[3.13] CoC Bladefall | Screen-wide 40m+ DPS | 10k+ ES | High defense | Any content | Very expensive

"Bladefall? What about Blade Blast?" - you might think. And yes, Bladefall is the star of the build. Blade Blast is simply an extra utility in this build and isn't even necessary, you can replace it with whatever you like. Most people would tell you that Bladefall is simply a utility spell for clearing weak trash mobs and providing blades for blade blast, but they really don't know what they are talking about.

I recommend watching one of the videos of this build in action on some of the hardest PoE content to see if it's something you're interested in:

100% Delirium maps

- [3.11] T15 Burial Chambers - AL8 + 100% Delirium + Double Beyond

Simulacrums

- [3.11] Simulacrum #1 - Hysteriagate
- [3.11] Simulacrum #2 - Hysteriagate
- [3.11] Simulacrum #3 - Hysteriagate
- [3.11] Simulacrum #4 - Bridge Enraptured
- [3.11] Simulacrum #5 - Oriath Delusion
- [3.11] Simulacrum #6 - Lunacy Watch

Note: Bridge Enraptured is the best layout, Oriath Delusion is worst, but you can still reach 5~6 rewards on any layout, just need more effort on worse ones.

Bosses

- [3.11] Sirus
- [3.11] 3x Uber Elders
- [3.11] 2x Shapers
- [3.11] Shaper Guardians
- [3.11] Elder
- [3.11] Cortex

All these runs were deathless and I was mostly using Awakened Increased Area Of Effect gem in main link instead of Concentrated Effect for more efficient clearspeed and I didn't really bother swapping it for most bosses.

Out of all endgame bosses - only Sirus pose real threat on last phase, and probably Aul if you fail too many mechanics. The rest of the bosses will die faster than they can throw anything at you.

My Harvest character: Afolian
POB pastebin (use fork): https://pastebin.com/sKsQ2sfK (updated 24 Aug 2020 @ 16:00)

Early tree

There are two trees in PoB - lvl 90 and lvl 99. Reaching level 90 should be fairly easy and until you reach it - you can simply exclude some clusters or crit multiplier nodes on the tree.

Damage

It is very hard to estimate Bladefall damage - displayed damage (~685k) is per blade hitting the enemy under all buffs and debuffs active vs Shaper. With proper gear - awakened gems & cooldown reduction on boots and belt - you can proc ~36 (9x4) Bladefalls every second and each Bladefall can hit your target multiple times.

Important thing to understand - Bladefall can shotgun. And even if we would consider that only 1 out of 4 Bladefalls (you proc 4 with awakened spell cascade) hits the target and only 3 blades from that Bladefall actually hit within your target hitbox - it would still be:
( 3 hits x 9 casts per second x 685k ) = ~18.5m dps

But with Concentrated Effect there should usually be more blades actually hitting your target, that is why if you are lacking single-target early on - I recommend using Concentrated Effect gem instead of AoE. And that is also why it is hard to estimate actual dps on this build.

It certainly goes above 20m dps (just by looking at some boss kills I've done and approximating), but how much exactly is hard to tell.

One important thing - it's almost impossible to instantly kill big bosses on this build because it requires a bit of ramp up time to reach it's maximum dps - getting power charges, pride aura stages, aspect of the spider debuffs - it usually takes 1~2 seconds to reach your maximum damage output, at that point most bosses just drop dead. And also this build doesn't do big damage hits - it does lots of tiny hits, so you can't skip phases on Sirus or Shaper.

Clearspeed

Clearspeed and, most importantly, coverage is what makes this build great compared to many other high-dps builds. Your dps is consistent at any spot on the screen that you can reach by Bladefalls.

Yes, you obviously still need to hit something in melee with Cyclone to trigger Bladefalls, but once you do - even just 2-3 procs should be enough to clear the whole screen of monsters, including tanky rares and often even unique enemies.

That is what makes this build especially great for simulacrum, for which I have been using it during Delirium and Harvest and it never failed me.

Survivability

I've been trying a lot of things with this build originally - block cap, dodge cap, high evasion, different ascendancies etc - but I ended up with just a few defensive mechanics that are perfectly enough to survive any endgame content.

