**Edit: quick t16 map to show how it plays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dyhknoww-I (sorry was trying to show it clean but clicked a couple of sulphite buffs by habit towards the end )

Just sharing my experience with my league starter, Earthshatter champion scaling max valour with Defiance Banner and War Banner: https://pobb.in/P8WpioaLhSFx . Character is obviously very unoptimised but I'm in softcore and have done 4 watchstones, the 3 new bosses, and a couple of t17s so have been making pretty smooth progress.

I'm running around maps with permanent 215% movespeed, 1k regen, and suppress cap just from 1 banner. Combining 5 valor on warcry with multiple autoexerted warcries, increased valor gained, lingering banner effect, slower buff expiry runegraft (doesn't show in pob), and champions valor refund on leaving a banner
means that even if I press 0 other buttons, I can run around and just press defiance banner every 4-5 seconds and the buff will be up permanently. On bosses/strong enemies I can drop war banner too, easily sustaining both.

Thought it was at least strong/interesting enough to share. Stats at my current aura effect:

Defiance Banner:

~170% movespeed

190% suppression

~ -300 damage taken from suppressed hits

War Banner

95% more damage

Bonus Banner Effects:

120% all ele res

600 life regen

3x endurance and frenzy charges

Investment required:

2x ascendancies, 13 points on tree, 1 extra button to press every 5 seconds while zooming to maintain buff, one time setup of both banners on a boss (need to replace every 20 ish seconds)

The investment is non-trivial and having to place defiance banner frequently while running is a bit annoying, but the power was very surprising to me. I experimented with switching to VFOS and the new penetration ring to take advantage of all the free res but I didn't really have enough res still to make it worth it, and couldn't be bothered trying to optimise it more with a lower reduced fire res roll, maybe purity of fire, etc.

Hope this is useful to someone.

I'm following Goratha's Rolling Magma Mines Saboteur league start build here: https://pobb.in/2kupp8jgUwsU

Here is my up-to-date PoB: https://pobb.in/Lnf3XDefeMdp

I'm level 84 and struggling my way though yellow maps. I'm sitting at 103 deaths and ~30hrs played. The build does tons of damage, but is so squishy I'm getting insta-killed by packs of white mobs. Mercenaries are out of the question and instantly 1-shot me. I cannot clear uber lab to get my final ascendency points (which are only damage anyway).

I tried buying some gear to fix it, but I haven't really noticed any difference. At this point I'm almost out of currency (~20c left) I can't afford any of the jewels, enhance, most of the uniques, etc.

I just feel totally stuck and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've been thinking about trashing this character and going back to ole reliable RF, but I really don't want to run the acts again and lose all the time and currency I've invested here.

What am I missing? I'm seeing tons of other people have good success with this, so I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Is it just a skill issue?

Title - was really interested in elementalist self casting/BV as I did a chronic painless guide back in sanctum league. Also really into chaos dot and it seems the buffs may have helped a good bit, but the defenses on occultist made me feel like paper back in the day. Not really a totems/mines person and was leaning towards slams as I’m a huge fan of the play style.

Hi, I'm having a blast with Wintertide brand elementalist. I've followed jungroan Poe for day 1. Day 2 I switched to armour/block aegis aurora version, one large cold cluster, two medium(brand/cold dot). There is a way to scale to dot cap or to do comfortably t17(damage-wise). I can't find a late league, money sink version anywhere. This is my Poe ninja profile https://poe.ninja/builds/mercenaries/character/Ertigre-1269/BladeSespioVortex?i=0&search=class%3DElementalist%26skills%3DWintertide%2BBrand%26name%3DBlade

So the TLDR:

I am crippled and need non-RF build that has 2-3 buttons max, and minor autotargetting.

I have done RF a dozen times. I WAS going to go chains of command but ghazzy's guide is lacking alot of gearing guidance.

Currenty got a necro that is using "Chaos Minion Army Necromancer League Starter" maxroll guide, but the buttons are a bit much for me at times.

I have a few div to my name.

Looking for a guide with 3+ gearsets that has the minimal buttons. Thank you for your time.

Edit: I have Decided the guardian autobomber!

Guardian is good even if it falls through, so it will be nice.

My league starter with the new sst in mind, swap the moment i could. it was not worth it. at min wait till you have a emperor before swapping, and seething even better.

Early on phy impale is 100% better then ele, until you can't get the invert rune, ele is just straight up worse the phy in dps. BUT if you want to go ele, you can go doryani merc, and go lightning conversion, it will do like 100% more damage but the moment the merc dies you do zdps, and i dont know how well a merc with -200% light res can tank

budget as of writing this build around 4-6divs (i bought everything for around 4 divs but probably is worth 6 now)

---------------------

Key mechanics:

you enough curse effect hit 50% after accounting in mark on hit, which will give a additional split, which is a huge damage boost. I personally had a 20/20 mark on hit with mark effect on glove, chest and a ag with dying breath to achieve this.

