Conc's 3.5 Jugg WS / MS build
#1
Thought I'd do a writeup of the builds I used for 3.5. This one is a Juggernaut using WS that has an easy swap to Molten Strike. I was planning on getting to level 91 or so, but spent one night doing breachstone rotas and pure breachstones in 3.5 offer a LOT of experience. I shot from level 89 to 95 in a matter of 2-3 hours. They have announced some nerfing to the experience from these for 3.6, and the betrayal mechanic being less accessible will also make the pure breachstones more rare, so level 91-93 is more realistic.

Wild Strike linked with Ancestral Call and anything else is simply insane in maps and just plows through hordes of monsters quickly. Single target is a little lackluster, and I struggled a bit with single target until I added Vaal Ancestral Warchief as a 2nd totem to complement Ancestral Protector. This helps shore up the weakness significantly on map bosses, incursion architects, and syndicates, primarily. Throw your two totems & war banner down as you approach, flask up and these go down much quicker than before adding the Vaal totem. In the endgame gearing, it's primarily only T16 maps that this is really an issue T14 and below for sure were fine without the Vaal totem.

For those longer boss fights (Izaro / T16 Guardians / Shaper / Elder,) I swap to my loreweave with Molten Strike Links, where Molten Strike shines like no other. It works well with the same tree, but alternately you can shift the tree around a bit to squeeze a small amount more damage. I went through a good 50 orbs of regret with small changes to the tree here and there... overall it's barely noticeable. Pick a tree and go.

The build was designed to have quite a low budget when you enter maps, working well with 1-5c gear in every slot, and grow into endgame easily, with no really expensive items outside of Loreweave & Xoph's Blood. My final gearset items were worth ~15-100c each, with the exception of Loreweave & the Xoph's Blood amulet, which I farmed myself with Pure Breachstones. I assume that drop rate of Xoph's amulet gets better with Pure Breachstones, because I got an amulet drop in 6 or 7 Pure Breachstones, and each Xoph kill yielded a blessing, so when I got a trash drop, like the bow, I could always use the blessing on it, and it would give back 10 shards when I vendored it.

Leveling I went straight to RT through Versatility, Strong Arm & Barbarism, then down to Duelist leech nodes by going through Art of the Gladiator, Dervish, Golem's Blood to the outer ring, and then to Vitality Void. Then the DW damage nodes and Scion life, then EO (refunding RT,) then Scion gem area, then linked the outside of the tree at Duelist and dropped all the small nodes between Dervish and Golem's blood to connect the Marauder outside and refund Strong arm and the surrounding nodes to get Heart of the Warrior, ele penetration and mace nodes, then added endurance charges and jewels and eventually dropped Vitality void for just the one leech node when I had enough damage gear.

Even though this was the 2nd character of the league and I had plenty of currency, I made a point to do some lab farming in a rare 5L just to prove the concept. It worked well when using molten strike on Izaro. WS on Izaro took longer, and would sometimes kill adds you didn't want to kill. Gluttony belt prior to the fight start to gain endurance charges is nearly a must, as you can't carry them in with you and the build is not really tanky at all without them... I learned that the hard way with a 2 deaths on buffed up 3rd trial Izaros.

Overall it felt really good mapping this with a relatively tanky character, and bossing with MS is also good. A well rounded character that really never felt underpowered. Probably anyone reading this here is past playing these kinds of characters and more on variant style characters, but I enjoyed the style, as this is my first full league with PoE.

It looks like Hatred will be changed a bit for next league and we will see how that will affect this type of character, but overall I feel this will still be quite good in 3.6.