I'll properly cover them all in a separate section, but to list the most important ones:
- High ES pool - Having 10k+ ES pool allows you to survive big hits
- ES on hit - Coming from watcher's eye, your main way to recover ES
- Fortify - One of the strongest ways to mitigate damage
- ES leech - Always helpful to have when there are no targets to hit
- Block - Some attack and spell block from shield and flask
- Dodge - Some dodge granted by elusive & flask
- Cyclone - Being mobile at all times is the best way to survive

As you can see - it's nowhere near some other builds like max block Gladiator or max dodge Pathfinder in terms of defensive capabilities, but it is also way better than none. Paired with high ES pool and fast ES recovery options - it is more than enough to survive even toughest endgame content.

Build cost

This build is fairly expensive even in Harvest league. It's not hard to make the basic version of it, but it is difficult to polish and min-max it - it will most certainly require you to self-craft most of the items as they aren't available on the trade.

Appoximate cost of the build
- Basic: 25~35ex
- Polished: 90~140ex
- Min-maxed: 250~400ex

That being said - these are prices considering you would buy most of the stuff directly from trade. You can easily halve these prices if you are going to craft this gear yourself.

Pros
+ Very high single-target DPS
+ Very good clearspeed
+ Respectable amount of ES, up to 10~12k
+ Cyclone as main skill
+ No accuracy needed for 100% hit for Cyclone
+ 100% hit and crit chance for Cyclone and Bladefall
+ Fortify on hit via cluster notable
+ Immune to extra critical damage during Elusive (90%+ of the time)
+ 30 ES on hit, works really well with Bladefall
+ Flesh and Stone for extra defense or more damage
+ 40%+ physical damage reduction
+ 45/10% block and 25/25% dodge
+ Reflection immune once crit-capped
+ More defense layers can be added
+ You can always throw more currency at this build
+ Slot for portal gem

Cons
- Lots of visual clutter, courtesy of Bladefall
- Pushes your GPU to it's limits
- Very skill point -hungry build, level 94+ is recommended
- Requires expensive but obtainable jewels (clusters, watcher eye, etc)
- Quite expensive to min-max overall
- Can be quite squishy with low-budget gear
- Not recommended as a season starter

This is my personal rating of this build for each endgame content type with some additional notes and information:

Simulacrum - 10/10
This build was originally supposed to be my go-to for clearing Simulacrums back in Delirium league and it does it exceptionally well, even on a budget gear. You should be able to get 5~6 tiers of rewards on every wave, even on Oriath Delusion layout. It easily rivals headhunter builds at Simulacrum clearing potential, but you can also pair it with headhunter to make it even better.

100% Delirium Maps - 10/10
The more juice you have on the map - the easier it is to clear on this build. So yes, it is extremely good for delirium maps, even without a headhunter. In fact - you can check out the video section for an example run.

Delirium on normal Maps - 10/10
You can easily breeze through normal maps with delirium (via mirror) due to Cyclone mobility and Bladefall AoE coverage without wasting any time. In most cases you can even afford to pick up loot as you go through since you will save a lot of time due to high damage and clearspeed.

Metamorphs - 10/10
You get to kill them in under 2 seconds (when starting unbuffed), so they don't pose any real threat to this build. Just keep an eye on on-death effects metamorphs might leave as they die. Same is true for metamorphs on the map and in the lab.

Syndicate - 10/10
Syndicate poses no threat, all members instantly die as you engage them in the map or in the safehouse. Mastermind is also an extremely easy fight for this build if you choose to do it.

Normal Mapping - 9/10
Very fast and safe map clearing with pretty much any mods. Can do reflects, no leech and even no regen (but might want to have a bit more mana vailable for that or a mana flask). Gets minus 1 point because there are even faster builds out there for map clearing, although those are often way squishier and slower at killing bosses.

Garden - 9/10
Can easily clear T3-T4 seed patches in high quantity delirium maps when properly geared. Gets minus 1 point for visual clutter Bladefall creates which, on top of the garden and delirium, makes it impossible to see anything at all until you kill all monsters.

Bossing - 9/10
Easily kills all endgame bosses, but loses 1 point for Sirus being pretty sketchy on last phase. Even with chaos resistance capped and shock immunity - you might still die quite easily. That goes for most builds out there, but there are some that can tank all Sirus attacks without any issues (and I'm not talking about full immunity builds). So it's not the best for Sirus particularly, but very strong bossing character overall. You can check various boss videos in the video section.

