[3.14] HoWA CI Jugg – Resurrected, Again. Wild Strike Edition. (Maven & All Maven Battles)

This is an Int stacking build that uses HoWA. We use the typical trio of CI, GR, and Zealoth’s Oath to make ES our life and get a large amount of ES just from having so much intelligence. This lets us use more points on DPS in the tree while retaining a large ES pool.

The main attack skill is Wild Strike. With the unique jewels, we eliminate the Cold and Fire portions and only use the Lightning Hit. We anoint Tribal Fury for +1 Hit on multiple targets, and the Helm Enchant gives us +6 chain for the Beam. With this setup, every hit hits twice and sends 13x2 beams, basically obliterating packs of trash mobs in one hit. This build also works with Molten Strike and I briefly talk about it at the end.

Initially, this is an Elemental Overload build. However, once you get your gear going, you will change into a Crit build.

The Juggernaut is one of the tankiest ascendancies. While huge amounts of flat ES might look nice and give you the illusion of being tanky, you are not actually tanky without layered defenses. And Juggernaut sure helps you with that.

Being a Juggernaut, we get…
Undeniable. Aside from giving us flat accuracy, this gives us 1% attack speed per 150 Accuracy. Long story short, I have 13000 Accuracy currently.
Unstoppable. Stun immunity, freeze immunity, and it also nullifies chill to a large extent.
Unbreakable. Life regen, lots of it. Reduced damage taken. It also doubles the armour received from Body Armour. We use an ES/Armour hybrid chest, so this gives us a fair deal of armour, which is rare for softcore ES builds.
Unflinching. We are basically always at full endurance charges. We burn these with CWDT IC on cooldown.

In the past, I have seen occultists run this build with Molten Strike as well. However, this guide is only for the Jugg version, even if other alternatives exist.

This is an Intelligence stacking build that revolves around the Hand of Wisdom and Action Unique Claw that gives you 1 to 10 Lightning Damage to your attacks with that weapon per 10 intelligence. Stacking intelligence, we can go up as high as 2000+ intelligence, which means we are getting 200 to 2000 Lightning Damage on the weapon. We then stack all kinds of % increases to lightning and other attack damage to make this go through the roof.

Intelligence also gives us +1% Energy Shield per 5 Intelligence, synergizing with the idea of using Energy Shield (ES) over Life here. Moreover, ES generally provides a larger flat life pool as “Blue Life,” which we can then make even more impressive by adding on layers of defense on top of the flat “life.” While 6-7k life is already a lot of life, we can go well past 10k ES with good gear.

We use CI (Chaos Inoculation) to become Chaos Immune, while reducing our Maximum Life to 1. While Marauder and the Juggernaut are typically associated with life builds perhaps more than any other character, we use ES (Energy Shield) as our main line of Defense with our 1 Life. The Juggernaut as an ascendancy is all about being tanky, but none of its passives are exclusive to Life builds. Any life regeneration becomes ES regen with Zealot’s Oath taken. Similarly, any Life Leech we have is converted into ES Leech with the Ghost Reaver passive. This effectively makes ES our Life without any big drawbacks.

As I said at the very start of this post, this is not my build at all. This is an old build. We’ve been killed many times and we have risen from the dead just as many times. We have survived the Immortal Call nerf and Molten Strike nerfs, which killed the first version of the build. And we have survived the Split Personality nerfs, which killed the most recent version of the build.

The Original (afaik anyway): https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2184746
The Split Personality version: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2807156

This is an early build base for when you are working with BUDGET GEAR. If you already have decent gear, you can start with crit (see Endgame Tree). You can PoB this yourself with your gear: will EO be better than going crit for you?

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.13.1/AAAABAEBAAbGEQ8TBBSwFf0WuxhdGdcdFB8YJScpTyy_MFsw-DH7MtE7DTwtPO88_kVHRwZMLVH7UilTDlXgVkhYWlnzXUlfamZUZp5nm2hYaPJsCG9Xcg9yqXfleBl7jH1zf8aCHoKbg1-IQonYjHaNgY9Gj_qTJ5Rvm1iboZ48oS-nCKyYrKqtCa0zrfGuPrTFtzG-isABwGbBoMHFxBXE9sauyx7NFtDQ0jjWB9eW2CTb5-RR6-7sGO_r8Yry5ve598H31_rS

If you use this and do not go crit yet, you can invest in more defenses or more DPS. You can get Written in Blood or Unnatural Calm or Max Endurance Charges for more defense. You can path to Divine Judgement and/or Heart of Thunder for more DPS (without crit). Try to also include the 8 passive Large Cluster Jewel from the gearing section.

