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How To Make The Best Walking Simulator Ward Loop Build With Firestorm & Volatile Dead In POE 3.23?

Jan 08, 2024

Hi everyone, someone asked me what my favorite build in Path of Exile is. I really enjoy running Ward Loop builds to take players through 10 Acts in each league.

Why Choose Ward Loop?

The budget to complete a Ward Loop build usually ranges from 10 to 20 Divine Orbs. Ward Loop build is extremely different from other Cast when Damage Taken builds. It’s also one of the most complex builds in Path of Exile. But once you run it, it’s very satisfying.

You don’t need any buttons to play with this build. You can play this build with any desired skill set of your choice. It has very good clearing speed and boss DPS. I also noticed that as long as you kept moving in circles at my speed settings, you rarely died from anything.

How To Make The Best Walking Simulator Ward Loop Build With Firestorm & Volatile Dead In POE 3.23?

Currently, I’m running a complete, unedited set of T16 Guardian Maps. In theory, these walking simulators won’t actually be hit by smaller affects, but may actually be hit by larger affects. This is why Ward Loop is the worst choice for things like Abyss and Wildwood Magic Find.

This build can withstand most hits and blasts from deep Delve, but will not survive T16 Abyss. The reason is that in order for a Ward Loop build to work, you can’t have any physical damage reduction, nor can you have any chaos resistance. This also includes physical damage conversion.

The defense of this build depends on the total number of Wards stacked in your build. With huge DPS, we can also kill enemies before they can hit us.

The build I made here has pretty decent damage when running the map with Wildwood and comes in two types of variants. But the ultimate goal here is to use Crystallised Omniscience.

Build Basics

To start the engine loop, you need 2 weapons in your off-hand, each with Summon Spectral Spirits ability. When you swap them to your key staff, this will kill the minions, causing you to take damage from Heartbound Loop.

The next cycle of self-inflicted damage comes from Summon Skeletons and Forbidden Rite, both of which are tied to spell-casting when taking damage.

That’s what building a feature is all about. Sometimes you may need to change weapons a few times before you can start the engine. This can happen if you don’t have enough Wards in your build settings. Basically, you need 7 POE Items for Ward Loop to work properly.

POE: Heartbound Loop

Mana And Mana Recoup

The most important factor is mana. You need more mana, and reduce the mana cost of your skills. You can also split some of your mana cost with your life cost, while restoring health and mana with each hit.

Mana regeneration is a key element of Ward Loop to sustain the engine. This is also why we can easily maintain Righteous Fire on our builds.

Reduced Skeleton Duration

The way the engine works is that you basically have a minion skill, like Spectral Spirits. When you swap weapons, they die and you take damage from these Heartbound Loops. This, in turn, stimulates your spell-casting when taking damage.

One setting will spawn some level 20 Summon Skeletons. When they die, you take damage again, repeating the cycle. Therefore, the shorter the duration of your skeletons, the faster they will trigger.

But remember, the duration of these skeletons should not be lower than 0.2 milliseconds, otherwise it will not generate them. There are two ways to reduce the duration: one is through Passive Tree and the other is through Gems.

Ideally, skeletons should have a duration between 0.20 seconds and 0.40 seconds. You can adjust these numbers using To Dust Cobalt Jewels and Gems.

POE 3.23: To Dust Cobalt Jewel

Cooldown Recovery Rate

Another important aspect is cooldown recovery. You can get this from several sources, such as Saboteur Ascendancy, Suffixes on Belts, Charms from Primalist, and Eldritch Implicits on Boots. When taking damage, you can try to stack as many as possible to increase the chance of casting a spell.

Flask Sustain

The reason we don’t die from self-inflicted damage is because Olroth’s Resolve Flask gives us a permanent Ward effect as long as it’s active. This is the most important aspect of the build and why we invest so much in POE Currency in Flask Effect Duration and Charges Gain.

First, there are two primary sources, one is Pathfinder node, and the other is Brutal Restraint Timeless Jewel, which allows access to Traitor Keystone. From here you can adjust the flask effect duration of Jewels and modifiers on our belt.

You can also remove your fourth Flask if you cannot maintain your Olroth’s Resolve. The reason we can’t use Micro-Distillery Belt or any global modifier to increase the effect of Flask is because this would also increase the negative effects of Olroth’s Resolve Less Ward.

POE 3.23: New unique iron flask - Olroth's Resolve

Ward

Speaking of Wards, the build is entirely dependent on the total stack of Wards you have. You need at least 900 when running Olroth’s Resolve for it to work properly. The more Wards you have, the more tanks you can build.

This basically acts as a barrier when you take damage. If you find that your build is losing life while the engine is active, that means you need to put more numbers in it.

In addition to Summon Skeletons with Heartbound Loop, we also used Forbidden Rite with CWDT. The more life you have, the more damage you take from Forbidden Rite.

Physical Damage Reduction And Chaos Res

With these 2 casts in our build when taking damage from a source, both physical damage and chaos damage should remain at their default values in the build. If you don’t take enough self-damage, the engine won’t start.

Map/Monster Mods

There are several modifiers that can brick this build. The main one is reducing the cooldown recovery rate, especially from monsters with Temporal Bubble. This will stop the loop and you will have to start the engine again if you enter its shield. Other than that, try to avoid these very common map mods.

Why Choose Scion?

Although there are many variations of these builds from Occultist and Saboteur. What makes Ascendant the best choice in my opinion is its ability to get both Flask Charge Gain and Cooldown Recovery Rate.

Scion variant is the only one that can run up to 4 active Flasks simultaneously. Every Flask in this build is extremely powerful, so choose wisely.

Leveling Tips

Leveling this build is very easy and a lot of fun with Detonate Dead of Chain Reaction. You can use Vaal version for bossing and Trans Gems version for leveling. This is an extremely powerful skill that works well even without investing too many passive skills into your build.

I recommend the following unique upgrade tools, starting with Act 1. Other than that, just dual-wield Wards and +1 Fire Skill Gems.

POE 3.23: Ward Loop Build Passive Tree

Passive Tree used for leveling is also flexible, and you can reassign some of its nodes later. But that doesn’t matter, since most of our damage comes from Corpse Explosions with Ignite Proliferation Support.

In any case, this is the best Ward Loop build in POE 3.23, and the damage and clearing effects are very satisfying! Hopefully, this guide helps you melt everything in Affliction League with ease!

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