Heists - 8/10
Easily handles heisting, but Blood Rage might be a bit annoying during downtimes so I recommend not using it during heists. It is a slight damage loss, but ultimately will save you a lot of pain. Besides that it breezes through contracts, grand heists and heist bosses. And fairly high defenses will keep you alive in most situations.

Delving - 7/10
It's not a deep-delving character, you can go down to depth 700~800, but past that you will get one-shot very often and it generally won't feel good, mostly because build doesn't offer an excessive amount of defensive mechanics. But you can delve on it pretty efficiently - roam around the darkness for chests and walls, massacre monsters and do any available nodes. It is very good for delve bosses though, that's why it gets a fairly high overall score for delving.

Blighted Maps - 7/10
It's a strong build, but you still have to actively channel and stay in melee range of your enemies to kill them which is not the perfect case for blighted maps. I did clear a lot of blighted maps on this build and didn't fail any of them, but sometimes it was really annoying to manage towers and kill monsters at the same time, especially when you get packs with proximity shields. So yes, you can easily clear blighted maps with this build, but it isn't the best possible build for that task.

HoGM - 1/10
You can't do HoGM on this build for a simple reason - you are low-life and some of the enemies there have culling strike and will instantly kill you on hit. You might be able to clear it in a few attempts by simply overwhelming packs with damage, but you will surely die a lot.

Since this build reaches 8 power charges and easily sustains them in any encounter - Militant Faith jewel with "converted by High Templar Dominus" can provide a substantial damage boost through Inner Conviction keystone which adds 3% more Spell Damage per Power Charge, 24% more Spell Damage in total.

The best (and only) spot where we can use this jewel is the jewel socket near the Mind over Matter keystone:



One important thing to note about Inner Conviction keystone - it does have the downside of "Gain Power Charges instead of Frenzy Charges" which effectively prevents you from gaining frenzy charges in any way, you will always gain power charges instead.

That being said - you're still able to have frenzy charges if you have the "+1/2 to Minimum Frenzy Charges" mod on your gear, effectively adding 4% more damage and 4% attack speed per each extra minimum frenzy charge passively. Those crafts are still very powerful and they can also help solving attack speed problem in case you're missing any.

I wouldn't prioritize minimum frenzy charges mod on the gear though because other mods on the items are more important, but if you so happen to find a perfect ring or a shield - it will be a nice extra bonus to your damage. You can craft that mod on the rings (suffix) and you can find it on the redeemer influence shield (also suffix).

Does this build work with Headhunter? - Yes
Should you use Headhunter if you have one? - It depends

Headhunter is a ~1k ES and 10~15% damage loss for this build. But it can also fix most of the issues you might have with the lack of Dexterity and Strength attributes, on top of allowing you to steal all modifiers from rare monsters.

Obviously your damage will also scale pretty well with Headhunter buffs since you're dealing primarily physical damage but aren't locked out of other elements like builds using Brutality Support.

So in general - Headhunter is really good for any kinds of mapping and bad for bossing. So I personally had both Crystal Belt with ES & CDR and Headhunter and fixed my build around that. But if you're lazy - you might as well stick with either of two options and still be able to easily do any content.

Headhunter will only be significantly better than Crystal Belt for 100% T19 Delirium maps in terms of clear speed and survivability. For any other content you will be perfectly fine with just Crystal Belt. I even showcased one of my 100% Delirium T15 Burial Chambers runs in Harvest: https://youtu.be/qFPGnIfKZ-E

Labyrinth enchantments aren't necessary for this build, but helmet enchants can be useful to increase your damage or clearspeed.

Helmet
- Bladefall has an additional Volley - My personal choice for clearspeed
- 40% increased Bladefall Damage - A slight (~4% more) damage increase
Other enchantments are useless or even negative for us

Boots
- Regenerate 2% of Life per second if you were Hit Recently
- 10% increased Movement Speed if you haven't been Hit Recently
- 8% chance to Dodge Spell Hits if you've taken Spell Damage Recently
Other enchantments are useless or even negative for us

Belt
- 20% chance to Avoid Elemental Ailments while you have Elusive
- +300 to Armour while you have Fortify
Other enchantments are useless or even negative for us

Gloves
Use whatever you want, seriously, all glove enchantments are useless

Cast On Critical Strike (CoC)

Main damage in the build is coming from casting Bladefall spell whenever you crit with a linked attack, in our case - Cyclone. To make Bladefall be auto-cast upon critical strikes - we use Cast On Critical Strike support gem in the link, so the minimum link setup for this to work is next:

[Cyclone] - [Cast on Critical Strike Support] - [Bladefall]

For the remaining links we want to use whatever makes us do most damage while not hindering or limiting us in any way. So, after weeks of testing I came up with 2 optimal setups:

1. Single-target (~26% more damage than AoE setup)

[Cyclone] - [Cast on Critical Strike Support] - [Bladefall]
+ [Controlled Destruction Support] - [Spell Cascade Support] - [Concentrated Effect Support]

2. AoE

[Cyclone] - [Cast on Critical Strike Support] - [Bladefall]
+ [Controlled Destruction Support] - [Spell Cascade Support] - [Increased Area of Effect Support]

Whether you want to keep switching between these two setups or just use one of them is up to you. I personally use AoE setup for everything except Sirus and Delve bosses as it also has enough DPS to down any bosses fast.

For quite a while I've been using Brutality Support as the 6th link, but it locks you out of any other elemental or chaos damage which results in less overall damage with my new setup compared to physical only setup.

Awakened gems

Awakened gems, especially Awakened Cast On Critical Strike and Awakened Spell Cascade, provide a huge damage and clearspeed boost but aren't mandatory for the build to work.

If you have limited budget, this is the order I recommend upgrading gems to awakened versions in:

1. Awakened Spell Cascade Support - provides huge AoE coverage boost
2. Awakened Cast On Critical Strike Support - provides a substantial DPS increase
3. Awakened Increased Area of Effect Support - provides more AoE and a substantial DPS increase
4. Awakened Controlled Destruction Support - provides a small DPS increase


Cooldown recovery speed

Cooldown recovery (or CDR) plays a huge role in boosting any CoC build damage because it affects how many times per second you can trigger spell (Bladefall in case of this particular build) with your critical strikes from attacks.

Cyclone has a very high base attack speed which, when paired with ascendancy passives and high weapon speed, will be just enough to cover maximum possible CDR you can get on this build.

There are a lot of explanations around on how you should balance CDR and attack speed, so I won't go deep into that. But to put it simple - Cyclone attack time should be lower than Bladefall trigger cooldown. The smaller the difference between them - the higher will be your damage output. So in perfect case scenario if you have, let's say, 0.14s cooldown on Bladefall trigger - you need 0.15s attack time on cyclone.

If you want to check it in-game - you can simply look at the tooltips:




Tooltips screenshots from above do not show the actual attack time for Cyclone because in combat you will have all sorts of buffs affecting it, so you have to check it fully buffed in a map (or manually in PoB). Bladefall cooldown is pretty accurate though because it comes from gear and stays the same all the time.

The main sources of CDR are:
- CDR modifier on Crusader or Shaper boots
- CDR modifier on Crusader or Shaper belt
- Awakened Cast on Crit support gem

Also note that with addition of Maven and elevated (T0) mods you can now potentially have even more CDR, so you might want to also get ASPD modifiers on gloves/rings to match your attack speed appropriately.

If you want to know more about how CoC works, I recommend reading this reddit post from the time when awakened gems were introduced:
The Cyclone Cast on Critical Strike Cooldown Guide MkIII

Take these calculations with a grain of salt as these are still only theoretical values based on my Harvest league gear (so pretty high-end stuff), specific scenarios (your experience may vary) and some guesses I've made based on my experience with the build (so I might be wrong).

Base damage per Bladefall hit (according to PoB):
- If 1 rare/unique enemies nearby: 1.09m
- If 0 or 2+ rare/unique enemies nearby: 0.88m

As for aspd - with 3.13 we can have:
- Up to ~8.2 attacks per second without Onslaught (so on bosses)
- Up to ~9.4 attacks per second with Onslaught (on clear)

Now, one big mistake I've done - I considered that Awakened Spell Cascade procs area spell 4 times because of the description which says:

"

Supported Area of Effect Skills also affect areas in front of, behind, and on each side of the targeted area

But that is actually wrong, is procs it 5 times - at the targeted location, in front of it, behind it, and on each side of it, so 5 times in total.

With CoC & Cyclone mix - initial spell always procs on top of the enemy position that you landed critical strike on with Cyclone and the "duplicates" from spell cascade occur on two sides (or four sides with awakened gem) of the targeted enemy. So positioning shouldn't really matter much as long as you're hitting your target.

