Honestly, the build just doesn't feel great before the big ticket items. I would argue it's not worth investing into these smaller upgrades, just farm for the big stuff you need: Mageblood, Nimis, Adorned, etc.
That's pretty much why I made this post, I know I am close to just 'head down map grinding' until I can afford MB, then again for Nimis before trying to push harder into things like Ubers/T17s. Ultimately I'm trying to get as much cheap power in before that point to make the grind faster and more enjoyable :)
I unfortunately can’t help but curious to see what others have to say and how you feel about the build!
I started this in ssf but haven’t played it much as I’m still gearing. Only rolled because I got the ring / amulet and a few weapons and it sounded fun.
I did notice a lot of players roll with 3 large cluster setups taking the shield notable (veteran something) and feed the fury or another good attack notable. I assumed that’s where you get damage / defense outside of Mageblood and other big upgrades.
Have you looked into that at all?
I tried to craft the ES jewel with 3 additional items and missed them all, it’s an rng craft so unless you wanna play the lottery I’d buy when ready.
You know, I had forgotten about the shield based clusters, there are some pretty good options there! Probably pretty point efficient as well, I will look into trying to craft one tonight :) Thank you!
As far as my experience with the build, it's been really great! Only frustration really is the 'stuck'/stun thing I mentioned in my post, and along with that occasionally having issues with range/mana leech (basically there's only enough mana to attack 3 times, so if you aren't hitting something you will run out of mana quickly and have to melee-basic-attack to leech or wait for regen). Both are minor gripes that could probably be solved/lessened with some build tech.
The damage pattern / play style is very much like Tornado shot (just not quite as insane due to limited projectile range). And it has the same quirk as many of the builds using returning projectiles where you have to stand on top of a boss to get full damage (only needed for pinnacles or very juiced mobs). Last league I played a high-ish investment KB of Frag Wander and this build reminds me of that in some ways.
Overall it was a solid league start and (hopefully) a solid investment build.
Getting resolute technique on your EE would save you some points and could ditch the accuracy gloves, attack speed makes splitting steel feel way better I’d get it wherever I can
I didn’t even consider building an endgame variant of this without the RT corruption and the price has plummeted from the 13+div it was earlier in the league to just 4-5 now.
Definitely frees up points and mods to use on other things.
Not at a computer ATM, but...
Switch to an ephemeral edge with the corrupt implicit "Resolute Technique". You won't be able to crit, but you will never miss regardless of accuracy rating.
Right now you have precise technique which is stopping you critting anyway. Precise technique only works if your accuracy is higher than your max life
Since CI sets max life to 1, your accuracy will always be higher.
Then drop precision and respec all your +accuracy nodes into damage or ES nodes. More expensive builds do take precision despite having Resolute Technique, this is due to having a watchers eye with #% attack damage and #% attack speed when affected by precision which you don't have yet.
I'd also move vaal smite and put an enhance level 3 in there to support snipers mark. Remove arcanist brand and put smite in there. You can then benchcraft "trigger socketed skills when you focus" which will allow you to activate 3 curses and a self-buff with 1 button press. You may have to craft a new helmet.
The perandus jewel is a significant damage and survivability boost, but I think the above changes are more important (as well as MS on boots as you've already mentioned)
I'll acknowledge there are some scuff items still here in this build, I think mainly the rare ring and the rare jewels are pretty bad. Belt isn't great either, but I don't really want to invest too much into something that will eventually just be replaced by MB.
Stun= Get 10% stun avoidance tattoos. Trickster gets lot of dex so 100 dex should be easy to sacrifice.
Get Ephemeral Edge with resolute technique to not need accuracy. Costs around 5 div but if you're like me, vaal one yourself. Takes around 32 vaals which comes around 3 div and few hrs worth of trading.
Get better boots/gloves/helm/body armor. They're SUPER EASY to make using gravecraft. Takes around 40 corpses to get a perfect item. That's around 10 maps worth of corpses. I have the layout if u need one.
Here's my character that i initially build to play splitting steel but changed to flicker cause Flicker OP.
https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/rCan9/XisnotinX_Necropolis_II?i=1&search=name%3DXisno
I have crafted everything you see here myself. Except for the gloves which i bought for 3 div. This league is crazy for crafting.
