then leap-slam to the "East" position, where you turn back around and attack. As the boss begins to counter your strike with an attack of his own, you close the distance by leap slamming on him, then leap-slam out to the "West" point. You then turn and attack. As the boss turns back around to you and starts his own counter attack, you then leap-slam on to him and then leap-slam up to the "North" position, where you turn around and attack again. You just keep doing this attack pattern until the boss is dead. The direction you chose to move towards after leap-slamming on the boss is up to you, so long as it's never back to the position you were just in. The reason for this is because most bosses in the game can only hurt you when facing you and attacking or when you get hit by overlapping spell/attack damage. So by keeping them turning and moving around looking for you, this restricts their ability to hit you, it restricts the amount they attack you & it keeps you moving to places where their overlapping attack and spell damage (Including AOE effects) aren't moving across the screen. Even in the most hectic of boss fights or Izaro/Argus fights, this technique applies and works.

You can also apply the same technique, but instead of moving 90 and 180 degree angles from N/E/S/W, you do it all from the in-between angles of NE/SE/SW/NW.

What this technique effectively does in terms of your character is that it raises up your fortify and defensive buffs every time you leap slam on the boss, cursing them and making them weaker in the process, before moving out to a point where they aren't facing yet, which gives you more time to then attack the boss before they notice you and begin their attack animation towards you. This prevents you from being stuck in an attack animation sequence where you notice a massive in-coming hit coming at you, but can't make your character move out of the way of it because their stuck completing the attack animation sequence. It also has the added bonus that the area's you jump to when doing this are more than likely the area's where the boss-add's (extra white-trash minions and mob's that the bosses spawn to help them) will spawn, which means your leap-slamming on to other enemies, keeping up those buffs and triggering more life-leech in the process.

If you'd like to see a real-life masterclass of this technique working in a boxing ring, watch the Vasyl Lomachenko vs. Guillermo Rigondeaux world title fight. Loma sticks and moves while darting in and out at Rigo on angles, circling around him or straight past him, leaving Rigo swatting at air as Loma mercilessly plastered him from the angles.

Key Bind's and Mouse Setup:
For my mouse, I have plain movement/pick-up-stuff for left click, Sunder for right click, Leap Slam for the first button on the left side of the mouse and Blood Rage for the button directly behind that one on the left side of the mouse. For the keyboard, I have flasks on numbers 1-5, then Ancestral Warchief on "Q", Summon Stone Golem on "R". Arctic Armour and Hatred are on "W" and "E". Each to their own though, you set it up how it's most comfortable for you. It's basically going to play out that you Leap-Slam to a pack, sunder it, then do the same over and over till the boss, where you deploy the totem and then just Sunder them dead. Leap Slam and Sunder will likely be the only two buttons you use 99% of the time, with the occasional left click to pick up loot.

A word about Guardians / Shaper / Elder / Uber Atziri:
If you are going to fight these end-game bosses, you will likely die if unprepared. As stated already, this build is not optimized or designed for them. You can defeat them, but you'll have to know what your doing to be successful & you will have to be experienced if not at least decent to do any of them deathless. Watch the boss fight instructional's that players have posted on Youtube. They each only need to be watched once to help understand what big hits to avoid and then they are actually reasonably easy to kill. They usually just take up to a few minutes to kill, because they have massive health point pools to knock down. Also remember that Uber Atziri has curse-reflect, which means that you'll want to remove the curse-on-hit skill gem from your leap-slap setup prior to this one boss fight.


Pro’s:
Spoiler
- Fast
- Tanky.
- Above-average DPS.
- It's a Phys-attack build that can run phys reflect maps.
- Completely immune to phys reflect enemies or maps.
- The gear is absolutely cheap as chips to obtain.
- Levelling is easy, as is the final Kitava kill without the need for Twink quality gear.
- You can face-tank the entire Uber Lab in under 5 min’s while collecting keys and shrines along the main path. You can do this over and over and over again with basically no risk of death.
- Uber-Lab faming will make you filthy rich in a number of different ways, all through the length of a season. Then back in standard mode, too. This is applicable even in 7-day+ race leagues, too.
- This is the only character I’ve ever “raced” to Kitava without worrying about gearing myself with twink items and still been able to easily beat the boss………. Deathless…….. the entire way.


Con’s:
Spoiler
- This is not a Guardian-stomping mega-DPS build. You can clear the Guardians and Shaper deathless with a good understanding of the boss mechanics over the course of 2-4min’s, but most casual players will die at least once or twice in those encounters, especially in they have lower level/quality gem’s, or attempt to completely face-tank the fights.
- It’s not as fast as wand builds because It doesn’t have 600% movement speed. It’s still very fast none the less though.
- It’s not as completely screen-shattering as the 1-shot trash clearing mega-AOE-sized Kinetic Blast builds. It still clears trash very fast none the less though.
- The DPS drop’s off noticeably against T10 map bosses and above. It’s not like you can’t kill them, it’s just more like the bosses go from taking 1-10 seconds, to around 30-90 seconds. Bosses with "phases" in their fights are a complete pain in the ass sometimes due to your life-leech effect wearing off. Having said that though, they are still easy to kill deathless, they just take more time.


Map Mods:
Spoiler
Map Mod’s It Can’t Handle:
- Cannot Leech Life (T11 maps and higher)
- No Regen (T11 maps and higher)

Map Mod’s It Can Handle:
- Everything else.

Map Mod’s That Are Annoying:
- Burning Ground (Can kill your FPS due to a bug in the game and makes things look choppy as you move around).
- Temp Chains (You move everywhere via Leap-slam so that’s not the issue, what is annoying though is trying to collect the loot explosions with negative movement speed applied on your character).
- Elemental Reflect (You can survive easily due to general life regen and life leech, but you just have to attack enemies at a slower rate and allow the Ancest Warchief totem to do damage for you as well, so you don’t get 1-shot by the reflect damage coming back off massive groups of enemies exploding at the same time).


An Overview of the Gear:
Spoiler
The build uses four unique items to get the best out of it. The first is the Carnage Heart Onyx Amulet, which grants us up to a whopping +56 to all attributes, +20 to all elemental resistances, 2% of phys attack damage leeched as life, 50% increased life leech per second, 40% increased damage while leeching and finally the “Extra Gore” weapon modifier. The second is the Bringer of Rain Helm which we use as a glorified 7-link item, via it’s guaranteed three extra support stats you get, that synergise well with a 4-link Sunder setup (something we will see more of in general next season in 3.1 onwards with Shaper and SquidBoss-Guy’s unique items). The helm also grants a 6% chance to block, 20% to obtain an endurance charge when blocking, up to 300% increased armour and evasion and up to +160 to max life. This leaves open the weapon to be used as a 4 or 5-link setup for the Ancestral Warchief or Ancestral Protector, meaning you don’t need a 5 or 6-link weapon OR chest.