With that information in mind - we proc 5 Bladefalls about 8-9 times/second (depending on buffs & scenario). If we're using Concentrated Effect - all Bladefalls will be tightly packed around us and each will definitely hit the target (from my experience) at least 1-3 times.

So the result DPS is (with average 2 hits/Bladefall):
- 1x Boss: 1.09m x 8.2aps x 5 x 2 = 89.4m DPS
- 2x Boss: 0.88m x 8.2aps x 5 x 2 = 72.1m DPS
- Clear: 0.88m x 9.4aps x 5 x 2 = 82.7m DPS

Now, this will only be your DPS under perfect circumstances:
- You're cycloning right on top of the boss, not near it
- You have Vaal RF up
- You have all flasks up
- You have stacked maximum pride effect stacked on target
- You have maximum spider webs stacked on target
- Enemy is on your consecrated ground

To account for more realistic settings:
- For bosses: -No Vaal RF, -slightly worse positioning
- For clear: -No Vaal RF, -bad positioning, -no spider webs, -enemy is not on consecrated ground, +enemy isn't a boss

Result in more realistic setting:
- 1x Boss: 0.85m x 8.2aps x 4 x 2 = 55.7m DPS
- 2x Boss: 0.68m x 8.2aps x 4 x 2 = 44.6m DPS
- Clear: 0.59m x 9.4aps x 3 x 2 = 33.27m DPS

This will still vary heavily depending on your positioning, consecrated ground, flasks uptime, webs uptime etc. And gear as well - all numbers above are based on my gear from Harvest league which was really good and might now be possible again, but it still wasn't perfect and can be upgraded further.

To summ it up - about 40m+ DPS is something you can realistically expect vs bosses with a decent enough gear, so that is the number I'm using for the post title. It can still go all the way to 80m+ DPS or down to 10~20m DPS with poor use of flasks and bad positioning in the fight.

In current build version I tried to balance all of damage sources to make sure that damage output is at it's maximum potential, while also adding a lot of defensive layers to make sure build is pleasant to play and you won't die on it every second map.

Bladefall damage is scaled by many things:

Gem levels
Bladefall level affects it's damage a lot, so I strongly recommend finding a level 21 gem, preferable with 20~23 quality. Support gem levels provide a substantial damage boost as well, but it is far less than Bladefall levels. This is why I have [+1 Level of All Physical Spell Skill Gems] mod on weapon and shield. Specifically on the shield it is slightly weaker than getting 90%+ spell damage, but is much easier to acquire in Harvest.

Awakened gems
I already mentioned in explanation section that awakened gems are not mandatory, but they do provide a huge damage boost. Specifically Awakened Spell Cascade due to the AoE coverage and slightly better stats and Awakened Cast on Critical Strike due to it's additional cooldown recovery.

Increased cooldown recovery speed
This is the main stat you want to focus on getting on your belt, boots and on Awakened Cast on Critical Strike gem because it will basically increase amount of Bladefalls you can proc from crits per second and therefore substantially increase your DPS output. Overall you can have 20% on belt, 15% on boots and 22% on gem, bringing additional 57% cooldown recovery in total.

Critical strike multiplier
This build is a crit build, and we also have a 100% chance to crit on top of that, so every critical strike multiplier % provides a huge boost to our damage. That being said, I tried to find a perfect balance between % damage increases and critical strike multiplier on the tree, so resulting multiplier is about 475% when buffed. It would be hard to acquire more without abandoning some ES or defensive mechanics.

Spell damage
Bladefall is a spell, so it will be affected by any bonuses to spell damage or physical spell damage, percentile or flat. Although I don't recommend getting flat added physical spell damage on any gear pieces because that mod will result in less damage than other mods possible on the same items.

Physical damage
Bladefall only provides flat physical spell damage, which can be scaled by "Increased Physical Damage" nodes on the tree which we do take advantage of on the tree and on the cluster jewels. Don't confuse those with the similarly named mods on the weapons - those are local mods that apply to attacks with the weapon only, not spells.

Physical damage reduction overwhelm
Overwhelm is a fairly new modifier that was added to provide a way to mitigate enemy physical damage reduction. It is pretty handful, but it is hard to acquire a lot of it. While I don't recommend focusing on that mod - still keep it in mind when you purchase any jewels, they often have corrupted or Synthesis implicits which can include overwhelm.

