Character is currently level 91, but the PoB below is for a level 94 character.

Jank T16 Coves alch and go, harbinger, essence. I ignore the expedition because I hate Gwennen. I do a gem swap on one of the essence mobs just for more damage, but usually just keep chain in for clear.

https://streamable.com/4ni62q

T16 maven witnessed Minotaur. Single target DPS is alright, nothing to write home about. I also realized I didn't use Vaal haste which would have killed it a lot faster. Can probably be improved by swapping to Reap.

https://streamable.com/izlf7p

POB:

https://pobb.in/wrqNVIShowVt

~~NOTE THAT PoB CANNOT HANDLE DoT CONVERSION FROM THE CRUCIBLE MOD. In order to make PoB properly calculate DPS you have to edit the skill gem files. I will show how to do that at the end if you are interested. If not, then the total dps is 5.5m with chain, 7m with swift affliction.~~

EDIT: As of 04/28/2023 it seems the lovely PoB devs have added support for the crucible mod.

The motivation:

• I have the coom exsanguinate mtx and I like the skill
• I like the herald of ash explosions and mtx
• Heirophant arcane surge got buffed and I've never played one
  • Elementalist or Cheiftan could be better but I felt like Heirophant. Elementalist also pigeonholes you into scaling Ignite.
• I didn't want to do the classic witch cold convert + heatshiver because that's boring
• I don't like dying, so I wanted something "tanky"

It's not the greatest build you'll ever see. It is certainly outclassed by many other builds this league, but I find it fun and satisfying to run. The damage is decent and I don't die too much.

It's my first time making a build on my own from scratch and I'm fairly proud of it.

Offense:

Exsanguinate has 2 portions: a hit, and a DoT. Previously, the DoT could not be converted. This led to either converting the hit to elemental and dropping the DoT completely, or scaling Phys. DoT which is not the easiest thing to do. With the the new crucible mod, the DoT is replaced with a fire DoT, so we can take advantage of elemental scaling and Auras. This also allows you to scale ignite if you so choose.

Exsanguinate DoT stacks up to 3 times, and crit is expensive. As such, I decided to scale the DoT. Crit could be good, but even with power charges it takes some extra investment to hit close to 100% crit chance.

Scaling Ignite is another option, but that also requires scaling the hit damage for better ignite damage. I was not having a good time trying to make it all work, so I focused on scaling the DoT.

The DoT scales with Spell Damage. My strategy was to stack spell damage with power charges to take advantage of Heirophant's free power charges.

• 9 power charges easy
  • 4 by default (Conviction of Power)
  • 2 from the passive tree
  • 1 from Void Battery
  • 2 from Malachai's Loop
• 20% more spell damage from ascendancy with arcane surge
• 3% more spell damage per power charge from militant faith keystone passive (Inner Conviction)
  • 27% more spell damage with 9 power charges
• Void battery gives net 145% increased spell damage with 9 charges
• Malachai's loop gives 144% increased spell damage with 9 charges
  • It also removes charges at max, but we have a minimum of 4 and 20% chance to gain one on hit. Overall it's a decent average power charge sustain.
• Heirophant gives crazy mana reservation efficiency and free energy shield. Reserve > 50% of life to use Pain Attunement
  • 30% more spell damage
• Use all remaining space to grab DoT multi, fire damage, elemental damage, burning damage, etc.
• Much of the damage comes from using curses and stacking gem levels for super high base damage, which is why I chose Skin of the Lords, and why having Whispers of Doom is important.
• Herald of Ash gives great clear with the explosions combined with Exsanguinate's ability to chain
• Single target vastly improved by swapping Chain to Swift Affliction
• I couldn't find a good way to fit Righteous Fire in sadly

Defense:

Heirophant gives a decent amount of free energy shield. I chose to rely mostly on energy shield for my main life pool so I could be free to reserve most of my life to use Pain Attunement.

• Resist capped
• Max spell/attack block (with Glancing Blows)
  • Use Tempest shield to reserve a lot of life, give 50% spell block, and cancel the negative aspect of Malachai's loop.
• 45k armour with flasks up, 25k with them down
• 4.3k energy shield with Discipline.
• Coruscating Elixir to prevent Chaos Damage
  • Since it's a Ruby Flask, it also gives less fire damage taken and gives +50 base life regen during the effect due to the new Fire mastery.
  • There's enough life regen to almost instantly recover from the loss of life
• 1.4k energy shield leech to sustain damage
  • Also running Divine Shield to further sustain ES regen
  • Zealot's Oath would be nice, but life regen is needed to sustain the skill's life cost.
• Vitality, but mostly to regen the life cost of Exsanguinate

Cost:

Total is maybe around 15-20d to get to the same status. My gear is mostly pretty mediocre and has a lot of room for improvement. I self-farmed most of it on poverty (league-start) wages

• Skin of the lords was the most expensive at 5d for a junk keystone.
  • Ideal keystones would be Ghost Reaver, Divine Shield, Glancing Blows, Pain Attunement.
  • Acceptable keystones would be Iron Will or Elemental Overload
• Awakened swift affliction and awakened controlled destruction cost about 1d total. I leveled them to 5 myself (with beastcrafting) and corrupted to level 6 with luck
  • Awakened chain is about 2d. It's optional as it mostly provides better chaining for clear. Regular chain is fine too.
• Malachai's loop is a 1c unique.
• Void battery can be around 1d - 3d if you have the crucible mod on it. I got mine for 2.5d.
  • Note that shields can also roll this mod, so if you can get it on the loop, then grab a cheap void battery instead
• Rings, boots, gloves were crafted with random essences I farmed onto 5c fractured bases I bought on trade
• Helmet base with the enchant was around 30c, crafted with essence spam.
• Militant faith was about 20c since I only really cared about the keystone
• Thread of hope small is 15c
• Impossible escape at Lethe Shade is also very cheap. Around 30c
• Amulet is actually a bit pricey. I crafted it by buying a high-rolled t3 DoT multi fracture for 1d. T1 is obviously better but I am poor. I alt-spammed until +1 all skills, then used metamods and harvest slam to get the +1 all phys. Total cost due to harvest juice and metacrafting was around 6d.

Future Improvements:

I am only level 91 at the moment. With more levels I would put a transcendent mind near the Mind over Matter keystone for extra DoT multi.

Also, a cluster jewel would help a lot. If you can get a good skin of the lords and save some passive points, a cluster jewel would boost dps a fair amount.

Forbidden jewels to grab Radiant Faith adds a huge amount of tankiness if you can afford it. The combo is around 13d unfortunately.

If you can path down to the Ranger area and grab the extra +1 power charge, that's around 10% DPS increase

A watcher's eye is always good

Maybe some mad lad can find a way to squeeze RF in for 39% more spell damage

How to change PoB to make fire ex/reap work:

• Do not update PoB after making these changes, as it will overwrite them

• Go to your PoB install directory -> Data -> Skills -> act_str.lua

• Copy the file as a backup. To undo the changes, just replace it with the backup.

• Ctrl + F exsanguinate

• Under baseMods change the following (Physical -> Fire)

  • mod("FireDamage", "MORE", 100, 0, KeywordFlag.FireDot, { type = "Multiplier", var = "ExsanguinateStageAfterFirst"})

• Under constantStats, add the following line. Include the comma:

  • { "skill_physical_damage_%_to_convert_to_fire", 100 },

• Under stats, change the damage per minute line as follows with the comma:

  • "base_fire_damage_to_deal_per_minute",