Hi there! I’m blarshk, and I’m a build nerd and chronic PathOfExileBuilds lurker. I saw a handful of build retro posts from other people earlier in the league, and felt like sharing one of my own! I hope this is interesting to some, even if it is pretty long and rambly. This league was pretty fun for me, even if the league mechanic a lot of the endgame changes were… rough.

I've included POBs for the major builds, but they're not super polished. Some have more ailment effect than they're likely to achieve in game, and I think I've left guard skills active on most, but meh. Should be good to look at still.

Anyway, happy to answer any questions anyone might have if you’re interested in any of these builds! Enjoy.

1. League Start - Explosive Trap Trickster

   1. Used fearless_dumb0’s guide here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXwLgREzSOI&t=2s
   2. Solid build, good guide, did everything I needed for a league start
   3. I HATE SUNBLAST. It’s essentially double damage, but the extra do-nothing pauses it introduces, even with a perfect roll (which I snagged early), is just the worst. I hate it.
   4. If I league start something trap-ish in the future, I’m just going to do mines. Ability to automate detonation, lack of aiming, no big delay from sunblast for max damage, same pre-load bursty damage style for bossing.

2. Fortify Stack Rakiata’s Molten Strike of the Zenith Raider

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/CIOAyJiqQKBA
   2. Summary:
      1. Wanted to make something cool with the new Celestial Brace unique. Thought synergies with frenzy stack and replica badge would make Raider super fun and uncharacteristically tanky. Giga attack speed, lots of tank from ~50 fortify stacks, could be cool. Have wanted to make something with Rakiata’s Dance for a while, and I liked the look of Molten Strike of the Zenith.
      2. First exposure to the lunacy of gravecrafting; made a near perfect, 6x T1 Blasting Blade as an upgrade from Rakiata’s.
   3. Good:
      1. Super zoomy, lots of fun
      2. Rakiata’s means that enemy resistance buffs from allflames/maps is a buff instead of a negative. Blasting Blade means lots higher base damage and we can forget about resistances altogether.
      3. Feels REAL tanky when fortify is up
   4. Bad:
      1. Projectiles from MS don’t fortify, and most of our damage comes from there. So we’re counting on the melee portion of MS for fortify stacks. For clearing this worked out fine, for bossing, fortify stacks were pretty inconsistent.
      2. When fortify is down, we are paper. We get decent evasion from frenzy charge stacking, and we cap suppress, but a unique heavy build means our life total is pretty low. With fortify up it feels surprisingly tanky, but without it, it feels awful. Frequently found myself getting instagibbed while trying to close distance to bosses/ranged mobs.

3. Wild Strike of Extremes Inquisitor Trauma Aura Stack

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/D9AmkNSFf8SV
   2. Summary:
      1. I ANCIENT ORBED A MAGEBLOOD
      2. My first BIG investment build. Wanted something super tanky that could reliably uber boss and clear T17s. Also really liked the idea of Wild Strike of Extremes, and figured an Inquisitor with recovery rate stacking from Guardian could manage the steep costs of the skill pretty well.
      3. My proudest build of the league, probably.
      4. Defenses were divine flesh and fourth vow, with some phys as ele and chaos to maximize armor efficiency. Eldritch battery synergizes well; eliminates the mana portion of the skill, gives us the ability to reserve as much mana as possible for auras, and lets us stack chaos res and phys taken as chaos for mitigation of the trauma we generate.
      5. In the end, loved the build, was a lot of fun to put together, had a lot of effective synergies and I’m glad I found a non-meme way to make wild strike of extremes work. I think there’s another version of this build that uses flat ele damage and possibly corrupted soul with no EB for huge HP pools and no ramp. Would have a lot of similar benefits but be more fun to play without the trauma ramp. Wanted to try it out, but I’ll leave that for a future league.
   3. Good:
      1. Stealing guardian recovery rate with forbidden flesh/flame and stacking auras means we recover all three of our pools VERY quickly, which makes the steep costs of wild strike of extremes manageable. The less-known side benefit of generic recovery rate is that it makes our recoup more efficient as well. In the end, I didn’t even take a full wheel of recoup on the tree and ended up with over 100% of damage taken recouped as life just from ring suffixes (though one was a helical, tbf)
      2. Enduring composure notable + immortal call cwdt and the skill effect duration we take on the tree means that we regain all of our endurance charges that are removed by immortal call before the IC buff is down. So we get juiced immortal call AND full endurance charges and they each cover the other’s downtime. Sexy.
      3. Trauma stacks can get up to ~100 before sustain starts to get dodgy.
      4. Aura effect is super efficient for us; damage, tank, and recovery, so we are free to stack small clusters with introspection/35% effect
      5. Because our recovery is bananas, we can use uber exarch boots for perma adrenaline with virtually no impact on our standard gameplay. Huge boosts to % damage, and a flat 10% phys damage reduction make it easier to stack trauma.
   4. Bad:
      1. The number of things that just SHUT OFF your recovery in T17s is stupidly high. Desolation of the awakener pools are a minor annoyance to other builds, but to anything running righteous fire or the exarch boots, they’re almost instant death. As if running Sirus as melee wasn’t painful enough.
      2. Trauma ramp gets old after a bit. I let trauma carry my dps a bit much, which means that I do very little damage in the early stages of ramp, and then a BUNCH once we’re rolling. For mapping it wasn’t too bad; usually had enough trauma to make clear effortless after a few packs. Bossing was a bit tiresome though; downtime meant we lost a good chunk of damage until we had good stationary time to get stacks back, which just doesn’t happen that often.
      3. Even with as much invested into tankiness as I had (90% all res, 86% chaos res, 93k armour, 41% base phys damage reduction, 2k/sec life regen, over 100% damage recouped as life, etc), I still felt squishy in a few scenarios. Between Exarch boots, Trauma Stacking, and life expenditure for the skill, my life pool was under a LOT of pressure. So if I was ramped on Trauma and taking big hits at the same time, I could die more easily than you’d expect.

