[3.8] Baron Thor - Just facetank everything - 20k total life+ES, 23k total life/s + ES/s

I tend to play PoE on and off, leaving and returning in random intervals.
This time, seeing that the 50% nerf to offering spells was reduced to 75%,
I thought about undusting my old witch and give it another try. :-)

I had some Baron gear lying around anyways so I went on this way and first made it into a Bone Offering (BO) based build with 75/60 block/spellblock, 600 life on block and some 8.5k life without even using a real body armour (+1 tabula because I am poor), with the addition of about 5k LGoH just because I wanted it to be really tanky. ^^
(I'll add that 2nd build later)

Then I realised the possible synergy and added a shapers touch (obvious move, I know), and went for more ES, added SO in a CwC cyclone setup (also nothing new really) and as additional Cwdt setup but it still lacked some sustain for my taste, the dps was already sufficient though.
Because I always wanted to add Mjolner to a build where it makes sense, and because it fits this build so incredibly well, I just did it with Ball Lightning (BL) socketed in Mjolner and it worked really well with a watchers eye with ES on hit.
Surprisingly, the dps from Mjolner/BL alone was good enough to warrant adding energy leech on top, getting further sustain, also replacing my "old" watchers eye with one that has ES on hit and life on hit did a great thing.
I went on to further optimise it and that's how I got there. :-)

Then I realised, even though you can only have one Offering active, you can in fact benefit from SO and BO together, so I developed a hybrid build that is still mainly block/BO based but also gains some ES refill from SO.
(I'll also add this 3rd build later)

Just Shield Dash / Leap Slam from one mob group into the next,
spin cyclone if there is something that does not die instantly.
Your ES will stay topped even if surround by countless mean mobs on t15/16 maps, it will go so far as that you will be startled when you're actually taking life damage again. ^^
But that is usually just harmless amounts of chaos damage.

Feel the joy of being able to stand face to face with any boss in the game and actually not try to dodge their hits but anticipate them,
eager to find out how much they actually hit for. :D

Your 2m dps Zombies are not only aggressive, but quickly pulled through the maps by you leading the way, resulting in surprisingly fast clear speed and boss kill speed on top of being basically fully immortal.

(I may add pictures later)
- 1375 str / 460 int
- [updated] 143k dps per Zombie according to PoB (without Kingmaker buffs), 14 Zombies
=> 2m Zombie dps
- 120k+ dps alone from Mjolner/BL
- 7238 life
- 12597 ES
- sustain of up to about 23k total es+life/s (!)
Considering I am pretty poor, these numbers can easily be a good bit higher if you have the currency to do so

Baron, obviously, makes the core of this build, provides leech and a serious dps boost, cheap if not perfectly rolled, still not that expensive with a perfect roll,
enchants can help but won't be that game changing


Mjolner, again obviously, boosts this builds tankiness through the roof in combo with watchers eye through triggering Ball Lightning on hit.
Again, not an expensive item really, rolls do not matter, only useful corruption on it is increased AoE as it increases both cyclones and BLs AoE and therefore gives us even more hits/s


Shapers Touch, this is the backbone that makes stacking up all that strength really good.
Again pretty cheap and again rolls are not really important,
you may be looking for an increased attack speed corruption or some on hit curse if that's your thing.


A watchers eye like this is rather "cheap"... a few ex maybe, but it's all you need.
I use one with 29 ES on hit and 27 life on hit, which is not that cheap but still not unreachable, a nice thing to work towards maybe. ;)
With the many hits from Mjolners triggered BLs, this gives you roughly 2k+ ES/hit (and the same life/hit if you have one with both)


There are other viable options, but a pretty good rolled Astramentis is well possibly not only the BiS for anyone but super rich players, but also a great value for your money, with Shapers Touch this really shines.


Makes it a lot easier to reach the 1k strength when getting into this,
a perfect 18% roll is again not even expensive.


Any belt with high strength will do, best would be 12% all attributes with some nice added stats but that'd be pretty expensive, and not really necessary.
A good common rare will go a long way here.


A "perfect" chest has as much ES as possible with only 2 prefixes so you can add 9-10% max life as ES, which works the same as SO (see my SO explanation) and this alone adds over 1.5k net ES for me with only a 9% max life as ES roll.
But in general, any semi-high ES chest will do, Geofri's is a pretty good alternative as well.


The shield, along with the armor, is our main ES source besides SO, so again high ES is priority, int is nice, anything else is not that important.


Unset rings are a necessity here, strength, life and resists, pretty simple,
added ES is ofc nice, too, crafting can add quite a bit as well.


