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Before the full release of PoE 3.27 Keepers of the Flame content, many players anticipated significant balance changes due to comments made by the game director in a previous patch Q&A session. However, the official patch notes were disappointing in terms of balance adjustments.

Unexpectedly, the biggest impact of PoE 3.27's meta gameplay wasn't on balance changes, but rather on the addition of hundreds of Foulborn unique items. Now that the official focus is primarily on POE 2, there shouldn't be any new Foulborn unique items in this league. So, will Foulborn unique items be integrated into the core gameplay?

What Are Foulborn Unique Items?

Foulborn unique items are not new unique items, and they are unique items that already existed in the game, whose one or more affixes have been replaced by Foulborn affix.

Because Foulborn affixes are generally stronger than regular affixes, these Foulborn Unique items become unique and powerful enough in many situations to form an entire build idea around them.

The Red Drea (Foulborn)

Foulborn unique items were used in many builds in Patch 3.27. The Red Drea (Foulborn) was the most frequently used Foulborn unique item in both softcore and hardcore trade leagues in patch 3.27. In softcore, 8% of level 95-100 characters used it, while in hardcore, this figure rose to 11%.

Its most common Foulborn variant replaces its Endurance Charge chance affix with Fire Resistance or All Elemental Resistances talent allocated nodes based on Jewel range, providing an increase in maximum life. This provides a much-needed boost to life-based builds, allowing them to compete with the energy shield configuration.

The Red Drea (Foulborn) is used by approximately 40% of Chieftains, 17% of Juggernauts, and 20% of Gladiators, with Elementalists also making significant use of it.

The effectiveness of a Jewel is closely related to its position in the jewel socket on the Passive Skill Tree. The classes with 3 jewel sockets have particularly strong effects.

The sockets outside Marauder's starting point have the greatest potential. By using Tattoos to replace Strength path talent points with "+6% Fire Resistance" nodes, and combining them with The Red Drea (Foulborn), each small node provides an additional 4% maximum life increase. This allows for a total of approximately 55% additional maximum life increase using this unique item.

Templar slots outside the starting point offer slightly less potential, providing approximately a 30% increase to maximum life. Ranger slots south of the starting point offer around a 20% increase to maximum life.

This allows life builds in this area to either become more durable due to the significant increase in life or save talent points invested in damage, thus better tackling endgame content.

Hand Of Thought And Motion (Foulborn)

Foulborn unique items even impacted the PoE 3.27 meta. Hand of Thought and Motion (Foulborn) boasts a powerful affix that increases accuracy rating by 5% for every 25 points of Intelligence.

It fundamentally solves the scaling accuracy problem inherent in past accuracy-stacking builds. Previously, these builds heavily relied on Precursor's Emblem Rings, but the improvements they provided were limited and had limitations.

Now, Hand of Thought and Motion (Foulborn) allows you to scale accuracy simply by stacking Intelligence. This is incredibly powerful because Intelligence stacking has been strong in recent leagues, and it also provides a significant amount of energy shield.

Combined with Shaper's Touch Crusader Gloves' boost to energy shield and accuracy, Stormrider Boots' base Lightning damage, and Juggernaut's Undeniable Ascendancy node's massive attack speed, you can create an extremely powerful build, potentially the strongest build of the league. But if Foulborn items don't carry over to the next league, this strongest build will only be available in Patch 3.27.

Doedre's Scorn (Foulborn)

Foulborn affix of Doedre's Scorn indicates that the socketed gem is supported by a level 30 Impending Doom. This provides approximately 6000 to 9000 flat Chaos damage. Players can equip it at level 39.

A normal level 4 Impending Doom Support Gem only provides 175 to 263 flat Chaos damage at level 38. This means that at the corresponding level, Doedre's Scorn (Foulborn) version can deal approximately 34 times the damage.

It allows players to quickly complete campaigns and even one-shot campaign bosses. Its ingenious design lies in the fact that in the endgame, it is surpassed by the highly sought-after Forbidden Shako Helmet.