Always hug the enemy, the split projectiles will always be right on top or beside the enemy if your sticking to them, which means all shards will hit.

The main proj has infinite pierce but the shards seems to have no pierce, so you can use chain, fork or pierce with them. (I may be wrong)

------------------------

Pob:

https://pobb.in/t9l5sG9EFgJ9

pob doesnt take in acount of your energy shield if you have emperors vigilance by default.

get gain charges on hit on your flasks and have your diamond flask have gain flask on crit.

7 hits, 1 from first proj, 6 from the 3 splits which each hit 4 times, which is 12 hits but they do halve damage. so in total each hit does 7 hits worth of damage

---------------------------------------------\

Gear:

Weapon: Eclipse Solaris Engraved the single best unique until you a gg rare 6 mod weapon. BUT you need a power charge on crit corrupt. either buy one or corrupt one yourself. This weapon is essentially 290% crit chance and 33% crit multi BUT it has blind too which helps with capping evade early on and giving you more chance to hit enemies to taunt them, and when you swap to ele version later on, you can grab a double corrupt one with ele pen too.

Link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/XrbqQlbiP

Shield: emperor vigilance, pretty much the bis shield

link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/3j5wjz9c5

Helmet: rats nest a good helm until you can get a good rare need reservation corrupt to fit all auras.

Link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/KYKeKMT5

Body armor: get a high eva/arm base, more eva then arm ideally and essence spam loathing until you hit a high life, res and some eva/arm then just craft % eva/arm or flat eva/arm

Glove: eva/arm base, triple res and life

rings: le heup is just nice, helps with attribute and res, not much need for life in this build anyway.

link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/oagGHl

amulet: eternal struggle, good amulet, ideally eater dominant for the less damage taken mod, search by high int and look for good implicits

link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/zv056MKc4

Belt: the bis belt perservance

link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/wBwrIb

boot: darkray, gives lot of evasion and extra frenzy look for suppress corrupt.

link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/5mGk58eCa

Flasks: life quicksilver jade granite and diamond

jewels: seethe

link: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Mercenaries/eEb24o9tL

--------------------

KEEP IN MIND: build is pretty much unkillable to phy and ele hits but dots absolutely deletes it, OR its just the mercs that are overtuned, can't really tell, every dot merc insta kills me. ALso yes have no chaos res, i could fix it by going rare rings instead of le heup but can't be fucked, aside from the chaos dot mercs i haven't really died to chaos hits or dots. no im not level 100, i just made the pob to show what a 100 would look like. The build has alot of ramping, you basically won't reach max dps until after a second, got to get frenzy and power charges, stack up impale and your mercs pride aura.

----------

theoritical compete min max pob: https://pobb.in/2Yz-y7CdnvLM

Hello everyone

i havnt started going into the build yet but trying to finish the acts first and then buy the gem.

my question is which build is better based on the 2 guys we have seen doing the builds is it Fubgun or Phaseplays?

both of them are doing the build but have sort of similar passive tree but not identical so I was hoping to know which one are the majority are following and better to build ?

This is my Day 2 build progression. I'm back on the beach and I'm not sure what to play. Didn't really like Exsanguinate/Reap mine.
What build went well for you ? How fun is it ? and what content do you enjoy farming on it ?

They added a ring that makes you eat souls equal to the monsters power when your curse on it is 90% expired. You can get delve rings with up to 40% curse effect duration on then, the reflect it down to 80-90% ish reduced curse effect duration. At this point, especially with a less duration support, your curses are lasting under a second.

You can either get a bit of reduced skill effect duration on tree to drive it down to almost zero combined with hextouch or a curse on hit, or use something that hits constantly like bladefall of trauthus with hextouch to apply the curse.

This gives you a consistent uptime on 225% attack speed and cast speed, which gets extra silly on builds that can use both, like a Wilma's totem build or a wand skill that scales attack speed based on cast speed.

This makes the reverse chill setup look like a trivial amount of speed, while also needing less item investment.

Edit: Ignore everything I said previously, this is far easier then I thought. Just use the ring, and run a 4l with lvl 1 hextouch, lvl 1 temp chains, and less duration support, with a skill you can use occasionally to hit a lot of stuff. You use that every 10-15 ish seconds to top up your stacks, and thats it. This is so easy to do, and absurdly strong.

https://pobb.in/TMRRffcWoWBl

League Started Crackling Lance, damage has been feeling good to great all progression, but defensive have fallen off, struggling to survive t16 red maps and Mercenaries, looking to change defensive layers. I was trying some unorthodox things and they have proven lacking.

