[3.5] Shattering Steel pure physical/Blood Magic Deadeye | Uber Elder/Uber Atziri/Shaper.

Let me start by saying that this build is quite versitile. It is possible to go non blood magic, champion instead of deadeye, tree is also quite modifyable.

When GGG announced sword/axe skills I thought they were gonna be weak since I saw that they both lack melee tag, so I decided to skip them and start with CwC Winter Orb/Ice spear. It was only on my second char that I decided to try it while leveling and noticed that Shattering Steel can shotgun. This made me try and make a build with it. After testing different support gems on standard I thought Pierce works best with it, so went with Deadeye to have pierce from ascendancy. I wanted to take advantage of new Impale mechanic so tried to risk and go full phys although phys->ele and phys+added as ele are superior for a long time already. It turned out pretty good. Uber Elder doable on 3ex budget (assuming you will 6link chest from fuse/jew drops)

Pros and Cons

Pros:
- cheap to start
- high clear speed, can't clear 1+ screens but super fast movement
- can shotgun single target which means following in my setup that fires 10 projectiles:
- 30 life gain on hit base from ascendancy = 300 life gain per skill use, with around 5 attacks per second feels like old vaal pact,
- Impale massacre - each hit has 62 (72 if banner is planted with 50 stages) percent chance to impale and since projectiles fire in sequence it means that if 1st projectile applies impale effect, the next 5 will proc the damage in addition to having chance applying another impale effect. That means in average 7/10 impale effects from one swing of a weapon, which are boosted from base 10% of damage to 15+ with banner and quality on Shattering Steel
- fast gain of banner stack on single target. Dread Banner gains stacks for each enemy impaled with a cap of 5 per second, Shattering Steel reaches this cap easily on single target which means you can have fully stacked banned after 10 seconds on fight like Uber Elder.

Cons:

- to achieve max single target you are required to stand on a targets face to ensure that all projetiles are hitting him
- fortification encounter door are pain in the ass, if you are to close you deal no damaga (dont know why) but if you move to far away only portion of projetiles hit and doors are tough :)
- setup with Beltimbers requires you to use movement skill every 4 seconds, doesn't bother me at all, but some people might not like it
- can't run phys reflect maps


Path of building pastebin

https://pastebin.com/9pFqq3tZ

My current gear and tree as of level 95, depending of what you want to see you might want to check the following in config tab:
- frenzy charges
- tailwind
- enemy is bleeding
- enemy is maimed
- projectile travel distance (point blank/far shot)
- banner is planted and its stages
- enemy is boss

also you might want to check flasks in items tab


My current gear




There aren't really realy any core items, although items in my current setup complement each other pretty nicely.

Weapons: 2x Beltimber Blade - after using a movement skill u gain 4 additional projectiles, this is super strong and even though pretty
strong phys foils are probably better, nearly perfect Beltimbers cost me 50c total. Since you move with a movement skill due to high attack speed you will have those additional projectiles almost 100% time.

Gloves: Haemophilia - picked to smooth out map clearing, since you have 100% combined chance to bleed explosions improve aoe clear remove corpses so detonate dead is less scary and helps in delve with those pesky insects that explode on death unless you destroy their corpse, extra damage against bleeding targets is nice. Mine are corrupted with additional crit chance to attacks which cost me 1.5ex but you can run normal uncorrupted version which is dirt cheap.

Helmet: Rare evasion helmet crafted with pristine/jagged fossil combo. Nearby enemies take increase phys damage is pretty strong but its not hard to hit, mine took about 5 attempts. Before it I ran with Starkonja. Additional Shattering Steel projectile enchant is required, fortunately Starkonjas are quite cheap (20-30c) and are good starters.

Amulet: Physical Impresence, required if you want to run blood magic, makes Vulnerability-Blasphemy combo free. Provides some damage and life.

Chest: Since Beltimbers have poor (5%) base crit chance you want to get yourself Elder chest with additional base crit chance to attacks, rest of stats should be defensive (life/res) unless you can afford chest with crit and gems are supported by level 1 Maim. Mine cost 30c and took 850 fus to 6link.

Boots: Life/res item

Belt: I chose Stygian vise with life and ress because normal jewels are better when it comes to dmg/cost than abyss jewels, but I wanted to have at least 1 abyss jewel with blind on hit to improve defenses against monster that dont die in 1 hit.

Rings: Life/ress/int and some attack mods if possible (flat phys, accuracy etc)

Flasks


Instant life flask for panic moments when crazy life gain on hit and blood rage life leech isn't working, suffix is personal prefference
Dying Sun - expensive (to some people) but boosts clear and single target a lot, you can get it as a last item.
Diamond Flask - required, increases number of crits
Other flask slot are personal preference. I roll with basalt and silver.


