[3.25] One shot Tectonic Slam Chieftain. Great Damage and Survivability. Melting all content.

We put molten shell on left click, therefore molten shell will be used while moving whenever available. This is a pretty good quality of life binding so you don't need to worry about activating molten shell.

As for Vaal molten shell, you can use it before big encounters like map boss/breach/legion/expedition/metamorph etc. The vaal molten shell lasts for 20+ seconds, giving you 6K+ damage mitigation in end-game whenever you need it. Just remember to pop up your flask before activating the skill for maximum effect.

Phase run will make you enter phasing upon usage, it also gives increased movement speed and additional damage buff during phasing.

However, there is a catch to it: if you perform an attack during phasing, the phasing breaks, and the damage buff will only last for additional 0.2 seconds from the moment you initiate the attack. Since our attack takes ~0.9 seconds in hideout, using phase run normally won't help us at all.

Fortunately, our low attack frequency play style becomes an advantage here if we use phase run in a slightly different way. Here's how: Initiate slam -> Activate phase run before slam lands on ground -> damage dealt with buff applied. By doing this, the attack action is done before phase run therefore won't break the phase run, in the meantime, the damage is calculated after the phase run so we gain the additional benefit of attack buff.

Furthermore, using phase run this way has another major benefit: we get to keep the phasing buff. If you consumed 3 frenzy charge, the buff will last ~7 seconds with increased duration. This phasing buff will give you stealth mode which can protect you from mobs/bosses so that they will target your totem/minion instead of you. The phasing buff will also give you up to 50% increased movement speed for a long time so you can find your next position to slam or simply move forward to the next pack of mobs without them noticing you.

Overall speaking, the usage of phase run in maps/bosses opens up lots of potential possibilities. If you practice it well then you can move in high speed in maps and deliver high damage in boss fights while avoiding being hit by enemy.

As stated in the warcry related answers, rallying cry is only used in boss encounters. Rallying cry's damage buff depends on the number of allies nearby, therefore, it needs to interact with our totem skill for maximum effect.

Before big boss fight, I will do either of the following:
a) If vaal totem is available: quickly press ctrl+T(totem) and ctrl+R(vaal totem), then T (rallying cry)
b) if no vaal totem is available: quickly press ctrl+T(totem) two times + T (ralling cry)

If there are at least 5 allies around you, there's a visual effect of sword rising up when you use the rallying cry. Then your next 5 slams will benefit from the 25% more damage buff.

The league-start version of the build is to provide easy leveling experience and to get you into red maps to farm currency comfortably with minimum investment.

The gearing & skill choices focus on getting a good balance between offense and defense rather than chasing pure damage. As an example, you will see that fortify is used instead of shock wave despite shock wave gives significant better damage boost.

The choice of passive tree nodes also prioritize achieving build-enabling capability without major investment on gears. Such as the choices of life & mana leech nodes to resolve mana problem, mana reservation nodes to avoid using more expensive enlighten support.

Hope you enjoy the leveling and early mapping. Keep in mind, this budget build is only the start of something much more exciting.

We use tidebreaker because it has good physical damage, and it scales well with our 7 endurance charges.

If you are in trade league, you can buy 5 The Deep Ones card, or buy a tidebreaker directly (whichever option is cheaper). Don't worry about the links and sockets if the 5L price is more than 10c higher than usual item.

If you are in SSF, then you can grab any 2H weapon (rare or unique) with high physical damage. Also make sure your attack time is less than 1 second in hideout without flask.

Once you have acquired the weapon, here's how to do 5 link + 6 sockets easily:

improve the quality of the weapon to 20%, then use jeweler orb (or crafting bench) to get 6 socket. It should take 300 jeweler orb on average. Then use fusing or harvest craft to link 5 socket.

If you do not have enough jeweler, you could simply go for 5 socket, and use unset ring to get the extra socket.

For body amour, we need one with 6L and decent life and resistance. Here's how you can get one:

If you are in trade league, you can do 3 of the following and choose the cheapest option:
1. Search for 6L non-unique body armor corrupted and with 6 red sockets. Apply some filters like 90 life, 20 resistance.
2. Search for 6L non-unique body armor uncorrupted, apply filters like 90 life, 20 resistance. Then look for armors that requires strength (a hybrid of str-dex, str-int is ok too), because it will make changing socket color easier.
3. Search for non-unique 6L body armor uncorrupted, don't apply any stats filter this time. But still look for armors that requires strength. After buying it, put it in your stash. Then during your harvest encounter, apply chaos craft on it until you get one with decent life and resistance. You can also craft life using crafting bench if you get one with good resistance only. This body armor needs 2 harvest encounter at most, and don't be greedy :)

If you are in SSF, you can use any 6L body armor you can find. If 6L isn't available, 5L works too.

