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A Deep Dive Into The Special Synergies Of Font Of Thunder Unique Shield In POE 3.25

Aug 21, 2024

Font of Thunder is a Heist exclusive Unique Shield that can only be looted from the final reward room of Grand Heist Blueprints. This shield has had some use in the past, especially regarding its Chance to Shock modifier, which can be used for Self-Shock mechanics, such as detecting Galvanic Field on your character instead of the enemy.

The other interesting part of this shield is of course Damage Taken As Component, which makes 40% of cold and fire damage taken as lightning damage, and this is not specific to hits, so it applies to all damage all the time as well.

A Deep Dive Into The Special Synergies Of Font Of Thunder Unique Shield In POE 3.25

Limitations Of Damage Taken As Modifier

But the problem with this modifier has always been that it is 40% instead of 50%. Because the shield can be combined with Divine Flesh Keystone, which makes 50% of all elemental damage you take taken as chaos damage, resulting in a total of 90% of cold and fire damage taken as lightning or chaos damage.

You might be thinking that having only 10% of your damage left isn’t so bad, but the problem is that you don’t want to invest in any more CC or Fire Resistance since that kind of defeats the purpose of using those mechanics.

However, since 10% of the damage is still of those types, if your Cold and Fire Resistances end up at 60%, you’re still going to take a lot of damage from that 10%. As a result, these mechanics aren’t used together very often.

In POE 3.25, however, this particular synergy is getting some huge buffs, and that’s what we’re going to talk about. In Settlers of Kalguur league, Physical Damage Taken As modifier has been nerfed across the board, with many modifiers being removed outright or changed to something else.

Watcher’s Eye Modifier Changes

One thing that has been changed is that previously Watcher’s Eye was affected by Purity Aura modifiers. These modifiers cause a percentage of physical strike damage to be taken as elemental damage instead of being based on the type of Purity Aura you’re using. For example, with Purity of Fire, physical strikes are taken as fire.

But in POE 3.25, these modifiers now cause a percentage of the other two elemental damage types to be treated as the element associated with Purity Aura you use. The really important point here is that they are no longer specific to strike damage, but all damage, including damage over time.

So, when affected by Purity of Lightning, its modifier is 10% to 20% of the fire and cold damage that is taken as lightning damage. This finally fills in the missing piece of the puzzle with Font of Thunder and Divine Flesh Keystone, which has all incoming fire and cold damage taken as lightning or chaos damage.

POE 3.25 Font Of Thunder Unique Shield

Damage Taken As vs Damage Conversion

However, there is one very important thing to note here, Damage Taken As mechanic works differently than Damage Conversion mechanic. That is, damage types with Damage Taken As over 100% do not scale back to 100% the way Damage Conversion over 100% does.

In other words, if you have a modifier that is over 100% of Damage Taken As, then you will actually take more damage than the original portion of the damage. This is because all Damage Taken As modifiers are calculated at the same step as receiving damage calculations. Therefore, you want to get exactly 100% or as close to 100% as possible.

So with Font of Thunder, Divine Flesh, and Watcher’s Eye modifier equipped, the only one here that has a roll range is Watcher’s Eye. You actually want to project this modifier to roll to its lowest number to 10% or as close to it as possible. If you take an extra 1%-2% of fire or cold damage, this won't matter much, but an extra 10% is a lot.

Once you've completed this setup, you're ready to start using it. You are now taking 100% of your cold and fire damage as lightning or chaos damage. This means you no longer need to invest in any cold or fire resistance.

Jewel Modifier

Now the crazy thing about this setup is that the change to the Watcher’s Eye of Purity of Lightning modifier isn’t the only buff. Since modifiers are now accessible to normal Jewels, max resistance becomes much more accessible.

You can increase the max lightning resistance of Viridian, Cobalt, and Crimson Jewel up to 2%, but note that the easiest to increase is on Cobalt or Blue Jewels.

The presence of this modifier on a gem is a little crazy since it’s weighted more heavily than the other two lightning resistance types. Combined with Purity of Lightning and some Aura effects, you’ll be able to hit 90% lightning resistance fairly easily.

If you’re struggling for Jewel slots, you can even get a further 2% on Searing Exarch Implicit modifiers on your helmet.

Synergies With Body Armor Slots

Now there are a ton of synergies you can achieve with this setup. Since a lot of them revolve around Body Armor slots, let’s take a look at those first to see which Body Armor you should invest more POE Currency into.

You can use Doppelgänger Guise, which is a Maven-exclusive Body Armor. It has a modifier that reduces Chaos and Physical damage by 40%. So this gear works really well for the previously mentioned setups.

POE 3.25 Doppelgänger Guise

There’s also Fourth Vow, which will provide more extreme mitigation for Chaos damage once you have a decent amount of armor. But it’s different from Doppelgänger Guise. This Chaos damage reduction from armor only applies to it.

We’ll also mention Juggernaut’s Unbreakable Ascendancy, which has changed significantly in POE 3.25. Now it applies 15% armor to Chaos damage from hits taken, rather than any elemental damage reduction, which is very useful in this setup.

Of course, there’s another Body Armor choice, Lightning Coil, which makes 50% of physical hit damage treated as Lightning damage, rather than drastically increasing physical damage mitigation.

You’ll also need to use Eldritch Implicit on Helmet. Because now Body Armor slot isn’t the only slot that has effective synergy with this setup if you’re not using Unique Helmet to treat physical damage as Lightning or Chaos to further increase your mitigation against physical hits.

Elemental Penetration Avoidance

Finally, we want to mention one of the most powerful parts of this setup, which is the ability to fully or partially avoid specific damage types with Penetration. Because this build doesn’t take Fire or Cold damage, Fire or Cold type specific Penetration doesn’t apply.

This setup can easily withstand the slams of Uber Shaper. For example, with 40% Cold Penetration, half of Cold damage is treated as Chaos and the other half as Lightning, so we can avoid all Penetration. This is also true for Uber Maven’s Fireballs with a lot of Fire Penetration.

Once Penetration is taken out of the way of any Lightning damage specific Penetration, these types of abilities aren’t as scary.

Finally, we wanted to highlight this mechanic combination because now it’s actually a more practical setup than before. I think it could make for some interesting builds, with new surprises as you explore the endgame!

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