I guess my flasks are pretty boring, well, so be it.
Basalt (anti-shock),
Granite (more armor),
Amethyst (anti-poison),
Life (anti-bleed),
Quicksilver (anti-freeze)
should cover all the situations you could run into.

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Further items you should have, or that may be of great help, also when leveling or trying to first reach that 1k strength:

I highly not recommend using Brawn, but instead Efficient Training.

As well as a jewel with taunt for your minions (= 10% damage reduce for you)

For SO you need to know that it does not exactly do what it reads, it does not simply add "maximum life as extra maximum ES", but in fact it takes the 15%
(20% with 5 corpses, but only 75% effect on you => 15%)
off your base life and then adds % incr. life and % incr. ES additively.
(SO_ES = (Base_Life * 15% * (all % incr. life + all % incr. ES))

As an example, my pure life block build with 8.5k life got about 1.4k ES from SO due to not having much of % incr. ES,
while my current build gets 2780 ES from only 7238 life.

This means, to optimize ES from SO and ES gain/s, you need to focus on a good balance between base life and total % increases to life and ES.

Note: Necromancer Ascendancy has 30% increased recovery rate which is a (mostly invisible) buff to all "over time" effects like regeneration and leech, but not to SO and on hit effects or other instant gains.

- Life leech from Baron/zombies with 1k+ str, pretty much always up due to aggressive zombies with good dps, base 20% of life per second, so that's in my case
=> 1447 life/s plus 30%
=> 1881 life/s

- 530 life regen plus 30% (I know it's not much but it's ok^^)
=> 689 life/s

SO generates 2780 ES for me, casted every 0.7s through cyclone/CwC this means
=> 3971 ES/s

SO can further go off 4 times/s independently from Cwdt which means
=> 11120 ES/s (only under very constant high incoming dmg)

Assuming 10 hits per Ball Lightning (+1 initial hit) and about 6.2 hits/s with cyclone this makes 68 hits/s against a single enemy, more if the enemy is bigger and your placement good (more BL hits), which gets you
(with my 29 ES/hit and 27 life/hit watchers eye)
=> 1972 ES/s (or 2040 with a 30 ES/hit)
=> 1836 life/s
...this gets A LOT more as soon as there is more than just 1 mob nearby(!)

1637 ES/s from ES leech, 1259 as 10% base plus 30%

All this adds up to:

- 4406 life/s from regen + leech + on hit

- 7580 ES/s from SO-CwC + leech + on hit

- up to 11120 more ES/s from SO-Cwdt

=> total up to 23106 life and ES per second

That's more than enough to just facetank everything, even situations that do not allow you to always hit something and/or situations where you get heavy degen-damage which does not count as hit and therefore does not trigger Cwdt.

Adding almost 20k total life + ES to the equation allows you to take even the heaviest of hits like t14 Malachai or t16 Minotaur, even with bad map-mods, shapers beam and bullet hell, all that.

Also, more nearby mobs means even more life/ES on hit.

Because this build does not just hide behind thick ES and SO-CwC but instead has good life and life/s, you also do not need to be afraid of occasional chaos damage like Kora (Syndicate) or Kurgal (Delve).
So long as you hit something, you won't even notice.^^

Helmet (Baron): Animate Guardian + Raise Spectre + Blood Magic + Minion Life or Meat Shield Support

Mjolner: Ball Lightning + Slower Projectiles + Energy Leech Support
Exchange Ball Lightning for a lvl 1 gem and leech with Increased AoE for elemental reflect maps

Chest: Raise Zombies + Minion Damage + Feeding Frenzy + Empower + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage or Withering Touch Support
(=> this can be essentially 3R 3B or 2R 4B)
Exchange Minion Damage and Melee Physical Damage (or Multistrike in case of 2R 4B) for Minion Life and Life Leech for physical reflect maps

Gloves or Boots: low-Cwdt + Enfeeble + Desecrate + SO (all low lvl)
Gloves or Boots: Cyclone + CwC + Desecrate + SO

Shield: Faster Attacks + Movement Skill (Shield Charge, Leap Slam,...) + 1 Aura

Auras: 3 total, 2 in rings (unset rings), 1 in shield
Discipline and Vitality are mandatory due to watchers eye life/ES on hit
Flesh & Stone is my 3rd choice, but not mandatory

- 10% phys dmg reduce from Necromancer Ascendancy
- 10% less dmg due to minion taunt (even less with hellion spectre)
- Flesh & Stone = 11% less dmg from "not nearby" enemies, nearby enemies are blinded
- 11% less dmg from rare/unique enemies through enfeeble (low lvl cwdt)
also reduced accuracy, less crit chance and multiplier through enfeeble
- 20% less dmg through hits from fortify
- basalt + granite flasks on demand for some armor and more phys dmg reduce

I highly recommend the following setup:

- 2 Carnage Chieftains for frenzy charges (Act 7 The Old Fields)
- 1 Host Chieftain for power charges (Act 7 The Ashen Fields)
- 1 Ruins Hellions for dmg buff and super taunt (Act 8 The Quay)
Look at this link for how good that hellion really is!

