Bane Occultist Build - A League Starter Recommended For POE 3.21
Mar 13, 2023 Source: POECURRENCY
Here, we have a quick guide on the Bane Occultist in Path of Exile.
About The Build
The Bane Occultist is a powerful and versatile build that combines two of the strongest chaos themed spells in the game. The build focuses on stacking as much Chaos Damage as possible while also maintaining high survivability throughout curses and block cap.
The primary scale used in this build is Bane, which caused the curse on all enemies in an area and deal Chaos Damage Over Time. Multiple curses gems and damage over time support gems support Bane to increase its effectiveness. Soulrend is used as a secondary skill to deal with high burst damage to single targets.
We can play the build in many combinations and is also a great league starter.
Pros
For the pros, you got high damage output.
It got good AOE clear speed and is also good for Solo Self-Found or solo play. It’s very budget friendly to start with a lot of potential to improve for the endgame.
Cons
For some cons, it needs high investment for endgame bosses. So, you should prepare enough POE Currency in advance. It cannot do all map mods like region. It can feel slow if you compare to some other build.
Uniques
There’s no need for any unique item for this build. But I do have some to make it even better.
The first one being Skin of the Lords and this body armor provides plus two levels of socketed gems, boosting our main skill damage by a lot.
We also gain 100% increased global defense, affecting things like our energy shield and armor and we’re also getting a random keystone from this armor, as well.
Crown of the Inward Eye provides a lot of great defense, such as armor and the shield and increased life. But we also gained some offensive bonuses from the unique modifier Transfiguration of Soul, Body and Mind.
Transfiguration of Soul has increases and reductions to maximum energy shield, and it also applied to spell damage at the 30 of their value. Transfiguration of Body is the same, but for life to attack damage. And Transfiguration of Mind is for mana to all damage.
Rumi’s Concoction is a unique flask to provide a percentage to both attack and spell a block and this helps if you are having trouble to getting your block capped.
Useful Stats
For the stats for this build, try to get life, energy shield, Elemental Resistance for cap strength and dexterity is usually a big problem for this build, as well.
Increased Maximum Mana, Increased Damage Over Time, Increased Damage, Chaos Damage, Spell Damage, Area Damage and Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier are all very useful.
Main Links
For the links, we’re using Bane with Despair, Temporal Chains, Void Manipulation, Punishment and Empower.
We also got Soulrend with Controlled Destruction, Greater Multiple Projectils and also Cruelty.
Auras
For auras, we’re using Malevolence, Tempest Shield, Determination, Vitality, Defiance Banner and Clarity.
Utility
For utility, we have Vaal Molten Shell, Flame Dash, Withering Step and Wither.
What do you think about the Bane Occultist build? Have you tried it out before maybe or try another version of it?
Recommended Article
-
How To Deal With Bandit King Sasan In Path Of Exile 3.25 Settlers Of Kalguur? - Location & Strategy
Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur league launched some time ago has been praised by players as one of the best league mechanisms ever, because it introduced some cool features that many players like. In addition, an interesting city system has been added to this new league mechanism.
In this city system, you can manage your own town called Kingsmarch, and you can send various workers to run the affairs of the entire town for you. However, this town is definitely not smooth sailing, and Bandit King Sasan will mess it up.
But unfortunately, Bandit King Sasan is not like other NPCs that you need to fight in the game. There is no way to find him. If you want to build your Kingsmarch town into a prosperous town as soon as possible, you can follow some tips and strategies in this guide to help you find and defeat Sasan faster.
Who Is Bandit King Sasan?
Sasan is a new enemy NPC added to Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur league. Although it will not attack your Kingsmarch settlement directly, it will hinder the progress of the town by kidnapping your workers or Map Runners. Occasionally, it will also kidnap your Atlas runners and ask for ransom.
When this happens, you only have three options: pay the ransom, fight Sasan, or let your workers fend for themselves. The best option of the three is to fight Sasan, because at the end of your battle with it, one of the best unique swords in the game will drop.
However, defeating it is not a simple matter. It has a very high health value, so you need to be prepared for a long battle. In addition, Sasan’s level is as high as 83, so your character level needs to be 83 or above, otherwise this battle will be more difficult.