The third unique item is the weapon, which is the Wings of Entropy two-handed axe, which has the unique item-benefit attached to it of allowing “dual wielding”. This allows you to make use of all single or dual-wielding skills/nodes on items and in the skill tree, as well as all axe skills/nodes in the same way. The weapon also grants 25% of your block chance to spells, 8% additional block chance, 120% increased phys damage, and an additional flat 65-125 Fire & Chaos damage. The fourth and final unique is the Atziri’s Step Slink Boots. These boots grant us 30% movement speed, 16% chance to dodge spell damage, +75 to max life and a 180% increased evasion rating. This leaves us as a build in the unique position that we need nothing more than 4-linked items to get to the end-game stages and we don’t even need a chest at all. You can just put in any chest you like that has 6 sockets in it to use as an additional 6 gem-levelling slots. The gloves, rings and belt need nothing other than life and resistances.



The max stat requirements for the build, gear & gems (only once all the gems hit Level 20) are 155 Str, 155 Dex and 111 Int. Once you have levelled to 70, assuming you have no attribute stats on any gear, you’ll have about 360 Str, 85 Dex and 55 Int. Equipping the Carnage amulet (even with a terribly rolled one) will take you to 400 Str / 125 Dex / 95 Int. Then adding the three jewels with a “+10 To Dexterity and Intelligence” as one of the stat rolls will get you to the attribute levels you need. You won’t even need the Dex/Int on the gems gems if you get the +30 Dex and Int you need across the gloves/rings/belt instead, but managing that is likely going to cost you a few extra chaos here & there, where as the gems with the Dex/Int rolls are like 1-2 chaos levels of cheap, even with life or attack speed rolls on them too.


How to realistically take your life to the 6k+ range and increase your damage significantly:
Spoiler
Life:
You just need to upgrade rings/belt/gloves and your jewels, then level up from L85 to L90. Aim for around 70 life on gloves, 60 life on each ring and 100 life on the belt. You could easily get an additional 20+ life on each of those with the addition of additional Strength rolls too, if you wanted to spend about 80 chaos in upgrades. Also have at least 6% increased life on the jewels, too (you could upgrade and get 7% on each jewel along with the current or better other stat rolls on the jewels, for about 20 chaos total cost). The 5 skill tree points you take at 86/87/88/89/90 are all either 4% increased max life + armour/evasion or just flat 5% increased max life - they all contribute nicely to boosting your overall effective life pool.

Having said that though, unlike from a number of seasons ago where damage mitigation was next to useless and your life pool was everything - life and damage mitigation are now almost hand in hand as useful as each other, especially with now having more forms of it and it being more effective in general. This build by L85 has around 5K life with high Evasion/Armour/Block and decent spell block & dodge on top of all that, with resistances over-capped easily and everything past that point playstyle-wise is just gravy in terms of DPS boosting and damage mitigation. So the need to go substantially upwards of 5.1k/5.2k health is waaaaay less necessary now, especially so with this build.

Now getting back on topic with some helpful practical info: I crafted all three of my jewels to have +Dex/+Int & 6% increased maximum life, then just applied a Regal Orb to give the jewels a random third stat roll. Took about 4 minutes of crafting all up. You can purchase a Jewel though with the +max life and Dex/Int combo at pretty much any point of a league/race for about 1-5 chaos, then just apply a Regal Orb to give it an extra stat roll (Attack Speed will give you the biggest DPS boost, but Phys/Attack damage rolls to axes or single/dual wield are all good DPS boosts as well). Total cost of the crafting for me was 3 Transmute orb's, 50 Alt's & Aug's, then 3 Regal Orb's - total cost of that is about 5 chaos all up.

DPS:
To increase your DPS, the first and most obvious step is the regular routine that every player using any build does - apply 20% quality to all your armour, weapons, skill gems and flasks. Applying quality to skill gems can be pretty costly, so my suggestion is to buy all the skill gems on poe.trade for 1-2 chaos each at level 1 with at least 10% quality, so you can level them up in one of your 12 gem levelling slots (alternate weapons plus the what ever generic 6-slot chest piece you have). Switch over to them on a skill-gem by skill-gem basis once each of the 10-20% quality gem's hit's level 18, then sell the L19-20 version of the skill gem you just pulled out (the one with a high level but no quality on it) for 2-4 chaos each. It's a nice little money earner and improves your character! Adding 20% quality to your sunder setup alone will give you 20% AOE, 10% attack damage and 10% Phys Damage. You get similar boosts across the board for applying 20% to your other skill gem groupings in your armour, too.

The next step for boosting your DPS is to enchant your boots, helm and gloves in the Uber-Lab. Boots and Gloves almost always give either a nice little DPS boosting enchant, or a damage mitigation enchant. It will only take a few attempts at enchanting either to get two nice damage boosting enchants. Helm enchantments on the other hand are pretty random though. The enchantments you want to chase on the helm are any of those that give boosts to Ancestral Warchief, Arctic Armour, Blood Rage, Hatred, Leap Slam, Punishment, Stone Golem or Sunder - with an enchant boost to Sunder being the ideal one to obtain. If you don't want to spend the time enchanting your helm, you can purchase one already enchanted for 1-5 exalt's from "poe.trade", but fair warning, they are not very common to find available for purchase & probably aren't worth the investment either given the reason for using this character/build.

Personally i like the three "Of Fury on Hit" glove enchantments. They send out a bunch of projectiles in a 180 degree semi-circle in front of your character at the same time. It kills white trash mobs all the way up to T9 maps pretty much by itself and has the added bonus of smashing all loot crates and barrels up to a few screens away. It's like having an extra map clearing attack skill for free and is great at keeping your charges and boosts triggered.

The boot enchants that are really good are "16% attack and cast speed if you have killed recently", "10% increased chance to dodge if you have taken a hit recently", "increased elemental penetration if you haven't killed recently", either of the Life / Leech if you have killed / haven't been hit recently enchants & the "8% increased chance to dodge spell damage if you've taken spell damage recently".

Next up you can work on your weapon. The first and easiest option is to buy a heap of WOE axes for 1-alch at about day 3 onwards into any league, then 4-link and colour you WOE axe the way you want too & then apply a vaal orb to all of them. The corruption wont change any of the affixes/suffixes, just possibly brick the axe, or apply a new stat roll. That new stat can add 11-28 base Chaos damage, a free curse or even culling strike to your warchief totem setup in the axe!!! Alternatively, you could also spend big and 6-link your Wings of Entropy Axe. You then swap out the Totem setup in the axe for the sunder setup in the helm. Honestly I think the 6-link option is overkill though.