Here are some pastebins of various combinations:
Generic Tree with Wild Strike & Shroud of the Lightless:
https://pastebin.com/2W209xXa
Generic Tree with Wild Strike & Loreweave: https://pastebin.com/j0kssh9r
Molten Strike + Xoph’s Blood & Loreweave: https://pastebin.com/QHeUxvjc
According to the Molten Strike calculator, this version is Shaper DPS: ~1.2M no flasks or totems / ~2.5M full buffs / ~3M if you're rich and are able to afford the helm enchant

You can switch around gearsets and trees if you like, but you need to take care of a couple things:
  • MS is using Combustion support and Xoph's Blood, WS is using Elemental Focus and a rare amulet, so the config needs to be set correctly for ignite & covered in Ash for each set. All patebins disable blood rage, as that's mainly being used as an Arakaali trigger rather than for DPS.
  • Wild Strike skill section has extra gems so you can look at mapping vs. single target configs if you wanted to say, look at swapping in a melee phys link for Ancestral call for a map boss by just checking / unchecking the respective gems.
  • Lightless is a 5L and Loreweave a 6L, make sure skill gems reflect that.


Pantheon is Arakaali to take advantage of making the self DOTs stop (Immortal Call ends blood rage DOT, dousing flask ends nebuloch self DOTs, Forbidden Taste flask you just let if run out.) Minor god of Tukohama, we are phys mitigation capped at max endurance charges, but with no charges at the start of a fight we are only like 10% phys mitigation, this shores up our weakest point a bit if you stand still at the start of a fight to gain some additional mitigation, though I recommend leap slamming in to trigger fortify instead.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#2
Some Gameplay videos of the build:

Mapping T16 Elder Marshes, demonstrating how good WS is at clearing packs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIik-VynVsk

T16 Guardian kill speed comparison of WS and MS (also known as "MS is insane"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYvhMc9dLaE

Will upload a Xoph's Pure Breachstone solo full clear soon.
Edit:
Xoph's Breach clear:
https://youtu.be/3ZWlBSYrVE0
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#3
Nice Comparison.
I'm thinking I may try the league this time. Not because it interests me, but rather because if they are going to start treating the Atlas in Standard like it's a league, I really have no reason not to.
Shoju.
Used to play WoW on Terenas.
Played PoE for a while, Guild Leader of the Lurker guild there. Back to playing.
Lover of stringed instruments, and the beautiful music they make.
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#4
(03-05-2019, 02:40 PM)Chadvoluted Wrote: Nice Comparison.
I'm thinking I may try the league this time. Not because it interests me, but rather because if they are going to start treating the Atlas in Standard like it's a league, I really have no reason not to.

Yeah, I think they'll at least fix map tab issues, but it's kinda messed up that the main reason to play standard is because you don't have time to fill out all the atlas grind every league... then they start changing the standard atlas every league so there is basically no reason to ever play standard.

I was planning another Toxic Rain character this league, this time with Occultist & Energy Shield / CI since I haven't done anything with Energy shield at all, and build it tanky with Memory Vault & Incandescent Heart for armor and reserving a lot of mana with discipline and/or Purity auras and getting some % phys taken as <element> to make it a heavy mitigation style vs. the evade / dodge avoidance style I did with Raider. And then a melee staff Templar that uses Hegemony synergy with staff crit & knockback nodes to gain endurance & power charges and either use that with Tec Slam & melee totems in the two 6L or some other attack skill in one 6L with cast on crit discharge in the other 6L. We'll see if the patch notes interfere with that plan at all.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#5
Precisely. I wont lie, if this is how the end game content is going to get treated each new league now, I'm not sure how long I'll keep playing. From the time I came back at the tail end of incursion, through Delve, I had amassed ~600 maps in my stash. I was selling low level maps in bulk to fuel the alchs to keep moving through maps, while running High Yellow tier maps.

Then, after the chance at Betrayal, I amassed about 450 maps, and I'm not running Low Red Tier Maps. I'm up to 130 Maps complete now.

