It is league start time, and that means that you need a good league start build. Because Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction League has some of the largest changes to the meta game that we have ever seen.

You’ll want to make sure that your first build is real solid so that you can bring it into the Wildwood. Within the Wildwood, you will be collecting Wisps as well as fighting off enemies in the darkness.

And once you’ve collected all these Wisps, they’ll come with you and buff all of the enemies on the map that you came from. These buffed enemies will drop tons of additional loot and get some additional difficulty.

On top of that, every single class has got 3 brand new ascendancies that you can have on top of your original. There are tons of powerful options here and a lot to look forward to.

And 100 + new gems have been added to the game. These are Transfigured Gems. Essentially, they’ve made alternate versions of almost every single main skill gem in the game and just tossed well over a hundred of them at us at this point.

There are tons to do in POE 3.23 Affliction League, so let’s talk about some builds. If you're going to make these builds, be prepared with plenty of POE Currency!

Starting off here, I would say that this is probably the best build for newer players and most likely Righteous Fire refugees.

Righteous Fire did get some pretty heavy changes and nerfs. But it’s not looking great early on for RF. So, why don’t you just get a big giant minion that has its own RF that covers 3/4 of the screen?

On top of that, you can have a bunch of little minions that’ll do single target damage for you. It is super easy, SSF friendly, and extremely tanky build. It does pretty well all the way up through the campaign into early maps and can handle a lot of the early Pinnacle Bosses.

One of the biggest bonuses about this build is the fact that once you get the Sentinel of Radiance, you essentially don’t have to do anything anymore through the entirety of the campaign. This skill will carry you all the way through and you don’t even have to worry about anything except shield charging through zones and picking up loot.

I highly suggest that you give this build a shot.

Next on the list, for anybody who’s interested in playing a melee build, we have the Boneshatter Slayer by Carn.

Now, Boneshatter has gotten a pretty decent amount of changes this league. And whether or not it’s a very slight nerf or potentially a pretty large buff is yet to be seen.

However, what we do know is that the build is still absolutely excellent.

In previous leagues, I had put on a Boneshattered Juggernaut guide. However, the super highend of the Juggernaut might potentially be pretty nerfed and it looks like this layer is a just kind of ending up being the better build.

So, I highly suggest that you follow Carn for this. He is the Boneshatter guy. So much that one of the new alt qualities literally got named after him.

And the Boneshatter Slayer uses a bunch of really super interesting mechanics. Make sure that you go follow Carn, so you can see any updates that he makes to this build as we get information on the new Transfigure Gems and he does some more testing with all that kind of stuff.

If there’s anybody that’s going to figure it out, it’s Carn.

Third on the list, we have Vaal Flameblast Ignite Elementalist from Jungroan.

Now, you might know about Jungroan from all of his like speed running and racing content, where he basically goes through the entirety of the game getting the first 2 Watchstones in as little time as possible.

He’s posted like 8 or 9 of those this league so far in a whole bunch of different builds, but the one that stood out to me was this Flameblast Ignite build.

This uses a pretty interesting mechanic on the tree that allows you to essentially just extend the duration of ignites infinitely, meaning that you can use just a somewhat clunky skill that does a huge amount of damage and then just extend that ignite essentially forever.

This is an extremely well-rounded build. It might be slightly clunky for some people if you’re not very good at timing, because of the way that Vaal Flameblast works and it does use Wave of Conviction early, which some people are not a huge fan of.

But this build is exceptionally strong. And once you do learn how to pilot it, it is very good for bossing, clearing, and all kinds of other good stuff.

Next on the list, we have Caustic Arrow Poison Ballista by Palsteron.

Now, it’s no surprise that Palsteron has made another Ballista/Totem league starter, but this one has gotten a pretty decent update this league with the addition of Tinctures and the ability to have all sources of damage poison.

It is going to be significantly easier to make a bow for this build, meaning that it is going to be way stronger for way less gear.

Ballistas are a super safe play style. You can essentially just drop them down and run away and let them do the damage for you. However, if you are someone who likes doing the damage yourself or likes being upfront in their business, this may not be the play style for you.

That said, this is an extremely powerful build, way easier to gear this league and something that I can highly recommend.

Lastly, we’ve got the Splitting Steel Champion by Ruetoo.

I have played Splitting Steel a lot in the past and Splitting Steel this league has gotten some pretty significant changes. Call of Steel is gone from the normal version of this gem and it works essentially the same exact way it did previously.

You’re still going to be able to overlap all of your projectiles. You’re still going to have excellent clear and excellent damage. And Ruetoo has made a pretty early league friendly build that uses a ton of very easy to get uniques.

So, I do highly recommend this build as well. This version should be perfectly fine and it should get you through pretty much all content in the game.

POE 3.23 Affliction Challenge League will be launched soon. In this guide, I want to go over what we know so far about Affliction’s league mechanics and rewards, potential farming strategies, and the implications of this league mechanic on what builds and Atlas strategies you should be playing. This way you can enter the league armed with everything you need!

First, let’s review everything we know about league mechanics.

Affliction is mechanically similar to Delirium. Near the entrance to each area, you’ll find a Sacred Wisp that will lead you to Wildwood.

This is an area shrouded in darkness. As you explore the darkness, the power of Sacred Wisp will be drained. You need to explore a limited area before running out of energy. Your goal in Wildwood is mainly to collect Wisp while keeping an eye out for Azmeri Wanderers and Bosses.

Wisps are automatically collected by walking through them or killing enemies in Wildwood.

When you leave Wildwood, it released these Wisps into your map to enhance monster abilities. Monsters that are empowered are more powerful - similar to Delirium and Tormented Spirit.