*Please Note* - The 5-link version of the weapon is not worth using with the Sunder-setup in it. Initial figures in POB indicating it's boost were incorrect due to an old config box or two being left ticked when they shouldn't have been. I re-worked the entire setup and build again from scratch and double-checked everything to make sure it was correct. There is no reason to chose the 5-link setup at all as it's only around a 1K DPS boost at best overall including the raised Ancestral Warchief damage.

Putting Sunder, Conc Effect, Ruthless, Multistrike, Melee Phys Damage and Maim will increase the build's total un-buffed base DPS by a bit more than 25%. This process will also give your Ancestral Warchief a base DPS boost of about 10-15% too, due to the free extra 3 skill links it get's by being in the helm now. A 6-link WoE axe will set you back about 2-5 Exalt's though, so that's not the cheapest of options. In my opinion, given the context of this build and what it's designed for, unless a 6-link by some miracle drops, it's not worth spending the currency on.

Next up would be min-maxing your Jewels used in the skill tree. In terms of DPS, 5% increased attack speed or better (You can roll any or even multiple types of the following on jewels and we will benefit from it: flat increased attack speed, increased attack speed while dual wielding, increased attack speed with axes, increased attack speed with one handed melee weapons, increased attack speed with two handed melee weapons) will give you a greater DPS boost than any other stat roll or even combination of flat damage rolls in abyssal jewels. This is especially awesome for us, as the differing versions of "increased attack speed" is the most common and applicable skill roll you can find on jewels in the entire game. Every type of base standard and abyssal jewel can roll one or more types of increased attack speed. As an added extra bonus, increased attack speed is also one of our biggest QOL (quality of life) improvements, as it will leave us stuck in place attacking for lesser amounts of time (which leaves us less vulnerable to being attacked) and grants a huge boost in speed to our leap slam movement skill.

The final option for boosting DPS is to re-do your gear a bit with minor stat improvements. One option is to balance your resistances along with two rings that have base stat rolls of Strength, Life and +% Phys Damage to Attacks. Another option is to purchase an upgrade to your current amulet with one that has a maximum roll of "% Increased Damage While Leeching", as well as the same in regards to the WoE Axe and Atziri's Flask.


Gear and Gem Combinations:
Spoiler


Helm Slot: (R/B/R/R)

The Bringer of Rain Nightmare Bascinet (Can use at Level 67)
L5 – Ruthless (R)
L12 –Sunder (R)
L18 - Concentrated Effect (B)
L38 – Multistrike (R)



Weapon Slot: (R/B/R/R)
Wings of Entropy Sundering Axe (Can use at Level 60)
L10 - Leap Slam (R)
L24 – Punishment (R) or (L24) Warlord's Mark (R)
L31 – Fortify (R)
L38 - Curse on Hit (B)
**Note** - Punishment gives a nice DPS boost, but Warlord's Mark will give a 40% chance of gaining an Endurance charge any time you kill an enemy, including every time you pop the writhing jar flask and kill the worms that come out.


Gloves Slot: (R/R/R/R)
Anything with an armour base and +20 Dex, +50 Life & +60 to Dual or Tri-Resistances
L5 - Chance to Bleed (R)
L8 – Maim (R)
L18 - Melee Phys Damage(R)
L28 – Ancestral Warchief (R)

or

L5 - Ruthless (R)
L18 - Concentrated Effect (B)
L18 - Melee Phys Damage (R)
L28 - Vaal Ancestral Warchief (R)



Boots Slot: (R/G/G/G)
Atziri’s Step Slink Boots (Can use at Level 69)
L16 – Blood Rage (G)
L16 – Arctic Armour (G)
L24 – Hatred (G)
L34 – Summon Stone Golem (R)


Unset Ring Slot: (R)
L16 – Enduring Cry (R)



Amulet Slot:
Carnage Heart Onyx Amulet (Can use at Level 20)



Ring Slot 1 and 2:
Anything with +40 Life, +60 to Dual or Tri-Resistances, then if you’re lucky, any rolls with Phys Damage to Attacks and Dex/Int rolls are also great (not needed, but are helpful).



Belt Slot:
Anything with +60 Life, +60 to Dual or Tri-Resistances, then if you’re lucky, any rolls with Phys Damage and Dex/Int rolls are also great (not needed, but are helpful).




Body Armour Slot:
In order to use any chest with this build for gem levelling once you have the Bringer of Rain Helm, you’ll need to take off the helm first, then equip your chest, then put your Bringer of Rain Helm back on. Otherwise it will block you from equipping the chest.
Put in any un-linked 6-socket chest in here and use it to level up gems. Six-slot un-linked chests start dropping at level 50, which to be precise is the final zone of Act 6 “The Brine King’s Reef” and then any level onwards. I’ve found that strength chests seem to drop the least when it comes to 6-slot chest drops, so often farming for a Tabula Rasa chest via 9 x “Humility” divination card drops in Act 9’s “The Blood Aquaduct” (Will take about 90min’s of re-running the map over and over to do) is the solution to this issue. It really comes down to how fast you want to start making currency at the start of a season or race, that’s all. It’s not even a needed item after all.

Chest Slot Update - Thanks to clever thinking from the user "CyclopsRio" and testing from other community members here in the forum (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2032624/page/28#p15144512), I can advise that equipping the Dialla's Malefaction chest with 6 sockets (none need to be linked at all) is the new advised "best in slot" chest piece, as the chest grants any gem you put in it, in a blue coloured socket, a 25% boost to it's experience-gain. The Chest also completely ignores it's own socket colours, so you can put any coloured skill gem in the blue sockets to level them up. Thanks to CyclopsRio for the idea and for the other community members who helped test out the theory here in this thread !!!!!



Alternate Weapon Swap Slots 1 & 2: (Only used when Lab Farming)
Brightbeak War Hammer in slot 1 with Leap Slam (R), Faster Attacks (G) and Blood Magic (R) socketed. Brightbeak in slot 2 with no gems required.

*A note about the “Unset Ring” option.
This is basically just an optional add-on for a week or so into any season or league when you’ll finally come across a decent unset ring with good rolls on it. I’ve run this build as a Lab Runner during the regular Harbinger league and used it in the 10-day Turmoil race as a race character and never once needed to use the ring or the Enduring Cry skill. It’s just one of those things that when min-maxing, can be of benefit for you at the start of a boss fight when facing Guardian level bosses and you didn’t come into the fight with any charges up. Even then though, I never bothered using an unset ring or the EC skill and I killed 3 of the 4 guardians deathless.