However, the latter is extremely rare or it requires a vast amount of valuable PoE Currency. So Doedre's Scorn (Foulborn) will give players the freedom of choice if it could be in core game. You can choose to use it from start to finish or simply as a fast leveling tool.

Other Noteworthy Foulborn Unique Items

Berek's Respite (Foulborn)

Berek's Respite provides a new way to obtain the explode affix for various builds, especially when combined with Elementalist's Ailments transformation, creating interesting explosion chains.

Esh's Mirror (Foulborn)

Provides a relatively easy way to obtain damage reflect immunity, used by approximately 2% of characters above level 95, primarily in Detonate Dead builds.

Kaom's Spirit (Foulborn)

Kaom's Spirit (Foulborn) is very useful for mana stacking builds, and even more so when you use two. It provides immunity to curses, a large number of attributes, mana regeneration, and a flat mana of up to 200.

Will Foulborn Unique Items Be In The Core Game?

Foulborn Unique items will probably be added to the core game in some form. This is because Breach rework is almost certainly going to be included in core content and won't just appear in this league, and this mechanic requires unique rewards.

The hundreds of newly added Foulborn Uniques items have enormous potential, much like Replica Uniques. Many of them may remain dormant across multiple leagues, but should specific balance changes occur elsewhere, one or two of them could become key to a meta, enabling new builds.

Even if some of Foulborn items clearly require balance tweaks, they provide players with more options and more playable toys, which is a good thing in Path of Exile.

As the saying goes, everyone has their specialty, and this applies to Path of Exile as well: different classes specialize in different powers and weapons, and the main functions of available builds also differ.

Unlike the classes, whose basic attributes are fixed, the builds themselves, as craftable creations, are entirely up to you. Whether dealing with bosses, developing new dungeons, or farming PoE currency, each build's fate is sealed when it's crafted.

Of course, with the updates to various mechanics in 3.27 league, your strategy for crafting builds should also be adjusted. To save you time, this guide will directly introduce how to craft Death's Oath Occultist Build, suitable for farming resources.

Death's Oath Occultist Build Overview

In fact, this isn't a completely new build originating from Keepers league; it appeared in earlier leagues, but 3.27 gave it another chance to showcase its power.

As the name suggests, this build revolves around Witch Ascendancy class Occultist and the unique Astral Plate of Death's Oath.

The Occultist specializes in cold, chaos damage, and curses. And Death's Oath, when equipped, grants Death Aura effect. This effect deals continuous chaos damage to enemies within a certain range and inflicts chaos damage on yourself when you kill an enemy.

As a key element of the build, Death's Oath's advantage lies in its easy availability at the start of the season, allowing you to farm currency or XP early on through its effective health, damage reduction, and wide-area explosion.

However, as the league progresses, this build becomes less effective due to its relatively low single-target damage, requiring you to adjust your build strategy.

How To Craft This Build?

Before you can unlock Occultist class for crafting this build, we recommend using Chaosslinger build as a transition, which also focuses on chaos damage output, to complete early battles, accumulate resources, and level up.

This transitional build is centered around Spellslinger, combined with other chaos damage-dealing skills to quickly farm XP. Of course, if you have a more suitable Occultist leveling build, you can play at your own pace.

Next, use your earned currency to exchange for some basic gear, such as shields or rings that increase damage, but more importantly, obtain at least two Voidstones.

Socketing these items into Atlas of Worlds will enhance the base map's tier, up to Tier 16. This will give you a chance to obtain more and rarer loot when clearing the map later. The available Voidstone types and their corresponding enemies are:

• Ceremonial Voidstone - Drops from The Maven
• Decayed Voidstone - Drops from Uber Elder
• Grasping Voidstone - Drops from The Eater of Worlds
• Omniscient Voidstone - Drops from The Searing Exarch

Next, use these buffs to wreak havoc within your capabilities! Continue until you've earned enough Divine Orbs. Then, try to acquire Cluster jewels to expand your talent tree and activate more passive nodes.

