Welcome, Exiles! Join me as we explore the Rage Vortex CoC Hierophant in the Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League today. The Rage Vortex of Berserking is one of the best skills to use with the Cast on Critical Strike Support, but it requires a very specific setup to work.

In this build, it attaches the Rage Vortex to your character, continuously hitting nearby enemies until you run out of Rage, allowing you to perform other actions in the meantime, such as the Shield Charge or casting curses.

Exerting this attack with Ambush will apply its massive Critical Strike Chance bonus for the entire duration of your Rage Vortex. Although you will still need some investments for your Spell Critical Strike Chance, the most crucial part of such a setup is sustaining the Rage cost itself.

Gear Setup

This Rage Vortex CoC Hierophant build is cost-effective, demanding only a modest investment of POE Currency to commence. However, its operation depends on a unique helmet. It also relies on rare items, the quality of which significantly impacts performance.

Unique Items

The Ravenous Passion and the Cospri's Malice are necessary for the build's functionality. Thanks to the Ravenous Passion helmet, you will generate insane amounts of Rage with a higher trigger rate on your CoC setup. You will generate Rage faster, allowing you to sustain Rage Vortex for a longer time. 

The Cospri's Malice sword triggers your Frostbolts on hit and improves your damage slightly. You can get a corrupted implicit that generates frenzy charges when you spend mana, which will help with your attack speed and boost the damage of your Vortex.

The Prism Guardian and Atziri's Foible are also important for scaling your damage properly. The Prism Guardian causes socketed auras to Reserve Life instead of mana but without the usual massive penalty of the Arrogance Support.

The Atziri's Foible amulet greatly improves your maximum mana and your mana recovery. Moreover, it decreases the necessity for demanding attribute prerequisites, making it quite useful. Anointing the Essence Sap notable can help with mana recovery issues. If not, the Arcane Capacitor is available for use.

The Glorious Vanity can grant you the Corrupted Soul keystone and convert nearby notables into different ones. Try to get at least one that provides energy shield leech. It can also grant you other bonuses to energy shield or lightning spell damage.

You can use the Healthy Mind jewel to greatly improve your mana at the cost of lowering your life. You can also alter your aura setup to include different bonuses, such as energy shield on hit from the Discipline aura or life leech from Vitality aura.

Rare Items

On your rare gear, you should aim mostly for bonuses to your maximum life, mana, and energy shield.

• Weapon: Ensure sufficient dexterity to wield your sword and prioritize acquiring at least 14% cooldown recovery, accuracy, and adequate attack speed to boost damage. If opting for a different spell, consider a rare weapon enhancing spell damage with guaranteed hits.
• Body Armor: Boost energy shield and mana, optionally avoiding life modifiers in favor of the Life Mastery, preferably shaper-influenced to enhance Spell Critical Strike Chance.
• Boots: Enhance life, mana, movement speed, and resistance. Aim for a total of 14% cooldown recovery rate.
• Gloves: Offer beneficial bonuses to attack speed, accuracy rating, or damage. Utilize Eldritch Implicit modifiers to incorporate life leech and unnerving of enemies.
• Belt: Prioritize high maximum life, mana, and resistance bonuses, with flask modifiers enhancing utility. Utilize a Stygian Vise base for an additional Abyss Jewel socket, and craft cooldown recovery rate through the Crafting Bench.
• Ring: Provide life, mana, regeneration, and substantial resistances. Compensate for lacking attributes with increased accuracy rating to improve hit chance or Critical Strike Multiplier.
• Jewels: Target bonuses to maximum life and mana on jewels, along with enhancements to attack speed, accuracy rating, or Critical Strike Multiplier.
• Abyss Jewel: Consider socketing it in your belt to access similar modifier, along with potential cooldown recovery rate or a phasing buff upon enemy elimination.

Flasks

As for the flasks, with the Sorrow of the Divine, you can recover your energy shield more efficiently. Combine it with a Life Flask that grants more healing when you are on low life, as it is your default state at all times because of the Petrified Blood.

The Bottled Faith is the obvious choice for this build as it will greatly improve your damage and Critical Strike Chance against enemies standing on the consecrated ground. You can enchant it to trigger when you hit a rare enemy.

For the remaining Magic Flasks, I recommend using a flask with bleeding removal, the Quicksilver Flask with Critical Strike Chance bonus, and a Diamond Flask with attack speed.

Gem Links

The Rage Vortex of Berserking attaches the Rage Vortex to your character until you run out of Rage. The Rage cost accelerates over time, but you can refresh it during its duration to restart the Rage drain. The Vortex of Projection deals cold damage in bigger areas and can be used with Frostbolts to create more explosions with a bonus for its damage and area.

Most of your damage comes from the Archmage Support, so Lightning Penetration is more useful than Cold or Elemental Penetration. The awakened version also grants you lightning exposure. The Frostbolt creates a cold projectile that, although not dealing much damage on its own, can be consumed by the Vortex to create even more explosions with the Greater Volley Support.

Slowing the speed is also important to prevent explosions from happening too far. The Petrified Blood delays the damage you take directly to your life, making your leech more effective and enabling the Pain Attunement keystone. The Arctic Armour grants you immunity to freeze and extra physical damage mitigation if you are stationary.

Precision is a simple yet powerful aura that improves your accuracy rating and Critical Strike Chance. Socket those auras in the Prism Guardian shield, and thanks to the Petrified Blood, you can reserve half of your life without negative consequences. The Assassin's Mark greatly improves your damage by increasing your Critical Strike Chance and multiplier against marked enemies.

The Zealotry is an offensive aura that greatly improves your damage and Critical Strike Chance with spells. Divine Blessing Support changes this aura into a temporary buff and adds a massive mana cost to it, which you can use to quickly generate Rage.

The Shield Charge is your main movement skill, and you can use it without interrupting the Rage Vortex, giving you a big advantage over other CoC setups. The Ambush launches your next attack, adding a massive amount of flat Critical Strike Chance, and will be applied to the whole duration of the Rage Vortex. 

The Arcane Cloak is a Guard skill that absorbs a large amount of damage and improves your DPS during its duration. Frost Blink is an instant teleport that leaves chilling ground in both locations, supplementing Shield Charge for even better mobility.

Bandits & Pantheon

The optimal choice is to eliminate all bandits for an extra 2 passive points. Helping Alira is also acceptable at first. The best major Pantheon power is the Soul of Arakaali, as damage over time effects are the biggest weakness of Petrified Blood. For your minor Pantheon power, I recommend either Soul of Ralakesh to trivialize bleeds or Soul of Shakari to help with chaos damage.

Passive Tree

The passive tree of this POE 3.24 build is very straightforward. The biggest focus is picking up as much mana as possible. You will also get bonuses to maximum life, accuracy rating, and a bit of damage and crits thanks to the Elemental Mastery.

You will sometimes treat enemy resistances as inverted, which grants you a lot of damage without needing to invest in a second curse, especially against enemies with bolstered Lightning Resistance. Such hits will also inflict much more powerful shocks than usual.

This build uses 5 keystones, but most of them are self-explanatory. You will have a lot of energy shield without big investments. The most important sources of it are the Corrupted Soul keystone from the Glorious Vanity jewel and the Hierophant Ascendancy.