There are two main types of damage that Sasan can deal: Fire and Physical. Before the battle, remember to equip some armor or helmet that can protect against these two types of damage tightly on your body.
The tricky part is that it has 50% resistance to some common damages you can use, such as Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos. So when choosing your build and weapons, remember to avoid these types, or add some Elemental Damage to your original build to increase your damage to Sasan.
It currently only has two abilities, Hail of Arrows and Circle of Flame, both of which are AOE attacks, and both can cause significant damage and DoTs. You need to use a little POE Currency before the battle to increase your flexibility so that you can avoid most AOE damage.
Bandit King Sasan’s Location
There is no way to find Sasan directly unless you interact with him passively. According to current player feedback, Sasan has a very low chance of appearing, and only appears after he kidnaps your workers.
If he does hold your people for ransom, you may find him in Abandoned Port zone. You can also use the current league mechanic to increase the chance of spawning if you don’t want to wait all the time.
How To Find Bandit King Sasan?
The only way to spawn Bandit King Sasan is to lure him into kidnapping your Atlas Runners. You can increase the chance of this elaborate kidnapping situation by constantly sending your workers to draw or do other activities.
But the rewards from this method are also very small, so you must let your workers do Atlas as much as possible and keep praying for it to appear quickly. As long as one of these workers is kidnapped by Sasan, you can have a “mandatory” interaction with Sasan.
Currently, this is the only way to spawn this boss. I hope you can find more ways to make it appear in subsequent games.
How To Unlock Kingsmarch Map Device?
Before you can send Atlas runners, you need to unlock Kingsmarch or Kingsmarch Map Device first, which only requires you to raise Town Level to Rank 7. You can use these resources to help your upgrade: 5760 Gold, 225 Verisium Ore, 125 Pumpkin and 250 Orgourd.
If you unlock Kingsmarch Map Device, you will find that you still cannot send Atlas Runners because you still need to increase Max Town Populations to 60 and Max Job Rank to 7. So you can start your lure plan.
Other Options
In addition to fighting Sasan, you can also pay his ransom or abandon your workers. Paying the ransom can be a bit more expensive, as Sasan will demand a lot of gold from you, but you won’t get any reward. If you choose to leave your workers to die, you’ll lose some potentially valuable workers and get nothing in return. You can decide based on your own POE Currency and Gold.
If you decide to fight Sasan, it’s not clear whether you’ll win or lose. Despite the challenges just presented, you’ll win most of the time if you’re prepared. If you have an Atlas Portal open, you can fight him multiple times.
What Are The Rewards For Defeating Bandit King Sasan?
At the end of your fight with Bandit King Sasan, you’ll get some pretty cool rewards, like some runes and gold. But in some cases, it’s possible to trade those runes for one of the best two-handed unique weapons in POE 3.25, Living Blade. If you’re determined to find Living Blade, you can try to fight him multiple times.
That’s all you need to know about Bandit King Sasan in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur. Hopefully, you can quickly make your Kingsmarch settlement a very prosperous commercial town, and have fun exploring the game!
-
How To Unlock The Full Potential Of The New Svalinn Unique Shield In Path Of Exile 3.25?
Svalinn is a new Unique Shield in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur, and it will drop from Sasan, the Bandit Lord, as part of the new league mechanics. Svalinn has a very powerful modifier called “Chance to Block is Lucky”, which doubles your chance to block, allowing you to choose a favorable outcome.
I think this is a very cool POE item that is very powerful if used correctly, and it can enable some tanky builds that are centered on blocking. In this guide, we’ll talk about what this Svalinn Unique Shield is good for, and how to unlock its full potential.
Chance To Block Spell Damage
Let’s take a look at the modifier on Svalinn: 13% Chance to Block Spell Damage. This is a modifier that could potentially roll between 10%-15%. Considering the rest of the shield, this is a good start.
Ward
Next, let’s look at Ward. Ward is a defensive measure that blocks hit damage before Life or Energy Shield. I don’t mean you’ll get a lot of Ward from this shield, but you may hit the blocking cap while using this shield. And Ward has been buffed to refresh every 2 seconds instead of the old 4 seconds.
This is actually a fair amount of damage reduction, since it doesn’t deduct from your Life or Energy Shield, but is absorbed by this shield. So not a completely useless modifier.