Alternate attack skill gem setup for safer mapping of higher tier maps:
Spoiler

- Cleave (R)
- Increased Area of Effect (B) (Swap for Concentrated Effect (B) against bosses)
- Added Fire Damage (R)
- Multistrike (R)
- Ruthless (R) and Maim (R) are skills #5 and #6 to add to this if you get a 6-link Wings of Entropy Axe.

This is a safer alternative as you won't get obliterated by Phys/Elemental reflect, or the version applied to map mods, due to the way the Ruthless skill in the normal skill setup works. You'll just need to swap 1 of your 3 jewels in the skill tree for the unique Cleave Jewel called "Overwhelming Odds". The jewel is a quest reward in Act 5 and can be purchased on poe.trade as early as on day 1 of a new league for as little as 1 alch. It basically does the same DPS as sunder with a better area of effect, but with a bit less bleed damage. It also has the annoyance of needing to swap out the ConcEffect/AOE skill gem's during boss fights. But on the upside it clears higher tier maps a bit quicker.


Flask Setup:
Spoiler


- The Writhing Jar Hallowed Hybrid Flask (Or a Seething/Bubbling Life Flask).
- Rumi’s Concoction Granite Flask. (Or a standard Granite flask is fine, too)
- Atziri’s Promise Amethyst Flask. (Or a standard Amethyst flask is fine, too)
- Quicksilver Flask (Freeze/Frost Immunity, “+ Max Charges”, or whatever else you’d like).
- Stibnite Flask (Immune to Curses, Removes Curses).


An Honest Look at the Costs Involved:
Spoiler
Day 1-2 of any new league, or 7 Day+ race:
- The Bringer of Rain Nightmare Bascinet – 10c.
- Wings of Entropy Sundering Axe – 7c.
- Atziri’s Step Slink Boots – 5c.
- Carnage Heart Onyx Amulet – 10c.
- Gloves – Nothing, just equip the best that you’ve had dropped.
- Rings - Nothing, just equip the best that you’ve had dropped.
- Belt - Nothing, just equip the best that you’ve had dropped.
- Gems – All purchased for crafting material costs from vendors as you levelled.
- Jewels – Can self craft for next to nothing, or buy the Dex/Int base magic tier jewels for 1 alch each.
- Magic Flasks – Nothing, can be collected along the way, crafted into any secondary mod you - want on them yourself. Can also be purchased for crafting materials from random vendors while levelling.
- Unique Flasks - Atziri’s Promise Flask – 10c, Rumi’s Concoction Flask – 10c, Writhing Jar 1c. None are needed at all though and an Amethyst Flask, an instant life flask & a Granite Flask will also work fine in their places. The Atziri’s simply gives a small damge and life leech boost & the Rumi’s add’s a bit of additional block chance. Neither of those are required at all, their simply just there to min-max the build a bit where possible. The writhing jar is just there as when it pops, the two worms it drops can be killed for instant charges (great for keeping up charges against bosses deep into those fights where no add’s are available to kill).
- Brightbeak Warhammer for alternate weapon slot #1 – 6c.
- Prismatic Eclipse for alternate weapon slot #2 – 5c.

Day 5 or later into any season or race:
- The Bringer of Rain Nightmare Bascinet – 2c.
- Wings of Entropy Sundering Axe – 1 Alch.
- Atziri’s Step Slink Boots – 1c.
- Carnage Heart Onyx Amulet – 5c.
- Gloves – Nothing, just equip the best that you’ve had dropped.
- Rings - Nothing, just equip the best that you’ve had dropped.
- Belt - Nothing, just equip the best that you’ve had dropped.
- Gems – All purchased for crafting material costs from vendors as you levelled.
- Jewels – Can self craft for next to nothing, or buy the Dex/Int base magic tier jewels for 1 alch each.
- Magic Flasks – Nothing, can be collected along the way, crafted into any secondary mod you want on them yourself. Can also be purchased for crafting materials from random vendors while levelling.
- Unique Flasks - Atziri’s Promise Flask – 1 Alch, Rumi’s Concoction Flask – 2c.
- Brightbeak Warhammer for alternate weapon slot #1 – 1c.
- Prismatic Eclipse for alternate weapon slot #2 – 2 Alch.

Day 30 or later into any season or race:
8 chaos total, for absolutely everything.


An Honest Look at Performance if You Hit 70 and Don’t Have Any of the Uniques & Can’t Afford Them Straight Away:
Spoiler
Still not a problem, don’t worry.

You’ll be able to still do the Uber Lab just fine, you’ll just take 30-45 seconds to kill Izaro instead of 5-10 seconds. Even without the Brightbeak and Pris Eclipse weapons in your weapon swap-out, the Uber Lab at 70 will only take around 15min to clear, unless your going hunting for every box in every room (which is do-able, but will take you over 20min to do and lead you into some risky trap encounters). Two great pieces of advice though:
- Buy a Writhing Jar health flask ASAP. It will save your ass as an instant health flask and kick your buffs and charges into overdrive for 20+ seconds.
- DON'T try and fight the optional side-boss Argus in the Uber-Lab until you have at least 5K life. His hit's seem to avoid all damage mitigation completely and his huge 1-shot will bend you over to the tune of 4500-4900 of your complete effective health points.

You’ll be able to farm maps all the way up to Tier 5 and kill the bosses, without issue. You can fly through T1 and T2 maps in under 90 seconds each without risk of death, even with terrible level gear to the point where resistances are only half-way to being capped. Just skip the bosses if you find them annoying. Even though they have a chance to drop a +2 level map, they rarely drop anything unless the map has heavy map-mod investment put into it.



Bandit Selection:
Spoiler
Help Oak for the Phys Damage Reduction, Life Regen and added Phys Damage.


Pantheon Power Choices:
Spoiler
Please Note***
If getting the harder Pantheon Powers on high tier maps is too difficult, you can simply use an alternate character (so long as it's a character in the same current league) to insert the Divine Vessel and Map into the map table to start with, then complete the map and boss. Then when you portal back to town after killing the map boss, exit to the character selection menu and re-enter the game with this character. The remaining portals back in to the map will still be active and you'll now be able to remove the filled Divine Vessel from the map table with the captured soul and hand it in for the Pantheon Power with this character.

Take the Soul of the Brine King major and Soul of Garukhan minor. The minor choice is up to your own personal preference ultimately.



Build Guide Continues Below!!!!
Last edited by Adambjjoz on Feb 24, 2019, 6:51:21 PM
Last bumped on Mar 5, 2019, 10:49:42 AM
Build Guide Continued

Ascendancy Order:
Spoiler
1. Headsman (Do at Level 35-40)
2. Bane of Legends (Do at level 55-60 once the Act 6/7 lab trials are complete)
3. Endless Hunger (Do at Level 68-70, once the lab trials in Act 8/9/10 are complete)
4. Brutal Fervour

Basically it's up to you the order you do these in. 1 and 2 give huge boosts to your DPS, area of effect and attack speed. You effectively get culling strike for free too which makes killing Uber Itziri sooooo much easier when you do the Uber Lab for the first time and your a low level still. On the flip side 3 and 4 mean you don't need a bleed flask equipped while levelling, you have an effective 20% life regen for 20+ seconds after you finish attacking something and you still get a nice DPS boost too.