With proper gear, we switch to a crit build whereas EO might work better on a small budget. This comes as a Path of Building (PoB) link. If you do not have it, I highly recommend you get it, as it is a very useful tool for planning out your build.

My current lvl 99 ritual build (DPS settings are for unflasked Sirus DPS): https://pastebin.com/M72JypLy

This build is flexible. This is not an optimal solution. In my build, I opted to get more defense at the cost of DPS. For more DPS you can drop Thread of Hope. Additionally, my % int ring screws me over as it has 60 Dex on it. I wanted my Str to be higher than my Dex for the ignite immunity from the belt so I wasted 2 passive points to achieve this with the ring. Lesson learned: sell the base/ring to an int wander and start over if you roll T1 dex.

More DPS, less defense at lvl 96 (DPS settings are for unflasked Sirus DPS): https://pastebin.com/XRJxv3NZ

In the past, Arakaali synergized with IC, but after the IC nerf, this is no longer the case. None of the pantheons currently offer you anything gamebreaking.

You can go for either Solaris or Lunaris, depending on which bonuses you prefer. As for the minor pantheon, Soul of Tukohama gives you some nice bonuses for standing still, while Gruthkul is another alternative for mapping.

Hand of Wisdom and Action. Preferably one with 12% int. Should be cheap nowadays given how easy breach items are to get. This is a MUST HAVE as it is the item that makes this build a thing.

Rare ES Helm with +# Wild Strike Beam Chain lab enchant. Look for Int and ES.

Chances are you will have to craft this yourself. Buy a base helm with the enchant (Hubris Circlet is a bonus, can be a worse base too at this stage) for hopefully only a few chaos.

If you are really poor:
1. Use Shrieking/Deafening Essence of Woe
2. Craft % ES on it (or reroll if you got a low tier % ES on it)
3. Done. You have ~200 ES on it.

If you have some chaos to spare:
1. Use Shrieking/Deafening Essence of Spite until you roll T3-T1 flat ES as a Prefix
2. Craft % ES on it
3. Done. Now you also have the int on it on top of the ~200 ES.

The enchant for Wild Strike is really good for mapping. I highly recommend you do this over just buying a random 250+ ES rare with int but no enchant. It will be better for you even with worse stats.

This is realistically your endgame armor too. Why?

This chest has many things you want on this build:
+ A source of life leech
+ Armour. Your ascendancy passive gives you double armour from your Body Armour.
+ Some 300 ES
+ 15-20% more damage as chaos damage
+ 25% of elemental damage from hits taken as chaos damage TO WHICH YOU ARE IMMUNE!

You can start with a 5link, but 6links are not expensive either after the new Atlas changes. This armor will never cost you more than a few chaos, so a 6-link will cost you only as much as the prophecy. The 5-link prophecy (The Jeweller's Touch) is less than 10 chaos lately.

Rare ES Shield with some 30-50 Int. Aim for 250 or more ES. Use this to get resists too if possible/needed.

At first, just get one with 14-15% attributes and no implicit. These quickly drop in price after league start.

Aside from % attributes, this belt makes you elemental ailment immune. As a Jugg, you are already Freeze immune, so as long as your Int>Str>Dex, you will be immune to Shock and Ignite as well.

These are your endgame gloves too. Get one without an implicit initially and upgrade later when you switch to crit.

This can be a wall initially as these are expensive in the first few days of most leagues. The price comes down fast, though, and will eventually reach 1 chaos per pair, so grab these only when you are ready to start otherwise. These are a huge boost to this build and I do not recommend trying to play without them early on.

Rares are surprisingly expensive early on in a league, so these are more budget friendly. These two give you ES and some stats. Rainbow Stride can help you fix your resistances if they’re ****ed. Otherwise take Sin Treks.

Lots of flat stats.

Anoint Tribal Fury. It makes your Wild Strike hits hit an additional target, resulting in another chaining beam.

Alternatively, you can look for a rare amulet with lots of flat stats. You might find one with an int or int + x base with T1 int and T1-2 all stats and some other desirable rolls (ES, crit, crit multi, resistances). Don’t pay too much for one, though, as it’s not an endgame item.

Rares. Look for these stats:

Suffixes
- Intelligence (at least 35-40 per ring)
- All stats (more int)
- Empty suffix slot (you can craft int+dex/str here)
- Any resistances you might need

Prefixes
- Maximum Energy Shield
- # to # Lightning Damage to Attacks
- Increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills

A good starter ring might have 50 int, 40 ES, and 60% resistances on top of the ring’s implicit ones. Then you craft something to finish it up. These are not expensive.

