[3.2] CI ST/BF HoWA, still ass kicking! Shaper/Guardian/Uber/Elder etc

Thanks for all your time spent for us...i'm going to try that !

@Bristoling
What are your thoughts on Incandescent Heart? I figured going that by going Occultist, you can make up for the lost flat ES, making Incandescent more viable. It effectively puts you at 81% fire/cold/light resist with CI, as well as adding some extra chaos damage, 1% leech and a bit of armour. It's also even better vs things with penetration like Shaper, as it acts more like 13% max cold res vs 25% penetration (see https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Incandescent_Heart).

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Impaired wrote:

@Bristoling
What are your thoughts on Incandescent Heart? I figured going that by going Occultist, you can make up for the lost flat ES, making Incandescent more viable. It effectively puts you at 81% fire/cold/light resist with CI, as well as adding some extra chaos damage, 1% leech and a bit of armour. It's also even better vs things with penetration like Shaper, as it acts more like 13% max cold res vs 25% penetration (see https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Incandescent_Heart).

Since the build relies on leech and Vaal Pact, we are already in proximity of leech nodes, and even without them we would still need some points to get mana leech, so I would rather ignore the leech stat for this build.

Overall it's a small damage bonus and does help vs elemental damage, but in my opinion the scariest and most unpredictable sources of one shot KOs come from physical damage, rather then elemental. It's quite easy to dodge Shaper's Balls or Phoenix's Big Boom since they are well telegraphed, but unlucky crit streak of simple autoattacks from Minotaur or Chimera comes out of nowhere and could one shot you with low ES pool.
So, personally, I would prefer to have for example 8k ES with cheap Regalia then 7k with Incandescent Heart, not to mention that rare 6L is a lot cheaper then 6L unique. But, if you like that armour and are convinced that it helps you more then a rare with higher ES, feel free to use it :)

@Bristoling Ok so I made some changes to my Occultist PoB, and put the config to your taste (though I probably wont use ancestral protector just out of laziness, well see). One thing I want to ask though is why you seem to tick the Intimidated checkbox, even though you don't have any sources of intimidation that I'm aware of. Anyways here's the updated version:

https://pastebin.com/h13Eh0f6

960k BF dps with a shield, 12.1k ES. In general I sacrificed a small bit of damage to gain 1.5k ES, a bit of armour and evasion, 10% block chance, curse immunity without needing a flask and more curse effectiveness which adds about 2% to enfeebles less dmg modifier vs shaper. Should also mention that I'm assuming Atziri's Reflection prophecy was bugged and will be more attainable this coming league.

I'm probably putting way to much attention to detail into this build, but I'm just so keen for Incursion and plan to gear this build to the teeth.

Edit: Ah I realise you probably ticked the intimidated box to simulate Vinktar's.

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However your tree does have much easier access to Vaal Pact and attack leech nodes, which is probably better for leveling. You do lose out a bit on projectile speed, so it might not be as great for clear but will probably end up with better dps on Slower Projectiles with Point Blank, since projectiles will start to turn around closer to you, meaning a bit more benefit from Point Blank. I practically almost always path through Ranger area when theorycrafting builds pathing to Vaal Pact so I didn't think about this possibility. I will add it to the guide. I'm not 100% sure about it since there is next to no life nodes nearby as a starter, so I'd have to level with it myself to get the general feel of it :)

While leveling I took the life/ES circle with 'Melding' and completed the circle with 'Written in Blood'. I was running hybrid life+ES for quite some time (up to maps, if I recall correctly). This was due to tabula that I was wearing, before buying 6L regalia. The transition could have been done much earlier with different chest, but I was OK with dying from time to time. A very important thing was to grab Vaal Pact early on, and then head up to 'Ghost Reaver' while taking life/ES nodes on the way. With tabula dps was not an issue. Having these two nodes I could path to 'Elemental Overload', and then take the ES nodes near witch starting point. Afterwards, I completed the templar part of the tree (more defensive), and, then, added more dps with shadow part of the tree. The last two points went to 'Point Blank' as the damage penalty from the distance was no longer an issue for the mobs.

For the clearspeed and general clear, I strongly recommend Lightning Strike + Pierce instead of Spectral Throw + GMP. With Lightning Strike, I clear T16 maps with just one-three shots per screen (lightning damage is not very predictable), and it runs like a breeze. Usually, I also replace Lightning Penetration with Increased Rarity, and Astramentis with Bisco's. It works great with T16 mobs. For guardians and shaper, ST is way better though (finally, I bought a decent helmet).

EDIT: Small upgrade - replace brute force jewel with pure talent (bought mine for 15c), and drop sniper nodes and beef while pathing to templar start instead. Everything better: more dps, more ES, and +7% move speed. The projectiles get 10% slower, but I will still use LS for clear. Here is the updated tree also including the ST helmet: https://pastebin.com/xF934GJa

What do you think about new helm "Mask of the Stitched demon" and making this build life based?

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Svoy3 wrote:

What do you think about new helm "Mask of the Stitched demon" and making this build life based?

Here's something I came up with really quickly: https://pastebin.com/gX8DbjZq

It's a lot less dps while only getting 7.5k life, your leech is really low but you get 1k life regen per second.
Off to work now but you can play around with it if you want, completely different build so you might need to change more things around.
Personally, I don't think it's worth it.

Hi, Can you explain how you get 2 Ancestral Protector up at the same time?

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FreshOfTheCat wrote:

Hi, Can you explain how you get 2 Ancestral Protector up at the same time?

That's unfortunately no longer possible since the Ascendancy change. But other then that the build is still the same.

I'm surprised seeing Damage on Full Life as a support gem for ST in your Pastebin (3.2), was under the impression that that didn't work with CI somehow... Does it really work like 1/1 life? Or does it base it on ES levels when u go CI?