Amulet is where you can fill your attribute requirement. On top of that, getting an amulet with decent life, resistance is good enough. You can anoint Panopticon once you get into red maps.

It's not necessary to go for dexterity at lvl 20 phase run, running lvl 1 phase run with 79 dexterity works equally fine.

One Profane Proxy to apply flammability with skitter bot. Remember to put it on your left ring spot so your skitterbot can still apply shock.

For the other ring we simply look for life and resistance. If you are not able to get 6 sockets on your weapon, then use an unset ring here.

We need Spiked Gloves with attack speed and decent life.

Here's how you get them cheap:
1. buy spiked gloves with life and empty/crafted suffix, then craft attack speed
2. buy spiked gloves with attack speed (more than 10%), then craft life
3. buy spiked glove base (lvl70+ is fine), then in your harvest encounter apply chaos craft on it until it hits good life or attack speed. Then benchcraft the other.

Get one Hrimnor's resolve, it's pretty cheap. Its stats - life, resistance, and fire damage are all useful to us.

Most importantly, it also provides freeze and chill immunity, because our character heavily uses fire skill (tectonic slam, molten shell, infernal cry, flame dash etc). Therefore, we are basically immune to freeze and chill all the time.

Before you open a strongbox, remember to use a flame dash first so you won't be frozen there.

Get one with 30% movement speed and good life and resistance. Nothing fancy here.

life, resistance are all we need. Nothing much here either.

In this budget build, I'm suggesting to skip the jewels because the budget build is only a temporary setup to farm more currency. We are better off spending that currency later when we convert to crit version.

Lion's roar and wise oak to improve our damage. Make sure your fire resistance is the highest among the all.

Quick silver and silver to improve our clearing speed and movement speed. Sulphur flask to increase damage and life regen.

Put Sulphur flask in the last spot, so that when you press 1 2 3 4 5 then slam, you are standing on your consecrated ground.

In terms of utility mods, you need %increased armor, %movement speed, %attack speed. You can put distribute those mods among the utility flasks.

The goal of this build is to help you progress further into more challenging game content like A8 Awakener, Shaper, Elder, Uber Elder etc.

Comparing with budget build, early crit variant offers more than 2 times more damage and survivability. Most importantly, it also marks a new starting point of our build journey. From now on, our overall damage will begin to scale with critical strike.

Defensive-wise, we start to leverage block as an additional defensive layer, with the help of new keystone, we can get 50% attack & spell block chance during mapping and most boss encounters.

At last, hope this build can help many of you with more challenging yet more rewarding end-game adventures.

When deciding the early crit weapon, here are the requirements I considered:

1. The weapon needs to be a staff to leverage crit nodes.
2. The weapon needs to have good attack block chance (to leverage the 50%/50% block chance keystone)
3. The weapon needs to have good base damage
4. The weapon needs to be accessible by players without major investment

Disintegrator is an option that fits all descriptions above. In addition, the siphoning charge can provide lots of extra damage boost. Since our build has many active skills to use, maintaining siphoning charge is extremely easy.

Disintegrator's side effect(150 physical damage per second taken per charge) is negligible to us, because our phys reduction is extremely high, taking some minor phys damage per second is nothing.

Body armor is the most expensive item in early crit build. Having said that, this item will be reused for end-game crafting. In other words, we are gradually building towards end-game gear now, therefore the currency you spend now won't be wasted later.

What you need is lvl86+ astral plate that is uncorrupted, hunter or elder influenced, and 6-linked.

Ways to acquire this item base


After you get the item base, use harvest craft: reforge attack / reforge attack more common on the item, so you can guarantee a critical attack chance mod. In addition, it must meet the following condition:

1. Must have an empty prefix so we can craft block chance later.
2. Must have 80+ life (you can go higher if you are willing to gamble)
3. You can go for t1 crit chance (>1%), but if other mods are too good to lose, then you can settle with t2 crit (like the one I used).

Again, don't be greedy, then you can get a decent body armor within 10 reforge.

In the end, craft attack block chance so we can cap spell block chance easier with the help of new keystone.

Amulet is the main source of dexterity and intelligence in gears.

Our target dexterity is 118 (for lvl20 precision) and target intelligence is 113 (for disintegrator). Among all the gears, you should get amulet only after you finalize other items, so that you can search for amulet with missing attributes directly.

