Architect of Chaos - Dominating Blow League Starter - Phrecia 2 (POB ADDED)

IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES FROM THE FIRST TIME AROUND Forest Warriors (from Ritual corpses) give Onslaught, which is typically superior and better feeling to the Cluster Jewel notable. I still recommend all players get the currently recommended Pale Seraphim in their Spectre Bank. There are alot of good spectres out there though, and they're less cumbersome / risky to make use of these days. The Block Nodes are EXTREMELY important. I personally tested trying to escape these, but the survivability boost (while mapping especially) is too noticeable and necessary for the modern PoE landscape. If possible, moving around some supports to get Maim into our Spectre setup is also being recommended at least for early on, as it's a free boost to damage and our Spectres actually do a decent job applying it to major targets. Added what seems to be an even more ideal Timeless Jewel to the 'Second Endgame' tree, this one being a bit more optimal after having experienced the build in-practice. Divine Shield has turned out to be VERY good at keeping Everlasting Sacrifice up. Maybe so good that it's worth recommending long-term even, as it helps with map survivability in no small way as well. Likewise, the Hearty notable and preceding regeneration nodes have proven to be very high-value for our sustain. Minion Accuracy - There used to be a note about this, but now minion builds don't need it. STONKS! Added a note about Omen of Blanching and gem swapping your Movement Skill for Pinnacle Boss fights in the 'IMPORTANT GEAR NOTES' section. I'm adding a note here that Quality on Enduring Cry is another extremely important stat to consider rushing early, you can do this through Merciless Lab. Maintaining Endurance Charge uptime can be rather uncomfortable without it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ When leveling, it can be beneficial to start as Smite, opening incentives to pick up Melee Splash and Ancestral Call early. You then transition into Absolution, using Smite solely as a buff while you work your way toward Dominating Blow. This strategy may be overridden based on player preference, as saving a bit of currency in a league start via support choice is only 'so-so' since the attack speed of early sceptres was gutted leagues back. Otherwise, the name of the game is getting to level 12, as Absolution both synergizes early with our tree, and sets up well for an early Dominating Blow switch. Additionally, Summon Holy Relic is available extremely early and will reward you for making use of an attack. In Act 2, when offered damaging supports, ensure you make choices for Absolution that will also work with Summon Holy Relic, as you'll be moving those supports over when you switch to Dominating Blow. Ascendancy Order - Fever For Corruption -> Chaos Reigns -> Impure Blood -> Everlasting Sacrifice You do not have to take Enduring Cry from Brutus early on. Vitality or even Clarity for comfort is much more recommended, as we'll not have Warcry support until later regardless. Additionally, allocating Spiritual Aid early can be worth it even though we don't use it early if you find a strong weapon to make use of it. Keep the Warcry Ancestral Cry in mind at all times as well, and try to pick one up in Act 2 if you can. This is a dramatic boost to clear in the late game and can even completely remove the need for any sources of +1 Strike Target thanks to our Warcry investment. It even gives us +2% Elemental Max Resistances against bosses! Some things to keep in mind when approaching Level 28: Ensure you have Resolute Technique. Path to this aggressively so that you can switch ASAP, and attach Melee Splash and Ancestral Call to the skill. You can switch supports for bosses if you want extra efficiency, but generally speaking Dominating Blow is mechanically strong enough to not really care this early on. The most valuable stat for a weapon early in the game is +1 Socketed Melee Gems, assuming you can get it on a 4-link base. This will pay extreme dividends until level 50 and 63, when +1 Socketed Gems and +2 Socketed Melee Gems becomes available. Outside of this, (Local) Attack Speed is likely most valuable, but if you find a strong enough weapon Spiritual Aid may be preferable as you might be in a position to contribute meaningful damage. Essence of Fear gives us the ability to add Minion Damage to any weapon, creating our avenue to a +1/2/3 Gem-Level boosting weapon that also contributes up to 140%+ Minion Damage. The last piece of the puzzle comes from the Minion Attack/Cast Speed CRAFT unlocked via BETRAYAL. The Minion Attack/Cast Speed mod is not 'exclusive' with (Local) Attack Speed, creating a pretty clear ideal pair of suffixes to make use of alongside 3 clear ideal prefixes. The remaining suffix is flexible, assuming you're in a position to choose, which is likely going to be very expensive. Ensure you prioritize skill point choices that make sense. This