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With Path of Exile 3.24 launching soon, here we’ll review everything we know so far about Necropolis League mechanics and rewards, as well as the implications of this League mechanic on what build and farming strategies you should be playing. If you want to get a head start when entering the league, be sure not to miss this guide. Let’s get started!
First, let's talk about everything we know so far about the league mechanics.
Necropolis is a crafting league that has many similarities to Bestiary, Harvest and Delve.
Before entering each area, you’ll see a UI pop-up, Lantern of Arimor. This UI will show you some Spirits, their associated monster modifiers, and each monster pack that can be spawned locally in the area.
Using this UI, you can move spirits onto any monster you want and assign modifiers to parts of those monsters. Lantern UI also displays detailed information about monster packs in the area, including key information such as pack density. It allows you to assign modifiers to monsters to diminish or reduce effects, or maximize bonuses from high-tier or beneficial modifiers.
It is worth noting that this league mechanism affects all zones, including league zones such as Heist Contracts and sub-zones such as Abyssal Depths.
What I really want to emphasize about this mechanic is that it is mandatory. You cannot opt out of this mechanism. Every area you enter has Haunted Spirits, which make monsters stronger and more dangerous. But you do want to make sure your build can handle these difficult spikes.
There are two types of Spirits you can find in Lantern: the more common Haunted Spirits and the rare Devoted Spirits.
Haunted Spirits come in various tiers. The higher the tier, the stronger the monster modifier, and provide better rewards for slain monsters haunted by those spirits. These better rewards come as increased chances for monsters to gain “Unresolved Anguish”.
This simply means that monsters will drop collectible corpses when slain, increasing the drop chance of Embers of The Allflame, and increasing the chance of getting Devoted Spirits for each haunted monster killed for future Lanterns.
It’s worth noting that all of this only applies to monsters that spawn locally in the area. Later, monsters spawned from the league mechanic will not be haunted, and in fact will not even appear on Lantern.
The second type is Devoted Spirits. Unlike Haunted Spirits, these Spirits grant modifiers with beneficial effects on the player. This can include Magic Find, increased XP, and monster spawning things like Lesser Shrines, Strongboxes, and Nameless Seers.
Your chance of gaining Devoted modifier increases based on the number and level of haunted spirits you killed in the previous area. This means that placing higher level, more difficult modifiers on a high density of monsters will result in more Devoted Spirits appearing in subsequent areas.
If you’re not interested in the crafting part of Necropolis, this could very well be a way to flesh out your map and get extra rewards. Not only are you likely to have highly profitable Devoted Spirits, but it’s worth noting that these modifiers may increase the monster’s item count and rarity. Whatever modifier you gain will allow you to expand your loot.
Next up is Ember of The Allflame. These are consumable items that drop haunted monsters, and can be used with Lantern UI to replace monster packs with different special monster packs. Most of these special monsters have additional items to drop, including some very exciting ones that drop tattoos!
It’s worth noting that these special monster packs will inherit the density of the monsters they replace, so you may want to use them on the densest monster packs available to maximize the number on the map.
The important thing about Embers of The Allflame is that at least some of them can only be dropped from specific content or even specific monsters. It’s possible these items will be linked to specific maps or content types, but that’s unclear at the moment, and it’s something we’ll have to figure out once the league goes live.
The ultimate effect of Haunted Spirits is Unresolved Anguish. A certain percentage of haunted monsters will have this modifier, which makes them collectible corpses when killed.
These corpses have a crafting modifier and inherit the monster’s name, monster type, and monster level. In addition, the developers also stated that at least some monsters from Embers of The Allflame have exclusive crafts associated with them.
If this applies to all monsters, and popular crafts only come from specific monsters or maps, then much of the league’s strategy will revolve around trying to farm those specific crafts.
Finally, it’s time to talk about the crafting part of this crafting league, Exorcism Crafting.
The corpses you collect from slain, haunted monsters can be consumed in large quantities to create single items. Each corpse has a crafting modifier that affects the items created.
How it works is that you’ll travel to Necropolis Graveyard, bury any number of corpses, and then exorcise all of them, and the items you craft will gain all of their combined effects.
It is said that there are many graves, and if you are willing to invest more POE Currency, you can craft an incredibly powerful item.
However, this design is far from deterministic. You can’t even choose the item base of the item you’re crafting, only broad categories like “Shield” or “Boots.”
In order to get the item base you want, you will need to use corpse modifiers that affect the item base. One of the new corpse modifiers is called “Modifier Tier Rate”. This is a new way to make items have higher level affixes.
While this modifier allows you to gain higher-level affixes, it doesn’t actually ensure that you actually gain that affix. This means you need to combine Modifier Tier Rate with other modifiers to increase your chances of rolling that type of affix.
Another interesting use of Modifier Tier Rate is to use it on affix types you don’t want, to reduce the chance of getting that affix in your item. Using them in this way is like using a much weaker version of Fossil that prevents certain types of affixes from rolling on items.
So what farming strategy is best for Necropolis? Since the endgame got a huge overhaul in POE 3.24, with the addition of tier 17 maps and a massive scarab rework. Compared to previous leagues, it feels difficult to make any reliable predictions this time around.
However, I do believe we can glean some important insights from all this.
For one, the rewards associated with crafting don’t match other league mechanics. Only monsters local to the map will be haunted, which means other league mechanics spawning in monsters not only won’t give you any corpses to craft, they’ll even just slow you down.
Embers, on the other hand, seem to be designed specifically for players who want to ignore crafting elements and focus solely on farming drops. Embers and their rewards will probably increase as the number of items increases. So if you decide to focus on corpse collecting, you’ll need to find ways to maximize the number of local monsters on the map.
As far as taking advantage of league mechanics, most will just slow you down. The only league mechanic that has the potential to increase the number of local monsters on a map is Shrine, but I’m not 100% sure it actually works. However, some of the new Scarabs will definitely come into play and can add additional haunted monsters to your map.
Embers farming has two parts: farming Embers themselves, or using embers to farm the monsters they spawn in the map. The details of Embers drops are currently unclear, so it’s difficult to assess whether players focused on farming Embers will do both, or just one or the other.
But the goal is to grow more Embers as you use them, and maybe even over-maintain to sell the excess Embers! Because you are replacing monster packs with Embers, you need to make sure to always replace high-density monster packs.
You may even want to consider running a map with a less efficient layout and more monster packs overall in order to maximize the value you get from your expensive Embers.
Finally, let’s talk about the factors you need to consider when creating Necropolis league builds.
What I really want to emphasize here is that this league will be more rigorous than the standard league. This league mechanic is mandatory. It makes monsters stronger, and you can’t opt out. On top of that, this patch introduces a lot of new and challenging endgame content. Therefore, I highly recommend you play with proven meta builds.
Because this is a crafting league focused on crafting powerful rare items, builds that use a lot of unique items will be at a disadvantage here. They won’t be able to take full advantage of the powerful crafting options Necropolis offers.
As for the specific type of build you should be playing, you have to take a bit of a gamble here. The fact that corpses don’t scale with the loot-increasing effect of increasing difficulty means that a clear speed build that clears the map as quickly as possible at the expense of high-end power is probably the right choice.
However, we still don’t know much about how the endgame will play out. If the best corpses come from side content like Heist or Delve, then clear speed may not be king. But a full build is probably a safe bet.
That’s all for this guide. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on Necropolis. Are you going to focus on corpses or embers? Any thoughts on all the new Scarabs we’re receiving? See you next time!
Hi, Builders! I extend a warm welcome to explore my curated list featuring the top 3 budget builds for the Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction League. If you're interested in delving deeper into affordable and powerful builds, then come with me on this journey. Let's dive right in!
To start this topic, we have the most beginner-friendly of all, the Arc Totems Hierophant with the Templar class. On this build, we use many totems that cast the Arc skill for a fast and safe clear speed.
Budget: As for budget, you can get it by destroying early endgame maps with only around 35 chaos to comfortably advance to Yellow Maps, you need to invest around 90 chaos, and for easily completing your Atlas, I recommend investing around 3 divines. But you can totally do it. This build needs 3 mandatory unique items, but they are normally very cheap and easy to get.
Pros: The pros of this build is that this build is cheap and easy to complete. Using this build with almost no investment, you have a powerful, safe, and fast character that will be the perfect POE Currency farmer for this and future builds.
Cons: To all the cons, this build doesn’t have access to Evasion or Spell Suppression, but totem builds are very safe to play. Another issue is that some players might find this gameplay to be a little tedious.
Clear Speed: For clear speed, this build gets 9 out of 10. Arc is a good skill that chains to many enemies and easily clears big packs. This build counts with 4 totems casting this amazing skill.