Now, it's starting all over again. So, I'll run my highest tier map that I have to get back most of my progress, and then vendor everything else to build up a base of new maps, so that I can keep trudging forward towards getting to Shaper. I was actually thinking that I could hit Shaper by mid ish April. Having to reduce my map pool by 1/3, is going to slow that down quite a bit. It's going to reduce me to single digits on all of my red maps, except T11, as I'll be able to get a fair amount of those from vendoring my T10's.

Synthesis doesn't interest me at all. I'm baffled by the idea that adding more timed content you don't want to leave / can't leave to a game where the only way to trade / sell items for their worth is to actually trade with people, while the company still bemoans the bots / RMT presence in the game.

As far as what I'm working on, If I do play the new league, I'll go with something simple, probably my MS Jugg, as it's the best char I've ever had, or maybe my Frost Blades Scion. I would rather play my Shield Throwing Witch, but I know that it can't get past T8 Maps, because the Golems constantly die, and they're a big source of DPS (increased per Gol), and Defense (immune to ailments based on Gol).

I took a break from my jugg for a few days. I was getting burnt out and slightly frustrated trying to make the jump to T13, and trying to figure out why I have intermittently just... Exploded and died in T13 Maps. My Jugg isn't a push over, but every so often (and not from reflect), I've gone from Near Full Life (75% ish or more) to Dead. 7700 HP, max resists (+1 to max Fire), and 75% Phys Redux while standing still, and I will just implode like I'm trying to play evasion again (I hate evasion. I think it's garbage, based on the system that they have installed for calculating evasion).

In my break away from the Jugg Crawl, I've been playing a Shrapnel Shot Deadeye Ranger. It's been a lot of fun. Killed PII Kitava this morning, but to make the jump to maps, I'm going to have to scour for some gear to get my Resists inline. It's basically just wearing things I had stuffed in the stash, as I've all but given up on trying to ID items. I just collect and Vendor Recipe anymore, as Standard requires near perfect items if you want to trade non unique items, and I'm not much of a fan of the slot machines of crafting.

My Red Elder kill absolved any of my desire to bother with IDing anymore.The Elder Satin Slippers on this page were my super awesome Elder Drop from T12 Elder.

I tried Toxic Rain, but as I'm pretty newb when it comes to ranged / bows / not in your face, I slid from that to the Shrapnel shot that I'm currently doing.

I'd love to see your plan for the build.
Shoju.
Used to play WoW on Terenas.
Played PoE for a while, Guild Leader of the Lurker guild there. Back to playing.
Lover of stringed instruments, and the beautiful music they make.
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#6
(03-06-2019, 07:40 PM)Chadvoluted Wrote: I tried Toxic Rain, but as I'm pretty newb when it comes to ranged / bows / not in your face, I slid from that to the Shrapnel shot that I'm currently doing.

I'd love to see your plan for the build.

I'm planning to league start toxic rain for 3 reasons:
1) It plays a lot like a caster in that all the damage is on the gem and the tree. Leveling you just need any fast bow, doesn't matter if it's white, blue, yellow or unique, whatever drops is something you'll get good damage from. I was WELL into yellow maps, maybe into red before I felt like the MAGIC bow I rolled with alt orbs and 6 linked (+2 bow gems) was starting to feel a little low DPS. Betrayal veiled mods + multi-mod make an endgame bow cost currency, but reliably easy to obtain otherwise. (I think I spent 5ex + change at the crafting bench)
2) It's looking like an ES meta and Occultist + Discipline will make getting a baseline level of ES super easy without needing really high end / expensive ES gear.
3) Toxic rain does not care about reflect. The only map mod this build will struggle with is no regen (as will any energy shield build). Since most mods are doable, we can pretty comfortably vaal maps when we want to in order to help map sustain.

The core of the build is turning mana into defense. Toxic rain can't leech and doesn't work that well with on-hit either, so you need to invest in mana and/or regen. Using memory vault helm and skill points, mana becomes armor and energy shield, as well as regen, which makes it a stat more worth investing in.