The way empowerment works is that after you leave Wildwood, every monster on the map has a percentage chance of being possessed by each Wisp independently. The more wisps of that type you collect, the higher your chances.

Monsters can have more than one type of Wisps. This makes them more deadly, but also increases the bonuses given by Wisps.

As for these rewards, each Wisp has a different effect. Primal Wisps give monsters an Item Rarity bonus, Wild Wisps give monsters an Item Quantity bonus, and Vivid Wisps are a little different and cause monsters to drop currency items.

It’s very important to note that empowerment doesn’t just affect the monsters on the map when you complete Wildwood. Afterwards, each monster spawned in your map will also gain a rolling percentage of empowerment.

Now let’s move on to Wildwood Ascendancies. Affliction Leaguer adds 3 new Ascendancies that you can unlock through Affliction content. In addition to the regular Ascendancy class, you can also choose one of Ascendancy classes to get.

You can unlock these benefits by finding relevant Azmeri Wanderers in Wildwood. If you choose to occupy their Ascendancy, you will immediately gain the first 2 points and start a quest line to get the remaining 6 points.

Warden of the Maji gives you access to a new item called Tinctures. Warlock of the Mists has Curse and life-related passives. Wildwood Primalist has Sockets that can be inserted into Charms. Wildwood Primalist also has a notable skill that allows your Warcries to open chests and cause corpses to drop additional loot.

Each of these Ascendancies has small nodes that add some type of Wisps collected in Wildwood.

Next, let’s talk about Tinctures, Charms, and Corpses. Likewise, Azmeri Wanderers NPC lets you ascend double as a vendor, allowing you to trade Wisps you collect in Wildwood for Tinctures, Charms, and Corpses. These are unmodifiable but can be traded.

Tinctures go into the flask slot, but not the flask. They provide passive bonuses to your equipped weapons, and you can activate one Tincture at a time.

Charms have 1-2 affixes and are miniature versions of the existing class Ascendance passives. I predict that certain combinations of affixes on Charms will be powerful, sought after by many players, and valuable.

Finally, Corpses are consumable items that spawn specific Corpses on the ground. We can use these Corpses with minion skills like Raise Specter, or with Warlock’s Ravenous skill.

Unfortunately, these Specters will not spawn additional Corpses once revived with Desecrate. So if your Specter dies, you will need to spend POE Currency to purchase additional Corpses to re-summon them. This sounds bad, but if they were powerful enough, I’m sure some players would use them, despite their clunky nature.

Now that we’ve had a quick look at how everything works in Affliction, I want to start discussing Affliction League strategy.

The first choice you have to make is what Ascendancy is to choose. I recommend that players first choose their first Ascendancy based on which force is most powerful at the start of the league. They can then transition to another Ascendancy later if they wish.

I think Warden is the right Ascendancy to choose first for almost every build. This is for two reasons.

First, Warden passive, Oath of the Maji, can provide many valuable rewards early in the league. Most notably, if you don’t have any gems embedded in your boots, you move 30% faster. This is a price you’ll be happy to pay in leveling up and ancient maps.

Another reason is that each vantage has small nodes that increase the specific type of Wisps collected. A type related to Warden is Vivid Wisp, which allows monsters to drop large amounts of POE currency.

If this turns out not to be the enormous boost to the currency that I was expecting, it would be cheap and easy to move to something else. The risk is tiny and the rewards are extremely high.

The next thing I want to talk about is the potential for Raw Currency farming with Vivid Wisps.

While many players have been focusing on Ascendancy, I believe the currency drops of these Vivid Wisps will become the focus of farming strategies.

There are two different paths you can take when farming currency is this way. The first is to fill your map with as many monsters as possible. The second is to gain triple-empowerment on powerful and unique monsters. Because these monsters inherently have top item counts and rarity bonuses.

The key thing to note about the first method is that monetary rewards from Vivid Wisps actually double-dip with pack size. This is because the monsters in Wildwood that drop Wisps scale according to the pack size, and there will be more monsters on your map for Wisps to empower.

So there are more monsters, and the probability of each monster dropping currency is also higher. If you go this route, you can target many league mechanics that will spawn large numbers of enemies.

On the other hand, the monsters that guarantee currency drops during the league are not the ones that cause huge currency explosions. This is a unique monster that has a tremendous bonus to item quantity and item rarity.

So, how do you extend these bonuses further? Mainly through Delirium, Tormented Spirit and Expedition. Tormented Spirit and Delirium can increase the rarity and quantity of items, and Expedition can add modifiers to farmed monsters, increasing the quantity and rarity of items even further.

Finally, there is something that absolutely everyone can relate to. Some Charms from Azmeri Wanderers Vendors will be highly sought after. This means they will be profitable if sold.

Therefore, you’ll want to focus on the prices of various accessories on Charms so you don’t miss out on items at the vendor that could be worth a lot of Divine Orbs.

For my last topic, I want to briefly talk about Affliction’s build options.

Unfortunately, it’s unclear which building is best for Affliction, as it can interact with many league mechanics, and we don’t yet know what the winning strategy will be.

If energetic bosses are going to end up dropping the best rewards, then you’re going to want a build with a strong single target. If the number of monsters is high, you’ll want a build with a high clearing speed.

Personally, I’m focusing on Explosive Arrow Ballista build. It takes advantage of Tinctures I can get through Warden Ascendancy, can take down the most active bosses in the game, and has a pretty good clearing speed if needed.

That’s all for this guide. What are your plans for how to use Affliction mechanism? Do you think it would be better to fill the map with as many monsters as possible? Or focus on creating the most exciting rare items and bosses? Hope to see you in Affliction League!