Boss Damage: The boss damage deserves 9 out of 10. With the right debuffs and all 4 totems summoned, this build can take even big bosses down without any issue.
Survivability: For survivability, I’ll also give it 9 out of 10. As a totem build, you’ll always be far from the action while your totems do all the work. So if you know how to mind your position, you can easily complete high-tier maps with low-grade gear. Above all, this build still comes with high armor and high block chance.
Next, we have this incredibly tanky Melee build, the Boneshatter Juggernaut with the Marauder class. This build is perfect for the Melee enthusiasts out there. Boneshatter hits enemies so hard that it hurts your own character, accumulating Trauma stacks. For each Trauma, you’re going to deal and take more damage. That’s why it’s important to gear both attack speed and armor to stack many Traumas and sustain their damage.
Budget: As for budget, this build is cheap. You can get it destroying early endgame maps with only around 60 chaos. To comfortably advance to Yellow Maps, I recommend investing around 120 chaos. And for easily completing your Atlas, I recommend investing around 4 Divine Orbs.
Pros: To reach the pros of this build, I would start off with its survivability. Even though you do damage to yourself, this build has so much armor that you won’t feel a thing. However, this build don't need to sacrifice speed or boss damage. It’s still super fast and can kill Guardians in just a few seconds.
Cons: To all the cons, the first thing that comes to mind is that you need to keep an eye on your Accuracy. This is because the keystone Precise Technique grants 40% more damage if your Accuracy is bigger than your Life.
Clear Speed: For clear speed, I’ll give it 9 out of 10. Boneshatter also creates a big pulse of damage when stunning enemies, meaning that a single blow can kill an entire pack of monsters. Other than that, you stack a lot of attack speed that causes your Leap Slam land to almost teleport you through the map.
Boss Damage: The boss damage is also great and deserves 9 out of 10. Using Boneshatter on bosses causes you to accumulate a lot of Trauma stacks and do huge amounts of damage.
Survivability: For survivability, this build is surely 10 out of 10, and I would even like to say 20 out of 10 if I could. This build achieves almost 200,000 armor and over 83% of all Elemental Resistances. All of that combined with the Juggernaut Ascendancy grants his character over 300,000 effective HP. It’s really crazy.
The last build of our budget selection is the amazing Summon Raging Spirits Guardian also with the Templar class. As we all know, minion builds are among the best out there, and this one has the best cost-benefit. It’s a very simple and safe build for you to complete all content with little investment or effort. It's also a good choice for beginners.
Budget: As for budget, you can get it destroying by the early endgame maps with only around 60 chaos to comfortably advance to Yellow Maps. I recommend investing around 100 Chaos Orbs. And for easily completing RAS, I recommend investing around 4 divines.
Pros: When it comes to the pros of this build, it is accessibility, super cheap and easy to play, doesn’t need any mandatory unique POE Item. This build is for everyone. It also comes with great boss damage and survivability. Above all, it has 3 damage auras totally for free and a minion that takes 20% of the damage for you.
Cons: To let the cons start, saying the Raging Spirits have a short duration, and you need to keep resummoning them, which might reduce your speed a little. Other than that, this build also doesn’t have access to Evasion or Life.
Clear Speed: This build gets 8 out of 10 because you have to keep resummoning Raging Spirits. Even though the clear speed isn’t super fast, it’s perfectly fine for you to play.
Boss Damage: The boss damage is great, it’s a 9 out of 10. If you apply all the buffs and maintain the Summon Spirit, you will easily reach over 15 million DPS, more than enough to decimate all end-game bosses in seconds.
Survivability: For survivability, I’ll give it 10 out of 10. This is because we’re talking about a minion build where you just need to summon them and wait behind while they destroy and tank everything for you. You just need to mind your position, but with this build, even if they manage to reach you, you still have high armor and block chance, resting on an effective HP of over 14,000.
Occultist, as an Ascendancy class, is mainly related to Explode construction in Path of Exile. The monster actually explodes and does considerable damage to nearby enemies. In POE 3.23, however, Occultist reaches new heights, thanks to the new Transfigured Gem: Penance Brand of Dissipation!
Here I’m going to share our build guide for Penance Brand of Dissipation Occultist! If you’re interested in creating this character, don’t miss this build guide!
Our skill choice is Penance Brand of Dissipation. You create a brand, which will connect to an enemy and start collecting energy, dealing more and more damage per energy. When the maximum energy is 20, the brand will deal maximum damage until the end or the target dies and jumps to another target.
But to be honest, I don’t think the build will ever reach max stack because in Sanctum, most people will die after the first damage. Even the supreme boss will die after 2 seconds. But we can use the new Specters added to the game in this patch.
So why am I not using any Specters in Affliction League? Since I always try out some Uber Boss content, and Specters die easily on the map, it’s annoying to buy new ones every time. What’s more, if they weren’t in Sanctum, they were zero threat.
However, in Sanctum, the effect of Specters is completely different. So we use Specter, Perfect Spirit of Fortune. It will bring us Wrath Aura.
Another Specter is Perfect Hulking Miscreation. This gives us 20% of physical damage as bonus lightning damage. This is a big damage buff for this build.
To further increase our damage, we will use Animate Guardian in a basic setup, with Dying Breath as a weapon, which will give us more damage and also increase the aura effect used by Guardian.
Because we use Guardian’s Blessing, and select Haste Aura, we will move faster and cast spells faster.
We also use Leer Cast as a helmet, which also gives us more damage. Gruthkul’s Pelt acts as body armor, which will give him health regeneration. Southbound Gloves will also increase his maximum health.
To keep Specter and Animate Guardian at their best, we’ll use Convocation on left-click. This way they will transfer to us every few seconds and gain life regeneration.
Because this build is focused on critical hit damage, we’ll be using a lot of unique items that will give us more and more damage.
But I want to talk more about body armor, Dialla’s Malefaction. We need 2 red sockets because red sockets increase the gem level by 2. We insert Penance Brand and Empower here.
Other sockets need to be green. In green slots, they will gain +30% quality. This is the biggest damage increase and is much better than gem levels.
With all this, our gemstones will have 50% quality and Penance Brand will also reach level 27.
We’re going to convert all damage to lightning, and then convert it to cold with Call of the Brotherhood. This is because we can deal with cold damage better than lightning damage. And we can also freeze enemies so we can reduce the risk of getting hit in Sanctum.
Since this build has such high cold damage, we can also use Heatshiver. Based on cold damage, we take additional fire damage. We also take more damage if we hit a frozen target.
Malachai’s Loop deals with more spell damage and also grants 2 additional Power Charges. We can also use Badge of the Brotherhood to increase our maximum Frenzy Charges to 10.
Also, we cannot ignore Ralakesh’s Impatience, which will give our character Power Charges. So all 10 Power and Frenzy Charges will be activated and it will also give us Endurance Charges.
In this build we also use some unique items which will give us extra damage.
Next, let’s take a look at some of the important flasks you’ll need in this build.
Then I would like to highlight some key points from Penance Brand of Dissipation Occultist on Passive Tree, as well as some of the unique jewelry used.
Each Frenzy Charge deals with damage at 2% movement speed and penetrates elemental and all elemental resistances.
Watcher’s Eye takes additional physical damage as lightning damage while affected by Wrath. We get Wrath Aura from Specters, so it’s always active. And its movement skills have a good cooldown recovery rate when affected by Haste. This will give our Flame Dash a very short cooldown.
Militant Faith Timeless Jewel with carved to glorify a new faithful converted by high Templar Dominus. Note that we assign Inner Conviction here because it may convert the node you are using into a bad node.
Green Dream Viridian Jewel will give us extra cold damage.
We use Occultist as Ascendancy.
There is no doubt that Penance Brand of Dissipation Occultist is one of the best builds in Path of Exile 3.23 in terms of bosses and maps. While this build feels clunky at first, it gets better later on, especially if you’re already equipped with everything mentioned in this build guide!
Welcome to another POE 3.23 builds guide. Each week I’ll choose a theme and show you my three favorite builds.
Today’s topic is for those players who like to stay and call the shots. I’m talking about Minion Builds. if you want to try any of them, then don’t miss this guide. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Let’s start with this classic minion build, like there are fireworks on the screen, Mage Skeletons Guardian with Templar class.
I’m sure you’ll remember that to turn regular skeletons into Mage Skeletons, you once needed a unique Jewel called Dead Reckoning. This all changes thanks to the introduction of the new Transfigured Gems.
Now we have Summon Skeletons of Mage Gem, which naturally summons Mage Skeletons without any mandatory unique items, and for a much lower price. This means Mage Skeletons become a better starter than before.