means don't invest in Endurance Charges if you lack the Warcry nodes required to sustain them. Jewel Sockets aren't worth anything without the Jewel to fill them. Additionally, make sure you get a Vaal Domination before acquiring your second ascendancy! The initial gem doesn't need to be able to reach level 21, we'll level 20s on the side and use temple them down the line to get that going, so don't be afraid to burn your Vaal Orbs on this until you get it (or just buy one if you're in trade, people will find them in vaal zones and sell them for cheap.) As a special note, Hearty is not taken, but may be a superior choice to other nodes as with Enduring Cry the bonus to Life Regen is actually immense, and it also gives us access to some rather useful Masteries. Behead is not a support to change lightly, as it's more or less the only way to improve the Weapon Range of our Sentinels. This can help them all stack up on a single target more effectively, and the DPS from the support itself is actually quite good, albeit not properly reported in PoB. In the case of Melee Splash, the gem we swap out is Brutality. Brutality is an incredible damage support, but BAD when we're converting Rare and Magic monsters into Sentinels that may inherit strong Elemental or Chaos damage buffs. IMPORANT ANCESTRAL CRY NOTE - Multistrike doesn't like Exerted Attacks. That means no Ancestral Cry after we get Multistrike, so use your discretion on when it is phased out. +1 Strike Targets from an Eldritch Implicit on Gloves is the way to go, and will allow us to drop Ancestral Call entirely. ---------------- ***IMPORTANT GEAR NOTES*** ------------------- Equipment simulated in this guide lacks suffixes whenever they are flexible. These should be used to fill out your resistances and add attributes where necessary. Everlasting Sacrifice requires us to top off our Energy Shield regularly. Ideally, this means sacrificing a Prefix on a Ring to give us a particularly terrible +Energy Shield roll. Crafted Energy Shield can be as low as +21, which is probably feasible for good uptime in most situations. Outside of this, Divine Shield can be taken to ensure a powerful non-percentage based ES regen keeps us topping off, but ultimately using open prefix slots on our Abyss Jewels offers us a relatively easy avenue to flat Energy Shield Regeneration to save us a skill point down the line. Several Elegant Hubris Jewels are simulated to show you various seeds that work for the central Witch jewel socket. You can also use a Timeless Calculator (found here in PoB or usable as a tool online) to simulate/search for more. The current one chosen is not the most point efficient, but offers likely the most value (3 80% Minion Damage nodes, 1 80% Armour node, with only 1 point of waste). Getting %Armour from this jewel can be just as valuable if not more so than the %Minion Damage, as it's a tremendous amount and raw %Increased is actually what we're lacking in. The build is very close to being able to survive an entirely unbuffed Shaper Slam in its current iteration (easily survived with Molten Shell up), so boosts to physical mitigation are close to sizable payoffs. Brass Dome is a feasible alternative to a strong Rare Body Armour, both lowering strength/suffix fixing, as well as giving us greater Elemental Mitigation. The downside is a loss of Flat Life, much greater Phys Reduction via the loss of relevant Suffixes and Eldritch Implicits, and the absence of other Suffixes for relevant Attribute or Resistance rolls. Bone Rings offer options for more damage stats, but don't need to be overly emphasized for this reason. Having at least 1 for the implicit Minion Resistances can be extremely beneficial, however. Outside of this, while %Minion Damage as a Prefix is an obvious major benefit, the Minion Attack Speed will also apply to us via Spiritual Command if Resistances have been fixed elsewhere. Our Amulet should be a Replica Dragonfang's Flight with +3 Dominating Blow skills. No other amulet offers as much for the investment. Alternatively, a rare Amulet desperately wishes for +1 Skill Gems, and offers other stat/res fixing opportunities. Dominating Blow lacks exploitable tags (beyond 'Melee'), so this is all that applies. Ashes of the Stars is a viable option, although not nearly as impactful for this build as it is for other variants, chiefly the 'Dominating Blow of Inspiring' variant that's better played on other Ascendancies. Likewise, +2 Minion Gems on our Helmet is also highly valued, and these mods have very low weighting. For these reasons, your Recombinator is very important, as is ensuring the Suffixes you get from your Gloves, Boots, and Rings are adequate and/or flexible for your Attribute and Resistance needs. Because we are in Keepers of the Flame though, a lot of equipment that would've been much more expensive will now be vastly more attainable, not least of which include our Helmet. THE HELMET - I have to put something here to talk about The Dark Monarch. The Dark Monarch was not in the game in the original Phrecia event, and the good news is, you don't have to worry about it. The reasons for this our twofold, but I will explain all the same. The first reason is that the helmet just gives too much Energy Shield, and we are a build that wants as little as possible without having 0. In theory, it offers a lot of DPS in the form of doubling our Sentinel count. In practice, it does far, far less than this, something that itself bifurcates into two distinct reasons. 