Passive Skill Tree:
Spoiler
Here's the Pastebin link (now with 20/40/60/80/100pt levelling skill trees and then the L91 and L95 skill tree options included too) to import the build at it's completion at level 91, into Path of Building: https://pastebin.com/d6a7hKyR

Here's an image link showing the order in which to take all the skill nodes on the skill tree, from starting, all the way up to when you reach L91: https://imgur.com/a/Pjgq3kg - it's ugly, but it will get the job done.

Please note that my skill tree and progression route is slightly different to that of Nathan's from the video build guide posted at the top of the page, but the only real differences are that I take the frenzy node early and a few extra health nodes with 4% life and a bit of armour/life-regen, as opposed to Nathan taking the health nodes with straight 5% increased life. I also path up to the Shaper node for 2 extra skill tree points at the cost of 2 health nodes, which amounts in the end to having no mana regen or mana expenditure problems in exchange for about 170 less life in your total health pool of around 5000+.

Past this point just add nodes with extra increased life / armour on them. It’s a bigger boost to your quality of life than minimal damage boosts. Especially given that you aren’t using this character to farm Shaper and Guardians.

Basically once you hit Level 85, from then on forwards, you just keep taking nodes that are either Life, Life & Armour or Life Regen - it's completely up to you.


Levelling advice and notes:
Spoiler
First and foremost, one thing you need to understand about POE is that there is a major unwritten and often not talked about area of the game, which is almost more helpful than any other function of the game or the gear you can obtain..... public multiplayer games.

"Pub Games" as their referred too, are filled with complete randoms (random players) and can be found in every Act's town. You can either use the town noticeboard to bring up the multplayer group-making game menu, or the "s" button on your keyboard. Playing as a group buffs every character defensively and increases the overall DPS, too. It also increases the magic find, as well as accelerates the rate at which you gain experience for your character. There is literally no downside to it what so over, so long as the members of the group stick together when advancing through maps / levels / boss rooms / whatever content you are doing.

So in saying that, take advantage of group play and use it to drastically accelerate your levelling process. It will enable you to hide any weaknesses of your player and make your strengths shine. A surprisingly massive chunk of the game's player base has little to no knowledge of just how much you gain from group play and how much faster you can do it. It makes no difference if you know anyone else in this game or not, just hop in and out of groups as frequently as you can to take advantage of faster levelling. Once you finish the 10 Acts and get to maps, the town in the Epilogue "Oriath" is where you can go to find group games for doing maps & many will actually be titled "Join for XP Leech, don't pickup loot" - these are games you can join and do nothing but run with the group as they sprint through low level maps rapidly, for fast experience gain and levelling up your characters. The trade-off is that you leave the maps and loot on the ground for the higher level player carrying the group. A simple example of how this group play accelerates your levelling speed, is that levelling solo to L100 will take the better part of 2 and bit months, where as groups doing the same in the same time spent levelling can achieve L100 in a week.


Levelling Guide from the start:
Spoiler
L1 - Head into town after the first initial boss kill during the intro and then take the cleave attack gem right away if you don’t already have it. Socket it in an axe immediately if possible. If you are lucky enough to score a 3-link axe early, add in the Ruthless and Chance To Bleed gem’s if it’s a 3-red socketed axe (It will be a 1-handed axe, because 2-handed axe’s don’t start dropping until Level 4 or higher zones).

Switch over to a 2-handed axe as soon as possible (you can’t equip one until you are at least Level 4) for the extra DPS. Now keep it and only upgrade to other 2-handed axe’s that have the correct colour and linked sockets on them that you need. You can do this easily by just picking up the white normal 2-handed axes that are linked and have the correct colour sockets you need. The only stat rolls you need are Phys Damage, attack speed or “+ Level of socketed gems”. You can simply just apply a Transmute Orb to make the axe magic, then apply an Augmentation orb to give it a second magic stat roll. If you don’t like the rolls, use orb’s of alteration on it till you get a stat roll or two that you do like. It’s just that easy. The reason to do it this way is because the likelihood of magic or rare 2-handed axe’s with 3 or more linked sockets dropping while levelling is actually extremely low, where as the white normal linked multi-socket versions of the 2-handed axe actually drops pretty frequently. Do the same for the rest of your items as well. You don’t even need movement speed boots either, because you’ll be leap-slamming everywhere except when in town. Of course if you do get lucky though, feel free to equip and use any better rare’s or unique’s that drop that do have the right coloured and linked sockets, with needed life or resist’s though.

L3 – Take the quicksilver flask as a reward and equip right away. Hell, equip 3 of them with 1 health flask and 1 mana flask if possible (you can do this by creating 2 mule characters and running the first couple of missions to get the flask reward, then just equipping the extra 2 flasks on your actual character).
L5 – Take the ruthless support gem and put it in your helm, linked to Cleave if possible.
L5 - Take the Chance to Bleed support gem, slot it in your gloves.
L6 – Collect two 1-handed axe’s, each with 3 sockets on them (they don’t need to be linked) and place them in your alternate weapons slot. You can use these to level up alternate gems to sell later on.
L8 - Take the Maim support gem
L10 – Take the Leap Slam gem and now use this for your movement ability. Slot it in your weapon.
L12 – Take the Sunder gem now as soon as possible, using it instead of Cleave. Slot it in your helm.
L16 – Take the Blood Rage gem and slot it in your boots.
L16 – Take the Arctic Armour gem and slot it in your boots.
L16 – Take the Enduring Cry gem and slot it in to one of your two 3-socketed 1-handed axe’s in the alternate weapons slot. You just level this gem as an optional extra skill to use later on from L45 onwards, when if a Unset Ring drops that has good stat rolls on it, you can equip this skill in it and use it to gain endurance charges quickly while levelling.
L18 – Take the concentrated effect support gem and slot it in your helm.
L18 - Take the Melee Physical Damage support gem, slot it in your gloves.
L20 – You can now equip the Unique Carnage Heart amulet from any point onwards.
L24 – Take the Hatred gem and slot it in your boots.
L24 – Take the Punishment support gem and slot it in your weapon.
L28 – Take the Ancestral Warchief gem, slot it in your gloves.
L28 – You can equip the Brightbeak unique weapon now in alternate weapon slot #2 from any point onwards.
L31 – Take the Fortify support gem, slot it in your weapon.
L34 – Take the Summon Stone Golem gem and slot it in your boots.
L38 – Take the Curse on Hit support gem, slot it in your weapon.
L38 – Take the Multistrike gem and slot it in your helm.