Minus Max Chance To Block
Now we come to the important set of mods on this Svalinn Shield: minus 10% of the maximum chance to block attack and spell damage. These mods combined will reduce the maximum base block chance of attacks and spells from 75% to 65%.
Lucky Block Chance
But the next modifier, “Chance to Block is Lucky”, makes up for this. Lucky is a property that is rolled twice, and you can choose the more favorable result. So with Chance to Block is Lucky, you will roll twice for Chance to Block incoming hits, which means your effective block chance is higher than your actual block chance.
The benefit you get from a Lucky roll is largely dependent on the base properties of your roll. So you’re better off with maximum base block chance with Svalinn equipped (65%), which gives you an effective block chance of 88%, which is insane.
The new Gladiator has a new Skill Ascendency Notable, which grants you Lucky Block Chance whenever you’ve recently blocked. This is a great mapping node, but it’s much less reliable for boss scenarios.
Svalinn’s Lucky Block Chance is unconditional, though it’s always active. This is a very powerful start, and having it means investing in blocking is more rewarding.
Triggering Blocks
Svalinn also has one final modifier, which triggers a socketed elemental spell with a block time of 0.25 seconds. With such a high effective block chance, no matter what you put on this shield, you’ll be safe as you move through the map.
How To Maximize Block Chance?
In POE 3.25, investing in blocking has become more rewarding, as many of Block Wheels in the tree have received huge buffs.
For example, Safeguard Wheel near Templar starting position now provides 10% Chance to Block Spell Damage, and it also increases maximum spell block by 3%. What’s more, it also restores 50 Energy Shield when blocking. This sounds like a small amount, but with such a large effective block chance, it will make up for the recovery of most hits in a mapping environment.
There’s also a new Wheel here, located near Blood Magic Keystone, that’s similar to Safeguard. This doesn’t provide the 3% maximum block chance, but that’s for attack damage, and it also has a 12% block chance.
Another new Block Mastery Wheel, Wall of Steel, gives extra attack block chance and some flat armor if you’ve recently blocked.
There’s also a new Block Mastery that adds 1% chance to block spell damage for every 5% chance to block attack damage. So if you have 65% chance to block attacks, you’ll get 13% chance to block spell damage from spending that point.
Besides these options, many other Block or Shield Wheels that provide block chance have been buffed. This means it’s easier to cap attack and spell block chance with a lower POE Currency investment than before.
There’s also Tempest Shield, which provides a lot of spell blocking. If you’re playing a Scion or Necromancer, you might also want to consider Bone Offering.
Glancing Blows
Of course, there will still be Glancing Blows. But the real potential of this shield is having such a high effective true blocking ability that it can avoid the vast majority of incoming hits, especially considering that you can’t recover from blocking with the shield, so Glancing Blows with this setup aren’t too useful.
How To Build A Map Clearing Build?
When combined with something like Mjölner, this shield becomes a very interesting map clearing build. You’ll be able to easily use Mjölner and Svalinn’s triggered spells and Tempest Shield’s triggers to clear monster packs.
When you need a nuke to knock down a stronger target, you can use the new Divine Retribution spell to deal a lot of damage. It can be used by blocking, and it can overlap to hit the same target multiple times.
All in all, this new unique item is really fun. What do you think of it? Will you try to equip this Svalinn Unique Shield? Do you have a better way to make the most of all its mechanics? See you next time!
-
How To Use The Various Defensive Stats In Path Of Exile 3.25 Settlers Of Kalguur? - Stats Explained
In Path of Exile, it is common knowledge that you can use the various defensive attributes in the game to help your character become stronger or more well-rounded. If you have found yourself dying frequently in previous leagues, you may not be using these defensive attributes correctly.
However, it is important to remember that you should never rely on just one defensive ability in this game, as you may encounter specific enemies that can penetrate your defensive attribute. Currently, in Path of Exile 3.25, there are many ways to improve your ability to take a beating in the game.
Some can help your build gain additional blocking, evasion or armor, some can help you build Endurance Charges or specific resistances, and some can even make you immune to certain types of damage from enemies. Stacking these various effects together is the most common layered defense in the game.
In this guide, you will be shown how to make your character stronger in the current Settlers of Kalguur league, so get your POE Currency ready for this guide!