Based on this, combined with your existing Death's Oath and Occultist, the basic build and the resources to further optimize it are complete.

Recommended Gear

When crafting this build, aside from Death's Oath as chest armor, most gear choices are not fixed. Just ensure the rarity is at least rare and meets your attribute requirements. However, for the helmet and amulet, we recommend the following:

Helmet - Heretic's Veil:

• Adds +2 to the level of socketed cursed gems.
• Socketed gems gain a level 22 Blasphemy bonus.
• Socketed cursed gem retention efficiency increased by 30%, dodge and energy shield increased by 90-110%, and maximum energy shield value increased by 40-50.

Amulet - Impresence (Chaos):

• All attributes are increased.
• Damage over time increased by 30-40%.
• Adds extra chaos damage.
• Maximum health increased by 50-70.
• Chaos resistance increased by 17-23%.

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How To Obtain Enough Divine Orbs?

There are many ways to obtain this currency, but we recommend Heist and Delirium. Heist's advantage lies in its optimization in 3.27 league; rogues' skills will upgrade along with their chosen jobs, accelerating your reward farming.

Since the enemies in Heist are not dangerous, you can easily complete it even in the early stages of the season when your character's damage output is insufficient. If you want to improve efficiency, you can equip items that increase movement speed.

To maximize your Delirium currency earnings in League 3.27, you need to add Delirium orbs to the relevant maps to increase the level of Delirium enemies encountered and the final reward. Currently available orbs include:

• Abyssal Delirium Orb
• Armoursmith's Delirium Orb
• Blacksmith's Delirium Orb
• Blighted Delirium Orb
• Cartographer's Delirium Orb
• Diviner's Delirium Orb
• Fine Delirium Orb
• Foreboding Delirium Orb
• Fossilised Delirium Orb
• Fragmented Delirium Orb
• Jeweller's Delirium Orb
• Singular Delirium Orb
• Skittering Delirium Orb
• Thaumaturge's Delirium Orb
• Timeless Delirium Orb
• Whispering Delirium Orb

How Effective Is This Build In Combat?

If you're familiar with PoE player community, you'll know that Death's Oath Occultist Build is often considered a chaotic version of Righteous Fire build, which inevitably results in a very slow combat pace.

But don't worry, with the right gear selection, you can ultimately gain increased chaos damage and damage over time, and further enhance your build's defense by stacking chaos resistance.

More importantly, besides direct damage output, Occultist class allows you to curse enemies, slowing their movement speed and reducing their damage output, thus ensuring you survive longer to the end.

That concludes this introduction. Hopefully, it will help you delve deeper into 3.27 league!

Dear Exiles, it's been over half a month since the release of Path of Exile 3.27. Have you found your best build yet? Here, we'd like to share a very interesting new build from Keepers of the Flame League, centered around The Grey Wind, added in 3.27.

Frankly, when we first saw this unique axe, its insane damage multiplier made us feel it was definitely going to be the focus of all builds in this league.

About The Grey Wind

This axe has an affix: When attacking with this weapon, deals an additional 8%-12% of the player's maximum health as fire damage. In other words, it's essentially a life-based version of Ephemeral Edge. The affix descriptions are very similar; the former provides maximum lightning damage based on an energy shield, while this axe provides fire damage based on the player's health.

It's worth noting that the difference between The Grey Wind and Ephemeral Edge is that The Grey Wind provides fixed damage with no area of ​​effect. That is, the damage value remains constant. However, Ephemeral Edge provides maximum lightning damage, so its scalable damage range is very large.

Considering its damage type, this axe is well-suited for Ignite build because it also has another affix: an additional 2% fire damage over time bonus for each Rage stack.

However, here we're not opting for continuous Rage stacking, but rather a hit-based totem setup.

How Does It Work?