1 - We lose out on other minion types, meaning we lose our Spectres, and anything else in that category (Holy Relic, for instance). 2 - And this is the important one, we are not Arakaali's Fang. Our minions take up space and cannot overlap, so if there is no more room to pile on atop the boss... they just stand there doing nothing. As a pseudo-3, we also have to factor in how long it spins up to get those added Sentinels, so in reality, The Dark Monarch really only shines in 'clear' situations. If you convert to an Energy Shield build that drops Forbidden Secrets for Glimpse Chaos, then maybe. THAT SAID - You want a +2 Minions Gems Armour-base Rare Helmet. That's it, simple as. When making your Weapon, it is easiest to do so by pre-purchasing (or preparing yourself) a +1 Socketed Gems or +2 Socketed Melee Gems base with the mod Fractured on. This drastically reduces the amount of Essences you need to hit all 3 mods, but until you can do that, it's not unreasonable to find a +3 weapon and simply craft on %Minion Damage. This isn't ideal for a number of reasons, but it is serviceable, especially early on. The Recombinator is your saving grace if in SSF or if you can't find a base for cheap, but Keepers of the Flame should help significantly in this regard. +2 Socketed Melee Gems is the optimal fracture to look out for, as it removes the most competing mods from the pool. Annoints: Lots of serviceable options here, many of which are Defensive. Constitution or another Life Node is perfectly acceptable because our Flat Life is rather low. Prismatic Skin is obviously great, as it boosts our already stellar Maximum Elemental Resistance values, and Soul of Steel is even better because it also gives us increased Armour. Death Attunement can be used to give you an extra Spectre if you have a support in mind, and Decay Ward can drastically boost the survivability of our Sentinels if you feel they're too squishy. Don't be afraid to annoint stats early if you're lacking them, though! These annoints are very cheap! Enigmatic Defense is another cheap alternative to consider. (Fun Fact - Sentinels of Dominance have a hidden innate 40% Block Chance, but take 20% of Damage from a Blocked Hit! This makes Decay Ward even better than you'd expect at first glance.) Our best Offensive Annoint could be Hollow Effigy. The ability to cast Offerings without needing corpses is a multi-pronged benefit, and we can free up socket space to add Offerings if need be. Consider a Banner in our extra socket space as well, as these affect our minions and fit well with the ramping nature of Dominating Blow. MORE LIKELY - if you have an Elegant Hubris, it's likely you can annoint another 80% Minion Damage or other valuable stat that way! For the main simulated tree, Golem Commander is annointed for another 80% Minion Damage! You will notice 'Deal No Damage' in our Configurations. This is to negate 9 Instances of Player Damage being (falsely) reported as part of our 9 simulated Sentinels. Resistances are here because suffixes on simulated gear are open; you want to fill these where you can in open gear suffixes. The simulation lets us see what our max hit situation is otherwise. Keep in mind that in maps and other applicable situations that we will also have 3 Magic Sentinels and 1 Rare Sentinel, which greatly boosts our DPS. We will ALSO have 3 Vaal Sentinels up at times even while bossing, so our DPS is actually higher than reported. Finally, Behead's Damage Multiplier doesn't apply unless the enemy is on Low Life. It's effectively another 26% More Damage that simply isn't being recorded in PoB (~21% More Damage with a source of Culling Strike). Watcher's Eye - This is currently not simulated, but Determination offers tremendous defensive benefits, and Pride is pretty negligible. Using a Determination Watcher's Eye to fix crit reduction is a great idea, and something I recommend on several builds. Getting any other Determination mod alongside it is just gravy on top. Alternative Second Endgame tree added as it's likely much more attainable for SSF than getting a specific Elegant Hubris Jewel. It loses out a lot of raw damage and armour potential, but still gets a fair amount of these and gives a general boost to clear speed, which is probably more valuable in the SSF environment anyway. Getting your gems set up in such a way that you have 4 red gems in one piece of equipment is VERY USEFUL. By doing this, you can use an Omen of Blanching to guarantee a single white socket, which is intended for your