Double damage chance
This build uses 2 large and 4 medium cluster jewels which are primarily focused on physical damage and chance to deal double damage. While low - double damage chance is not really that good, even with a skill like Bladefall. But if you are able to get higher chance - in this case 37% (25% from clusters + 12% from watcher's eye) - it gets more reliable and provides a substantial damage boost.

Increased damage taken by enemy
This is a very strong stat as it directly multiplies the damage our target is taking. We get it from a lot of sources - War Banner, Pride, Aspect of the Spider, Vulnerability, helmet mod, Bottled Faith flask and potentially some cluster jewels. You might also find this mod on the jewel implicits.

Increased critical damage taken by enemy
This is a pretty unique and strong mod that we get from our second curse - Assassin's Mark. I personally recommend getting Assassin's Mark first even though it provides similar to Vulnerability DPS increase. The main reason - it will help you to cap your crit chance, increase your DPS and provide some mana upon kills which can be very helpful early on.

Flasks
Bottled Faith is the biggest DPS increase you could get from a single flask. The other big increase you can get in addition or instead of it is Atziri's Promise. I personally don't use both because I still want immunity to freeze, bleed and curses plus additional survivability from Rumi's flask.

Extra damage procs
This refers to Overwhelming Malice node you can get on the medium cluster that provides you with a 10% chance to get Unholy Might (30% of physical damage as extra chaos damage) - this is a huge damage increase for us, even though we don't directly scale chaos damage. And it only takes 1 node on the tree. Other "extra" mods on the shield or weapon can also be used as an option instead of gem level or spell damage mods.

Energy Shield
First and main layer of defense in this build is high ES pool. I've managed to reach 10k+ ES pool in both Delirium and Harvest while mostly focusing on offensive aspects of the build. If you feel that you don't need as much damage and would rather have extra ES - you can sacrifice mods on helmet, gloves, belt and boots to have extra 2-4k ES. My personal opinion - 10k is more than enough with all the other defensive layers on any boss except maybe Sirus, but he might kill you even with 14k+ ES pool anyway.

Energy Shield Recovery
We recover ES in two ways - leech & ES on hit modifier coming from watcher eye. Leech on this particular build can be strong, but it would require a lot of investment into passive nodes. Instead we are using [Soul Thief] notable that gives 0.3% spell damage leeched as ES, but our main ES recover comes from watcher eye. Bladefall paired with Awakened Spell Cascade and Cast on Crit produces hundreds of blades every second, even if only a portion of them hit - you can easily recover between 1k and 4k ES per second. It is especially powerful against large packs of monsters - you become practically unkillable due to huge recovery (watcher eye mod doesn't have internal cooldown).

Stun Immunity
Stun immunity is straight up granted by Presence of Chayula amulet which is best-in-slot for our build by a long shot - it provides us with extra ES, chaos resistance that is hard to get, stun immunity and also attributes that we are really starved for.

Block
While this build doesn't focus on capping out block or dodge - it still has a bit of both. 25%+ attack block comes from shield, Rumi flask gives another 20%/10% block. More block can be acquired by using different shield mods (spell/attack block).

Dodge
Quartz flask grans 10%/10% dodge, another 15%/15%+ come from elusive that you get from ascendancy and have up most of the time. It's not much, but it does help to mitigate incoming damage pretty well.

Physical Damage Reduction
Basalt flask grants 15% physical damage reduction. Another ~25% come from armour granted by Rumi flask. Some more physical damage reduction can also come from pantheon which I do recommend on this build.

Fortify
We can acquire Fortify buff by using Karui Sceptre as our main weapon paired with [Overlord] notable that is coming from cluster jewel. I would strongly recommend to get it as fortify is one of the strongest defensive options available in the game.

Flask Mods
We are using 3 non-unique flasks (Quartz, Basalt & Quicksilver) on which I recommend having anti-curse, freeze immunity and bleed immunity. On top of that - preferable "reduced charges used" prefix on each of those flasks to maximize uptime potential for bosses. Bleed immunity can be replaced with shock immunity if you are able to get corrupted blood immunity on any of the jewels.

Kill all, we want every skill point we can get.
Even the last 2 points (level 99-100) give you quite major benefits.

I prefer Soul of Lunaris and Soul of Gruthkul for extra physical damage mitigation which we are weak against. Other pantheons probably provide less benefits for us, but you can surely switch them depending on the situation and your personal preferences.