To list the pros of this build, I’ll start with its survivability. With Guardian Ascendancy, you have nearly a 75% chance of blocking attacks and spells, and massive life regeneration and the new Sentinel of Radiance can take 20% of damage for you.
Best of all, this is a very safe minion build to play. Because you stay behind your minions, they can kill enemies from a long distance. With the new Elemental Relic, you and your minions can gain 3 damage auras completely for free, allowing for massive boss damage.
Now to list the cons, the first thing I’d say is that Mage Skeletons don’t move. They feel more like totems in the build. Therefore, you need to keep re-summoning them as you clear the map.
Guardian Ascendancy also doesn’t get the speed boost from Flesh Offering like Necromancer does. So it’s a little slow.
On top of that, this build also doesn’t give you and your minions an exceptional 30% resistance to all elements compared to Necromancer. If you don’t look for minion resistance on your rare gear, this could result in your Zombies and Specters dying from elemental damage.
This build was fairly low budget. You only need about 50 Chaos Orbs to destroy the early EndGame map. To easily advance to Yellow Map, I recommend investing around 120 Chaos Orbs. If you want to complete your atlas easily, I recommend investing in 4 Divine Orbs.
For clear speed, I would give it an 8 out of 10. You have many skeletons firing many projectiles at a high cast rate. The two points I deducted are because Mage Skeletons don’t move and you need to keep re-summoning them, and also because Guardian doesn’t get Flesh Offering speed buff like Necromancer does.
Its boss damage is also amazing and deserves a score of 9 out of 10. With the new Returning Projectiles Support Gem, 100% of projectiles will hit the enemy twice. But since it’s not as powerful as the nerfed Anomalous Faster Projectiles, I removed a bit.
For this survivability, I would give it a 10 out of 10. This version has tons of defensive layers, like high armor, a 75% chance to block attacks and spells, and a minion that can take 20% off the damage for you. And since it’s a minion build, you’re always out of danger.
Now let’s take the previous build to another level and use Archer Skeletons Guardian with Templar class.
I’m pretty sure by now you all know that the very popular Mage Skeletons build nicely with the new Transfigured Gems. We also have Summon Skeletons of Archers now, so I spent the weekend trying it out and got this super fun build. So I hope you all enjoy it.
To list the pros of this build, I’d start with its balance. Unlike Mage Skeletons, this build has a smoother clearing speed and can deal more damage to bosses.
And this one isn’t complicated to build either, we just need a very cheap mandatory unique item. On top of that, as a Guardian, we still have three damage auras for free and a minion that takes 20% of the damage for us.
Now to list the cons, I’ll start by saying that while this build is still very tanky and safe, it’s not quite as tanky as Mage Skeletons staff build because it has less chance to block. But don’t worry, if you keep an eye on your position in time, you’ll have a hard time dying.
As for budget, this build is pretty cheap. You only need about 80 Chaos Orbs to destroy early endgame maps. To easily advance to Yellow Map, I recommend investing around 150 Chaos Orbs. To easily complete your atlas, I recommend investing in 4 Divine Orbs. But you can definitely do it for less money.
For this build, you only need one mandatory unique item, which is Lioneye’s Vision Armor, which already provides Pierce Support and allows us to give our skeleton one more Support Gem.
For clear speed, it deserves 9 points. We have a lot of Archer Skeletons, which fire a lot of arrows and have a high attack speed. Unlike Mage Skeletons version that uses Spell Echo Support, we can easily cast 4 skeletons at once in different locations and greatly increase their damage angle.
Its boss damage is amazing and deserves a full 10 points. It can even destroy those endgame bosses in seconds, and that’s just using Determination Aura. But if you’re playing in Affliction League, you can use Specter of the Guardian Turtle to get free Determination Aura, and Pride to deal more damage.
I would give it a 9 out of 10 for this survivability. As a minion build, you can stay out of harm’s way while they tank for you and kill everything. This is a very safe style of play.
And this build also has over 90,000 effective HP because of its high armor, block chance, and minions that take 20% of the damage for you. I’ll just point out that because we don’t use this staff like Mage Skeletons version, we end up with less chance of blocking in terms of effective HP.
Finally, we have a surprising endgame build, Poison Raging Spirits Guardian with Templar class.
This build takes advantage of the large number of Raging Spirits we can summon to stack massive amounts of poison on our enemies. Initially, I tried to make it a Necromancer. But with Guardian, we only lose a little of damage, but nearly triple the survivability.
To list the pros of this build, I’ll start with its boss damage. Once the build is complete, we’ll kill the biggest boss in just a few seconds. Survivability is also amazing, as we can have all of Guardian’s layers of defense on top of an already very safe minion build.
Now to list the cons, I’ll start by saying that this version isn’t for everyone. You’ll need plenty of POE Currency to assemble this build. Another problem is that Raging Spirits have a short duration and you have to stop frequently to re-summon them.
As for budget, this build will require at least 10 Divine Orbs to put together. Like I said, this is an expensive build.
Also, this build requires four required unique items.
The first is United in Dream Sword, which gives us Envy Aura, which deals with massive chaos damage to our minions. It also gives them a 60% chance of being poisoned on hit.
We also need a Darkness Enthroned Belt with two Abyssal Jewel Sockets so that we have a 100% chance of poisoning our minions.
Next we need a piece of Covenant Armor to provide level 29 Added Chaos Damage Support to our Raging Spirits. This means we have more chaos damage.
Finally, we need Ancient Skull, which gives our minions a massive damage and attack on speed boost.
For clear speed, I would give this a 9 out of 10. Even though we have a lot of fast minions that can destroy everything in seconds, their duration is short and they need to be re-summoned all the time, which is why I removed one point.
Its boss damage is totally worth a 10 out of 10. You can easily get over 30 million DPS, which is enough to take out every boss in the game.
This is definitely a 10 out of 10 in terms of survivability. As a minion build, you’re already out of danger. On top of that, you have a number of layers of defense from Guardian Ascendancy, which gives this build a staggering 250,000 effective HP.
That’s it for today, guys, what do you think of these minion builds? Please take a moment to tell me what you think. Have a great day and don’t forget to keep building.
In this guide, let’s talk about the Blood Magic Firestorm Inquisitor build in Path of Exile 3.23. The Infernal Mantle, is a unique body armor that’s used only in certain builds. The fire spell can greatly benefit from the Critical Strike Chance because of its immense power. However, because of the 100% increased spell damage taken while on low mana, none of the conventional builds use it. Blood Magic gets rid of your mana completely, so this downside will never apply. It also forces you to make some atypical choices.
It encourages accumulating tons of maximum life that can be used to gain damage via the Rathpith Globe. Creating a lowlife hybrid build seems like the most sound option. Infernal Mantle is a very common unique that you can buy in bulk and corrupt for an additional increase in the socketed fire skill gems. It alone can grant you an extra 5 or even seven levels to selected fire area of effect or duration skills, one of which is Firestorm of Pelting.
Reaching a 100% Critical Strike Chance is rather easy for an Inquisitor with Righteous Providence and a lot of Strength and Intelligence. It is nearly guaranteed the inevitable judgment makes your critical strikes treat enemy Elemental resistances as they're 0%. We have used Firestorm of Pelting, which has a delayed damage delivery, making it rather clunky for clearing maps.
The ability to summon up to 10 Firestorms at a time combined with intense specificity support and concentrated effect will, however, more than make up for it in terms of damage output against bosses. The build is durable with its vast maximum life and ES. It has a high block chance, life and ES Leech Regeneration, and even life gained on hit, which is very desirable with this type of skill. It also has nearly capped block chance and Frost Shield but low physical damage mitigation.
Clear speed is not that good unless you’re willing to expand on your Righteous Fire setup. Single Target damage is extremely high after it ramps up, but it’s mostly against stationary targets. The relatively low cost is what makes this build so good. One can say the Infernal Mantle is the unique selling point of this build.
It’s a hybrid build with tons of maximum life and some energy Shield. Aim to maximize your overall life total, ideally reaching around 10K. This life results in a lot of damage after equipping the Rathpith Globe Shield. The remaining damage is sourced from the gem level of Firestorm, which can easily be increased with Infernal Mantle and Replica Dragon Fang's Flight.
Rathpith Globe increases your maximum life, crit chance, and spell damage by a lot. You should be able to withstand the life drain with consecrated ground Life Regeneration and Life Leech with life gained on hit. Infernal Mantle socket your Firestorm setup here. When searching, prioritize a relatively inexpensive corrupted Infernal Mantle with implicits for increased AOE duration or all socketed gems. A perfect double corruption may grant your Firestorm seven additional levels, but settling on the inherent + 3 is good for a start. It increases your crit chance, ES, and converts a small portion of fire damage to chaos.