That’s it folks! By the time you reach a lowly Level 38, you hit the milestone of being capable of equipping the entire build’s skill and support gem’s in your levelling gear. The game starts dropping 4-link possible gear (ilvl 25+) at L25 as well, which to be precise is “The Slums” in Act 3 and then any area/zone further on past that. So by L38 you have everything you need in all the correct types of gear and linked fully, with relative ease. Which is one of the reasons this build absolutely smashes through the levelling stages so easily.

L53 – You can equip the Prismatic Eclipse unique weapon in the alternate weapon slot #1 from any point onwards.
L60 – You can equip the unique Wings weapon from any point onwards.
L67 – You can equip the unique Bringer of Rain helm now from any point onwards.
L68 – You can now equip the Rumi’s Concoction and Atziri’s flasks from any point onwards.
L69 – You can now equip the unique Atziri’s Step boots from any point onwards.

You can drop your mana flask when levelling at around Act 8 to 9 when your around L61, when you take the Shaper Node in the skill tree. The 40% increased mana regen rate you get from it should see you through from that point onwards easily without mana issues.

As for Twink unique levelling items….. they really aren’t even needed. But as far as what’s on offer cheap in the first couple of days of any season or race to help speed things up a little, the Reapers Pursuit (L33) and Blood Reaper (L45) are weapons each costing 1-alchemy orb. Unlinked Ashrend and Bramblejack chests are also usually about 1-ach each. As for gloves and boots – whatever floats your boat. It’s unlikely any will be better than just having a pair that contains all your linked skill gems. You can check and see on poe.trade if anything you like is available at the time for a minimal cost.

A note about which axe level bases to skip using while levelling – the ilvl 36 “Dagger Axe” and ilvl 59 “Talon Axe” both have a 50% increased Crit Chance already on their base. You may want to avoid these as we take the Resolute Technique skill node on the tree fairly early, which means our hit’s never crit and this stat roll will take one of the possible stat roll positions that we want to roll on the axe.


Lab Farming:
Spoiler

First off, please don't forget to use http://www.poelab.com/ to see what the daily lab layout is. The upstanding gentleman at POElab have their Lab Layouts up-to date usually within 15min of the daily change over. I strongly recommend you bookmark their site for daily use.

Now on to the real business of Uber Labbing!

Once in the Lab, weapon-swap to your Brightbeak and Prismatic Eclipse, then fly through to the Izaro fights collecting keys and shrines along the main path. Before entering the Izaro rooms, switch back to the normal weapon. Once inside the room and Izaro is about to start the fight, activate your totem, pop all the flasks and kill the two worms that pop out, then just attack Izaro immediately as he comes alive (and his minions) for a couple of seconds until their all dead. If you are trying to avoid killing the mirrors/charges/others during the Izaro fights to ensure bonus treasure keys, you just do the same process, but starting from the top right corner of the room where your sunder and bleed strikes won’t hit the others in the room too. If you don’t kill him in less than 3 seconds during any fight, just leap-slam onto Izaro every 5 seconds or so to keep your fortify up and you can face-tank his biggest hits easily this way. Even with no charges or flasks available, the time it takes to kill the final iteration of him in the Uber Lab is rarely more than 5-8 seconds. He hit’s hard, but really doesn’t have much of a life pool, so he tends to die very quickly.

As noted in an above build guide section - a great piece of advice is DON'T try and fight the optional side-boss Argus in the Uber-Lab until you have at least 5K life. His hit's seem to avoid all damage mitigation completely and his huge 1-shot will bend you over to the tune of 4500-4900 of your complete effective health points.

Here’s a video showing a complete 1st-time Uber Lab solo clear done easily in under 5min (multiple keys collected, too), while the build is at Level 70, fresh off finishing the Act’s and Story mode, without high level gems or optimized gear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IClg6j0Ujg



Short Term Races + Turmoil & Mayhem Racing:
Spoiler
The build with it’s balance of defence and offence is also race-ready for events like Turmoil and Mayhem. As an example of this, in the Harbinger League 10-Day softcore Turmoil Race, I played casually for the week with this build and finished up midway between L91 and L92, with the Rank #92 Slayer, Rank #218 Duelist, Rank #820 character overall – which is an excellent result given there were over 15,000 duelist’s alone in the leaderboard ranks. This is racing solo the entire way too, never in a group and never with a support character. Everything was done and obtained by myself except the wings of entropy axe, the bringer of rain helm and the carnage heart amulet. The boots, rings, gloves & flasks were all dropped items while mapping early on. The Tabula I got on day 2 from div card drops and the tabula is only even used to level-up an extra 6 gem’s on top of those being farmed in the alternate weapon slots – you can’t use the chest slot for anything else but levelling gem’s due to the helm’s “Can’t use chest armour” requirement.

Update - for the Harbinger League 10-day softcore Mayhem Race I finished up the rank #81 Slayer / #186 Duelist / #807 Overall. I fell just a bit short of reaching L92 in the end. I thought it was a good result given the circumstances and not playing the final 2 days of the race again. I realised right at the end of the week too that I hadn't taken any of the Pantheon powers, LOL. I had 3 deaths total for the week, which was about 50 less than I was expecting considering each zone right from L1 of the Act 1 when leveling contained up to 20 Invasion/Exile bosses and all that level of insanity.


Want to Inspect and Analyse the Full Build in Path of Building for Yourself???


Tip’s on how to make VERY fast currency easily, in the first 3 days of a new season or race:
Spoiler
- Around about 6 out of 7 lab’s a week will have a Treasure Box or Loot Box in the indoor section directly to the left or right of the opening area, of the first area you walk out into as you start the Cruel and Merciless Labrynth’s. They will either be sitting there waiting for the taking via walking around a lava path, or completing the simple floor-tile task, which takes less than 10 seconds. You can empty the loot box, then quit the lab, the just walk back in and do the same thing over and over for hours on end, accumulating filthy amounts of loot and currency at zero risk. The boxes will always drop 5+ of one or more types of the following loot: Currency, Rare Items, +% Quality Gems, Maps, Divination cards, +% Quality Magic Flasks. The one day of the week where there is no loot box, it’s because there’s a power shrine there instead – which means you can take the shrine and then go ham in the next few levels destroying everything and getting even more loot.

- Chain open low-level maps over and over again, as fast as possible. T1 Desert, T1 Jungle Valley, T2 Beach and T2 Oasis are all ridiculously easy to farm currency and drops in. Even if you have the worst possible gear and are nowhere near capped resistances yet.

