Bloodmage [EA] - "Sanguine Bonemage" - Phys/Crit Build (+ some Bleed/Break)

Hi, Exiles!

I'm solidly in the PoE Noob+ category with a mere 450 hours in PoE 1 vs. the thousands many vets have. I've experimented a bit with builds in PoE 1, but always from the solid foundation of well-vetted guide. However, with PoE 2, a new game demands new guides. With things still in the experimentation phase, I thought I'd try my hand at my first build guide.

I had originally planned for a cold-focused Bloodmage for that added layer of defense from slows and freezes. However, once I got into the skill tree, I saw that some of the Crit nodes gave pluses to Physical damage, so I leaned into that and revised my plans.


We are still in early days, so this is very much a v0.1, WIP. I welcome your feedback!
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Table of Contents

1. Build Basics & Thoughts
- Pros & Cons
- Build Name (WIP)
- To WASD or not to WASD?
2. Passive Tree (WIP)
3. Ascendancy
4. League Start (WIP)
5. Skill Gems (WIP)
6. Gear (WIP)

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1. Build Basics & Thoughts
The build focuses on building up Crit chance and Crit magnitude, while supplementing the Life sustaining elements of the Ascendancy for added survivability. Things are rounded out with a smattering of Bleed and Armour Break to increase effectiveness. (I'm not fully convinced of the effectiveness of the last elements, but continued experimentation will sort that out).

Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Leans fully into Blood Mage's benefits without fighting against any bonuses.
- Bonestorm's channeling works great with an emergency dodge roll, launching the spell as-is vs. cancelling.
- Decent Bossing
- Decent clear if you can keep up Power Charges
- Keeps up a fairly consistent Life Overflow (mostly).(more experimentation needed)

Cons:
- Bonestorm's targeting, while great on bosses, sometimes whiffs on small nimble targets like bugs.
-Sometimes in the most dangerous situations Sanguimancy can quickly drop you into low-life more often than it helps, setting you up to be easily killed. (more experimentation needed)
- Not quite as efficient as some Chaos and Elemental builds I've seen, working to dial that in.

Build Name
In honor of my beloved Diablo II and even more beloved-er (and PoE-inspired) Project Diablo II, with their funny names for Bone Spear/Teeth Necro Builds, I was very tempted to call this the "Lady Boner" build. However, in the name of being more inclusive and ultimately to have a more evocative name, I went with "Sanguine Bonemage" which captures the essence of a Bloodmage focusing on bone skills, even if the skill names don't quite get called out. "Bloody Bonestormer" is more accurate, but still doesn't seem quite right, and I may end up changing the focus skills. Like the build, the name is still a work in progress.

To WASD or Not to WASD
This is a caster build, so being able to strafe and fall back while casting spells with the WASD controls feels great. I did struggle a bit with hitting "Q" and "E" spells sometimes during intense strafing, so I moved those spells over to my 7-button mouse for much smoother control. If you don't have a multi-button mouse, I still would think WASD is a better option. Hopefully, you have more nimble fingers than I and aren't bringing up your map mid boss fight instead of whatever you have assigned to "Q".

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2. Passive Tree (WIP)

https://poe2db.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABgECgh3oIN91pQxd585beNtizd8Sg0mdBtuj7cfwucNzPo3OVxK4ywjOfpQ9AhV94W4hqJ9P0tctmLhJIXl8zuPZ3CjvDNcwhXgQPcBE40YcsPyDaiiB5tdASrW242g65-LBaBTCcVHv67M99NW12ieT2ou0CDX_DLNV4CiOD9uirau8NwIif2PVXmUQ6Be_KAKU3_acpYtjsNT5uEDlpTP7DzYJzMO4f-nu-1L931rjRxSk6CFdgz4Ng19x3O5ykujg087tMjN--4gYBZk9pnoGvaioHAjE0zNr6rYkoS8r8NkssgEKcG5ri_cDiG-iavwNkN1AKJ7RwQvh6ZMnrHEWVh00wfbpAAA=

(This section is a WIP I plan to build out with multiple versions of trees to guide you in leveling)

Edit: Updated the tree to have early life on kill from the Life from Death node.
Edit 2: Massive clean-up of the tree with more efficient pathing, as well as added more life and life recoup. I also added Resonance to take advantage of a more efficient Power Charge loop as suggested in this thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3592603/page/1