Taking elusive buff (Mistwalker) first might be most effective during leveling, but otherwise you can invest points in any order you prefer - they're all quite powerful and useful.



I also prefer Opportunistic node over Ambush and Assassinate for the extra damage mitigation and movement speed. Ambush and Assassinate does provide slightly more damage and 10% culling strike, but you can also have it on the Warlord gloves instead, especially in Harvest.

To be honest - I currently don't have any special tips for leveling this build from zero. My only recommendation would be - don't use this build until you reach the maps. Simply use any other Assassin build that is easy to level and then switch to this build once you complete the story.

Reference item



Stats priority order

1. [prefix] [01] Hits can't be Evaded (crafted)
2. [suffix] [77] Attack Speed (local)
3. [suffix] [73] Critical Strike Chance (local)
4. [prefix] [84] Spell Damage
5. [prefix] [55] +1 Level of all Spell Skill gems
6. [prefix] [02] +1 Level of all Physical Spell Skill gems
7. [suffix] [73] Global Critical Strike Multiplier

Minimum ilvl: 64
Recommended ilvl: 84

Important note: Going above recommended ilvl will often result in lower chance to get better outcome because you will have more potentially possible modifiers available on the item. Any additional possible modifiers will pollute the overall pool and reduce your chance to get mods that you actually need. Long-story short - use items of recommended ilvl or, in worst case, of any ilvl between minimum and recommended if you need a cheaper option.

Crafting options

Weapon is the trickiest item to craft for the build as there is no best way to approach this craft, but there are some options:

1. Recrafting existing weapon

* Buy a weapon with at least two useful mods
* If item is good as it is - simply add "Hits can't be Evaded" bench craft
* If there are enough open prefixes/suffixes - multicraft "Hits can't be Evaded" and any other useful mod
* If there aren't enough open prefixes/suffixes - either annul the item until you get them or it bricks, alternatively can use prefix->suffix & suffix-> prefix beastcrafting recipes for better outcome chances

2. Crafting weapon with fossils

You can get it using either of two combinations:

* Attack Speed + Critical Strike Chance
* Spell Damage + Attack Speed OR Critical Strike Chance

Second one is much more probable to happen, but also is more expensive.

Once you get the combination of the two stats you can proceed to the #1 option - "Recrafting existing weapon".

3. Crafting weapon using fractured base

If you can find a Karui Sceptre with a fractured Spell Damage, Attack Speed or Critical Strike Chance with a decent roll (you cannot change fractured mod rolls) - it can be recrafted using either fossils as described in #2 option or via simple Chaos Orb spam:

* Use Chaos Orbs on it until you get 2+ useful modifiers on top of fractured one
* If there is no open prefix - either annul the item to get one or alternatively use prefix->suffix beastcrafting recipe to free one
* Add "Hits can't be Evaded" craft in the open prefix

Reference item



Video guides

Complete guide, all things explained:
https://youtu.be/eM6TJfFKa3c (~1.5h long)

Short guide, just crafting:
https://youtu.be/4ihg1nu8N9U (~10m long)

Stats priority order

1. [prefix] [82] #% increased maximum Energy Shield (crusader)
2. [suffix] [80] Trigger Level 12 Assassin's Mark when you Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy (shaper)
3. [prefix] [74] +# to maximum Energy Shield
4. [suffix] [82] +# to Dexterity
5. [suffix] [82] +# to Strength
6. [suffix] [60] +#% to all Elemental Resistances
7. [suffix] [84] +#% to Fire Resistance
8. [suffix] [84] +#% to Cold Resistance
9. [suffix] [82] +# to Intelligence
10. [suffix] [84] +#% to Lightning Resistance
11. [prefix] [80] #% increased Spell Damage (crusader)
12. [suffix] [82] #% increased Spell Damage (shaper)
13. [suffix] [80] #% increased Global Critical Strike Chance (crusader)

Minimum ilvl: 82
Recommended ilvl: 84

Important note: Going above recommended ilvl will often result in lower chance to get better outcome because you will have more potentially possible modifiers available on the item. Any additional possible modifiers will pollute the overall pool and reduce your chance to get mods that you actually need. Long-story short - use items of recommended ilvl or, in worst case, of any ilvl between minimum and recommended if you need a cheaper option.

Crafting options

This ring isn't hard to craft, but it it hard to min-max outside of Harvest league because it will be up to RNG. You will most probably get a %ES + Mark + ES ring from your first try, but other stats on that ring will probably suck. Still, even so it will be a very useable ring.

