[3.18] Wallach's Siege Ballista Hierophant (Enjoy Consistent Character Balance)
" It is hard to say how prices will be in the next league. Siege ballista got some streamer attention and was played by Empyrean in 3.17, so it might be more expensive than in previous leagues. Taking possibly increased costs in consideration it should be still more than enough to have decent character under 20ex. Build uses mostly not very expensive uniques - fractal is usually under 5c, hyrri's quiver can be 1-2ex in very early league, 6l wildwrap will be prolly in 5ex range, astramentis without perfect rolls should be under 1ex, iron commander you will prolly find on your own during leveling (if not its 1c unique), Garukhan's flight boots can be 1ex+. Other than that you really need rain on splinters jewel for build to feel good. Those are prices im expecting in first 3 days of the league, they will obviously drop later so if you are willing to wait few days you will get cheaper stuff. I would recommed to not swap to siege ballista to early - you can play explosive arrow totems that have similar tree/playstyle and farm some money before swapping. You shouldnt really swap to siege ballista before 3rd lab and you should have most of the uniques ready all together with decent amount of dex to actually feel good about build . For defenses - it looks bad on paper, not that much armour, very low hp (people usually have 4 to 5k hp), theres not much of additional layers of defense or damage conversion - so it was my big concern when i started this in 3.17. Well what I can say is that spell supression is very strong, and you will have 100% very easy with magebane keystone. Ritual of awakening is another great thing - this ascendacy node will give you 0.5% of life and mana regen per 1 totem placed - this is very very strong defense and really big QoL in case of mana regen. Your totems will also kill on sight and freeze mobs, and with totem mastery totems will taunt mobs for 1sec after they are placed and you will be placing them constantly. Overall very safe gameplay, and im not that surprised anymore seeing people going under 4k life with this build. I leveled to 95 in 3.17 with much less problems than when i played much tankier builds (i stopped at 95 cos other new shiny games coming in that time). You will die from time to time, this amount of hp and defenses isn't really hardcore material. Defense vs bosses - what bosses ? Totem builds are usually pretty good vs bosses and this one isn't an exception. Feared/breach bosses in 3.17 were super easy, new pinnacle bosses werent a problem even with crazy mods (80+ quant). 3.18 concerns Elites will have archnemesis mods - i had sometimes problems with those (they were super tanky and when fight takes too long bad things happen). Depends how nerfed those mods will be, it might be not an issue, but we will have to see. New uber uber bosses - its hard to say how hard those fights will be. I'm pretty sure that this build will handle new bosses (super hard mechanics wont matter if you are phasing bosses with your 100mil dps) but not sure how much investment it might require - 20 ex might be not enough for that. |
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hi everyone! played SB in 3.17 and felt like it was best build i ever played!
i have a question - did anyone tried to min/max this build around certain amountt of DEX? i remember having 1400 and feeling pretty fine with damage.. So what i think - how can we target 1400 dex (for example) the most efficient way and split everything else between health/chaos res - to be more tanky? I feel like there will be problems - as i understand, the more dex you have the easier it is to get more (% modifiers help) - so is this defencive balance even efficient/achieveable? |
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" I min-maxed the build within a reasonable budget (120ex as I found the global defences fractured grasping mail). You can see the build in my character tab. I aimed to maintain life to 4k and unreserved mana pool of 120. After that everything was up for change and the final set up I achieved felt pretty complete. I only achieved lvl 98 because it took nearly 3 hours to get to level 98 from 97 due to 6-party breachstone taking so long to establish. The extra 2 levels would have given another jewel slot or two passive tree points which neither were particularly powerful. an extra 35% crit multi would have been nice but again not noticable because everything just kept dying. Potentially the only item which would have made a difference would have been a Point Blank, Extra arrow corrupted hyri's quiver. Oddly when putting it in POB it only added 3% extra DPS and I was expecting more like 15% but oh well. |
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Man what a great build guide. So well written and detailed, I love it!
I was wondering if anyone would care to explain the big differences between this build and ea ballista in terms of gameplay and potential? I have a rough idea but I’d like to know from people who’ve played it. Last edited by Geoffrois#0069 on May 11, 2022, 7:52:11 AM
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" Siege ballista will have more damage than explosive arrow. If you check poe.ninja builds, you can see that explosive arrow usually top to 30mil dps, while siege ballista can achieve over 100mil dps (depends how much life you want to sacrifice). With explosive arrow you will be more tanky than siege ballista - more hp, more armour and evasion. Both builds have maxed spell suppresion. Explosive arrow might be better for clear, because of ignite prolif, but i don't really know, might need anomalous siega ballista to compete with clear. Gameplay should be similar, except on siege balista you dont have that delay before the damage is actually done - in this case siege ballista should be safer to play as long as you oneshot everything. In termns of buttons smashing, those skills are similar, both have to place ballistas, both have frenzy for frenzy charges generation. Siege ballista gets even less buttons to click later - early you might manually cast one curse and you can also use ensnaring arrow for additional debuff - those things you replace later with fully automated stuff. Explosive arrow have infernal cry (well i saw elementalists doesnt use it) and for bosses optionaly brand and lightning spire trap (to keep combustion debuff). Explosive arrow is obviously much cheaper to start with, and you can start playing it on lvl 28 when you get explosive arrow. For siege ballista you would need to have couple uniques for build to feel good. Last edited by greenrasp#5066 on May 11, 2022, 2:59:43 PM
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" The one big thing I liked about this build over EA is the pierce. You can steamroll through maps with even just 1400 DEX. Swapping over to barrage to bosses and burn them down quick. I did not spend nearly as much as a lot of people on this build simply due to the time I was able to play. I was able to reach 1800 DEX, 4.5K life, max resists with less than probably 30 EX. I played the build the entire league and min/maxed it as much as I could. |
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" Interesting, I expected maybe Siege to be smoother at mapping since it's direct damage and you've got pierce. Thanks for the write-up. |
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" It is way better for mapping imo because of both of those reasons. |
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" The reason i said EA might be better is because EA explosion + ignite proliferation is like chain reaction, so especially on elementalist EA clear seems to be pretty good. |
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" That may be true. All I know is that I played this build all of last league and it absolutely shreds maps. Once you get a good rain of splinters along withe the pierce you can offscreen whole packs. Also, once you can get a max level awakened ele damage with attacks gems you don't have to worry about reflect of any kind. The ONLY map mod you need to watch out for is "player can't regenerate life/mama or energy shield. If you are looking for a build that has incredible clear as well as bossing, there aren't a lot out there that beat this one. |
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