But before we discuss the totems, let's talk about the basic principles of this Grey Wind build. There's nothing particularly new here; it mainly revolves around Rathpith Globe and Crown of Eyes. So, we get a large amount of fixed damage from Grey Wind, and then use Rathpith Globe to boost that damage, which provides a 5% spell damage bonus for every 100 points of the player's maximum health.

However, this only applies to spell damage; to convert it into attack damage, this shield is needed. This means the spell damage increase/decrease effect applies to attacks at 150%, resulting in a 7.5% attack damage bonus for every 100 health in this build.

In other words, Rathpith Globe shield provides such a high damage bonus that we essentially don't need to invest in any other damage bonuses anywhere else in the build.

Totems Regarding totem setups, since Ehemeral Edge synergizes well with totems (for example, its affix grants you Lightning Damage based on your Energy Shield still works when used with totems), it's reasonable to assume that Grey Wind will also work well with totems. Excitingly, the effect is indeed quite good.

In the previous Path of Exile league, Trickster build players preferred using totems for damage, but that was before the totem rework. Now, in patch 3.27, the only way to obtain melee totems is through Dawnstrider unique boots.

These boots provide a level 25 Earthbreaker Support effect to socketed gems. This is a support skill that converts your attack skills into a totem, which then performs a slam on your behalf.

Therefore, totems spawn here, and when nearby monsters are present, they will slam at those monsters to quickly stack damage.

Sand Stance & Blood Stance

Here, we need to focus on the changes to Perforate totem under different Stance systems.

In Sand Stance, Perforate slams like Starfish, but you can only hit once, regardless of where the monster is standing. However, when you switch to Blood Stance, the damage multiplier is reduced by 70%. Furthermore, the attack pattern completely changes after switching stances.

In Blood Stance, the attack range is much smaller, and many spikes will emerge from the ground. Their positions are not fixed, and they will fly in different directions, covering different areas. But the key to Blood Stance is that once you enter this stance, your attacks can hit the same target multiple times. So even with the reduced damage multiplier, it actually generates additional spikes to deal more damage.

In this version, we're using Perforate of Duality, meaning you gain 5 spikes in your base stance, and then an additional 10 spikes for 4 seconds after switching stances. So when we switch to Blood Stance, we have 15 spikes.

Theoretically, all 15 spikes could hit the same target, dealing massive damage, but in reality, this is unlikely unless your target is large and stationary. However, if you position yourself correctly, its damage is still significantly higher than Blood Stance.

Equipment

Next, let's quickly look at the equipment needed for The Grey Wind Totems build.

• Weapon: The Grey Wind
• Helmet: Crown of Eyes
• Chestplate: Kaom's Heart
• Shield: Rathpith Globe
• Gloves: Oblivion Grasp
• Boots: Dawnstrider
• Belt: Cataclysm Locket
• Rings: Havoc Grip & Brimstone Coil

Our gear selection criteria are simple: a thin layer of defense to protect our lives, allowing us to absorb damage before we lose health. If hit by a critical strike, we essentially need to buy time to break free of the pre-emptive state.

Ascendancy

For the Ascendancy class, we actually have many interesting options.

For example, Ascendants, because they also grant +1 totem, and you can choose other Ascendancy passives on top of that. You can also choose Juggernaut, which provides additional accuracy.

There's also Gladiator, with its high base block chance. Since our shields only provide about 50% base block chance, this is very beneficial for improving blocking ability. You don't need to invest too many resources in blocking.

Another notable feature is Hierophant, whose totem placement speed is exceptionally fast. Hierophant provides a 100% totem placement speed bonus, which, combined with the 20% from other nodes, results in a total 140% increase in totem placement speed - making it almost indispensable for totem builds.

Furthermore, you also gain a totem duration bonus, which is extremely useful in certain situations. When placing five totems, this provides an additional 25% damage.

In short, The Grey Wind Totems build, with its incredibly high fire damage output and hit rate, is definitely the best choice for quickly clearing areas in Path of Exile 3.27. Give it a try!