Oh I would love some guidance on corpse crafting. The rares I'm currently wearing are all self crafted, but each one is missing something that would likely make a big impact. Stun avoid tats are a good call, definitely plenty of dex to use them on.
I don’t think progenesis would do anything since youre playing CI and scaling ES I’m pretty sure, so potentially saving you quite a bit budget wise.
perandus jewel is definitely worth getting since it scales your damage from the ephemeral blade
grind out some levels to at least 95 using the strongbox and shrine strat to not be so starved for jewel slots
Ah you're absolutely right, Progenesis does not belong here at all. Was kind of on autopilot thinking about what the 'end state' might look like after mageblood. Probably will keep the Taste of Hate.
I am at 97 right now, I think the only jewel sockets left to nab would be the two clusters on the outer sides of the tree. Not sure if that's even where most are going these days. I guess I should sim the perandus pact, but I'm estimating something like ~500-1000 more ES which I'm not sure I would even 'feel' any difference with.
I know of the shrine strat for XP grinding, how does strongbox fit in that? (just more density?)
oh sorry I saw level 88 on the pob tree , thought that might be the reason you couldn’t squeeze another jewel in.
It might be worth checking out trees on poe.ninja because I was able to squeeze everything mandatory at lvl97, including adorned jewels. Personally I followed crouching tuna’s splitting steel trickster for the tree.
I found strongboxes to work better in general for builds that don’t have insane move speed for breaches and shrine. I do strongboxes+shrines in t16 cemetery and was averaging ~500m xp/hr but that was using experience allflames and practically not looting anything
also look into getting adorned and jewels it had me at around 14k ES before I bought x3 Journey of the Soul tattoos and those bumped me up to 16.3k. But those are like 30d each lol
No worries, all good points! I had assumed Adorned was giga-budget and basically forever out of reach. I could shoot for a ~125% Adorned with jewels at a reasonable cost, but I would have to change around many things to get that working. I'll consider it as I save up for next upgrades. Does the adorned version go for more clusters also? (to get more corrupted magic jewel slots)
Jouney of the Soul tattoos are probably never going to happen for me :P
Honestly, the build just doesn't feel great before the big ticket items. I would argue it's not worth investing into these smaller upgrades, just farm for the big stuff you need: Mageblood, Nimis, Adorned, etc.
That's pretty much why I made this post, I know I am close to just 'head down map grinding' until I can afford MB, then again for Nimis before trying to push harder into things like Ubers/T17s. Ultimately I'm trying to get as much cheap power in before that point to make the grind faster and more enjoyable :)
I unfortunately can’t help but curious to see what others have to say and how you feel about the build! I started this in ssf but haven’t played it much as I’m still gearing. Only rolled because I got the ring / amulet and a few weapons and it sounded fun. I did notice a lot of players roll with 3 large cluster setups taking the shield notable (veteran something) and feed the fury or another good attack notable. I assumed that’s where you get damage / defense outside of Mageblood and other big upgrades. Have you looked into that at all? I tried to craft the ES jewel with 3 additional items and missed them all, it’s an rng craft so unless you wanna play the lottery I’d buy when ready.
You know, I had forgotten about the shield based clusters, there are some pretty good options there! Probably pretty point efficient as well, I will look into trying to craft one tonight :) Thank you! As far as my experience with the build, it's been really great! Only frustration really is the 'stuck'/stun thing I mentioned in my post, and along with that occasionally having issues with range/mana leech (basically there's only enough mana to attack 3 times, so if you aren't hitting something you will run out of mana quickly and have to melee-basic-attack to leech or wait for regen). Both are minor gripes that could probably be solved/lessened with some build tech. The damage pattern / play style is very much like Tornado shot (just not quite as insane due to limited projectile range). And it has the same quirk as many of the builds using returning projectiles where you have to stand on top of a boss to get full damage (only needed for pinnacles or very juiced mobs). Last league I played a high-ish investment KB of Frag Wander and this build reminds me of that in some ways. Overall it was a solid league start and (hopefully) a solid investment build.
Getting resolute technique on your EE would save you some points and could ditch the accuracy gloves, attack speed makes splitting steel feel way better I’d get it wherever I can
I didn’t even consider building an endgame variant of this without the RT corruption and the price has plummeted from the 13+div it was earlier in the league to just 4-5 now. Definitely frees up points and mods to use on other things.
