Build of the Week, Season 2 Episode 3 Build Submission Thread

Character name: Valstreya

Occupation: Raining Arrows

So, this is a Rain of Arrows build starting as a Scion, that utilizes the new aura support passives and the unique Alpha's Howl to run 4 auras. For solo play I typicaly use Wrath, Anger, Grace, and Hatred, but in a group you can run literaly any aura.

Gems are - Rain of Arrows, Concentrated Effect, Life Leech, Blood Magic, Weapon Elemental Damage

I also use Frenzy for single target and more attack speed - Frenzy, Weapon Elemental Damage, Life Leech, Blood Magic, Faster Attacks.

You can use Lightning Arrow instead of RoA, but I would reccomend you don't unless you have a 6L.

There are three main strengths of this build.

The first is its versatility and ability to adapt to any situation via changing the auras you use.

The second is its synergy with other players who use non-spell attacks. I often increase other melee or ranged attackers DPS by 40-100%. This build works insanely well when partying with Spectral Throw builds.

Lastly, you don't need amazing gear. The only unique you need is Alpha's Howl, but you really dont have to worry about getting it until your well into mapping. Most of my gear is self found and not all that great, but i still manage 17.5k dps frenzy, 14k dps RoA with 4.4k health and 10k armor with grace (25k with granite)

My gear:



My passive tree at 81:


There are other paths you can take, such as going through projectile damage nodes instead of the life regen. Also I'm using Lioneye's Glare, if you dont have that, or have something better, you will want to take Resolute Technique, which is an extra 4 points.

I take static blows because the Wrath aura alone counts for almost 40% of my damage, pretty much everything i hit gets shocked very quickly.

The only real weakness of this build is elemental reflect, but there are several ways of dealing with that. You can replace weapon elemental in your RoA with Life on Hit, or replace your Anger aura with Determination.

My post on the first page has been edited to reflect my updated build for my character Neiynia with the recent aura changes.

Dual Totem Incinerate witch with Frostwall, and summoning.

Incinerate totems with 6 link chest piece (GMP, Fast Cast, Fast Projectile, Item Quantity)
Dual Curse boots for Flammability and Temp Chains.

I run 3 Auras plus have 4 Zombies and 8 Skeles to act as cannon fodder (dropped down to one Spectre as it just became annoying raising them).

This build destroys anything while you never have to personally engage anything. The shotgun effect of the Dual GMP Incinerate means bosses melt in seconds while the totems cant be killed because they are behind the Frostwall (with a Inc Duration gem).

I solo any map. When farming -- my rings and gear become Magic Find. Only time I switch is for Piety as her lightning hits hard.

I use fire traps as well but they are really only an afterthought. The Twin Totems of Fire spewing death is what the damage is all about.

Not heavy gear dependant --- just not a good leveling build. Comes into its own past 50, but you can Dual Spork or Fireball until you get the Incinerate gems and Faster Projectiles leveled up (need the distance of streams).

Kole is a 2 second kill in Merciless --- piety about 20 seconds. Sometimes she will flee and then it is a 2 minute battle until I pin her down.

Map bosses are a joke. Only map I dont care for ones full of Reflect Damage that kill my totems. Then I have to use the Firetraps more often. But they only kill the totems and not me. I NEVER engage a fight...its all totems, skeletons, zombies, and a Frostwall for me and the totems to hide behind.

Chris I think it would be really cool if you guys used some of the rogue exiles for build of the week, assuming their builds still work (I'm pretty sure igna phoenixs would no longer really work after 1.0), but it'd be really cool to see how some of them are setup if they have genuine equipments and passive trees.

Hi, I'm a first time submitter and not really a hardcore player, tho I had some hardcore luck with a drop of Kaom's heart in Domination league :)

I wanted to submit my lvl 72 Scion, that started with spectral throw but I eventually went "meh" with that.

passive tree :


gear

Natural enemies:
physical reflect (not much tho, completed a map of 20%ph refl),
DESYNC, tight walls,
big packs of ranged extra critical things,
FREEZES

Main skill is cyclone, that is augmented by 3 direct gems (added fire, life on hit, multistrike, (extra area effect coming from that awesome Erqi), + 2 gems for extra fun and speed - cast on kill + detonate dead).

Idea is that this char can jump pretty much into any room full of anything, and with cyclone, life leech and life on hit, it keeps the meager 3172 hp pool filled. Also exploding corpses all around. Also one cyclone consumes almost all of existing mana pool (257 currently), but that's where mana leech comes into play (and sometimes splash linked heavy strike), if cyclone does not leech mana back up in time to fire a second one, I go heavy strike and reduce some damage with knockback+regain mana in the meantime, and when mobs come close, im all cyclone again. Cyclone in full rool recharges full health in a second or two, and that's without vaal pact.
Another interesting thing is dealing with desync - during my multiple deaths for it I found that fast leap slam, helps to restore your in-server possition with in-game possition, and many times that helps alot.