In addition, you can also try getting some extra life, accuracy (if needed), resistance(if needed) from amulet too. Don't forget to anoint the Panopticon

One flammability curse ring is needed. Please replace the shaper ring displayed above with a ring that has the mod: "Curse Enemies with Flammability on Hit, with #% increased Effect".

For the other ring, you can go with unset ring if your curse ring isn't. Look for accuracy, resistance, and life. Use crafting bench for any mod you need.

We need life, accuracy, attack speed and if possible, resistance on it. Find a spiked glove with at least 3 of the mods above and craft the 4th mod.

Crown of the inward eye is very cheap and gives us lots of life, damage, and armor. Focus on getting a good roll >= 19% of the item.

I personally prefer getting a boots with chill immunity. Luckily, there are plenty on the market because of the veiled mod.

A boots with 25% movement speed, chill immunity, 70+life and 30 total resistance only cost less than 5c. You can use this link to search for the item, and feel free to adjust the criteria:
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Scourge/LL8WW6BHn

Get stygian vise with good life and res on it. Then acquire a corrupted blood immune abyss jewel.

Use thread of hope with very large ring, and put it in the following position:

Diamond flask increases our crit chance therefore giving big damage boost.

Cinderswallow gives the "15% damage taken leeched as life" mod to improve survivability during mapping.

The other 3 are the same as before.

As for utility flask's mod, we need to distribute freeze immunity, %armor, and %crit chance among the utility flasks.

The mid-budget crit version is a progression of early crit build as we level up further. The main purpose of this build is to pave the way for end-game build by setting up the end-game build mechanic in absence of end-game gears. As a result of this, the build focuses on investing on items that have a good long-term return rather than exploiting short-term gain. Despite that, our damage still increases by almost 2 times just by getting end-game damage mechanics in pace.

Here's a summary of the change:

1. Start to leverage cluster jewel to gain necessary offense/defense mechanic. For example, Overlord to gain fortify, Master of Fire to gain fire exposure (especially when pairing up with exposure mastery).

2. Drop several non-essential nodes, and use jewel as a mean to acquire better stats with more flexibility.

3. Invest in awakened gems like Melee Physical, Elem attack, and alt quality gem like pulverize. Our attack speed will be reduced by -20% because of this, that's why we need the jewel to mitigate the attack speed loss.

4. Since we longer need to use foritfy support in main skill, we can now use shockwave to significantly improve DPS and clear speed.

5. Start to use two -mana cost of skill craft on amulet or rings, so we can drop the mana reservation nodes.

To conclude, you should know that almost all gears in this build are still from early-crit version, which means there is huge potential that is yet to be unlocked. We will upgrade all gears in the end-game build.

Here are several important notes about this mid-budget build:

You should only consider transitioning to mid-budget build if you are at least level 92.


Always make sure you attack time in hideout is less than 1 second.

Same as before, details in early-crit gear section.

Same armor as early crit, but there are 4 new skill gems: Awakened Ele Attack, Awakened Melee Phys, Shockwave, and Divergent Pulverize.

Remember, only upgrade Awakened Melee Phys or Divergent Pulverize if you can meet attack speed requirement stated in the important note section.

Same Amulet as before, but if you have issue matching required attributes, then you can change the amulet.

Same ring as before (remember we need flammability instead of assassin's mark). In addition, we need two -mana cost of skills crafts on amulet and rings.

I crafted them on amulet and one ring, you can choose to craft them on two rings if you prefer.

Once you have the two crafts, you can level up your flame dash to level 10 without costing any mana.

Same as before, detail in early-crit gear section.

Same helmet, there's no need to get tectonic slam enchant at this budget level yet. You will have plenty of chance to hit the tectonic slam enchant later in end-game when we run labs for boots and gloves.

Same Boots as before, you can drop the chill immunity if you find it difficult to meet resistance and life requirement.

Stygian vise and corrupt blood immune abyss jewel.

Large Cluster Setup:


Medium Cluster Setup:


Thread of Hope


Normal Jewels

Same flask as before, details in early-crit section.

The early end-game build is a non-minmaxed version of the build that can clear all end-game content. Comparing with the prior budget level, this build features a large variety of upgrades and therefore providing significant quality of life improvement along with damage increase.

All gears are craftable, therefore I will provide detailed crafting guides for every craftable item to help players acquire the item independent of market. In addition, since end-game gear requires quite a good amount of farming and grinding, there will be upgrade order guide in the end of this gear section to help you navigate through the upgrading journey.