Replica Dragonfang's Flight amulet will grant you another 3 levels to your Firestorm skill with some attributes, resistances and reservation efficiency on top of that. Hands of the High Templar could be a better option for you if you don't require any of the mods typically found on rare gloves. Try to gain extra crit chance for spells, increased maximum life, maximum ES, and cast speed as corrupted implicit mods.
The Glorious Vanity will get you the corrupted soul for more energy Shield. It is somewhat beneficial with Pious Path and a lot of both maximum life and ES, but it can be dangerous too with Rathpith Globe. Too much of your life is being drained, which may kill you. On a Watcher's Eye, most Zealotry modifiers are good enough, but the best addition to a build will be instant life gained on hit from Vitality’s mod pool.
A lot of DPS is provided by Righteous Fire, but to withstand the burning damage, you will need a source of Life Leach found on gloves, ES Leech from Ethereal Feast notable, or a flask modifier and basic Life Regeneration from POE Items. It’s also possible to gain life on hit mod. Firestorm of Pelting's rapid hits is fantastic. Other than that, get the regular life, crit multiplier, and cast speed. Try to get over 100 maximum life with some resistances on a helmet. When searching for Eldritch mods, prioritize mods that provide physical damage taken as fire damage and increased cast speed.
The weapon should provide you with a lot of increased damage Critical Strike modifiers, especially crit multiplier, +1 to fire skills, added fire damage to spells, and increased cast speed. If you’ve chosen a rare amulet, get as much maximum life and Critical Strike multiplier as you can. Resistances, attributes, and cast speed are valuable too.
Rings should be used for a lot of maximum life, resistances, especially Chaos Resistance, and Attributes like Strength and Intelligence to boost your crit chance with Righteous Providence. Maximum life and ES rare boots with Life, Resistances, movement speed, and Attributes are enough. Acquire the maximum number of these modifiers that you can afford.
For Eldritch implicits, seek maximum fire resistance, action speed, Life Regeneration rate, or brittle ground. If you need extra crit chance, focus on maximum life, Resistances, and Strength on the belt. You can also find large amounts of Life Regeneration here. Gloves are quite simple as well. Just get the usual maximum life and resistances. For the Eldritch mods, try to get unnerve on hit and fire damage leached as life.
On Jewels, get the increased maximum life with increased Critical Strike multiplier, resistances, or attributes. Progenesis is an expensive flask that’s great on its own but here, combined with Petrified Blood and rapid life recovery, it’s even better. You may be able to cap your spell and attack block chance with Rumi's Concoction. The consecrated ground created by Bottled Faith will increase your DPS and Critical Strike Chance. There are also some magic flasks you shall be equipped with. Silver Flask with increased cast speed is the most important. Diamond Flask with increased crit chance, Ruby Flask with Life Regeneration, or Basalt of quick silver flasks with movement speed or increased armor will be worth consideration.
Firestorm of Pelting summons multiple small meteors dealing fire damage every 0.15 seconds for 2 seconds. The maximum number of firestorms you can summon is 10. This spell has a basic fire duration and AOE, making it ideal for a corrupted Infernal Mantle. Link it with Elemental Focus, Intensify, Increased Critical Damage, Concentrated Effect, and Spell Echo support gems.
Storm Brand spell is used to apply shock and with added fire damage from items, it will also ignite for more damage from fire. Link it with Overcharge, Power Charge on Critical, and Unbound Ailments support gems. Replace Unbound Ailments with Combustion support if you have no ignite chance whatsoever.
Immortal Call reduces physical and elemental damage taken for a brief moment. Frost Shield drains your energy shield to form a protective bubble, causing you to take less damage and gain extra crit chance. Link these 2 to Cast When Damage Taken to activate them automatically after taking enough damage and Increase Duration to make them last longer.
Use Zealotry for more spell damage and critical strike chance. If you have no mana reserved, you’re allowed to host one blessing Aura for free if it’s linked to the Eternal blessing support. You don’t have mana, so it’s a no-brainer. Flame Dash is a simple mobility skill that is used to ignite enemies and travel with greater haste. You can link it to Faster Casting for slightly better mobility, but that’s not necessary.
Petrified Blood redistributes a fraction of the incoming damage from direct hits into a damage-over-time effect, a feature that synergizes well with a rapid life and Energy Shield recovery rate. This effect is limited to the lower half of your life pool. Tempest Shield grants shock immunity and substantial spell block chance. Vitality regenerates your life over time, which is very important, especially with the corrupted Soul. It also has good modifiers to get on a Watcher's Eye.
These 3 auras shall reserve half or more of your total life: Assassins Mark marked enemy is more likely to be hit with Critical Strike, which deals with increased critical damage. Enduring Cry regenerates a lot of life and ES on use and grants endurance charges to mitigate physical damage. Set it up as your movement key. Righteous Fire grants more spell damage. It has also quite high damage on its own because of your maximum life. If you want to improve your clear speed, you can link it up with additional support gems, but that would require you to abandon some of the previously mentioned.
In Act 2, kill all the bandits for 2 additional passive skill points. For a major God, you can pick pretty much anything. Solaris is good if you’re up against pinnacle bosses, and Brine King good for freeze immunity. For a general-purpose major God, we recommend Lunaris. It improves your clear speed and protects you from projectiles. Minor God should improve your physical damage mitigation. That’s Tukohama or Gruothkul. Both are decent.
The passive skill tree should provide you with a lot of maximum life, spell and fire damage, cast speed, block chance, or Asylum for chaos resistance and reduced effect of curses should be allocated to pick up Iron Will, Blood Magic, Call to Arms, and Pain Attunement keystones. Allocate all 6 Life masteries, Shield Mastery for Critical Strike multiplier per energy shield on a shield, Fire Mastery for increased damage against ignited enemies, Reservation Mastery for Life res conservation efficiency, and Caster Mastery for one additional maximum Intensify.
I will guide you through a fun build for the Occultist featuring a new Transfigured spell - the new Cold Snap of Power in Path of Exile 3.23. It is seemingly the ideal spell, with very high base damage and effectiveness of the added damage, a 10% base Critical Strike Chance, and very fast cast speed. The only downside here is that it has a cooldown, which you can bypass by sacrificing power charges.
The Cold Snap itself can generate power charges on critical strikes, and if you pair this spell with the Power Charge on Critical Support at max quality, you will have over 100% chance to gain power charges when you hit with Critical Strike. With such a high base crit chance, it is trivial to reach the cap.
The Occultist is the best ascendancy for this skill. It grants you a lot of cold damage, access to additional curse, and boosts your damage and area of effect for each power charge you have. However, if you rely on energy charges to scale up your damage, spending energy charges to avoid cooldowns can be very contradictory.
The Cold Snap of Power removes the damage over time portion of the original spell but has much better hit damage. You will be easily able to Freeze or heavily Chill all enemies in the game. You will get insane damage bonuses for every additional power charge you obtain. The build is moderately tanky due to high evasion, immunity to Elemental Ailments, and a high amount of maximum life sourced from the Utula's Hunger. You can use Enfeeble as your third curse, heavily reducing the damage of affected enemies. The clear speed is great. Your cold snap can cover a wide area, shattering all enemies caught by it. The single-target damage is very good and scales with your investments very well.
You will need the fundamental unique items to start playing with this build. Rare items with basic defenses will be sufficient at first but should be upgraded as soon as your POE Currency allows.
Interacting with your charges demands unique items. The Utula's Hunger armor grants a lot of maximum life and significantly reduces the price of all other items since you don’t need maximum life. modifiers on them.
The unique Jewels are very powerful, even in the most basic version. Void Battery grants additional power charge, cast speed, Critical Strike Chance, and a lot of spell damage. You should use 2 of them. You might be tempted to use the Malachai's Loop shield for even more power charges, but it makes spending them very difficult.
The Badge of the Brotherhood is another important element of every power charge stacker. It raises your frenzy charge limit to be equal to power charges, which in this build means 36% more damage and cast speed. It also lowers the cooldown of your Frostblink.
To take full advantage of the maximum power charge, you can use Ralakesh’s Impatience Boots. These boots make it easier to gain Frenzy and Endurance charges, which are usually hard to generate. Charges must be generated in order to spend them.
Militant Faith converts nearby Keystone into Inner Conviction Keystone, which grants you more damage per power charge but disables generating frenzy charges, which you bypass with your boots. Ideally, it should give you useful bonuses for each devotion but doesn’t convert any of the picked up notables. Atula’s Hunger grants tons of Maximum life and lowers the burden on your other items. It should be corrupted for plus 2 levels for AOE gems and linked to tainted fusings. Doing so will make coloring with tainted chromatics much easier, as those ignore the attribute requirements of items.