If you find a ring with e.g. 50 int, 15 all stats and an empty suffix slot that you can craft int+dex on, you can get quite a lot of stats from it with Intrinsic Catalysts (+20% attribute modifier quality)

Random examples:

You will want one Large one. Anything more is very much optional.



If this particular combination is expensive (1 ex when I bought it in Ritual), look for other ones with 2 of the 3 notables on it. Look for a random third one that gives you something beneficial. Veteran Defender, in my opinion, is the most important one. You can also choose to waste 1-2 passives initially and get one with more passives on it (e.g., one with 10-12 passives should be cheaper).

If you're on a tight budget, you can craft these yourself (or something similar). Roll these jewels with Harvest "Attack" chaos crafts. You will often hit 3 notables, although the combinations might be wack.


You can also use small ones for some more ES if you find your ES low early on.

Brute Force Solution. Look for one with 22-24 flat intelligence on it. Socket this into the socket between Marauder and Templar starts.


Combat Focus (Cobalt). MUST HAVE. You will need this so that your Wild Strike does not choose Fire. Socket e.g. below Faith and Steel.


Combat Focus (Crimson). MUST HAVE. You will need this so that your Wild Strike does not choose Cold. Socket this e.g. near Discord Artisan.

Additionally, rare filler ones for the other sockets that you might want to take already:
Intelligence
% Increased Maximum Energy Shield
Resistances (if you need more)
Lightning damage / one-handed weapon damage or attack speed mods etc.
Critical mods if you are going crit already

You can also pick expensive unique ones but check the endgame gear section for those.

Make sure your Lightning Resistance is the highest uncapped to make use of Wise Oak. Pay attention to this while gearing. You can get Lightning res from jewels etc. as a bandaid fix too.

For the last slot, pick whatever you prefer. We ultimately use Bottled Faith but that is not a budget option.

Some budget options:
Vinktar for DPS (with high flat lightning)
Normal Sulphur Flask for the Consecrated Ground. You can roll curse immunity on it since you do not have it with budget gear.

You do not need a quicksilver since you will use whirling blades to move, not run speed.

Still HoWA. Look for a crit implicit corruption with 12% int and other high rolls. Anything else (like +range quality) is a bonus.

Alternatively, you can look for a freaky rare claw with the # to # lightning damage per 10 intelligence influence mod. It will be tough to beat HoWA, but you can beat it. The easiest way to make one is to look for a Synthesised Claw with it as an implicit. It would look something like this without influence mods:
Prefix 1 - # to # Lightning Damage (T1-2)
Prefix 2 - Elemental Damage with Attack Skills
Suffix 1 - Crit Multiplier
Suffix 2 - Attack Speed
Suffix 3 - Crit Chance/Crit+Quality/Whatever

This time with % intelligence influence mod. This is a pretty basic helm with the added influence mod. This is enough, and anything past this is definitely a luxury. Other things to look out for are the conflux mod, for example.

THIS CRAFTING MINIGUIDE MIGHT BE OUTDATED AFTER THE HARVEST NERFS! I'm not 100% clear on what they did with R/A Influence, but I assume it's gone. If you can no longer R/A Influence, you will have to e.g. simply Essence spam after Hunter Orbing. Just settle for lower int and use lower tier Essences if you do that.
Seeing as you are probably unable to find a helm like this with the right enchant, you will have to craft one yourself. This is one way to do it:
1. Get a non-influenced base with the Enchant, ilvl 82+
2. Spam Essence of Spites until you get a good ES prefix set. Ideally T1 Flat with a minor ES with Life/Mana/Stun Resist so that you can craft % ES and call it a day. Trying to hit two T1s spamming Essences will cost you a pretty penny. If you do hit T1 Flat, you can craft % ES and slam defense with Harvest (after e.g. removing pure Life if possible) and hope for a decent tertiary ES roll.
3. Make sure there are no empty prefixes and 1 or more empty suffixes
4. Use Hunter Orb
5. Hope it hits % Intelligence
6. Add/Remove Influence Mod until it does if it did not

That is expensive, however. You could just roll Shrieking Essence of Spites until you also get the % Intelligence, which might be cheaper but might take forever.

Same thing. See explanation in the budget section.