Jewels

IF you can afford abyss jewels - life, flat phys and flat phys with swords.
Normal jewels: you can mix many decent mods - % max life, physical damage (global, with swords, while dual wielding, with one handed melee weapons), attack speed (global, with swords etc), crit multplier(same as before), additionaly you can help yourself with some lacking stats like resses, int etc.



Gameplay

Killing non threatening mobs: you move around with your movement skill killing every thing that moves.

Killing tougher enemies:
You drop Ancestral Protector totem, Dread Banner if you have some stacks on it, pop Vaal Double Stirke, use movement skill to get in face of the enemy pop flasks and go ham, if it's not dead in 4 seconds remember to use movement skill to proc additional projectiles and fortify.


Bandits

Killing all is probably the best, but I'm stuck with Alira because I don't want to change a lot of gear to cap my resses. You also go Oak if you really want.


Ascendancy


First you want to take Tailwind, you always take Tailwind on a Deadeye, it's that good.

Then you have a choice on Cruel, either you go for bleed nodes or pierce nodes. If you go for pierce you can swap out the pierce gem for something different, and if you go for bleed you should have haemophilia gloves to take advantage of bleedsplosion. I personally went with bleed nodes.

Merc lab you take what you didn't in previous choice.

Uber is when you take Fast and Deadly, at this level your accuracy should be dropping to ~90% so doubling it will probably bring it to 95%


Gem setup

Main skill (chest):
Shattering Steel -> Chance to Bleed -> Brutality -> Vicious Projectiles -> Maim -> Increased Critical Damage

If you have chest with supported by level 1 maim you add Slower Projectiles support.
If you don't have Pierce nodes from ascendancy you run with Pierce support instead of Vicious Projectiles

Cast When Damage Taken setup (gloves/helmet/boots):
Cast When Damage Taken(lvl1) -> Immortal Call(lvl3) -> Blood Rage(max lvl)-> Increased Duration(max lvl)

Vaal Double Strike steup (gloves/helmet/boots):
Vaal Double Strike -> Bloodlust -> Brutality -> Melee Physical Damage

Curse:
Vulnerability -> Blasphemy

Banner:
Dread Banner

Movement skill:
Leap Slam -> Faster Attacks -> Fortify

Totem setup:
Ancestral Protector -> Multiple Totems -> Culling Strike

You can also add Ice Golem, I don't run it because I hate golems on non summoner builds.





Post Note:
This build is far from perfect and not the best but the beauty of this game is that it can always be improved, you are not locked to the choices I made, you can tweak it to your preference, this is just a base of a build you can work on if you wish, it is Path of Exile's quality that you are free to do anything you want.
If you have any suggestions or ideas let me know.
Last edited by Noskill on Jan 5, 2019, 11:19:37 AM
Last bumped on Apr 14, 2019, 3:32:20 PM
With pierce nodes, you'll lose the shotgunning cause you lose fork.
You do not lose the shotgun with pierce nodes. I saw the video and the fork interaction is rather not intended as it looks like it double shotguns.
Videos coming up?
Cool.

I've gone a different route to you, heading into duelist rather than Marauder and no blood magic.
But basically same, pure phys shattering steel. It's a lot better than people are making out. Haven't had a huge amount of playtime this league, and struggling getting maps going so haven't done much endgame, few t15s, and a yellow elder but seems fine. Clear isn't bad if you are happy hopping around, and single target is decent, especially if you pop Vaal double strike.

PoB Here https://pastebin.com/pSCagYnz

I've upped the levels on my gems from what they currently are (Just flipped them to 20q) but apart from that it's accurate/honest.

You do have a chunk more life than me, which is what I'm struggling with, 5.2k isn't a lot for a shotgun range melee character, though the dodge and endurance charges help.

I really like the daresso's defiance I am using, but I might try and roll an elder chest, dropping inc crit strikes would be a good dps boost.

I've got some other bits to sort out gear wise too - rings aren't great, and I could get a stygian belt, plus a dying sun of course.
Hopefully get some more playtime this weekend, and will give guardians/elder a try.
Adding some videos atm.
Interesting.. A reply to follow this build
Thonk, HOP and the Nomad seems like options. Also if double shotgun is a thing, should I drop a the pierce and slot in fork?
IF you are playing non blood magic version then you should definitely play with hop. Nomad belt is super strong offensively, if you are able to fit it in with some nice corruption it should boost damage even more.

You could drop pierce for fork atm, but im not sure it is intended so will probably be changed/fixed in some time.
Last edited by Noskill on Jan 3, 2019, 8:15:41 PM
This is what I'm going to try
Didn't change the items, but adapt the tree to not play with blood magic.
Cut the marauder, add scion life and shadow damage. Plan to squeeze doublestrike and A.warchief into one 4 link, and play with HOP. Also want to hold one grelwood to save points on the tree.

https://pastebin.com/UJNvDSzj

Phys only is so nice since your way of scaling damage is pretty one dimensional.
Last edited by Ammoconda on Jan 4, 2019, 3:25:54 PM

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