4. Immortal Penance Brand Chieftain No-Loreweave Transcendence

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/Xv8WFAzlFE0v
   2. Summary:
      1. Originally started as a concept for the new Ravenous Passion helm and yoinking berserker rage effect nodes, but found that I wasn’t spending enough mana with brands passively to gain a lot of the benefit, and I didn’t enjoy pre-spamming spells to get rage before I could start blasting. Also, missing out on the potential 18% phys taken as ele makes the tanky transcendence angle a lot harder to pull off.
      2. Didn’t know about the cool double-dip mechanics with melding and chieftain max res node, so I just built on the idea that a mageblood ele flask now gives +9% max res instead of less ele damage taken.
   3. Good: 
      1. Insanely tanky for anything other than large chaos hits
      2. Great passive sustain from tree regen, a juiced Vitality, and the Chieftain res nodes + Fire mastery for regen, and Rational Doctrine conc ground
      3. Brand playstyle means high damage uptime and mobility for boss mechanics
      4. No-loreweave transcendence allowing for 90% all ele res (and without requiring taste of hate uptime) is a little unfair
      5. Avatar of Fire and Leadership’s Price is a nice combo; can focus on scaling a single damage type (or two, phys and fire) and gain the benefits of all the alternate ailments.
   4. Bad:
      1. Damage is passable, but not great for the investment
      2. Clear suffers without additional sources of explode like Oriath’s End
      3. Balancing attributes for Leadership’s Price can suck

5. Cold Snap of Power Occultist

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/Bl8zQtYC803H 
   2. Summary:
      1. Another attempt at the Ravenous Passion rage caster hat!
      2. Loved the idea of Cold Snap of Power when I first saw it, and farmed enough currency from previous builds that I could finally afford a good max power charge synth ring, and woke spell cascade wasn’t crazy expensive this league!
      3. I ended up playing this build a lot; builds I made after this I would sometimes take a break from just to go back and play this one.
   3. Good:
      1. The rhythmic cold snap sound effects plus shatters makes this one of the most aurally satisfying builds I’ve ever played.
      2. Very solid damage, both for clear and single target.
      3. Capped block with glancing blows and Aegis Aurora is always a great feeling defensive layer. Very hard to die in maps with that + CI
      4. Once you’ve got power charges, you can cast forever.
   4. Bad:
      1. Ramping power charges got so old after a while. A lot of the build’s damage and sustain comes from full power charges, so sometimes the first few packs in a map/delve wouldn’t generate enough power charges to sustain itself (low roll chance on kill, or mobs were tanky enough to just tank a non-ramped cold snap, so you just had to wait on CD to try again). Forced me to spam spells to ramp power charges via mana spend (which also gave me rage, which was a nice double whammy) but ugh, 15 seconds of casting at nothing just so that I could be ramped was tiresome.
      2. Self-cast still locks you in place for some amount of time, so damage uptime is inconsistent on bosses.