I don't yet have cast on damage taken leveled to get up the proper molten shel rolling, but it's close.
Another upgrade I'm looking to get is either Alpha's howl (bonus points for extra auras) or at least dreamfragments, this is because freezing is the only way I die at the moment.

Currently by the lvl 80 I plan to take +3 +15 attack speed and then all the rest into extra life nodes, to hit 5k hopefully, and increase survivability.

Also in the market or lookout for better gloves, as I have unique belt that gives mana/life leech too.

All in all the key for sustainability of this char is BIG mobs of npcs, and mana leech, because it just keeps the wheel spinning (literally)

Name: Mariawald

The Build: Traps and Mines with a Point Blank Chin Sol



My Gear:



Gems:

AoE attack 1 : Lightning Arrow + Trap + Multitrap + LMP + Chain
AoE attack 2 : Explosive Arrow + Multitrap + Fire Pen + LMP + Trap link from Deerstalker
Single Target : Elemental Hit + Remote Mine + Trap + WED

Why This Build Trivializes Content:

1) It is immune to reflect.
2) It is basically immune to projectile attacks thanks to double evasion.
3) The damage modifiers become grotesque very quickly for skills which are normally very hard to optimize damage modifiers for. Allow me to demonstrate the math for my Elemental Hit single target attack:


4) In an ideal situation, my Lightning Arrow will hit 135 times dealing 325 dmg on average per hit. Anything near the trap will instead take 975 dmg because of Point Blank and Chin Sol together. This means I would deal 131,625 total damage (per cast) to a pack of closely bunched enemies (i.e any packs which emerge from the ground, bandits, etc.)

5) Do you have any idea how hard it is to get +163% Fire damage passives for Explosive Arrow?
It benefits from my trap passives and I get to reap the insane rewards of 9 explosive arrows per cast.


I know that the previous build of the week was a Trap and Remote Mine character, but this one does an insane amount of damage with fairly mediocre gear (I don't even have a 5L Chin Sol or a 6L chest). It is also really fun to play and makes the most satisfying sounds.


Edit: added a screenshot

Alright, I'm not sure if my build is considered godly and OP enough, as I am not running high level maps at all. The most "difficult" encounter I am facing regulary is Dominus, who doesn't seem too much of a problem for this build.

Keep in mind the gear is far from ideal and even more improvised ever since the recent nerf to Purity, which I had to adapt to by suboptimal gear choice mainly. I do miss my +5max resists, but well.. That's how PoE works sometimes ;)

The idea of the build was to utilize Arctic Armour, simply because I think it's an incredibly powerful buff and I enjoy playing tanky charcters.



Arctic Armour sort of implied going Eldritch Battery.

Using Eldritch Battery makes one think "Where do I get armour from?" - Which encourages the Iron Reflexes, Grace and Determination Combo.

It got substantially buffed with release, as any bonus to Grace gets multiplied by the (as well increased) Determination effect. So bonus to buffs and auras were mandatory.

Same counts for Clarity, which provides (especially in combination with some mana regeneration bonuses from items and passives) stupidly high amounts of mana regen.

Already using Edlritch Battery and being close because of Iron Reflexes, using Mind over Matter is a no-brainer.

Using a high level Arctic Armour with the Inner Force cluster makes you almost immune to any small hits. Big hits and spells however still pose a threat:

Avoiding big hits works best with some life and high block/evasion. Evasion with Iron Reflexes does not seem to work, however exploiting its highly effiecient interaction with Blind, it does become an option which offers around 78% pseudo-evade.

Having high mana regen and wanting continuosly blinded bosses, Incinerate with Blind (11 hits per second) is an obvious choice, as it also provides high amounts of damage if you are able to stand still and tank, which is the designated goal of this build.

Using Eye of Chayula and Alpha's Howl makes a convenient (not mandatory) way not to get interrupted ever.

My first version of this build also used capped block chance, but it turned out it was too high of an investment. The higher your evade chance is, the less effective your block chance gets. 50% block chance halves the remaining 22% chance to hit, 75% makes it a quarter. So we are talking of effective 2-3% difference!

Since blocking small hits isn't necessary anyway, this build exploits high amounts of Spell Block offered by Rainbowstrides, Templar Shield Cluster and of course Saffell's Frame, which also provides +maximum resists, while not really lowering my defenses, as I don't need to block any trash mob hits.