How To Become More Endurance?
Before you can make your Settlers of Kalguur League character stronger, you need to understand the four main defense categories in the game - Avoidance, Mitigation, Life Pool, and Recovery.
When you combine these four defense attributes effectively, not only will you be able to survive different encounters well, but you will also be able to participate in many types of fights more safely. Otherwise, when you encounter a boss that can penetrate a certain defense, you may be in danger. Now, let’s learn about the details of these four defense attributes!
Life Pool
Of all the defense attributes, Life Pool is the most basic. Anything related to your raw ability to survive a blow falls into this category. Things like your maximum health in the game and Energy Shield are its principal components.
If you are using a build that focuses on restoring health or spells to help you in combat, it is important to make sure you have enough total health to avoid dying from attacks. For example, when you are using a character with a lot of health recovery like Boneshatter Juggernaut, plus this defense attribute, you can quickly recover from any type of damage.
However, it is important to note that having strong recovery abilities is useless if you don’t have enough health to take the initial hit.
Avoidance
Avoidance is made up of Block, Evasion, or Chance to Avoid Damage. Any attribute, passive, or ability you encounter in the game that can completely negate the damage of an attack you take will fall into this category.
As with many MMO games, how you take advantage of these attributes and which of them you use will depend largely on your build. For example, if you use a character that can engage in close-range melee, you will perform better on Block and Chance to Avoid Damage stats.
But this build or character will have more trouble avoiding attacks, especially when some blue and white enemies swarm to attack you. So, when you encounter this situation, it is best to assume that you will definitely be attacked before building or adjusting the attributes, so that you will think about negating them when making choices.
For some builds that are highly mobile or good at ranged attacks, you may want to consider enhancing their mobility or invulnerability skills. For example, when you use the toxic rain setup in Path of Exile 3.25, you can easily defeat many enemies with your primary ability.
So when your build focuses on movement, you don’t have to invest skill points in blocking or dodging, which is a waste.
Mitigation
Mitigation category in Path of Exile 3.25 includes anything that reduces the amount of damage you take. Armor, Physical Damage Reduction, or Elemental Resistances all fall into this category.
The most important thing to understand about this attribute is that its primary purpose is to keep your health at a minimum of 1. So when calculating how much Mitigation you need, you need to know how much health you currently have. Just like doing math, you need to know the minuend first.
From here, you can start calculating how much Mitigation you need to make it so that a large attack from an enemy can’t hit you in one hit. As long as your Mitigation can reduce the total damage of the attack to less than your Life Pool, you can rely on health regeneration to recover.
For example. If you are facing an enemy that uses a fire-based melee attack to counter you, you can use this defensive attribute to help you reduce the damage. In addition, you can also minimize the damage caused by this attack by increasing your armor, physical damage reduction, and fire resistance at the same time.
Recovery
Recovery covers a few of Life Pool attributes, but the more important ones are Life Gain on Hit, Leech, and Regen Speed. Some Flasks or skills that provide direct healing also count.
Recovery is largely a function of the interaction between Mitigation and Life Pool, ensuring that you can recover before you get hit again. If you have already used Mitigation to protect yourself from a fatal blow, then you cannot recover before you get hit again, and Recovery will be useless. So Recovery should be the last attribute you consider when increasing your stamina.
Do you have a better understanding of these four defensive stats now? I believe you will definitely create a very perfect build in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur to make your character ready for any situation!
-
How To Perform This Alch And Go Farming Strategy In POE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur?
In this guide, we are going to share a no-investment farming strategy that involves "Alch and Go" that everyone has been talking about lately. It is the new meta in POE 3.25. The reason this strategy is so important is that it is the fastest way to hit Divine Altars. The sooner you know this strategy, the sooner you can accumulate more wealth!
Why Is Alch And Go Strategy Good?
After testing several T14+ maps with it, I can confirm that Alch and Go strategy does have a special set of benefits in POE 3.25.
The fact that you can enter and exit quickly gives you more advantages than farming T17, which requires investing a lot of POE Currency and time, and also has a certain amount of risk. Therefore, Alch and Go is unique among a group of niche farming strategies.
If you hate T17 maps, but you want to farm more of the same, such as Gold or Ores, then this strategy is definitely for you.