Alternatively, you can opt for an influenced rare ES chest with flat intelligence and % intelligence. You can also get a splodey chest with the explode mod if you have currency to burn and nothing else to buy. I do not like pure ES bases personally as having some armour does wonders for small mob hits. You’re also losing other things by dropping your Incandescent Heart, but with good enough a rare chest you can also net some other benefits.

This is the most straightforward option, and the more expensive one. This shield has everything we want: ES, Evasion (you heard right), intelligence, all resistances, and the amazing curse immunity. Do not underestimate how nice curse immunity is when it comes to avoiding random deaths and simply ignoring any map curse modifiers.

This shield has 900 evasion. This seems like nothing, but the Shaper’s Touch gives us 2% evasion per 10 intelligence. With 1500 intelligence, this is already 300%. This shield alone will give you a reasonable amount of evasion, which serves to make you that much tankier.

Alternatively, with changes to the build...

A Rare Shield with % ES on Block
300+ ES
40-50 Intelligence
Recover 5% ES on Block

This is a shield that can add another layer of defense to your build. However, you will have to sacrifice DPS for this tankiness, as you will need to take block nodes on the tree for this shield to matter. If you go down this route, also pick up a Rumi’s flask. I do not have a PoB for this alternative, but you would take Glancing Blows and the nodes leading up to it, as well as other block nodes e.g. near the Soul Raker claw node. Additionally, you will have to get a Warding Flask if you wish to be Curse Immune with this shield.

Cyclopean Coil, still. This time you’ll just want 14-15% attributes and 4-6% intelligence from the corruption implicit, coupled with 20% quality for attribute modifiers. This belt can go up to 18+7% increased intelligence!

If you wish to get your elemental ailment immunity with other items (helm + gloves suffix and e.g., cluster notables), you can also opt for a rare belt. In this case, look for a synthesized belt with 18% intelligence as implicit and craft from there. You know the drill by now: int, ES, % elemental damage with attacks etc.

We have so much stats and we get bonuses from our Juggernaut ascendancy from having a lot of accuracy that these gloves continue to be great in the endgame. Just get the % crit corruption.

Rares. You have two options here. Also get the elemental damage penetrates % resistances if you haven't killed recently labyrinth enchant on whatever boots you decide to stick with (I forgot to do it).

1) Sorcerer Boots with ~180-200 ES, ~50 Intelligence, ~30% MS. You can also use Aspect of the Spider. You will have to get some more mana reduction from one of the Aura clusters, however, and may have to adjust the level of your Precision gem as well, depending on how much you invest into which node. This is the cheaper option.



2) The more expensive option is to get those Tailwind (+ Elusive if you have the currency) boots with Intelligence and ES. You are a crit build so these will work for you just like they work for wanders. As Tailwind no longer has a crit tag, crafting these is a pain if you want the int on them specifically.

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Perhaps only relevant for Ritual league, but given how much accuracy this build sports, Stormrider Boots from Ritual are a great base if you wish to prioritize DPS. They provide 1 to 6 Added Lightning Damage per 200 Accuracy, at the cost of 25% Less Accuracy. If these boots make it into the game past Ritual, it is definitely something to keep an eye out for.

However, chances are you will be crafting your own pair since they are not a popular base. Int and Tailwind.

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You can also look at Death's Door. These boots give you some ES, all resistance, and some strength, and Bleed Immunity. You lose a lot of other things, though, including flat int.

This is where things get really expensive if you want the best. You will want those rare double influenced necks the Wanders also use.

You will want some combination of the following influenced mods (or ideally all of them):
% Increased Intelligence
% Increased Attributes
1% Increased Damage per 15 Intelligence
Damage Penetrates % Elemental Resistance

On top of these, or in place of these, look for flat int, global crit multiplier, or flat and % ES. Above is my example neck from Ritual. When looking to buy one, make sure to check how much of an upgrade it is over Astramentis for your setup. Astramentis can be surprisingly good compared to budget versions of necks like this. At very least, you will need intelligence AND attributes or either one with the damage per int mod for it to be notably better.

You can initially buy one with just int and stats or int and damage per int. This can cost you something like 5-10 ex. You will most likely be able to get your money back if int builds continue to be popular in the next league. I bought my placeholder amulet for 10 ex and sold it for 11 when I swapped to the one above.

If you want to craft one yourself, you would be using an Awakener’s Orb on a shaper T1 % int and a Crusader T1 % stats and then harvest crafting the rest. It is really expensive if you keep failing to hit the damage per int roll and I really do not recommend trying to craft an endgame one yourself unless you have currency to burn on bad luck streaks. After the Harvest nerfs, R/A Influence with suffixes cannot be changed is no longer an option, probably, so you're left with rerolling prefixes while keeping suffixes after getting stats% and int% in the suffixes.