So far testing on Resonance tech for easier Power Charges and Bonestorm explosions is underwhelming. Might just end up going deeper into crit and damage. If so, I would switch out the tree for this: https://poe2db.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABgECgh3oIN91pQxd585beNtizd8Sg0mdBtuj7cfwucNzPo3OVxK4ywjOfpQ9AhV94W4hqJ9P0tctmLhJIXl8zuPZ7wzXMIV4ED3ARONGHLCB5tdASrW242g65-LBaBTCcVHv67M99NW12ieT2ou0CDX_DLNV4CiOD9uirau8NwIif2PVXmUQ6Be_KAKU3_acbXUmNlDFEPrU-bhA5aUz-w82CczDuH_p7vtS_d9a40cUpOghXYM-DYNfcdzucpLo4NPO7TIzfvuIGAWZPaZ6Br2oqBwIxNMza-q2JKEvK_DZLLIBCnBua4v3A4hvomr8DZDdQCie0cEL4emTJ6xxFlYdNMFPDDWcAAA=

To be updated soon.
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3. Ascendancy

https://poe2db.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABgECgh3oIN91pQxd585beNtizd8Sg0mdBtuj7cfwucNzPo3OVxK4ywjOfpQ9AhV94W4hqJ9P0tctmLhJIXl8zuPZ3CjvDNcwhXgQPcBE40YcsPyDaiiB5tdASrW242g65-LBaBTCcVHv67M99NW12ieT2ou0CDX_DLNV4CiOD9uirau8NwIif2PVXmUQ6Be_KAKU3_acpYtjsNT5uEDlpTP7DzYJzMO4f-nu-1L931rjRxSk6CFdgz4Ng19x3O5ykujg087tMjN--4gYBZk9pnoGvaioHAjE0zNr6rYkoS8r8NkssgEKcG5ri_cDiG-iavwNkN1AKJ7RwQvh6ZMnrHEWVh00wfbpAAA=

(Will continue to experiment with alternatives such as taking Bleed or Life focus first, then re-speccing.)

1. Sanguimancy: All Blood Mages have to start here. I had read some discussions pre-EA release about holding to apply this point until you had your second Ascendancy. But it seems GGG thought this benefit/drawback combo out well enough. It wasn't as much of a struggle as I thought to apply right away. But if collecting health bits is annoying to you or you have lots of plus levels making for expensive spells, it is admittedly easier to hold this until you also have your second ascendancy.
2. Vitality Siphon: Helps, but since Bonestorm's damage is broken up across the bones, you may lose some of the leech to resistances. Paired with some sub-optimal leveling gear with Life on Hit, this was a big help.
3. Gore Spike: I had thought to take this later, but as I'm not elemental and % life is also going to have a limited effect as alternatives, so it seems like proceeding here would be fine. You are starting yo build up Life and Crit at this point on the Passive Tree.
4. Grasping Wounds: A split Tree approach to improve Crit and Life. You could arguably switch this with Gore Spike if you need survivability earlier instead.

Edit: Updated to drop Sunder the Flesh for Grasping Wounds, as it seemed that Sunder the Flesh really isn't as helpful as it first seemed for Physical builds.
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4. League Start/Progression (WIP)

Started with a fairly effective skill combo of Bone Blast/Unearth/Contagion:
Curse with Contagion, Bone Blast until dead, revive temp summons with Unearth, repeat.
Bone Blast does good damage early on, but is clunky af. Plus I hate temp minions, so I was glad once Bonestorm was unlocked!

Bonestorm has good bossing, clear is OK, but clear improves with Profane Ritual or other power charge sources for explosions.

(I did experiment briefly with Killing Palm as a less awkward alternative to Bonestorm that seemed to work early one. I may explore that more in a second test build if this one continues to progress well.)

Currently set up as detailed in Section 5.

Will test out Reap and Exsanguinate when I can to see if they work better than Bonestorm.

(This section is a WIP I plan to build out)
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5. Skill Gems (WIP)

Bonestorm / Splinter + Brutality + Scattershot (switch for Arcane Tempo if you want a little slower attacks with more damage) + Combat Frenzy + Pin (switch for Inevitable Critical if you can get Pin elsewhere)
Bone Cage / Lockdown + Spell Echo
Vulnerability / More Duration
Profane Ritual / Unleash
Skeleton Warriors / Meat Shield + Last Gasp
Life Remnants / Vitality + Cannibalism


You are not a minion build outside of some +minion damage you get alongside your +spell damage. The Skeleton's are just there as fodder to buy you blasting time. May change things out as I continue to get more gems and experiment with alternatives.

(This section is a WIP I plan to build out. I also will be experimenting with Reap and Exsanguinate soon!)

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6. Gear (WIP)

Still a mess on gear so far. Been focusing on +Physical Damage, +Life/Regen/Life on Hit, and Defenses.