Leap Slam. The reason we pursue this is so that when you have to face Pinnacle Bosses with difficult content / unskippable phases, you can swap to Flame Dash, which is generally just superior in this regard. For this reason, leveling one should be started about the time you enter maps. ------------------------------------------------ THINGS TO CONSIDER ------------------------------------------------ The Aura Mastery for reserving life can be used to get another point of Maximum Elemental Resistance if you feel it's worthwhile, but make sure you don't need those two gem sockets first. A level 1 Vitality, Clarity, or Precision is what you want to use here, whichever minor benefit has the biggest impact. Currently, the build makes no use of Banners. This would be a late addition based on our gem socket pressure, but it's likely something like War Banner is a no-brainer addition long-term. Impure Blood is currently one of our ascendancy nodes to fix Mana issues, which is a perfectly acceptable use, but it's important to consider things like Glimpse Chaos long-term, especially once ways to shore up our Resistances are attached. Consider though that Impure Blood might be worth keeping also, as it fixes mana and acts as a bonus to our Reservation Efficiency in the same way. Glimpse Chaos was buffed though, and could potentially open the way to an ES switch for those inclined to do that, at the cost of Forbidden Secrets. Keep in mind, you would need to solve a lot of other things to make this work, but it's not impossible that the sheer amount of raw ehp you acquire overwhelms the need for Glimpse Chaos. Added into the items is an unused Medium Cluster Jewel, potentiallly to open up getting extra Armour and another way to get Onslaught in the setup. Onslaught in this way also applies to our minions, and is a great contender if you end up wanting to use your Spectres for other things. You may also consider a Large Cluster Jewel (Minion Damage). This gives us access to another 2 jewel sockets on its own, and can be rolled rather competitively to give a lot of raw damage stats. I would only recommend pursuing this when you have the skill points to spare, such as on a level 98+ character. Awakened Gems aren't even simulated, but where applicable are guaranteed boosts in power. Awakened Melee Splash only needs to be Level 2, as it will be boosted to Level 5 via the +3 Gem Levels in our weapon. This gives us an additional +1 Gem Level, not as good after 30, but still a nice benefit to our clear setup. Awakened Brutality ranks highly as at Level 5 is gives us some innate Crush chance, which is a welcome addition to our single target damage. Awakened Melee Physical Damage comes right in after and gives us Intimidate, which is another boost to damage (and as an 'increased' multiplier, plays very nicely with Pride and Flesh and Stone!). Awakened Multistrike is likely the best upgrade we can get to our gems overall, but this support is also EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE. You will likely be able to get more affordable upgrades elsewhere for a very long time. Eventually, unallocating Indomitable Army and its travel points may be possible, saving us a tremendous amount of points on the skill tree. How exactly this could be solved is difficult to say, but there are even more +Levels opportunities, and that also fixes survivability. With constant Enduring Cry spam, healing via Summon Holy Relic, a fair amount of %Minion Life from the tree, Fortify, and Resistances from Bone Rings, it may already be workable with a level 33+ gem. The Mastery for Minions Recover 5% of Life on Minion Death can also be considered to help with this. Ultra-Late, options for the build start to get a little wonky. There are things we can entertain that simply weren't possible before, a major addition being that, if you happen to acquire (or can afford) a Level 4 Empower, you have essentially completed the first step toward a previously-dubious Squire setup in which we craft an Influenced Weapon offering significantly more links! This would obviously be incredibly expensive, but the point of it is that we can reach Level 30 on our gem setup without prefixes helping, thus opening up additional prefix slots at the cost of one link. In a Squire setup it becomes very easy to sacrifice one link, allowing for potentially much more potent endgame DPS, AND a much faster weapon base! Even then, if you can open up a shield slot, a much better defensive profile may also be accessible with a negligible or small DPS loss (you would still require an Influenced Weapon crafted to form a 6-link to achieve this). Overall, I feel comfortable delivering the guide in this state as it achieves the ultimate league-starter goal of offering enough DPS and Survivability on a budget to get players farming endgame maps and acquiring their Voidstones. It will, at the very least, absolutely do that for you if it turns out you don't enjoy the playstyle! Happy mapping, Exiles! Good luck on the 29th!