Anoint Tribal Fury. It makes your Wild Strike hits hit an additional target, resulting in another chaining beam.

Synthesised or Influenced rares. You have three main options:
(1) Synthesised ring with % Intelligence implicit
(2) Synthesised ring with Onslaught on Hit implicit
(3) Influenced ring with a Conductivity on Hit mod

The conductivity ring can guarantee Conductivity uptime and saves you a gem slot from your CWDT setup. I opted for the synth rings myself. You can craft those yourself with Harvest crafting.

How I made mine in 3.13. After the Harvest nerfs, this will no longer applicable. You can still use this for ideas, though, since reroll prefixes is still possible afaik.
(1) Essence of Spite until you get 1 other decent Suffix.
(2) Craft a random suffix to fill up suffixes (temporarily). Reroll prefixes while keeping suffixes until you hit T1-T2 ES, Lightning, or Elemental Damage with Attack Skills.
(3) Start Adding or Add/Removing Prefixes (Defense or Lightning) while blocking Lightning Resistance from appearing if you are doing Lightning. I.e. making sure your crafted temporary suffix isn't a lightning one.
(4) Craft Elemental Damage with Attack Skills prefix.
(5) Add the last suffix. Add a resistance you need with Add Fire/Light/Cold. Keep on using Remove/Add Fire/Light/Cold if you want a better roll.
(6) Change the resistance into another resistance if you want to adjust your gear later. Harvest lets you do this too with the resistance swap crafts.

You will still want the basic stuff discussed in the budget section:


Combat Focus (Cobalt) + Combat Focus (Crimson) to make your Wild Strike only use the Lightning Hit.


Brute Force Solution to transform Str into Int between Marauder and Templar starts.

However, look for nice corrupted implicits on these. Get corrupted blood immunity. Get some lightning penetration.

In addition to these...


Watcher's Eye. 1, 2, or 3 mods depending on your budget. You will want (1) the Clarity Mana -> ES Mod, (2) Wrath Lightning Pene, and (3) Wrath Crit or Wrath Lightning Damage. You can also consider Precision mods such as Crit Multi or Flask Charges on Critical, but prioritize the Wrath Lightning Pene as your second one (if you start with Clarity).


Split Personality. This is still good, even after the nerf. It is no longer a build enabler but more of a nicety. As we go all the way from the Marauder start point to the Soul Raker node, this gives us quite a few passives to boost Split Personality off. Thus, you can put an Intelligence + Maximum Energy Shield split personality into the Shadow Jewel Socket near the Soul Raker node. It gives you +42 Int and +42 Energy Shield when placed there. You can also include a second one if you path further down to Ranger for some reason.


Thread of Hope. I like this one. I personally like tankiness. Socketing this near the Shadow start gets you a fair deal of ES and some other nice minor bonuses, at the cost of some DPS. Aside from ES, you get movement speed, some damage, and the Overcharged notable. You can see how this is done in my PoB in the skill tree section.

Overcharged makes it so you can have Power and Frenzy charges full virtually at all times while mapping, without any additional investment, as long as you keep clearing fast enough. It does nothing for bossing, though.


Rares. Look for intelligence and DPS or % Maximum Energy Shield, or even all resistances if you need help capping them. Crit multi mods should be the most DPS alongside int. I really just used these to fix my resistances and forgot to upgrade them further.

Nature's Patience. If you want to become tankier and do not mind the inconvenience, this jewel can boost your standing still tankiness.

You will mostly still just want the Large Cluster Jewel. I personally also opted to include an Energy From Naught small cluster for that flat ES. This is not optimal DPS-wise as you do sacrifice quite a bit of DPS for some 600 more ES.

Here things can get really expensive if you want to go further than that. You would look into those expensive stat Cluster Jewels with the max amount of passives for the size:

These are ridiculously good even with just 25% increased effect. You can also get Evasion instead of Energy Shield because of how much % Evasion the gloves give us from int.

These are pure luxury and they are just something you can buy after your build is otherwise finished. If you want to keep going, you can basically replace most of your tree with these, as silly as it is. These cost an arm and a leg though so it's mostly just something you can do if you're still playing late into a league (or are just that rich early).

Just add Bottled Faith when you have the currency. And keep making sure your Lightning Res is the highest uncapped so your Wise Oak works.