We need a rare Maelstrom staff with 250-500+ phys damage and "hits can't be evaded" on it.

The reason to go with Maelstrom staff is because of its attack block chance and its interaction with Versatile Combatant keystone. As a result, we can get close to 50% attack block and 50% spell block chance.

As for hits can't be evaded crafted, this is to solve our attack chance problem once and for all. Prior to this, we have been using precision + accuracy in gear + tree to get attack chance. However, as we are upgrading gears for different influenced mods, getting accuracy will eventually become a big burden which will put limits in our damage and defense.

Also, having the hits can't be evaded craft can allow us to remove those accuracy related nodes in the tree so we can focus on getting more jewel sockets for both damage and life. Finally, we can start using herald of ash for additional damage and clearing speed.

Crafting Instruction

Remember the astral plate that we invested in early-crit build? We will upgrade the item in a slightly different way this time. We will go for T1 life + T1 %life + double curse + t1 attack crit chance.

After hearing about these mods, you might be concerned about the item being overwhelmingly expensive to craft. It's not. In fact, it takes much less than you think to craft these mods when comparing with other body armors.

Crafting Instruction

Amulet is where we get the missing attributes. I prefer a dex/int amulet since our build needs it a lot. For this amulet, you don't need to craft it because there's nothing too special about it.

What you can look for is T1 life + fire res penetration or % Physical Damage as Extra Fire Damage. I suggest you get the amulet only after you finalized the source of attributes from other gears.

If you are in SSF, you can simply find a T1 life amulet with some crit chance or crit multi on it. Similar to what we used in prior build budget levels.

The amulet will be upgraded in the min-maxed gear.

Search for unset rings with flammability, if you prefer, you can also search for resistance and life on it.

Now that we can run double curse we need an elemental weakness ring too. Please replace the shaper ring displayed above with a hunter ring that has the mod: "Curse Enemies with Elemental Weakness on Hit, with #% increased Effect".

Crit multi isn't necessary on the flammability ring yet, I will provide crafting instruction in min-maxed gear to craft a good flammability ring.

We need a spiked gloves with good attack speed and at least one of the following mod: attack block chance, culling strike, melee damage. See crafting instruction for detail.

As for glove enchants, choose commandment of spite. It will give you lots of survivability. When you are hit, the enchanted skill will emit ice projectiles around you, killing mobs nearby so you are safe. It also leaves chilling ground which will slow down mobs that come after you. I don't have the enchant yet, therefore I still need to run labs to get that.

Crafting Instruction

Crown of Inward Eye with tectonic slam enchant. I suggest running labs when you are ready to target-farm the enchant for helmet, gloves, boots all together.

For Boots, you will need a tailwind + elevated onslaught boots.

Normally I am not a fan of elevated mod because most of elevated mods provide limited benefit comparing to its investment. But this isn't the case for elevated onslaught. It provides 10% attack, cast, and movement speed. Most importantly, it works with your silver flask too. This together with tailwind will give you an insane amount of clearing speed boost, therefore this item is the first gear I recommend upgrading.

For enchantment, the 16% attack and cast speed when killed recently is the top choice, if you like running labs you can go for penetrates elemental resistance if you haven't killed recently. But that enchantment is extremely rare.

Crafting Instruction

We need a double T1 life belt, and it is very easy to craft. For suffix, any resistance is fine for now.

Crafting Instruction

Cluster Jewels


Thread of Hope


Normal Jewels

Starting end-game gear, we start to use Brine King to get freeze immunity, therefore we get to keep the %crit chance and %armor mod on utility flasks.

Bottled faith is what we will need ultimately , it gives us huge damage boost especially during bosses and it provides additional life regen to help with defense too. If you cannot afford one yet, use a overflowing chalice.

Before talking about upgrade order, there are three things you need to make sure during the upgrade process:

1. Always make your elemental resistance 71%+ in hideout. This is so that once you enter the map with ele weakness curse, your resistance can still be capped with 7 endurance charges.

2. Always have a working gear during the upgrade so you can continue to farm. I've seen people getting stuck during the upgrade, and have no currency to go forward or backward.

3. Use jewel socket as a safe heaven to make your build viable. Suppose I messed up the body armor during upgrade, and lost 40% fire resistance and cold resistance. To get back to the game, I simply took out 3 jewels that provided crit multi and spend 5c each for 3 resistance + life jewels. Now the gear is working again and I can continue to farm currency despite the failed craft.