Watcher's Eye is a very useful jewel for this build. You can use it to obtain Spell suppression, Life Leech, redirect a portion of physical damage to be taken as Elemental, or simply boost your damage with Hatred or Zealotry. The Heatshiver helmet can be corrupted to give additional power charge. It would grant you tons of damage, but you would need to get plenty of mana reservation efficiency on your Jewels or readjust your aura setup. It also doesn’t provide an energy shield, which would make sustaining casting harder.
On your rare items, you will need Spell suppression, Resistances, and Attributes to improve the damage. You should look for cast speed and Critical Strike multiplier. It is important to have a corrupted implicit on any of your Jewels that grant 2% reservation efficiency, so your Leech won’t stop once you fill 50% maximum life with Petrified Blood. You can get a lot of mana reservation efficiency, with Essence and Eldritch implicit. It should also provide Attributes or Resistance.
You can opt for an additional power charge, but you would probably need to readjust your auras, as it is hard to have both modifiers at once. At first, you can use a regular rare armor with bonuses to maximum life, spell suppression, energy shield, resistances, and Aura effect. When doing so, though, you will also need maximum life modifiers on all other rare items. It is easier to assemble, but you will miss roughly 1,000 maximum life and 2 bonus gem levels for your major spell.
Here, you should focus on defensive bonuses such as Resistance, Spell suppression, or Attributes. Although there is some damage to consider, the primary significance lies in the Eldritch implicits that apply Unnerve and Exposure on enemies. Energy shield recharge rate can significantly improve your sustain.
Your belt is another defensive item. Look for resistance and strength. You can craft a modifier that grants energy shield regeneration while a rare enemy is nearby to improve your sustain. You should use the Stygian Vice for the additional Abyss Jewel socket. Abyss Jewel is the best target to obtain the corrupted implicit that grants reservation efficiency. In addition to that, it should offer maximum life, Resistances, Attributes, and, if preferred, cast speed and Critical Strike multiplier. Jewels do not count as equipped items.
On your rare rings, you should get a lot of Resistances and Attributes to improve your damage. You should look for cast speed and crit multiplier. Make sure you can sustain the improved cast speed. Crafting mana cost reduction will also help in that regard. Make sure to concentrate on maximum life, missing resistances, and Critical Strike multiplier. It can also provide a bit of mana reservation efficiency, which will be essential if you want to use a helmet with an additional power charge.
Thanks to Cluster Jewel, you can get the Doryani's Lesson notable, which grants your life Leech. Pair it with 2 other useful modifiers depending on your budget. The Cold to the Core notable is effective in this build because you require numerous attributes for your gems. Taste of Hate is a great defensive flask that grants a decent amount of protection against physical and cold damage. Make sure to not include it when you balance your resistance, as the uptime on this flask is not perfect.
For your remaining flasks, I recommend using Quartz Flask with mana cost of skills reduction, Jade Flask with an evasion rating bonus, Quicksilver Flask with cast speed bonus, and a Life Flask with bleeding.
Cold Snap of Power deals with high cold damage in the area. Cooldowns can be avoided by consuming power charges. It has the highest Critical Strike chance in the game and has a 30% chance to generate a power charge if you critically hit an enemy. You can use the Spell Cascade Support for better area coverage and potential overlaps if you aim correctly, but it is harder to land 3 hits than it used to be before the change.You can instead use the Bonechill Support to increase the damage of the single hit, making it easier to Freeze.
Grace grants a lot of Evasion rating and helps you improve it further. It also has very potent available modifiers on the Watcher's Eye Jewel. Purity of Elements grants immunity to all Elemental ailments and provides plenty of Elemental resistances, which saves you a lot of trouble gearing up.
If you have enough resistance, you can swap it to Zealotry Aura. Petrified Blood delays the damage from incoming hits, making them easier to manage. It makes your Leech more effective and enables the Pain Attunement Keystone for 30% more damage. Vitality grants life regeneration and allows you to gain Life Leech via Watcher’s Jewel. To decrease your mana reserve, you can keep it low. You should link your main auras with the Enlightened support to reduce their mana reservation.
You will also need a bit of reservation efficiency in your gear. The Herald of Ice inflicts cold damage on your spells and detonates it around foes that have been crushed. You could replace it with Arctic Armor to gain physical damage reduction while casting. The Arrogance causes linked auras to reserve life instead of mana. If you get at least 1% Global reservation efficiency, your Leech won’t stop upon filling the Petrified Blood limit. Zealotry improves your spell damage and critical strike chance. You can also use the Hatred Aura instead.
The major difference comes from the relevant modifiers on the Watcher’s Eye. The Divine Blessing changes your permanent Aura into a temporary buff that doesn’t reserve any mana but requires an upfront mana cost, which you can pay using the Energy Shield thanks to the Eldritch Battery Keystone.
Frostbite is your primary curse that lowers the cold resistance and makes your freeze last longer on the affected enemies. Enfeeble lowers the damage and accuracy of your enemies. You can also use Temporal Chains to slow them down and further improve the duration of your freeze. Elemental Weakness lowers all Elemental resistance of your foes. You can use the third curse thanks to the Whispers of Doom notable.
Arcanist Brand is a brand skill that can attach to an enemy and cast all linked spells in rapid succession. Thanks to this skill, you will apply all 3 curses with one button. To apply your curses, you can also use the new Bane of Condemnation, which has a higher cast speed but significantly lower area of effect.
The regular Bane is not a good choice, as it lowers the effectiveness of your curses. Frostblink is a very good movement skill for this build. It deals enough damage to kill weak enemies, and the cooldown is heavily reduced by your amulet. If you find yourself out of charges very often, you should consider using any skill with a fast hit rate. You might need this setup against bosses if your Critical Strike Chance is still low or if enemies can steal your power charges. It shouldn’t be necessary during regular gameplay. Steelskin creates a protective barrier that absorbs incoming damage and stops bleeding effects.
You should kill all Bandits in Act 2 to be rewarded with 2 additional passive tree points by Eramir. For your major Pantheon power, you should pick the Soul of Arakaali, as it helps you with mitigating damage over time effects, which are the major weakness of Petrified Blood builds. As the minor Pantheon power, we recommend using the Soul of Shakari. It further reduces the damage you take from Poisons and Chaos Damage.
You will need a very high Critical Strike Chance to reliably generate power charges, so you should use any other cold spell to level up. You can start scaling crit early, but the best choice would be any cold damage over time spell, for example, the regular Cold Snap. It doesn’t require crit and scales very well with just cold spell passives.
During the campaign on the passive tree, you will pick up 2 additional maximum power charges. The third one should be allocated by the anointment on your amulet. This build utilizes 3 very powerful Keystones:
In Path of Exile: Affliction, as you venture through Viridian Wildwood, you can find a new Unique Shield: Flawed Refuge.
This new item seems to be overlooked by many. This guide aims to break down the usefulness of this new unique item versus existing mechanics to mitigate the impact of upcoming penetrating hits.
So let’s see what this new Unique Shield does: it adds Armor and Evasion. This is a very poor base type, so it doesn’t have much effect even after increasing it. And there are a lot of extra attack block opportunities here too.
Then we have two big modifiers on this shield. You take 100% elemental damage from hits that block and 40% elemental damage from hits that take physical damage. Both statistics immediately exist in the game in other forms.
What we have access to in the game is dedicated to transferring physical damage to another damage type, such as Lightning Coil, which is very popular now. It converts 50% of physical damage taken on hit as lightning damage.
But this modifier on this Flawed Refuge Shield is to transfer 40% of all elemental damage you take into physical damage, with Fire, Cold, Lightning damage coming from hits.
So the reason there isn’t a lot of discussion about this shield is mainly because it’s quite niche meta. The focus now is on shifting as much physical damage as possible into other damage types so you can mitigate the damage through resistance. But that doesn’t mean there’s no use for Flawed Refuge.
So let’s first look at a basic example of Flawed Refuge.
Let’s say a character has 75% elemental resistance and 20,000 points of armor. It takes 3,000 lightning damage without a shield, which is mitigated by 75% resistance.
However, when equipped with a shield, it will take 750 lightning damage, 40% of which is treated as physical damage. Therefore, 1,800 points of damage are considered lightning damage and 1,200 points of damage are considered physical damage.
It can mitigate lightning damage by reducing resistance to 450, and armor can mitigate physical damage. In this case, it reduced physical damage by 77%, bringing it down to 276 for a total of 726 damage taken.
So you can see that the damage taken is very similar in both calculations, but in this case, Flawed Refuge setting is slightly more effective at mitigating the damage taken.