I can say it’s also great for Eldritch Altar and Invitation farming. You can choose any specific objective you want, any objective that doesn’t require a specific set of Scarabs, or complete the mandatory requirement of clearing each map. You can target a certain objective and leave the map as soon as you’re done, which means you can run multiple maps in a short period of time.
How Does It Work?
You basically alch your map without Chisels and Scarabs. You just check for mods that can break your build and you’re good to go.
In my case, we were targeting Gold or Ores, so adding some Rarity to the build and map will increase the gold drops. In our targeted runs, we made a ton of Gold or Ores just running about 30 to 50 T14+ maps per hour.
If you’re trying this, your Mining Rank should be maxed out first. Because they give you the same amount of Gold as Ores in the final stages. And maps will sometimes have more than 1 Ore, usually close to each other. When you go in to find Ores, you can check if there are more Ores nearby.
Occasionally you’ll still get some rare results like Great Eldritch Altars, Verisium Boss fights, and even some interesting drops, especially valuable Omens.
If you run it in T16, there’s a chance that T17 will drop as well, provided you have at least 2 Voidstones and your Atlas is tuned for map drops as well.
Although farming Boss can drop a lot of gold and some goodies, if it has several stages, like Harvest one in Bramble Valley Map, it’s best to skip it. It’s not worth your time.
How To Scale To Get A Lot Of Gold?
If you want to farm a lot of gold, just scale Rarity, add more monsters, and get some numbers in your map quantity mod. Eldritch Rarity/Quantity of Eldritch Altars will scale accordingly.
On average, you can get 15k to 30k on a normal map, and up to 100k if you farm T17. Because T17 has explicit fixes for pack size, item rarity, currency drops, map drops, and even scarab drops.
If you want to go a step further, you can add more monsters to your map, including Sacrifice Fragments, White Scarabs, and Shaper Scarabs. But if you use Shaper Scarabs, you can get this node in your Atlas Tree, Shaper Influenced Pack Size.
It’s worth noting that the things that currently drop a lot of gold are map bosses, rare, and magic monsters, in that order. My guess here is that most common item drops have been converted to gold drops, so the global drop rate has been affected by Shadow nerf.
I understand why they did this, because Settlers of Kalguur league are balanced around how you spend the gold you receive on the league mechanics. So if you like gold, get your Magic Find Builds ready.
Why Is Gold So Important?
So why bother farming gold in the first place? In fact, once you start reaching the higher end of the league mechanics, your rewards will get better, too.
Everything in POE 3.25 is now centered on gold, especially Auction House. On top of that, ground loot is balanced around the current league mechanics, which means you have to be in on the action if you want to get the most out of it.
Atlas Strategy
Now, let’s take a look at Atlas strategy I’ve been working on.
Before you try this strategy, I have to remind you that this is just my Atlas, targeting Scarabs, Gold, and valuable Omens. While Atlas is completely flexible, basically we’re just Alch and making sure we don’t run into any bad mods. This is very important since we’re taking so many of the buffing effect nodes from Atlas.
To make things even more exciting, I went with Eldritch Gaze because it makes a vast difference in the loot. If your build sucks at Cold and Lightning Penalty, you can go with Searing Exarch Altars.
The best thing about these Altars is Rarity and Quantity buffs they provide. Of course, if you get a lot of good stuff and find the map rewarding and satisfying, you can run the entire map.
In summary, the best strategy for Alch And Go is to focus on anything that doesn’t require completing maps and scarabs. This includes ore mining, gold farming, T17 hunting, and most boss strategies. Give this strategy a try and hopefully it will become your cornucopia!
-
Best Strategies For Gold Farming In Path Of Exile 3.25 League!
In the latest Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League, the developers have added a lot of great features. You need to manage and run your own small village and keep your Kingsmarch Settlement running. And gold is the key currency you need to run these mechanisms.
You can use gold to do many things in this league, including upgrading your Settlement, hiring and maintaining workers to run the map for you, and even re-speccing your Passive Skill Tree, and so on.
Since gold is the first time it has appeared in the game as a POE currency, many exiles have no idea how to farm it and how to maximize its efficiency. But don’t worry, there are actually many ways to make money, both actively and passively.