6. Archmage Recoup Loop Ascendent

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/a0-_nrfzkAKj
   2. Summary:
      1. Saw Jung’s Elementalist Recoup loop video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJMhJWK_HtQ&t=83s) and wanted to see if I could make something that didn’t require the crazy expensive Nine Lives jewels. I’d also never made a looper, so that sounded fun!
      2. The mana and life recoup mods you can roll on body armour via gravecrafting make this possible this league, and using a Timeclasp for the dual recoup also lets you drop a To Dust jewel if it has enough reduced skill effect duration.
      3. The loop worked! But you had to kind of kick-start it with slowly accelerating weapon swaps (as Jung demonstrates a bit in his vid).
      4. Initially had this as voltaxic burst because I’ve always wanted to make that skill work. It did work for the build, but it’s also a DEAFENING sound when it’s casting ~10/sec. I had to drop it for other spells because my ears would ring after a few maps.
   3. Good:
      1. I made a looper! Also it wasn’t your stock-standard ward loop! And I didn’t use Nine Lives flesh/flame jewels!
      2. The loop-start minigame was kinda fun for a while.
      3. Once your loop is going, it is extremely difficult for anything to kill you unless it’s just a complete one-shot.
   4. Bad:
      1. Know how I said starting the loop was fun? Yeah, for like four maps, and only if you had way more recoup than you needed to sustain. First, you have to un-equip the summon skeletons gem, then swap weapons to take damage from the phantasms dying, then swap back as your recoup recovers, then repeat that loop with accelerating speed until you think you’ve built a big enough recoup pool to handle the full loop and then you hot-socket the summon skeletons back in to keep the loop going. If you did it right, congrats! You’re rolling! If your recoup pool wasn’t big enough, you just turn into a fine pink mist and you get to reactivate auras, load back in, and try it again.
      2. Fine-tuning the amount of recoup needed to sustain the loop is agony. The build can “technically” operate with less recoup, but it shrinks the window of building a sufficient starting pool down to the point of absolute misery.
      3. Still significantly less damage and survivability than wardloop.
      4. Don’t play this build.

7. Voidfletcher Ele Hit of the Spectrum Deadeye

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/WXrnT8frQFCl
   2. Summary:
      1. Widowhail affects Voidfletcher’s maximum charges
      2. BAMA setup + Caspiro timeless jewel gives you 6 clones that each generate void charges that are shared with you; tons of void charges all the time. New Trans BAMA gems also have 20 second base duration instead of 3, so lots more consistent charge gen here.
      3. Barrage triggers a void shot volley per projectile fired, so a barrage of 11 arrows means we’re triggering void shot 11 times, and each void shot fires arrows equal to your generic “additional arrows” limit, so 8 for us. These can all overlap, and they don’t fan out much, so we can invest a bit into AoE to make this happen. Can legitimately end up with 60+ arrow explosions overlapping on medium-large model single target.
   3. Good:
      1. The rolling THRUMMM sound of 80+ void shots all exploding in quick succession is orgasmic.
      2. Cool interaction of mechanics between widowhail, voidfletcher, Caspiro jewel and BAMA clones made me feel smart while playing it.
      3. Really good clear (bow skill deadeye, duh), solid single target if you can line up your void shots.
   4. Bad:
      1. Squish. Very squish.
      2. The void shot sound effect is pretty much the first thing to disappear during combat 🙁
      3. If I had just made this an ele hit of the spectrum build and dropped voidfletcher, I would have been able to do a lot more damage, and be less squishy. Even with a build TAILOR MADE for Voidfletcher, and leveraging likely unintended layering of beneficial mechanics for it, it’s STILL not great. Sadge.