How about more damage? Let’s say the character takes 10,000 lightning damage. Without a shield, lightning damage is mitigated purely by 75% resistance.
Taking 2,500 points of spiritual damage when equipped with a shield, 6,000 of which are treated as lightning. Resisted by 75% of resistance, bringing it down to 1,500 damage. The remaining 4,000 points of damage are treated as physical damage.
In this case, armor provides much less relief. Because it does more damage, the armor reduces physical damage by 50%, bringing this down to 2,000 for a total of 3,500 damage taken.
You can see that due to the nature of the armor application, Flawed Refuge setup is much weaker when taking larger hits.
There is one very important thing to note here, however, and that is the type of damage taken after the mitigation occurred in the second example. The unshielded setup takes 2,500 lightning damage, while Flawed Refuge setup ends up taking 1,500 lightning damage and 2,000 physical damage. This is important for damage type properties.
Let’s talk about Non-Damaging Ailments first. These Ailments are based on damage taken from specific elements.
The severity of Non-Damaging Ailments is measured based on the amount of damage taken relative to Ailment Threshold of a specific type.
So if we take the previous example. Assuming 10,000 points of lightning damage are a critical hit, this means it has the inherent property of causing shock.
In this example, Flawed Refuge setting reduced lightning damage by 40% compared to the normal setting after mitigation. Although it takes overall more damage, the portion of damage taken as physical damage does not cause shock by default. As such, Flawed Refuge setups may suffer from weaker shocks, so this isn’t limited to Non-Damaging Ailments either.
So now let’s talk about Elemental Penetration. I believe this will be the main use case parameter for this shield damage type, another property related to that specific damage type.
Let’s look at another example. A character with 80% elemental resistance and 25,000 armor with 3 Endurance Charges. The character takes about 13,000 points of cold damage and has 25% Cold Penetration without a shield, with damage mitigated purely by resistance. In this case, penetration provided 55% relief.
A character equipped with a shield takes 5,850 points of cold damage. 7,800 points of damage are treated as cold damage, which is mitigated by resistance reduced to 3,510. Then the remaining 40% is considered physical damage. Combined, this will provide a 61% physical damage reduction, bringing this down to 2,028 for a total of 5,538 damage.
Flawed Refuge setting in this example does less damage. Because it avoids Cold Penetration which takes 40% damage. And it’s also worth noting here that characters may also take weaker cold damage due to taking much less cold damage.
Note that Overwhelm has a damage type attribute related to physical damage, allowing damage to bypass a specified amount of physical damage reduction.
For example, in Expedition, you can explode a wreckage, causing all monsters to overwhelm 100% physical damage reduction. But if you’re using this shield normally, you probably don’t want to do that.
Next, let’s talk about some synergies you can take advantage of with a Flawed Refuge.
Starting with the most obvious one, that’s Divine Flesh. You can get this Keystone from Glorious Vanity Timeless Jewel, and it causes 50% of all elemental damage to be treated as chaos damage.
When used with Flawed Refuge, a total of 90% of elemental hit damage will be diverted to other damage types. This combination of mechanisms is therefore powerful in mitigating the effects of elemental penetration.
Keep in mind that you still need to limit elemental resistances, as 50% of elemental damage will still be calculated as normal over time.
If you have enough POE Currency budget, you can also add Doppelganger Guise to this synergy to make it even more powerful. This is a unique Body Armor dropped from Uber Maven. This reduces physical and chaos damage by 40%, and combines perfectly with Divine Flesh and Flawed Refuge.
In this case, no matter what type of original damage you took, just using modifiers will mitigate most of the damage.
Then there’s Fourth Vow, another unique Body Armour. It applies full armor calculations to chaos damage taken on hit and when combined with Divine Flesh. This one is powerful at negating the effects of large amounts of elemental damage.
However, when combined with Flawed Refuge, it creates an interesting setup. You’ll be motivated to stack a lot of armor to mitigate all incoming damage types from hits.
Remember that armor is applied to each damage type individually, which is why split damage types are very effective for the application of armor to mitigate damage.
As such, Flawed Refuge has some synergy with Juggernaut’s Unbreakable Notable and its natural ability to mitigate physical damage through armor stacking and Endurance Charge generation.
In this case, Juggernaut will transfer a portion of elemental damage into physical damage. This will allow him to provide more mitigating late resistance against the resulting smaller hits.
Damaging Ailments work differently than Non-Damaging Ailments. Damaging Ailments are Poison, Bleed and Ignite, whose application is based on the damage of the original attack rather than the damage taken.
Therefore, transferring damage to another type has no effect on whether the hit causes Damaging Ailment or the severity of Damaging Ailment caused.
For example, there’s a chance that Ignite’s fire damage hits will still deal Ignite based on the full fire damage of the hit, even if you have Flawed Refuge equipped.
Meanwhile, this also means that the transferred physical damage you take using Flawed Refuge will never cause Poison or Bleed to you by default, even though you also have a chance to suffer from these diseases due to vulnerability and so on.
Finally, let’s talk briefly about this modifier on the shield: You take 100% elemental damage from blocked hits. Be very careful here as these modifiers will stack and end up making you take more damage than your initial attack.
For example, if you use this shield for Glancing Blows, which causes you to take 65% of the damage from blocked hits, you’ll end up taking 165% of the elemental damage from blocked hits. That’s 65% more damage than if you didn’t block it here, so be aware of that.
That’s it for this guide. I hope you all enjoyed Affliction League and I’ll see you in the next one.
I will explore the inner workings of Frostblink of Wintry Blast CoC Occultist build, which is my favorite of many new emerging cold CoC builds in Path of Exile 3.23. It offers superb mobility, as it teleports the character just like the regular Frostblink does. However, due to the lack of cooldown, you can hook it up to a well-established Cast on Critical Strike and Cyclone gem combo.
The additional upside of this alternate Frostblink is more damage per chill effect on the enemy, which should be capped at 30%. The chill is removed on hit with this spell, so to apply it once again, you will use the basic Frostblink, as it is one of the very few instant cold spells that will not disrupt the channeling.
The greatest benefit of using a mobility spell is the main damage source, as Bronze body armor, with its unmatched local increases to gem level for ascendency, we’ve selected occultist due to the obvious synergy with cold damage and critical strikes from forbidden power stacking maximum power charges normally yields tons of crit chance.
However, in this situation, it also provides a larger area of effect and area damage. The unique items that have to be used are also heavily tied to charges of all kinds, especially Ralakesh's Impatience boots, which treat you as if you’re fully charged. You’re dealing damage with your Frostblink cast on Cyclone that has 100% Critical Strike Chance with a high crit multiplier. You will benefit from Inner Conviction and Pain Attunement. Void Beacon and Frigid Wake are excellent additions.
Enemies will take magnified cold damage. The build has a high spell suppression chance, spell block chance, Elemental damage recoup, and a sizable hybrid life pool. It cannot withstand big physical damage hits unless you’re willing to tweak the build to make it tankier at the cost of damage. Clear speed resembles that of a Flicker Strike, but you can also use a regular Frostblink to close the gaps. It’s really fast. Single-target damage is also more than enough, tens of millions of DPS.
The build uses many cheap Uniques with rares to cap resistances. You will harness the power of charges with Ralakesh's Impatience, Willclash, Malachai’s Loop, and Graven's Secret. With this combination, the character is treated as though it had all its basic charges.
You will also benefit from the absorption charges, which result in a lot of life, life recoup, and spell block chance. Other unique POE Items to implement are Badge of the Brotherhood amulet and Bronze live body armor for more damage. Willclash is an enormous bonus to spell block chance. When combined with other items, characters are treated as if they had all 10 or more power charges, and they do not lose these charges when blocking.
The damage and defense stats are also generous. Malachai’s Loop increases spell damage and grants 2 extra maximum power charges. The extra 5 levels to the Frostblink spell socketed in Bronze live will result in much more damage. Corrupt it for an extra 2 gem levels AOE gems if you can afford it, double corrupted if you like to gamble.
It could potentially increase the level of Frostblink by up to 8. Ralakesh's Impatience boots cause you to be treated as on maximum power, frenzy, and endurance charges. Conjuring these in any other way would be too inefficient and difficult. You can still benefit from Inner Conviction Keystone or absorption charges. The build is not very tanky, so using the Graven's Secret belt is quite a good idea. It grants you an extra maximum power charge and tons of life recoup from the elemental damage you take.
Use Badge of the Brotherhood to benefit from an additional 7 or more frenzy charges. These make you deal more damage and increase the cooldown recovery rate for Frostblink.
You may struggle with capping your Elemental resistances if you put Polaric Devastation on, but if that’s not an issue, consider it for extra damage, crit chance, and to cover enemies in Frost. They will take increased cold damage, and their crit chance gets reduced by 50%. A good Precursor's Emblem with +1 to max power charges is immensely powerful in this build.