(This section is a WIP I plan to build out)

Hi

I am using your build and it works well. I read in another post that using scattershot support for bonestorm speeds up channeling. I checked it out and it really works. Here is the comment

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Nekrofancy#7289 wrote:

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, supporting Bonestorm with Scattershot makes it charge almost 3 times as fast. This is because the 2 additional projectiles make it so that it prepares 3 projectiles per charge stage. It feels a lot smoother to use at that speed, even with the damage reduction the support gives.

I'm curious to see if the %chance for additional projectiles on the tree affect the skill the same way, where while channeling each stage has a % chance to prepare additional projectiles leading to faster play.

Also for clearing with bonestorm, getting power charges feels vital. If you put Profane ritual with unleash you can easily sustain 3 power charges as you go, with the occasional detonate dead.

Just my thoughts playing with it so far!

Do you think you can add projectile generation? Or which part of the skill tree is less important that I can change it to projectile generation?

Wow, thanks for the heads up. I hadn't heard this. Need to test this morning.

This tree trades out a small amount of cast speed and 10% increased crit chance for a 20% chance of additional two projectiles by adding some nodes in the Psychic Fragmentation cluster:
https://poe2db.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABgECgh3oIN91pefOW3jN372nZw8Sg0mdBtuj7cfwucNzPo3OVxK4ywjOPDB-lD0CFX3hbiGon0_S1y2YuEkheZ84VRPfdHzOs9KgRePZ7wzXMDRrAnY6bkSMhXiB5tdASrW242g65-LBaD4Ng19x3O5ykujg087tMjN--4gYBZk9pnoGvaioHB8Yw7h_6bhACczU-bM95aUz-w827-v01bXaJ5Pai7QINf8Ms1XgKI6irau8GVo3AiJ_6CFdg-77Uv3fWuNHFKQIxNMza-q2JKEvK_DZLLIBCnBua4v3A4hvomr8DZDdQCie0cEL4emTJ6xxFlYdd_A0wUT3TaGO-kghZOPXyZbWAAA=

I'll look some more, because there are two more nodes in that cluster that would increase it to a 32% chance for extra projectiles, but any further node tradeoffs are going to be big cuts to crit chance or energy shield.

I was already looking into how to trade out some nodes to get into the Power Within cluster as well for Power Charge duration and added charges.

Yeah, Scattershot makes Bonestorm feel a lot smoother. Much more likely to be dropping a full volley (which I have been wondering if that impacts the listed DPS?). You do notice the damage drop off, but more shots seem like a fair tradeoff for some damage in a crit focused build.

I think I may need to make a second Witch for some A/B testing of various build aspects since respeccing is costly. Silly work getting in the way of science!

I will wait for the updates. I've read all the BM physical skill builds. I found most of the ideas here My Bonestorm/Reap Blood Mage starter for PoE 2 - A DAY TO DAY JOURNEY TO MAKE BLOOD MAGE GREAT, but there is something odd about the passive tree, so I prefer yours. If I find something interesting I'll comment.

Can anyone confirm how sunder the flesh works because as far as I can tell it sets all spells to a base 15% critical hit chance, bonestorm is 15%. This doesn't bump it up to 30% again as far as I can tell. If someone can confirm it does then sunder is pretty much mandatory. If not I would stop at gore spike and take progenesis... I mean grasping wounds. Btw I like your tree, very different from mine. I've stacked as much recoup as possible and power charge nodes along with a massive detour into life leech.

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Justcametomind#3158 wrote:

Can anyone confirm how sunder the flesh works ....

I've seen and read people claiming it works either way. When I started this build, I thought it was a stacking crit bonus, but in the last day of testing and discussing with people, I've come to believe it is much more likely to work as you described. It brings all spell crit chance to at least 15%.

This seems great for elemental or hex builds, but not great for Physical builds, as those spells tend to have a crit chance that is already at or near 15%.

I'm doing some retooling and will start another witch for better testing of alternatives. Big, if true. But yeah, I agree with your split tree approach if so, that's how I'd go rather than fully into Crimson Power.

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Kagokito#1717 wrote:

I will wait for the updates. I've read all the BM physical skill builds. I found most of the ideas here My Bonestorm/Reap Blood Mage starter for PoE 2 - A DAY TO DAY JOURNEY TO MAKE BLOOD MAGE GREAT, but there is something odd about the passive tree, so I prefer yours. If I find something interesting I'll comment.

Thanks for link! I've skimmed and will read in detail. It seems like my build leads to more impactful crits as I skipped the damage reduction nodes, but I do really like their Day 4 update on converting Frenzy Charges to Power Charges with Resonance. Makes for more consistent power charges to improve clear at the cost of some bossing due to the support gem switches. More to test!

What would you take as a 4th and 5th support Gem for the Main Bonestorm skill?

Between this and the other thread its been really helpful.