- Have 4 quad-size stash tabs ready to just dump all rare loot in that you collect along the way mapping & then at the end of a 2-3 hour session, pick out the chaos recipe (2 rings, 1 necklace, 1 belt, 1 boots, 1 gloves, 1 chest, 1 helm, any 2 one-handed weapons or 1 two-handed weapon) to sell to a vendor that you place next to your loot box, in your hideout. It will take approx. 3min-5min at the end of a gaming session to do this and it will be an easy 20-30+ chaos every time.

I also strongly recommend watching the following two now up-to-date currency and profit generating guides presented by the amazing guide video creators, Engineering Eternity & CuteDog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0cIN9l0lRA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9VyqPgkBc0


Tip’s on how to make VERY fast currency easily, from day 5 onwards of a new season or race:
Spoiler
- Buy Starkonja’s, Abyssus, The Barron & Rat’s Nest helm’s, enchant any attack mod on them you can find from the end of the Uber Lab. Check the price of the helm with the mod on it at poe.trade and odd’s are you are going to be able to sell it for 10-100 times the price you bought the helm for in the first place. Do this for 4 days straight and you’ll be swimming in Exalt’s. All the disgusting amounts of loot, gems, jewels, unique’s and currency you collect along the way on each Uber Lab trip will just be pure gravy. Next season, you can just do the same additionally with Lich, Shaped and Elder items, too.

I also strongly recommend watching the following two now up-to-date currency and profit generating guides presented by the amazing guide video creators, Engineering Eternity & CuteDog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0cIN9l0lRA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9VyqPgkBc0



Build Guide Change Notes:
Spoiler

- Added URL's to my links in the "Want to Inspect and Analyse the Full Build in Path of Building for Yourself???" section, so anyone can import my regular season or race characters into POB to inspect for themselves.
- Added "Tip’s on how to make VERY fast currency easily" sections.
- Added link to Engineering Eternities currency and profit generating video guide, in the first "Tip’s on how to make VERY fast currency easily" section.
- Added the successful results of using this build in the 3.0 Harb league 10-day Mayhem Race, as well as links to the character in the build guide for everyone to check over for themselves in POB.
- Removed the "Future Proofed?" section, because it turned out luckily to be accurate and the 3.1 pre and official patch notes reflect this.
- Separated the build guide up into two separate posts because the 5000 word limit was reached.
- Added an alternate 4-link and 5/6-link skill gem setup for clearing higher tier maps a bit more safely, once levelled and mapping.
- Pantheon Power section re-written as the bosses and maps you obtain them from have been changed & shuffled around, but not advised to the community yet.
- Levelling section updated.
- Lab Farming section updated, links to POElab provided.
- Added a "Please Note" section.
- Added a "Q & A" section.
- Added screencap's of the basic skill tree at L86 to the "Skill Tree" section.
- Added a quick bit of strategy advice on how to kill fully buffed Izaro and Argus, on day's where their buff's are crazy.
- Re-wrote a couple of sections after realising a POB error was predicting end-game damage with a 5-link and 6link with sunder equipped in it as giving way more DPS than reality. Re-did the numbers and updated with correct info and recommendations. There were no issues with the base build or any other section though, after reviewing the data.
- Added specific enchant recommendations for both the gloves and boots.
- Added a boss killing technique to the "Gameplay Style" section.


3.5 Changes and Patch Notes
Spoiler
Patch notes released, have updated all relevant info throughout the build guide.


3.4 Changes and Patch Notes
Spoiler
Patch notes live and once again, there are no changes at all to this build, or anything related. Build guide in opening post updated to reflect this.


3.3 Changes and Patch Notes
Spoiler
Patch notes live and there are no changes at all to this build, or anything related. Build guide in opening post updated to reflect this.


3.2 Changes and Patch Notes
Spoiler
Ascendancy changes revealed. Simply requires us to take the same ascendancy choices, but in a different order. Have updated that order in the build guide. Overall we gain a 5% AOE boost, a 30% damage boost, 100% phys reflect mitigation and for those massive boosts all we lose is perma-stun mitigation - which we'll claw back a chunk from via the Pantheon system at this stage anyway.


3.1 Changes and Patch Notes
Spoiler
3.1 Patch Notes Have Been Released In Full !!

The changes that effect this build not mentioned up till now, or not confirmed (6/12/2017) are as follows:

"Balance Changes:"
- Arctic Armour's chilling effect now slows enemies by 30% when you are hit (up from 10%).
- Melee attacks supported by Multistrike now more accurately take attack range (including area of effect modifiers) into account when checking for targets for subsequent attacks.
- Life regeneration mods have been slightly renamed and reordered as two higher tiers have been added.

"Class Changes:"
- No changes to the Duelist class.
- The Slayer Ascendancy passive "Brutal Fervour" no longer grants +10% of maximum Life per second to maximum Life Leech rate. No other changes to the ascendancy.

"Unique Item Changes:"
- No buffs or nerfs to anything we use, or could use.
- As expected, "The Bringer of Rain" helmet can be dropped for an effective 7-link Shaper or Elder helmet now, so long as the setup boosts evasion and grants decent life. If you did do this, you should probably equip either the "Belly of the Beast" body armour or the "Restless Ward" and 4-6 link it with your Sunder setup now in the chest instead.

"Unique Flask Changes:"
- No buffs or nerfs to anything we use, or could use.

"Rare Item Changes:"
- Shaper and Elder gloves will be able to be used for an effective 7-link setup if wanted, instead of reccomended standard rare gloves in the build guide.
- Life regeneration mods on rare items have been buffed across the board, with the existing highest tier mod now granting up to 20 life per second. Existing items can be updated to these new values using Divine orbs.
- When used on a belt, Essence of Insanity now grants 10% increased Movement Speed during any Flask effect, up from 5%.

"Monster Balance Changes:"
- Monster mods "Reflects Physical Damage" and "Reflects Elemental Damage" have been reworked. They now appear as Nemesis mods. Attacking a monster with Physical or Elemental Reflect now triggers a mortar spell targeted at your location. This spell has a cooldown. - This is a buff for us, as we are constantly on the move and shouldn't get hit by these at all. GGG still haven't clarified though if this is applied to the mod in general, or just monsters with this mod on them. Because if so, then the map-mod's of physical reflect will still be one of the only map-mod's we can't run.
- Both versions of Reflect now only appear on Nemesis rare monsters. - This is good, that means that dramatically less numbers of monsters in a map or area will hit you back with reflect damage.