Keystone of inner faith is available in the Dominus variant of Militant Faith and deals with more damage per power charge. The devotion mod shall increase your damage, grant you some Elemental resistances, Mana regeneration, or reduce the Mana cost of your skills. Shaper of Storms, Shaper of Winter, Mastermind of Discord, and Heart of Destruction are suitable keystones if you need more damage.
Shaper of Winter is particularly good to upgrade your chill and freeze for improved durability. Look for Bastion of Elements or Nine Lives, Elemental Penetration, and extra Critical Strike chance can be found as Hatred or Zealotry mods on a Watcher’s Eye. Grace offers more evasion and blind on hit. The abundance of unique items leaves you with very few rare items that will be mainly used to fix the missing resistances and attributes.
You can craft the prefix to never miss with Cyclone on your weapon. Reduce the mana cost of skills and gain Spell Suppression, Chaos Resistance, and Blocking. You need some sort of melee weapon to use with Cyclone. We recommend a claw with its instant life and mana on hit, but most weapons will do.
Craft a prefix to make your hits unavoidable and seek modifiers for Critical Strike chance and global crit multiplier with spell damage. Acquire some maximum life, resistances, and spell suppression on the gloves. Other mods are of lesser importance.
Cold Exposure and Unnerve can be gained as eldritch implicit modifiers. Rare rings are where the bulk of your resistances and attributes reside. For prefixes, get maximum life and reduce the Mana cost of your skills. You’ll probably still need a bit more resistances and attributes, so try to gain them on your rare Jewels.
If that’s already covered, go for suitable Critical Strike modifiers. You can use 1 or 2 of the cold themed Large Cluster Jewels. To proliferate freeze, you need to look for Elemental resistances, Elemental damage, cold penetration, and Blast Freeze. Medium Cluster Jewel here you may find additional Critical Strike Chance with crit damage or AOE for better clear speed. We recommend one vast power for around 30% increased area of effect.
Bottled Faith increases your Critical Strike Chance and damage as long as its consecrated ground affects you and your foes. Your block chance is high but not capped. Use room’s concoction flask for more spell and attack block chance. For magic flasks, you can pick up diamond, quartz, jade, and life flasks. Their suffixes shall increase your crit chance, evasion rating, and reduce the mana cost of skills. Life flask shall stop bleeding.
Frostblink of Wintry Blast is more suited for a trigger build, as it has no cooldown but cast time instead. Although it cannot be chilled, it deals more damage to chilled enemies and removes the chilling effect at the same time. Cyclone is used to trigger Frostblink. You can easily move and attack at a high rate. Link these 2 with cast on Critical Strike, Empower, Inspiration, and Power Charge on Critical Support gems.
A regular Frostblink is the mobility spell, which is also used to chill and freeze. Link it with Bonechill and Unbound Ailments for a more powerful chill effect, which translates into more damage. Zealotry guarantees you to have more spell damage and more Critical Strike Chance. Hits against tough enemies will create consecrated ground.
Use Grace for more evasion, which is excellent with Ghost Dance. You can swap it for determination if you prefer to take less physical damage from hits. Instead, Hatred simply grants more cold damage. If you feel like your damage is enough, use Tempest Shield or Arctic AR armor instead of it, maybe even both if you can fit them in. Link 3 skills with Enlightened to reserve less mana.
Numerous incoming hit damage is taken as dot instead of petrified blood on. It can provide you with a high life regeneration. Affects the bottom half of your life pool. Link it with Arrogance and Enlightened support gems to be just below half of your life pool permanently.
You will take less physical and Elemental damage by Immortal Call in a few moments. Frost Shield drains your energy shield to form a protective stationary sphere inside of which you take less damage and have an increased Critical Strike chance. Link both with cast when damage is taken to save your character from dangerous situations.
Enemy marked with Assassin’s Mark takes increased damage from critical strikes and is more likely to be hit with such strikes. Link it with Mark on Hit to apply it automatically against rare enemies. Activate VRF for a brief but potent bonus to your spell damage. Use Shield Charge to move around faster if there are no enemies nearby. Frostbite lowers cold resistance.
Manually kill all the bandits. It’s probably the best option. Alternatively, help Alira. This would get you extra Elemental resistances, Global Critical Strike multiplier, and 5 mana a second. It is a good option for starters.
For a major god, pick Arakaali. We don’t expect to cap chaos resistance anyway, and too much damage over time may be dangerous. As we went heavily into hit damage mitigation with block chance, petrified blood, and recoup. Minor God is less important. Abberath seems like the best pick. It reduces ignite duration for you.
The passive skill tree follows the outermost ring on the top. It’s the most efficient way to allocate all the maximum power charges and grab 2 large jewel sockets for cluster Jewels. The rest of the points are spent on maximum life, Critical Strike nodes, cold damage, reservation efficiency, and spell suppression.
For keystones, get Pain Attunement, Ghost Dance, and something to turn into Inner Conviction. Allocate 50 extra life and 15% increased life if there are no life mods on your body armor.
As life masteries, reservation efficiency as a mastery life reservation efficiency is reservation mastery crit multiplier against unique enemies and extra gem level to Critical Strike gems. As critical masteries, increased damage per charge as charge mastery, and maybe lucky spell suppression if you have any points left and low suppression chance.
This guide is about the new Righteous Fire skill for a Hierophant in Path of Exile 3.23. The build uses Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion skill, in contrast to regular RF, not only sources its damage from maximum mana instead of maximum Life but is also affected by all modifiers to spell damage, including increased spell damage from the Indigon helmet. It’s one of the most potent sources of damage that’s rarely explored in dot builds, as the dot damage doesn’t scale with it unless it’s specifically stated.
To get more damage from Indigon, get a lot of maximum unreserved mana and then spend it very quickly with Arcane Cloak to recover all this mana back. Use Armageddon Brand of Volatility with Brand Mastery that recovers 10% of your maximum mana after the brand expires, which happens after merely one activation. When mapping, there's no need to do it since you'll also gain mana on killing with Thrill Killer and/or Mind Drinker.
Hierophant is the ascendancy that specializes in mana, with passives such as Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought. These nodes grant mana damage, reservation efficiency, area of effect, and energy shield, which the build heavily relies on. The damage is sourced entirely from the Indigon. It has a damage cap that you’re able to reach with enough mana, which is sourced from items and passives.
The fire damage over time can be improved with burning damage or dot multiplier modifiers on a weapon. It’s a durable build with over 10k energy shield, a lot of evasion, and reduced Elemental damage taken. It has a low block chance and almost no armor, but the high ES pool combined with Arcane Cloak guard spell will protect you from getting killed in one hit.
Clear speed is great and restricted only by your movement speed. To reach meaningful single-target damage, you will need to spend some POE Currency. The price is high, as expected from an intelligent stacking build, but it can be assembled on a moderate budget.
The build requires a lot of unique POE Items. Your focus is on mana and intelligence. Intelligence grants mana and energy shield, making it important with Shaper’s Touch gloves. It grants Evasion. mana will affect your damage with the Indigon helmet. Transfiguration of Mind adds AOE due to the Sanctuary of Thought. Strength grants mana and energy shield. Indigon increases energy shield and your spell damage alongside mana spent recently, which is the main reason to stack mana and use Arcane Cloak.
All spell damage modifiers affect the damage over time of Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion. You can’t reserve mana, but you can reserve life, and the Prism Guardian Shield is the most efficient way to do so. Socket your most expensive and important auras here. The Ivory Tower protects you from chaos damage and grants tons of energy shield regeneration, intelligence, and mana.
There is no replacement for this armor. Legacy of Fury boots will significantly improve your damage with powerful Scorch and Explosions on killing. If you can't find any resistances, mana, or intelligence, consider replacing them with rare boots. Use Shaper’s Touch gloves to gain tons of mana with energy shield from strength and evasion from intelligence. Cyclopean Coil is a reasonably priced belt with a lot of maximum mana, attributes, and freeze immunity. Use it before you’re able to afford a better one.
Astramentis is the amulet with a lot of attributes that we recommend using in this build. Eyes of the Greatwolf with suitable rolls will undoubtedly be very expensive. You’re looking for increased intelligence, strength, or all attributes with life regeneration, global defenses, fire damage, or maximum mana. Put Shavronn's Revelation on your right finger to gain tons of maximum mana and energy shield regeneration. Since you don't regenerate mana, the downside won't be a problem. Socket Healthy Mind Jewel near Cruel Preparation to gain much more mana, intelligence, and mana on Split Personality.