In this guide, we will share some of the best strategies for gold farming in POE 3.25. Please note that the following methods are not the only ways to earn gold in the game, but they are definitely one of the most efficient and low-threshold ways. Without further ado, let’s take a look!
Utilizing Town Mining Mechanics
One way to earn gold in Path of Exile 3.25 is by utilizing the new Town Mechanics. It takes a while to unlock this feature, namely reaching Rank 11 with your Mining in Kingsmarch. Once you reach this rank, you will unlock a new feature: All Mining Ores in Areas Grants Gold Equal to the Amount of Ore.
This means that every time you come across an Ore Node in Path of Exile and click on it to mark the location for your miner to mine, you will receive an amount of gold equal to the amount of Ores mined.
If an Ore Node has 500 Ores on it, when you mark it for mining by your town, you will immediately receive 500 gold. Since most maps have several nodes on them, this will cause your gold inventory to pile up quickly. When you combine this with the gold rewards that come with completing a map, you will find that this is a lot of money. This is definitely the best way to efficiently earn gold in POE 3.25.
However, please note that you will need some starting capital to fund this operation and reach Mining Rank 11. Therefore, I would not recommend trying this approach when you have just entered the league.
Running The Maps
In order to upgrade to Rank 11, you will need to first get some gold to do all the upgrades. Before you unlock level 11 Mining, the best way to get gold for upgrades is to continue running maps. Once you are on the map, you can get a few thousand gold per map by just running through and killing all the enemies.
Synthesis Maps
In POE 3.25, running Synthesis Maps is one of the best ways to earn gold. This way you can earn an average of 15k gold per run, plus a 100% increase in experience points. With just a few runs, you can get a mountain of gold and upgrade your town quickly.
Not only that, it is especially good when you see that Synth Monsters can drop Quality Currency, because you can pick up items that sell well and usually easily help you pay for the map.
An example is Glassblower’s Bauble, which usually sells for around 3 Chaos Orbs. So the more modifiers you have on a map, the more money you’ll make.
I must warn you, though, that this method of grinding has its drawbacks, and it can make Synthesis Maps very expensive. So, be selective.
Strongboxes
Another option is to use a bunch of Scarabs and do a Strongbox run if you’ve already finished your Atlas. You might be able to make 20k gold on a single map with this method. You’ll need a few materials to run this method, though:
- Ambush Scarab of Discernment: Strongboxes in this area are more likely to be the Rare variant.
- Ambush Scarab of Hidden Compartments: Strongboxes in this area have a 15% chance to open again.
- Ambush Scarab x2: There are 5 extra Strongboxes in this area.
Don't forget, you'll also need to craft an Ambush on the map before entering. I actually recommend this method, as Scarabs involved aren’t expensive and you can afford them at the beginning of your league. What’s more, almost every build can implement this method, whether you’re running Lightning Strike Deadeye or Hexblast Mines Trickster.
However, it’s recommended to use maps with larger layouts, such as Dunes or Jungle Valley Maps. If you want to make a map, it’s recommended to use 4x Cartographer’s Chisels and use Orb of Alchemy on it. If you’re happy with it, just go through it. Of course, using Vaal Orb to corrupt the map is even better.
Killing Pirates
Finally, there’s another method, although I don’t necessarily recommend it. This is to deliberately increase the risk of your ship being attacked by Pirates through Sailing. Once they are attacked by Pirates, you can choose to go out and kill Pirates and get your looted cargo back. Successfully killing Pirates will get you 50,000 gold, which really helps with some upgrades.
All in all, by using these methods, earning gold in POE 3.25 should be pretty easy. Give it a try!
-
How To Build The Best POE 3.25 League Starter For Warden Ascendancy? - Lightning Strike Warden
In Settlers of Kalguur League, Raider was redesigned as a Warden, a change that excited many players who were reluctant to give up Warden Ascendancy in Affliction League.
Meanwhile, Lightning Strike received a huge buff in POE 3.25, so I combined this core skill to create a league starter for Warden, Lightning Strike Warden. I tried to make this build as tanky as possible to help you get from the beginning of the league all the way to the endgame. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Lightning Strike
Lightning Strike is a melee skill that converts half of your physical damage into lightning damage. It also has a secondary effect that fires a projectile every time you hit with a melee weapon. Both the melee and projectile attacks can hit the same target, but the projectile portion flies above the ground.