8. Uninterruptible life recharge Life Stack Trickster Caster

   1. POB: Didn’t pass level 90, so meh
   2. Summary:
      1. Yoink Wicked Ward with a Minion Instability impossible escape and use strength/life stacking with Eternal Youth and Trickster’s Spellbreaker to have uninterruptible life recharge for life-scaling spells without having to play with Dissolution and its downsides.
      2. Uninterruptible life recharge idea
      3. ES stack with Apostate
      4. Starting life recharge not reliable enough, even with 50% chance to start on suppress + vaal discipline
      5. Damage on forbidden rite felt amazing with Rathpith, but the life sacrifice was way too much to sustain. Damage without rathpith was PITIFUL. Defiance of Destiny could help here with enemy hits, but suicide by Forbidden Rite after sacrificing life with Rathpith happened way too often.
      6. Ran some spreadsheet math on chaos res vs recoup numbers needed to sustain both the self-damage of forbidden rite and the sacrifice of rathpith. The two scaling methods are at odds with one another; we need to over-recoup the self damage of forbidden rite to cover the life sacrifice of rathpith, lowering chaos res reduces the amount of recoup required, but it also makes us hit ourselves harder. Ick.
      7. Needed to swap to Dissolution to continue using Rathpith without constantly dying, but I hate the dissolution playstyle (did rage vortex berserker with dissolution in the past, lots of damage, but ugh) and that would mean swapping to a spell with no self damage, so, Dark Pact.
      8. Dark pact would be a good route, but that means more dissolution and it’s pretty much what everyone is doing with Apostate, so meh. New build time

9. Power Siphon of the Archmage Mines Trickster Adorned Abyss Stack

   1. POB: https://pobb.in/9ApAnumjW_pe 
   2. Summary:
      1. I like power siphon of the archmage as a concept, and power siphon is basically the only wand attack that works with Locus Mine in a way that doesn’t feel like steaming ass.
      2. Power Siphon of the Archmage can reach much higher added flat lightning values than a standard lightning damage per int wand, so wanted to try it out on a relatively proven int-stack trickster model.
      3. Shroud of the Lightless with Adorned abyss jewel stacking is pretty synergistic for this, even though we ended up going CI and not utilizing the % life per jewel mod.
   3. Good:
      1. No-aim playstyle, just chuck and clear.
      2. Automation linked to detonate mines actually feels amazing. Forget the mastery or left-click detonate binds. I even kept automation on when it would theoretically be better to detonate manually (bossing).
      3. Wicked Ward + Spellbreaker trickster is fantastic sustain for a mine build with no access to leech.
      4. I’m legitimately considering league-starting a version of this build in 3.25.
   4. Bad:
      1. Even with the significant investment into mana, this build is just weaker than if it were a standard int-stack trickster using a lightning damage per int wand and vanilla power siphon. Trickster just doesn't get enough out of mana stacking, and the ascendancies that do (Guardian, Hiero) don't have enough other points that synergize with mines or attacks to feel worthwhile. Scion could work, but I haven't felt it out too much.
      2. Locus mine still sucks occasionally if you’re throwing them too close to yourself. Wee.

10. Indigon Mana RF Ascendent Bloodnotch Experiment

    1. POB: Abandoned early, no POB
    2. Summary:
       1. Use Indigon and some self-cast spells to scale mana costs and gain huge % spell damage for Mana RF
       2. Not enough life to reliably live through one-shots that make it through bloodnotch

11. Lightning Conduit Archmage Self Cast Elementalist

    1. POB: https://pobb.in/suneTIseD5R-
    2. Summary:
       1. I love Lightning Conduit, but I could never make a build that made it feel good to play.
       2. Archmage is so hot right now.
       3. Scale the default 15% shock from Elementalist’s Shaper of Storms with generic ailment effect and the lightning mastery “Increased and reductions to Maximum Mana also apply to Shock Effect at 30% of their value” along with Archmage mana scaling to make any shock from any source apply at maximum value.
    3. Good:
       1. Ball Lightning of Static is the piece that was missing from my Lightning Conduit builds. Orb of Storms feels awful to me; it has to be close to enemies, and you also have to be standing in it, and it does basically nothing unless you’re inside of it actively casting. BLoS on the other hand, just poops out shocks at a flat rate, and actually has enough damage to clear pretty well on its own with Lightning Conduit casts on rares and resistant magic monsters. The cast range on BLoS is also pretty far, so you can drop one on the boss’s feet from across the arena, and cast Lightning Conduit from safety. I’m so happy this gem exists.
       2. Damage is CHONKY. Archmage lightning conduits hit SO hard. Felt great to play.
       3. Scaling the default shock instead of trying to scale effect + damage of the skill meant that every .1 seconds, BLoS would hit and apply a max shock that I could consume with LC. Using BLoS does mean that you lose some theoretical efficiency compared to Orb of Storms, since you can get slightly out of sync with BLoS if your cast speed is too high, but it felt fine in practice.
       4. A large ES pool was enough for this to feel tanky in most circumstances, even without block or suppress.
    4. Bad:
       1. Steep gear requirements; it might be possible to league start this with BLoS, but I don’t know how much you’d have to scale gear before it felt good. Even with the mastery and shaper of storms, I had to pick up quite a bit more ailment effect on the tree, along with a Militant Faith + Unnatural Instinct combo around the Scion area to get max shocks on pinnacles/ubers with some regularity.
       2. Leaned pretty heavily on graveyard crafting to get some of the pieces; don’t know how well this will translate into future leagues.
       3. Another adorned + mageblood build. Bleh.