See next spoiler for some vital info about these!

Spectres:
The recommended spectres for this build have a catch, you need to link them with blood magic, or they will use their own tiny mana pool for casting stuff, and therefor do it very rarely, with blood magic, they don't have that problem and are really, really good at what they do.

Charges from Spectres and Zombies:
Why take Spectres for frenzy and power charges over other options?
Well, charges behave much differently on mobs and minions than on the player!
In total, they get (taken from wiki):
15% increased Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge
15% increased Cast Speed per Frenzy Charge
4% more Damage per Frenzy Charge
5% increased Movement Speed per Frenzy Charge
Now that's a whole different story, isn't it?

Same goes for power charges, minons (and mobs) get:
200% increased Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge
Whereas Zombie base crit is 5% so 3 power charges gets them instantly to 35% crit!
Note: Kingmaker adds +50% crit multiplier on top of that! ...synergy all around.^^
Note: Using consecrated ground, for instance through flasks or purifying flame on a cwdt setup, for instance in place of enfeeble, adds 100% crit chance against mobs that stand on it (besides the 6% life regen for you and your minions).

I guess I do not need to explain Shapers Touch,
but I'll give it a mention here, it is what really boosts the ES on this build, giving strength basically the same ES bonus as intelligence, among other things, in my case thats 1375 str (actually only counts in steps of 10 str or nothing) and 460 int that is 1830 total and translates to 366% increased ES... just from stats!

phys-reflect-maps:
As Zombies will quickly kill themselves otherwise, I recommend fitting in minion life and life leech for them, in place of minion damage and melee phys dmg, yes this reduces dps a good bit, but it's still good and only necessary if you want to do this one specific map mod.
Note: If you do not spin a lot AND you do not have a Kingmaker-Animate-Guardian, you will likely need to also replace multistrik with fortify to really make sure they do not die.

ele-reflect-maps:
With 120k+ dps through Mjolner/BL, ele-reflect-maps tickle a bit.^^
With added minus-max-resists it starts to actually hurt, for that case and especially hardcore I recommend switching your high-lvl Ball Lightning gem for a lvl 1 gem, and energy leech for increased AoE.

No-Regen-Maps:
If you have no other source of mana, just drop one aura (any but discipline) and use a mana flask, simple, but it will work.

Temporal chains:
Not really a problem with movement skills, also quicksilver flasks are your friend here as flasks expire much slower.

High dmg combos:
Usually not a problem, even if several mean +dmg mods stack up, only need to really consider that if running maps with certain bosses like minotaur or t14 malachai, just be a little more careful there and all is good, this build really is that tanky. :-)

Chaos Damage:
Really high chaos damage spikes can be actually dangerous, like Kora (Syndicate) or Kurgal (Delve) or really hard hitting mobs/bosses on "monsters poison on hit"-maps.
Amethyst flasks and anti-poison help here, you can always drop a ring for Mings Heart if you feel it's really that necessary.

Freeze:
There is no hard freeze counter in this build asides from flasks, which is not really dangerous, but can be annoying at times, even with 7k+ life.
A hard counter option would be a Watchers Eye with "cannot be frozen" if effected by purity of ice, just as a suggestion.
(I am open to suggestions here.^^)

Degen Damage:
Not really a "weak spot", but something to consider.
Just like block, Cwdt does not trigger if the dmg is not applied through a hit, degeneration damage can therefore "bypass" the Cwdt and leave you without the up to 11k ES/s from it.
Again, this is not seriously dangerous by itself in most situations, but something that should not be forgotten.

Catherina ^^ (Syndicate Mastermind):
This paragraph isn't all that serious, but is nice to show some difference in tankiness.
In the Catherina fight, if you let her spawn a full set of exploding skeletons, then let them stack onto each other in one spot and then let them hit you, it is enough to kill even this SO-based build at 20k total life + ES, but for a BO-based build with high block and life on block, it is pretty good survivable.
That is why I'll also present the BO and SO/BO-hybrid versions here, because they are not necessarily less tanky, but in a different way.