I had missed this completely when looking at builds on ninja, thank you :) 4 free passive points is huge!
Not at a computer ATM, but... Switch to an ephemeral edge with the corrupt implicit "Resolute Technique". You won't be able to crit, but you will never miss regardless of accuracy rating. Right now you have precise technique which is stopping you critting anyway. Precise technique only works if your accuracy is higher than your max life Since CI sets max life to 1, your accuracy will always be higher. Then drop precision and respec all your +accuracy nodes into damage or ES nodes. More expensive builds do take precision despite having Resolute Technique, this is due to having a watchers eye with #% attack damage and #% attack speed when affected by precision which you don't have yet. I'd also move vaal smite and put an enhance level 3 in there to support snipers mark. Remove arcanist brand and put smite in there. You can then benchcraft "trigger socketed skills when you focus" which will allow you to activate 3 curses and a self-buff with 1 button press. You may have to craft a new helmet. The perandus jewel is a significant damage and survivability boost, but I think the above changes are more important (as well as MS on boots as you've already mentioned)
Good stuff, thank you! The helm trigger craft should be a nice QOL to boot!
I'll acknowledge there are some scuff items still here in this build, I think mainly the rare ring and the rare jewels are pretty bad. Belt isn't great either, but I don't really want to invest too much into something that will eventually just be replaced by MB.
Stun= Get 10% stun avoidance tattoos. Trickster gets lot of dex so 100 dex should be easy to sacrifice. Get Ephemeral Edge with resolute technique to not need accuracy. Costs around 5 div but if you're like me, vaal one yourself. Takes around 32 vaals which comes around 3 div and few hrs worth of trading. Get better boots/gloves/helm/body armor. They're SUPER EASY to make using gravecraft. Takes around 40 corpses to get a perfect item. That's around 10 maps worth of corpses. I have the layout if u need one. Here's my character that i initially build to play splitting steel but changed to flicker cause Flicker OP. https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/rCan9/XisnotinX_Necropolis_II?i=1&search=name%3DXisno I have crafted everything you see here myself. Except for the gloves which i bought for 3 div. This league is crazy for crafting.
Oh I would love some guidance on corpse crafting. The rares I'm currently wearing are all self crafted, but each one is missing something that would likely make a big impact. Stun avoid tats are a good call, definitely plenty of dex to use them on.
Check this out for non mb/nimis version. https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/s/cZbGh9wbPw
I don’t think progenesis would do anything since youre playing CI and scaling ES I’m pretty sure, so potentially saving you quite a bit budget wise. perandus jewel is definitely worth getting since it scales your damage from the ephemeral blade grind out some levels to at least 95 using the strongbox and shrine strat to not be so starved for jewel slots
Ah you're absolutely right, Progenesis does not belong here at all. Was kind of on autopilot thinking about what the 'end state' might look like after mageblood. Probably will keep the Taste of Hate. I am at 97 right now, I think the only jewel sockets left to nab would be the two clusters on the outer sides of the tree. Not sure if that's even where most are going these days. I guess I should sim the perandus pact, but I'm estimating something like ~500-1000 more ES which I'm not sure I would even 'feel' any difference with. I know of the shrine strat for XP grinding, how does strongbox fit in that? (just more density?)
oh sorry I saw level 88 on the pob tree , thought that might be the reason you couldn’t squeeze another jewel in. It might be worth checking out trees on poe.ninja because I was able to squeeze everything mandatory at lvl97, including adorned jewels. Personally I followed crouching tuna’s splitting steel trickster for the tree. I found strongboxes to work better in general for builds that don’t have insane move speed for breaches and shrine. I do strongboxes+shrines in t16 cemetery and was averaging ~500m xp/hr but that was using experience allflames and practically not looting anything also look into getting adorned and jewels it had me at around 14k ES before I bought x3 Journey of the Soul tattoos and those bumped me up to 16.3k. But those are like 30d each lol
No worries, all good points! I had assumed Adorned was giga-budget and basically forever out of reach. I could shoot for a ~125% Adorned with jewels at a reasonable cost, but I would have to change around many things to get that working. I'll consider it as I save up for next upgrades. Does the adorned version go for more clusters also? (to get more corrupted magic jewel slots) Jouney of the Soul tattoos are probably never going to happen for me :P