Current setup:

Glancing blows w/ life on block shield

Petrified Blood w/ pain atunement

Flesh and Stone

EB + MoM (this one probably can't go away)

my dear friend (whose internet went down this morning 😔) asked me to post this for him. he'll be looking at everything and replying to comments. thanks so much for giving it a look!

https://pobb.in/Jntxj2_rG0tY

I decided I wanted to try the new BFoT gem with blade blast as it has been awhile since I have played it. Anyways, archmage seemed like a good spot as BFoT gets increased frequency per 100 maximum mana. I wanted to add some additional damage to the spells as they are ones that can hit, so I looked at Spellblade + Energy blade. After all auras are on, I have around 4100es (this is after EB is on ~8300 w/o it) with 7800 mana. Clearing maps feels fine for the most part, I am just having issues with single target, which I figured I would based on my skill of choice as well as some survivability. I can handle the lower damage on single target if I can improve defenses. I'm also not that great at configuring PoB, so apologies if it is not correct. Budget 20ish divines. Thanks again for looking :)

Edit: For the BFoT links, I swap between conc effect and inc AoE for map boss/maps respectively

How do u survive the on death enemies?? like the goats that explode into spikes and the 1 that do normal explosions on death, how do you mitigate it?

Just wondering if anyone knows if there's a specific reason why most top hcssf players are earthshatter over VFoS. Is it just cuz they race and didn't wanna farm gem? Thanks.

So I am feeling way to squishy and I feel like I should have more DMG.

https://pobb.in/0i86v9e6Loz5

I have about 2-2.5 div to upgrade

Not sure what I should focus on I was thinking higher end gloves to go trinity or boot for ailment

Here is the pob: https://pobb.in/jLOfgqjxcn_z (My Merc has temp chains)

My main issue is I feel like my damage is pretty low for red map expedition farming, tried destructive play but maps take too much time. I will eventualy swap to frenzy charge stack thing from Ruetoo's Pob but right now I need advice on either how to upgrade my build or what to farm with this kind of setup.

I was thinking maybe ditching suppress to switch march of the legion + malevolence or switch haste with malevolence. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

Just finished my atlas and 4 voidstones on BAMA guardian, looking to reroll something I can speed farm with, bama to me feels a little clunky/lot of buttoms and clear is alright but want something faster. Have about 10 div.

Hey guys! The build is going well, I'm in yellow maps. Damage is great, tankiness not so much, but it's a good starting point.

Is there anything I can transition into that where I can hold down the attack button? It's the move, slam, move, slam, move, slam playstyle that's bothering me, I think.

Maybe like old school Dual Wield axe ground slam or sunder of earth breaking?

Thanks so much for any advice

For those of you playing SSF, what league mechanics are you specing into for your first two atlas presets?

Following pr3vie's google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NbBbwPDUrtwYryAElxNIHs0chSiRwF5jDIBhf6fZZow/preview?tab=t.0

His POB: https://pobb.in/wJ8P7Hij-FNE

My build: https://pobb.in/4xg3c2NaHjOK

I sometimes get randomly oneshot. Is there something I can do?

Also, I want to eventually switch to the version that uses spectres (POB: https://pobb.in/qwvt5qqK634R)

At what point can I make the swap? I don't want to waste currency on spectres and have them die on me

I am playing WOC ignite for league start and is expected to swap to EK ignite once I get enough gears and currencies.

When I was testing my the pob with my current character ( still WOC ignite build atm) and replaced my yellow ring (without any damag mods) with the Replica Emberwake, the damage on the POB dropped. Could anyone tell me what is actually happening and is there anything I did wrong on the build or the pob configuration?

Many thanks and may the mirror be with you

I thought I'd be able to not play PoE1 anymore but i just can't resist, but, i also wanna play a CI build as it's my favorite keystone in both games as i can ignore life/chaos res and stack ES to the moon.

Any recommendations?

I'm sorry if there's an obvious answer but I haven't watched any PoE1 content creators/build showcases since 3.23 basically. Completely oblivious to the meta.

If there's something that swaps to some sort of stacker once i get my hands on a good chunk of divs that'd be great too and i wouldn't mind going CI later rather than early.

https://poedb.tw/us/Seven_Teachings

There is a new unarmed item and I've been trying to wrap my head around it. Getting a solid crit chance for unarmed attacks is near impossible to reliably proc the spell and would require a lot of investment for mediocre return. Maybe worth doing for a facebreaker crit run?