With minmal investement into block nodes I therefore achieve 75% spell block and +5% maximum resists, which highly increases my survivability against spell casters and elemental damage hits.

For killing of trash mobs this build uses Molten Shell with Ele Prolif, IAoE and Increased Burning Damage. That's as well a no-brainer, since I can tank trash mobs anyway without getting hurt.

The last (and not even remotely mandatory) trick this build uses, is a Cloak of Flame. Since my armour is sufficient (12000), its interaction with Arctic Armour offers a high amount of damage reduction against high physical damage (like Kole). It's like having perma 5 endurance charges up. Even without gear optimization, this build can tank Merciless Vaal Smashes this way (haven't tried since new patch, maybe the missing 5% max fire resists changed this quite a bit).

It therefore means: 22% chance to get hit, when switching to a normal block shield around 10%, while also being able to tank these hits easily and constantly life leeching via Incinerate.

Keep in mind that Arctic Armour reduces reflected fire damage as well, which makes this build immune to reflect (as long as resists are decent in case of Molten Shell).

I haven't been in a situation where Granites and/or these new league evasions flasks would have been necessary, but that's of course another defensive option.

Further skills used: CoDT + Enduring Cry + a level 5 enfeeble to switch in for long lasting fights (like demon Dominus), Enfeeble with Increased Duration, Flammability with IAoE for damage purposes, Enduring Cry to use manually.

Passive Tree:



Gear:



What I'd love to get is a 6L to incorporate Fire Penetration, which would highly increase my DPS against bosses, but that's luxury I guess :) When considering this build to farm, one can use purity in addition and witch in an Andvarius and a pair of Auresize I guess :)
I also hope to get an alright pair of switch weapon + shield up until possible demonstration.


When evaluating this build, please keep in mind it's far from being optimized, especially gear-wise. Its goal was mainly to try out some defensive combos, which did work quite well in my opinion ;)

Optimization would be mainly in terms of gear. Neither Alpha's Howl, Eye Of Chayula or Cloak of Flame are actually needed. Replacing these parts by some GG Hybrid or pure ES pieces with +max life would probably increase the survivability quite a bit. I simply don't want to afford them yet :)

It's a standard league build with only 2500life + 700 mana. It's far fom ideal, but as long as I don't die, it seems to be sufficient :)

IGN: Black_Pudding, Standard League

I was wrecking maps with both the builds I've written actual guides for...but the characters themselves aren't available for playtesting after the reset. Go figure. I don't normally keep builds that I'm not actively working on and those two were in a state of completion.

Let me just see if I can persuade some devoted follower to submit their character made on my build, haha.

DON'T DO IT!!! JUST DON'T DO IT!!!

Please don't post your fantastic build that works super great at high levels! GGG is all about nerfing these days and as soon as they analyze your build to see what you did to exploit a weakness/flaw in PoE to face roll high levels you have to know that GGG will nerf that build and combo that makes it work so great.

While GGG was publicly congratulating Sir Baker for getting a hardcore character to level 100 in open beta privately they sit in their weekly progress and to do meetings saying things like "I thought we had made a hardcore arpg that would take years to reach level 100" or "we need to keep players from reaching level 100 too fast so figure out what the players are doing and nerf them". It's bad enough that the average, repeat AVERAGE player is very happy to finally create a build that works in Merciless so we don't need the PoE elitists showing GGG how well their build trivializes end game maps and handing GGG the blueprints of their build so they can do another round of nerfing.

One of you gets 1 week of PoE fame with your build being showcased and the rest of us end up getting another round of nerfing frustrations.

Maybe Obiwan is our only hope... naaa, he died a long time ago. Sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"

Arrowneous wrote:

DON'T DO IT!!! JUST DON'T DO IT!!!

Please don't post your fantastic build that works super great at high levels! GGG is all about nerfing these days and as soon as they analyze your build to see what you did to exploit a weakness/flaw in PoE to face roll high levels you have to know that GGG will nerf that build and combo that makes it work so great.

While GGG was publicly congratulating Sir Baker for getting a hardcore character to level 100 in open beta privately they sit in their weekly progress and to do meetings saying things like "I thought we had made a hardcore arpg that would take years to reach level 100" or "we need to keep players from reaching level 100 too fast so figure out what the players are doing and nerf them". It's bad enough that the average, repeat AVERAGE player is very happy to finally create a build that works in Merciless so we don't need the PoE elitists showing GGG how well their build trivializes end game maps and handing GGG the blueprints of their build so they can do another round of nerfing.

One of you gets 1 week of PoE fame with your build being showcased and the rest of us end up getting another round of nerfing frustrations.

Maybe Obiwan is our only hope... naaa, he died a long time ago. Sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What? Do you want a balanced game or a broken game?