I am looking at eventually being able to obtain a cheap watcher's eye (clarity gives -x mana to skills plus a purity aura giving x% of physical damage taken as <element>) These were <50c last league and I see no reason why they will increase in value. This will help with phys tankiness and alleviate mana issues to allow us to reserve almost all of our mana, so that we get LOTS of armor from the memory vault effect.

So for mana reservation you start with Discipline + one Purity aura + clarity for mana regen and as your gear shapes up and your mana regen comes online you can drop clarity to level 1, and pick up an enlighten lvl 4 to make the room for a 2nd putiry aura for more resists, so you can re-jigger your gear for better DPS without having to spend a fortune (well enlighten lvl 4 isn't cheap, so I guess you are kinda spending a fair amount either way.)

I think the build should be able to take Chaos Innoculation as early as when facing Deodre in the story mode, but we'll see. I plan on using Incandescent Heart body armor to gain extra elemental mitigation in conjunction with Chaos Innoculation. Combined with our physical mitigation this allows us to be as tanky as ~9-10k ES builds without needing extreme ES gearing that is sure to be quite expensive this league. We can live on scraps.

All the uniques I've listed in the PoB are like 1c uniques that will maybe be at most like 50c for a REALLY high rolled one, probably 5-10c range for a well rolled but not incredible.

The other thing to consider in the PoB is that the DOT DPS looks really low, but that is per-pod. You need to multiply by ~4 pods with the amount of increased AoE we have and then by the number of attacks per second. 30k Shaper DOT DPS is respectable endgame damage, and the pods stay on the ground and continue to do damage, so even though it sounds low. You can shoot and move and continue to do damage with the duration and the mirage archer shooting, so it feels like 800k-1mil DPS would on a melee character. My TR Raider had ~28-29k DOT DPS and 4 attacks per second and less AOE. While Uber Elder did not exactly go smoothly, DPS was not the reason for that, and I did eventually complete Zana's quest line.

PoB ~L80-ish / Early in White maps: https://pastebin.com/uDcGRqR2
PoB for endgame: https://pastebin.com/fx8gsZCQ

Note that I used the bow I used on my Raider in the Pastebin, which has a higher DEX requirement than is shown that we have DEX. For this character I won't use a Thicket Bow due to that Dex requirement, I'll use a Grove Bow for the same speed with lower Dex required & lower DPS (bow DPS does not matter.)

Also in the White Maps gearset, I left the stats of armor, gloves, amulet and rings completely blank, as I'll be using whatever dropped or potentially trading for something for like 1c just to get the right resists. Even with no focus on +energy shield gear, it's almost 6k and has a bunch of armor. With ES regen starting at 1second and <50% of max ES regen per second, I feel like it should be good, but I'm sure I'll be able to get a little bit more ES via some rolls on gear or via crafed mods to make as much as 6.5k or so in early mapping.

The jewels are where I got attack speed, which the build NEEDS as there is very little available on the tree. Bow gems with no +life should be quite easy to find via trade for reasonable prices. The attack speed is the reason I chose Vaal Haste as the Vaal skill. Having a triggerable boost to attack and movement speed is both offense and defense. The speed is my only worry about this build. My raider had automatic onslaught and movement speed per frenzy charge... I don't know if the movement speed on the occultist will feel good. I only have boot speed, I may need to figure a way to get more. It looks like it will be possible to get a boot implicit with Onslaught via the new league mechanic, but I don't know how difficult / pricey this will be. That would certainly go a LONG way for this build, and the gearing should be flexible enough that we can utilize pretty bad boots with other movement speed just to get that implicit.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#7
Nice write-up! Enjoyed reading and look forward to future ones, if you play more.

I'm going to try playing again this league. I played a lot of Flame Totem back in the day and the rework has me interested (Chieftain for full conversion).

Fallback is an essence drain build - which should be a tried but true skill.

I'll be playing day 1 and through-out the weekend. Let's see how it goes. Keep us updated how you do!
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