There is generally only one reasonable option, but you can always try other things if you end up bricking the result:

1. Crafting ring with Awakener's Orb

* Buy the ring of the correct ilvl (preferably 84) with only a crusader influence, that ring will be the base for the craft, you can buy any ring you prefer - Unset Ring, Moonstone Ring or any other
* Scour any modifiers from the ring and use 4 Tempering Catalysts on it
* At this point you can also use Gilded Fossil on the ring to add an extra implicit to it - this can be useful in case you're going to corrupt it later (for extra RNG and min-maxing), that extra implicit may be modified by corruption instead of a useful implicit your ring has
* Recraft it with Dense Fossils or Chaos Orbs to have T1 "#% increased maximum Energy Shield" crusader modifier
* If the ring has any other crusader modifiers - you will need to annul them (which will force you to reapply 20x catalysts later), use prefix->suffix or suffix->prefix beastcrafting recipe or simply continue recrafting it until you get no other crusader modifiers
* Buy a ring with "Trigger Level 12 Assassin's Mark when you Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy" shaper modifier and no other shaper modifiers, there are a lot of them on trade for ~1ex each, crafting it yourself would cost up to 2~2.5ex
* Buy an Awakener's Orb, you can also farm Sirus on AL8 - he has a pretty high chance of dropping it
* Double-check that both of the rings - crusader and shaper ones - have only one influence modifier each, this is important to avoid bricking the result
* Use Awakener's Orb, click on the shaper ring first (it will be consumed) then click on the crusader ring (which will keep it's implicit, catalyst quality and type) - you will now see the RNG result of merging two rings
* At this point you need to examine the ring that you got and see if it has flat ES of a decent tier or an open prefix to craft it, also whether or not it has any other useful mods from the list above in this guide
* In case ring is bad - you can attempt to modify it prefix->suffix & suffix->prefix beastcrafting recipes, or annul bad mods off of it first if necessary, there is no good way to safely modify it at this point - you might end up bricking it as a result

2. Recovering bricked ring value

In case you end up bricking the ring (lose %ES or Mark modifier) - you can attempt recrafting ring with Dense Fossils into a ring with ES + %ES + resistances/attributes, those sell quite easily for 6-10ex if you have high tier modifiers, so you can at least recover money spent on the craft.

There is even a chance you will get Assassin's Mark back, although it's a pretty low chance and I wouldn't hope for it too much.

There is no particular guide for this part because you simply need to rely on RNG to recraft the ring via Dense Fossil. Min of any good caster modifiers, resistances and attributes of high tier on top of ES + %ES will sell very well.

Aspect of the Spider is a skill that reserves 25% of your mana and can be added via beastcrafting it onto any rare item with open suffix. When activated is stacks Spider's Web debuff on nearby enemies, up to 3 stacks. Each stack increases damage taken by the enemy by 5%, so total maximum is 15% increased damage taken.

Aspect of the Spider is a pretty big damage boost vs bosses, but it takes about 3 seconds to fully stack up at which point even most bosses will already be killed by this build, so this is an optional thing for min-maxing damage vs more tanky bosses like Sirus or Shaper which now also have damage reduction during the beginning of the fight.

In my gear preview I have crafted Aspect of the Spider on the weapon:

Simply because I had an open suffix there and didn't want to gamble with exalting it. You are free to craft it anywhere you like.

To craft Aspect of the Spider you need to capture Fenumal Hybrid Arachnid on a map with Einhar (it's a special red beast) and then fight him in The Menagerie to receive "Aspect of the Spider skill" craft.

Alternatively you can simply buy "Fenumus, First of the Night" captured beast on trade and use it in The Menagerie. Here is a link for trade:
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Heist/vyjZQzsE

Once you got it - simply put item with open suffix on the altar, select the recipe, start the event, kill beasts and you get the extra mod on the item that grants Aspect of the Spider which you can find in your skills once you equip the item.

An important note on using exalts on items and using prefix->suffix and suffix->prefix beastcrafting recipes - whenever you use either of those don't forget that you can add a crafted modifier that can also be removed by the recipe or that can block unwanted mods.

This won't always help as you will need two open prefixes or suffixes and also be able to add crafted modifier, but it can save you a few failed attempts in some cases. Don't slam or swap mods mindlessly as you're wasting currency and potential expensive outcomes!