12. Viper Strike of the Mamba DW Dagger Perfect Agony Pathfinder

    1. POB: https://pobb.in/bXRAXmlm9SA8 
    2. Summary:
       1. Started off as a dual wield pneumatic dagger perfect agony concept, but quickly ran into gearing constraints with perfect agony.
       2. Pathfinder poison is always a good place to start, and I’ve liked the idea of a Low Tolerance stacking build for a while, and it gives me a chance to actually use Alchemist’s Mark!
    3. Good:
       1. Pathfinder Prolif with Viper Strike of the Mamba is hilariously good. One swing and a super-powerful and fast acting single poison (thanks to Low Tolerance stacking and Sadism) kills the first mob almost instantly, then prolifs to mobs around it. They each prolif the same giga-strong poison to mobs near them, which doubles up and overlaps the further you go into the pack. Juiced breaches with this build were AMAZING.
       2. Pretty tanky, with Pathfinder flasks and phys taken as ele, but not amazingly so.
       3. Zoomy and fun, and the strong fast poisons combined with Alchemist Mark caustic ground gave you good immediate and sustained damage on single targets.
    4. Bad:
       1. Elusive is rough and Nightblade sucks as a support even in situations when it should thrive and you’ve built into it specifically. So no Perfect Agony.
       2. Master Surgeon. Ugh. Why didn’t I learn my lesson the first time.
       3. Still melee, and since we have short duration poisons, we don’t get the benefit of high uptime damage. Makes bossing harder.

13. Ball Lightning of Orbiting CoC Energy Blade Inquisitor

    1. POB: https://pobb.in/8hlVCgnIx1nj
    2. Summary:
       1. Had my daughter suggest a gem to build around; gave her a list of the gems and she liked the sound of Ball Lightning of Orbiting, so we made an energy blade CoC build!
       2. I don’t love Balbala/Coruscating Elixir, so I wanted to see if using Searing Purity flesh/flame and some layered chaos defenses could allow me to skip that whole circus. And it would let me lean on the QoL of a Mageblood.
    3. Good:
       1. I thought I’d be using Cyclone, since Ball Lightning of Orbiting was basically going to be right next to me anyway, but oh my word, Lancing Steel of Spraying feels SO MUCH BETTER than Cyclone for CoC, even in situations where you’d expect Cyclone to be better.
       2. Ball Lightning of Orbiting has some extremely high added damage effectiveness once you consider the expected number of hits per cast.
       3. Pretty good visibility, all things considered; no crazy screen clutter or explosions of particle effects.
       4. As always, str/int stack inquisitor with ivory tower, rathpith, and energy blade makes for a super high damage spell with great survivability. Usually.
    4. Bad:
       1. Reserving almost all of your life (all but ~300-400), taking blood magic, and sacrificing 900 life per cast when triggering spells ~7.5 times per second means that very often, I’m at essentially 1 life. Even taking Searing Purity (90% of chaos taken as Fire/Lightning), 30% of chaos damage does not bypass energy shield, and 10% of armour applies to chaos damage taken from hits, 75% chaos res, 2k flat life regen and ~5k life leech/on hit from a watcher’s eye, I would still occasionally hit that sweet spot of being at 1 life, and taking just enough chaos damage at that exact instant to kill me. I never died to chaos dots, but I would die with frustrating frequency to chaos damage from hits that landed at just the right time. It was super inconsistent as well; sometimes I could run maps with mobs that dealt direct chaos damage, ran the phys as extra chaos map mod just fine, stood on desecrated ground and chain casted, etc. And then another map I would take one-too-many chaos spitter hits that would resolve at the same time I sacrificed life to 1 and I’d fall over. Meh. Lesson learned.
       2. Dropped the excessive investment into chaos mitigation and picked up some other pieces, and played it until I got tired of dying.

There you go! I'll be leveling a Tectonic Slam of Cataclysm General's Cry Jugg because my daughter wanted me to play a "big staff using guy" and hoping for 3.25 announcements before I fully burn out. Then I'll putter around on other games until August I guess (I may have a problem).

Stay sane, exiles.