This skill got a huge buff in POE 3.25, basically they just doubled the damage of this skill. That’s why we can start the league with this skill.
Why Is It Worth Trying?
I bet you have seen a lot of Lightning Strike Warden league starters. Now you must be curious about what is the difference between my version and other versions.
First of all, my version is much stronger than other versions, while the damage is almost the same. The recovery ability of this version is very good, not only leech has 15% life regen per second, but it can be maintained all the time.
In addition, we can generate Endurance Charges at any time. Our maximum Endurance Charges is 4, which reduces the elemental damage we receive by 16%. This is also maintained all the time.
We also put a Warcry notable on the skill tree, so that we can cast our Warcry faster and get its Passive Mastery, so that you can benefit from your Warcry when there are no enemies around.
See More: How To Complete Blight In Path Of Exile 3.25 Settlers Of Kalguur?
Precise Technique
Since this is the beginning of the league and we can’t afford expensive weapons, I think it’s best not to crit so we can save a lot of POE Currency. So we’ll go with Precise Technique. If your Accuracy Rating is higher than your life, you’ll get 40% extra attack damage.
You’ll need to keep your Accuracy Rating higher than your life when leveling up, but since we’re using Precise Technique when leveling up, that should be enough.
By the way, we’ll get this Keystone around level 22. So your early damage will increase significantly.
Defense
Next, let’s analyze our defense numbers. For a Warden, I think these numbers are pretty impressive.
Our physical and elemental max hits are pretty high. Remember, this is without Molten Shell. If we equip it, then our tankiness will soar.
Our life is close to 5k, but our Armour and Evasion is only 13k. If we fight against a normal boss, our physical damage reduction is 90%. So I think overall this build is pretty tanky. Even with the league starter gear, we can take a Shaper’s slam. Of course, our spell suppression is easily capped.
Warden Ascendancy
Honestly, the new Warden Ascendancy is pretty fun and I hope they’ll continue this type of rework in the future.
Its Barkskin node is really good in the early stages, which will reduce the physical damage you take, so that’s why we made it the first point. And when you start losing Barkskin, your Evasion starts to go up. Also, Reserve was also reduced in this patch, so as a 10% aura, this is pretty good.
The next node is Oath of Spring. In simple terms, this is similar to Wither, just increases the elemental damage the target takes instead of chaos damage. It starts to stack when you start attacking with melee skills. In the configuration, I only set it to 20 stacks so as not to increase the damage. But I think you should get more damage from it.
Avatar of the Wilds is our big burst damage. Every time you deal Chill, Shock, Ignite, or any other Elemental Ailments, you gain a stack. When it reaches 100, you gain 80% more elemental damage.
The last node is something we haven’t seen before. We can now stack two Scorch on an enemy. By default, Scorch will reduce the enemy’s Elemental Resistances, which was originally only 30% for this reason, but now it will be 60%. But you need to deal high fire damage to get a high% Scorch. This is why we use Anger as one of Offensive Auras.
Items
Next, let’s talk about some of the items you need for this build.
You can rest assured that the two unique items you need to complete Lightning Strike Warden are completely affordable. Only 5 Chaos Orbs are required on the first day of the league.
The first is Lightning Coil, which is the best choice for reducing physical damage. Honestly, I don’t even know how the right side of the skill tree will deal with physical damage if they nerf this item in the future.
The other item is Perseverance Belt. This will give us Onslaught, and will increase our damage for every 200 Armour and Evasion we gain. We also get Fortify in the build, since we have Fortify Mastery assigned. Additionally, we will take 20% less damage from hits.
It is worth noting that we have an open Flask Slot. I will reserve it for Tincture when we know what this mod is available for.
We also have access to a very interesting new Keystone, which is Bloodsoaked Blade. You will need to unassign two Life Nodes in exchange for being able to select and start Tincture right now, and the uptime is pretty good.
The damage provided by Tincture is simply insane for a Flask Slot. So, if you are playing this build or just planning to do so, keep that in mind.
All in all, this version of Lightning Strike Warden is very satisfying to me, and its high tankiness, coupled with its strong damage output, will definitely get us to the end! What do you think of this? See you next time!