Now that you get the essence of upgrading gear, here's the upgrade order I used:
1. Gloves
2. Boots
3. Belt
4. Weapon
5. Body Armor
6. Flammability Ring
7. Amulet
8. Bottled Faith

Jewel upgrade can happen during any time between 4-8. It's not something you will buy all of them at once, it is a progression.

The true power of our build is defined by its minmaxed version. Clearing the most difficult end-game content with minmaxed build is a truly enjoyable and satisfying experience.

Comparing the build with the previous budget level, the minmaxed version features more than 2 times of the damage by unlocking the biggest damage potential in gears - weapon. In addition, the build's defense is also upgraded to another level through the additional defensive layers and immunities.

Just like before, the journey of minmaxing the build starts from the prior build budget level. I will provide detail crafting instruction for all the upgrades.

Happy Slamming!

Damage-wise, the main source of the additional damage comes from weapon. A finalized weapon provides more than 2 times of the damage than before when considering its additional physical damage, critical chance and attack speed.

Defense-wise, the build becomes more tanky because of the following new defensive mechanisms and improvements:

Elusive: This is mainly available during mapping and during mob-intensive end-game encounters (like simulacrum). It grants up to 15% dodge chance and 30% movement speed.

Immune to Shock: This is achieved by Pantheon GaruKhan (60%) and 3 x 15% jewel implicit. It helps significantly when encountering mobs/bosses that deal lightning damage or entering places that have shocking ground.

Immune to Chill: This is achieved by Pantheon Brine King(50%) and 4 x 15% jewel implicit. Getting immunity against chill is also a big deal because the build becomes vulnerable when the action speed is slowed down by chilling effect. This also enables a much better quality of life throughout the game.

Immune to Elemental Reflect: This is achieved by level 5 awakened elem attack support. This means we can do all reflect mods now.

Higher Chaos Resistance: With help of gear, the chaos resistance isn't negative anymore and it can reach 26%. Chaos resistance in end-game is extremely important because many times the extra chaos resistance is the reason why you can one-shot enemy instead of enemy one-shotting you.

30% Reduced Critical Damage Taken: This is helpful when you go in a map or have a simulacrum level that has mod: 300% critical chance + X% to critical multiplier. A hit that deals 3k damage becomes a more than 6k under critical strike with the mod. Mitigating that damage by 30% means you are able to a hit then recover to full HP rather than death.

Others: There are many minor but worth-mentioning upgrades that provides defensive benefits. For example, the flask enchant (used when full) + flask mod (gain charges when hit) can sustain your flask much better, keeping us tanky. We also get more HP from gear upgrades.

The minmaxed weapon is a triple T1 (%phys, #phys, and attack speed) Maelstrom Staff with hits can't be evaded craft. You can refer to weapon section of prior budget level on why we choose the base and need the hits can't be evaded mod. On top of that, we need to multi-craft the crit chance and attributes too.

Crafting Instruction

Comparing the armour used in prior budget level, this armor has an additional veiled suffix for hybrid+chaos resistance.

Crafting Instruction

We need an amulet that has T1 %Physical Damage as Extra Fire Damage, T1 fire resistance penetration mod, and T1 crit multi.

Crafting Instruction

Our build needs many skill sockets, therefore we need unset ring for both rings. In terms of mods, we need one with flammability and one with elemental weakness. Then we need crit multi as suffix, veild life+mana regen, and crafted mana cost on both rings.

The shaper ring displayed above is before GGG removed assassin's mark mod on ring, please replace the shaper ring with a hunter ring. Replace the assassin's mark mod with elemental weakness.

Crafting Instruction

For minmaxed glove, we need a spiked glove with essence life, veiled crit/elemental suffix + T1 block chance + crafted attack speed. Use commandment of spite as enchantment.For details of enchantment, refer to prior gear section.

Crafting Instruction

Same Helmet as prior budget level. Nothing much here.

In previous version we crafted an elevated onslaught + tailwind boots. Now we are going to add elusive and veiled movement speed to it.

Crafting Instruction

Minmaxed belt is a stygian vise with double T1 life, T1 elem attack, T1 chaos, T1 hybrid, and crafted suffix.

Crafting Instruction

Cluster Jewels


Thread of Hope


Normal Jewels

enchant lion's roar with 70% increase effect for more damage. Enchant other flasks to be used when full. For diamond and quicksilver flask, get the "gain 7 charges when hit" and T1 % armor and T1 crit chance on them.

Simulacrum Flask Adjustments