"Labyrinth Balance Changes:"
- Added a new Darkshrine effect that can only be found in the Eternal Labyrinth.
- Changed the requirements for some chests to appear. In general, chests should feel more rewarding and better suited for their level and difficulty.
- Increased the total amount of items found on average from Silver Chests.
- The helmet enchantment which grants additional projectiles for Barrage has been removed from the Merciless Labyrinth. The Eternal Labyrinth Barrage enchantment now grants one additional projectile (down from 2).
- Hahahaha, holy mother of god, they just made the game's most filthy and obscenely easy method of gaining raw currency, loot, div cards, quality gems, jewellery, quality flasks, unique drops and making profit EVEN BETTER!!!! This is a build specifically made to be able to reap the rewards of the Uber Lab safely as fast as possible, too.

"Prophecies:"
- Rare monsters able to fulfill the requirements for unique item Prophecies have been added to various locations throughout the world. They provide the opportunity to obtain an item with a high enough level to be six-linked.
- You are no longer required to have the subject of a fated unique Prophecy equipped, and can now complete such prophecies by merely holding the unique item in your inventory while killing the correct boss.
- These changes make obtaining 6-link items much easier than before, which could come in useful for us to use personally or even to sell to a larger number of players in the player base now who will be chasing after them. Especially being that Uber Lab is the best place in the game to farm for Silver Coins, to obtain those prophecies.

"Bug Fixes:"
- Fixed a bug where you could Leap Slam out of General Adus's arena without completing the encounter. Also prevented access to the Trarthan Powder until General Adus is dead, for good measure. You know what you did, Raiz. - Booooooooooo, this is clearly a case of GGG being racialisms to us smart Polski Rat's who just want to progress faster :)
- Fixed a bug where enemies hit by Sunder's linear component also unintentionally got hit by the area of effect that hit created. - We have very minimal AOE, take none of the AOE skill nodes on the skill tree & use no AOE skill gem's at all, so it's not really of any consequence to this build or it's primary purpose. The AOE radius of our attacks is the least of any skill there is already, anyway, too. It's not going to stop us from 1-shotting trash mob's even on T14 map's and we don't scale up any AOE damage for boss fights, so we aren't missing out on damage in that way, either.
- Fixed a bug with the bonus unique Labyrinth Shrine effect that would cause a huge lag spike when activated. - Yay !!!
- Fixed a bug where shrines could occasionally be placed in unreachable locations. - Yay !!!
Moved the Labyrinth Silver chests and other rewards away from walls, and locked their rotation. This should prevent items they spit out becoming inaccessible. - Yay!!!



So overall this is excellent news for us. Very few changes that impact this build at all, those that do are quite minimal for the purposes we use this character for. Quite a number of effective fixes and changes should make this build even more effective at doing what it does already, too. New Elder and Shaper items should benefit us for at least 1 piece of armour if not more (depending on it's 7-link ability) and we can now take the more susbstantial Life Regen stat rolls on the rings, gloves and belt if wanted.

Also FYI, as per multiple dev notes, there is a good number of undisclosed buff's they weren't putting in today's patch notes, so we could all find them out when the league starts. I imagine some of them will come to light with data-mining over the next few days, but at least we know there's no more up-coming nef's planned, as of today.


3.0 Changes and Patch Notes
Spoiler
N/A
Last edited by Adambjjoz on Dec 7, 2018, 5:47:43 AM
Reserved.
How do you increase HP with this build? Only managing to reach like 4.5k at 84, which I don't feel is going to be tanky enough for buffed izaro.
"
AbdulJafreeze wrote:
How do you increase HP with this build? Only managing to reach like 4.5k at 84, which I don't feel is going to be tanky enough for buffed izaro.


You have a very bad gear.

I have now 4.2k hp on lvl 75 on Mayhem, and i have a lot to improve in my gear.
"
AbdulJafreeze wrote:
How do you increase HP with this build? Only managing to reach like 4.5k at 84, which I don't feel is going to be tanky enough for buffed izaro.


I added another section to the build guide in the first post of this thread titled "How to realistically take your life to the 6k-7k range and increase your damage significantly" - have a read of it. I've provided a base guide for boosting health and DPS significantly.

Buffed Izaro is fine even at 3k health with this build, you just need to make sure that your movement is done in boss fights only via leap-slamming around the room, which keeps your fortify and curse-application up 100% of the time. I completed the Uber Lab at L72 on my current Mayhem Race character using this build yesterday, with only 3.3k HP. The only thing I did differently was that I avoided Argus, as a fully buffed Argus will hit you for 5k HP in 1-shot and no damage/phys/spell mitigation will be able to avoid his big 1-hit's.

Having said that though, my HP is 5.94k (completely unbuffed, nothing up, nothing activated, no flasks up or anything) on my level 90 build of this character in softcore standard harbinger league, currently. I have 70 life on my gloves, 60 life on each ring and 98 life on the belt - I could get an additional 20+ life on each of those if I wanted to spend about 80 chaos in upgrades. I also have 6% increased life on my three jewels, too (I could upgrade and get 7% on each jewel along with the current or better other stat rolls on the jewels, for about 20 chaos total cost).

I crafted all three of my jewels to have +Dex/+Int & 6% increased maximum life, then just applied a Regal Orb to give the jewels a random third stat roll. Took about 4 minutes of crafting all up. You can purchase a Jewel though with the +max life and Dex/Int combo at pretty much any point of a league/race for about 1-5 chaos, then just apply a Regal Orb to give it an extra stat roll (Attack Speed will give you the biggest DPS boost, but Phys/Attack damage rolls to axes or single/dual wield are all good DPS boosts as well). Total cost of the crafting for me was 3 Transmute orb's, 50 Transmut'e & Alt's, then 3 Regal Orb's - total cost of that is about 5 chaos all up.

Also don't forget that every skill tree node you take past L85 is just adding either "5% increased maximum life" skill nodes, or taking the 4% versions that include extra added armour or life leech/regen instead. This also helps a lot in bringing up your life into the 6K-7k health pool region, if desired.
Last edited by Adambjjoz on Dec 1, 2017, 4:41:38 AM
Awesome guide, and I can't wait to try this build in the upcoming league.

One question...why not get Vitality Void? You're right next to it and more life leech can't be bad right? Does it just become unnecessary?
Going to give this a try when the new league starts
Why are you putting 3.1 in the title lmao
I want to play a few builds next league, and Ive done 2 duelist glad builds. Going to try this build to start next league, especially since I have to start a week late ( at least the market will have developed a little bit during that time.)

I want to do a wander character as well, and also something that involves some new 3.1 combo skills.

Looking forward to 3.1.

Harb was my first time ever playing POE (565hrs later) and my first build and I winged it, and I regret not following a guide, but i learned everything the hard way, and that has some value, lol.

Last edited by WreckedSoul on Dec 2, 2017, 3:42:04 PM

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