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All Details About Starting A Ward Loop Build In POE 3.21 Crucible League

May 04, 2023

In this guide, I will talk about my pussycat build for POE 3.21 Crucible League. It is called Ward Loop build. There are several things you need to know about this build before you start and this is not an easy build for beginners without a proper guide. If done in the wrong way, the Pussycats may fly out of your monitor towards your face. I’m not joking. There are several things you have to prepare for before you start this build.

Budget

Let’s start with the first one and that is the budget to start this build. You need at least 35 Divine Orbs. In my case, I spent three Mirror Shots, which are sold for 13 Divine Orbs each. Now, let’s take a look at my gear and I will explain what you really need to get started.

POE 3.21 Ward Loop Build

Items You Need

The key ingredient of any Ward Loop build is the Olroth’s Resolve Iron Flask. This flask gives you permanent uptime of your Ward. Ward is a form of defense that reduces the damage taken from a hit equal to the amount of Ward you have. This means, if I take a hit damage of 1000 while having a Ward of 1001, I take no damage at all. This applies to all damage types, namely fire, cold, lightning, physical and chaos. It then goes on a cool down. Ward recharges for seconds after it depletes.

But unlike Energy Shield, taking damage will not interrupt the Ward restoration time. Under normal circumstances, your Ward breaks after you take the damage. But since we are using a layer of flask, Ward does not break during the effect.

POE 3.21 Olroth's Resolve Iron Flask

Another fact is that Energy Shield and Aegis is of no use for Ward builds because the damage fast goes through them before applying the reduction. Hence, you gain low damage reduction benefit of having extra Energy Shield or the Aegis. This flask needs to be active all the time and if it breaks, you die. This is why our main focus in this build is all the modifiers to flask sustain.

One of the main items we use for our flask sustain is the Brutal Restraint Timeless Jewel, which grants The Traitor Keystone. Furthermore, we use two Medium Cluster Jewels (Ghoul Splinter & Plague Ornament), which grants increased flask effect duration with increased effect. Do not use Alchemist’s Genius or any modifiers that increase the effect of flasks because that also increases the less Ward modifier from the Olroth’s Resolve Iron Flask. We also have two suffixes on our belt (Beast Trap Heavy Bealt) that help our flask sustain.

One of the hardest parts of this build is tapping your resistances because Ward Loop builds are very squishy. For this, let me give you a big tip. Just look for the perfect prefixes on trade. Then, use Eldritch Orbs to free up the suffixes so that you can later craft resistances with the crafting bench. You will save tons of Divine Orbs this way. The Eternal Struggle helps you fix your attributes easily while giving you some good bonuses.

Also Read: Is Path of Exile Still Worth Playing In 2023? - 10 Things You Must Know

If you have tons of POE Currency, use Ashes of the Stars instead. Since Ward is a global defense modifier, most Ward Loop builds use Skin of the Lords and other items that increase the global defenses. The upside of having a high value of Ward is that you take no damage from small hits. I would not recommend doing Ubers with this build unless you have a good skill at it. 

The most important thing to note is that you cannot have any form of physical damage reduction here because we have to take lots of damage to trigger our skills. The way how we trigger the loop is with Heartbound Loop Moonstone Ring and the Forbidden Rite skill. The way how we start the loop is by switching our weapon slot that is using a minion skill, such as Spectral Spirits from Essence of Insanity. When we swap the weapon, our minions die and the loot begins.

You may ask why use the To Dust Cobalt Jewel? The only line we need from this is the reduced skeleton duration. We need to lower the duration to 0.2 seconds so that the skeletons die quickly and we take more damage and the loop is faster.

Another important factor to consider is that since Ward Loop requires lots and lots of Mana, we can only use one Aura with Eternal Blessing. Hence, we are using Mind Over Matter and stacking a bit of extra Mana to sustain our loop and our defenses. We have reduced minor cost of skills on our Quicksilver Flask as well.

POE 3.21 Annihilating Light

Finally, the weapon I prefer to use is the Cane of Kulemak. You need spell damage, double damage, mono regeneration rate and any modifier that is good. Some builds that have plenty of resistances use the Annihilating Light.

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