A rare amulet can be an excellent option. Look for maximum mana, attributes, and resistances. The best ones will have a synthesized implicit or shaper suffix for increased attributes. On a ring, you shall get the usual mana and attributes, especially intelligence. You will probably need some dexterity too for the Grace skill gem. You can obtain mana, energy shield, attributes, chaos resistance, and Elemental spell damage from Jewels. Use large cluster Jewels to create a suitable environment for 2 of your Split Personality jewels. There are quite a few notables to look for. Most importantly, Scintillating Idea from a lightning cluster Jewel for a 20% increased maximum mana.
Mana and intelligence from Clarity are the best modifier to get on a Watcher’s Eye. Another great one is the Malevolence dot multiplier. Excellent additions may manifest as Clarity, Discipline, Grace, and even Purity of Fire. It may be hard to cap your resistances after you put most of your resources into intelligence, strength, and mana. It can be done with Ruby, Topaz, and Sapphire flasks if you’ve opted for the Traitor Keystone. While searching for burning damage modifiers on your items is an option, prioritize mana and intelligence instead.
Life regeneration will affect your ES with Zealot's Oath and is very important. You need a weapon with a lot of maximum mana and various types of fire damage over time modifiers, attributes, and dot multipliers are too very valuable. We can craft some of these modifiers. Look for boots that offer attributes like movement speed, mana, and resistances. For Eldritch mods, seek life regeneration per endurance charge and maximum fire resistance. On a belt, you can increase your attributes via Hunter or Elder suffix. Try to get some intelligence from the crafting bench. energy shield, maximum mana, and resistances are good too.
Ivory Tower protects you from chaos damage until you have no mana. Use Coruscating Elixir flask to shift incoming chaos damage to affect energy shield if your mana has been depleted and to take less fire damage. You may also use a regular Ruby flask if your chaos resistance is high and you don’t run out of mana. For other flasks, get a Topaz flask with bleed immunity and a Sapphire flask with increased movement speed if you’re using the Trader Keystone for permanent flasks. These are your 3 flasks. If not, you should also get a Forbidding mana flask with a crafted mod for life regeneration during flask effect and a Quicksilver flask with increased movement speed.
Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion deals damage based on your maximum mana to your character and enemies around you in the form of fire damage over time. Link it with Burning Damage, Swift Affliction, Controlled Destruction, Elemental Focus, and Arcane Surge support gems.
It’s important to use some kind of channeling skill with Armageddon Brand of Volatility. Scorching Ray is the top choice because of its powerful fire exposure. Armageddon Brand of Volatility is supposed to recover 10% of your maximum mana when it expires, which it does after activating once. Allocate the specific Brand Mastery to achieve it. It’s a substantial source of mana recovery during boss fights. Link these 2 with Cast While Channeling and Infused Channeling support gems.
The following 3 auras shall be socketed in the Prism Guardian Shield:
Malevolence makes you deal more damage over time and increases your skill effect duration if you have no mana reserved. Eternal Blessing support allows you to have one permanently blessed aura of charge with an increased aura effect. Link Malevolence to it. Clarity does nothing with Shavronn's Revelation, but it unlocks some of the best mods on a Watcher’s Eye. If you don’t have it, use Vitality instead or alongside it if you have enough life. Link it with Arrogant support.
Your entire mana pool has to remain unreserved. Activate Arcane Cloak to spend 64% of your current mana and gain up to 2,000% increased spell damage from Indigon. Spending a minimum of 16,000 mana in just 4 seconds is necessary to reach this aspirational cap, but it's not practical to attempt with any other skill. Link it with Less Duration and Swift Affliction to use it again sooner. Flame Dash's ability is the curse that lowers the fire resistance of your enemies. If you don’t want to cast it, get a slightly worse Elemental Weakness on hit as a corrupted glove implicit, as we did. You can link your curse gem to Hextouch support to proliferate the Hex.
Shield Charge is simply used to travel faster. Spending mana within Sigil of Power enhances its strength, leading to reduced damage from enemies.
Kill all the bandits in Act 2. You will need the two extra passive skill points the most. For a major God, we recommend the Soul of Arakaali to take less damage over time and less chaos damage over time after an upgrade, which is good if your chaos resistance is not yet capped. The selection of minor Gods offers a variety of bonuses. We recommend something to take less physical damage or less damage over time against the type of damage you struggle with the most. We have picked Shakari for better protection against poison.
The passive skill tree resembles an S shape to squeeze out more mana and intelligence from forbidden jewels. So if you don’t have them, opt for a more optimized shape. Aim mostly for maximum mana, some energy shield, and intelligence. Fire damage and damage over time are less important. Eternal Youth will be transformed into the Traitor Keystone. Allocate also Zealot Oath, Iron Will, Pain Attunement, and a single brand cluster. Get passive energy shield regeneration and shift the stun threshold to ES. Two energy shield masteries lessen damage taken. As for mana recovery after using Guard skill, as mana Mastery, increased attributes as attribute Mastery, and mana recovery when brand expires as Brand Mastery.
Path of Exile 2 has revealed new gameplay, a boss fight, and a new class called the Mercenary.
Additionally, new features of the game include changes and new additions to the combat. This is really looking like a straight-up improvement to the isometric genre.
Let's go through the cool new things coming in Path of Exile 2.
Firstly, let's go over the confirmation of the new changes to how you can control your character and this applies to any class and any weapon type.
You can now use WASD movement to control and move your character, allowing you to move separately while aiming. You can still use traditional click-to-move if you want to.
On top of this, there are changes to many character skills whereby you can move while casting, increasing the pace and intensity of combat.
Honestly, these changes together are great news to me, and it really does impact how the game will feel to play.
Regarding the Mercenary class, then we got a really good look at the new Mercenary class, which is a new crossbow-wielding character.
This class comes with unique crossbow options, mimicking a variety of different firearm types but in crossbow form.
They wanted this class to feel both responsive and snappy when firing the crossbow, similar to how shooting in first-person shooter games feels. So, they've gone deep into making different crossbows that function kind of like a sniper rifle, a shotgun, and even assault rifles.
These crossbows are layered on top with different elemental ammo types and even attachments that all synergize together in different ways.
For your character's equipment, you can only equip 2 crossbows at a time, and there are 3 different types to pick from:
There are also ammo skills, which add another layer of depth on top of how these different types of crossbows function. There are slight differences in how they work across the different types, so let's go through them all.
Ammo abilities include Armor-Piercing Ammo, which makes your hits pierce through enemies, good for taking on a group at once.
However, for the Rapid Shot crossbow, each hit will erode an enemy's armor, eventually breaking it, negating the Burst Shot crossbows' drawback against armored enemies.
Meanwhile, for the Power Shot crossbow, if an enemy's armor is broken, you can then pull out your power crossbow to shoot them, triggering a special weak spot hit dealing massive extra damage and high stun on the enemy.
Then, you have Incendiary Ammo. This is good against single targets as it ignites them. With the Burst Shot crossbow, the more projectiles that connect to a target, the more damage it deals per hit, making it great for super close-range situations.
For the Rapid Shot crossbow, the incendiary ammo charges up before firing. As you continue to shoot, it heats up, dealing more damage per shot. Moreover, it boosts the fire damage of any grenades you launch and automatically ignites oil grenades.
Moving on to the Power Shot crossbow, this ammo transforms into a pseudo-rocket launcher, creating an explosive blast on impact for AOE damage. It synergizes with grenades, causing any fired on the ground to instantly explode.
Permafrost Ammo slows enemies by chilling them and has a chance to freeze them in place. Frozen enemies are vulnerable to a special effect of the armor-piercing ammo, making them explode for huge AOE damage nearby.
The rapid-fire crossbow can also shoot the ground with this ammo type to create ice crystals. These crystals act like mines, exploding when enemies touch them and applying chilling to slow them down. It helps set traps and establish a safe area before engaging in a fight.
The Power Shot crossbow creates ice walls on impact, blocking off areas in corridors and alleys to control enemies. These walls explode when broken by enemies, synergizing with Burst Shot crossbows' armor-piercing ammo for extra damage on Frozen targets.
Additionally, there are new grenade gear slots and types.
The attachment slot in your crossbow is where grenades come from. It functions as a grenade launcher. It allows you to fire different grenade types with varied effects upon explosion.
These attachments function as skill gems, providing extra skill slots for your character and can be augmented with support gems. Grenades are fired separately from your crossbow's primary shooting and explode after a short delay, based on the type chosen.
There are 3 known types of grenades:
These combinations allow for interesting build potentials. The different crossbow types, ammo types, and grenade varieties synergize in unique ways. Witnessing a character utilizing these synergies against a boss was impressive. The boss fight showcased these strategies in action.
