Run ALL Map Mods - Smite Champion Guide Update (PoE 3.26)

Campaign Notes: We're mostly following Alexpleblord's Duelist EConc levelling setup with some minor changes to alleviate some of the respec burden going into maps. Act 1: Poisonous Concoction - Lesser Multiple Projectiles - Volley Shield Charge - Faster Attacks - Momentum Frostblink Sniper's Mark Act 2: Herald of Ice Elemental Damage with Attacks (you won't use this until EConc at 28 but pick it up and level it in the meantime) Either help Alira or Kill All for Bandits. Alira will likely be be better until late maps and is my personal choice for a fresh start, but if you don't like the cost of respeccing you can just Kill All. Act 3: Haste (turn off Herald of Ice if your mana feels bad) Explosive Concoction - Lesser Multiple Projectiles - Volley - Elemental Damage With Attacks (swap at 28, 3 link is fine if that's all you have) Act 4: Mark On Hit - Sniper's Mark You can also grab any of the Golems from the quest reward at the end and use them but they're entirely optional. Pick up Multistrike from quest rewards and begin to level it in your Weapon Swap. You can also replace Herald of Ice with Grace if you're feeling squishy. Do this once you have some Increased Reservation Efficiency from the passive tree. Other than this you won't need any more gems to get through the campaign. Level up gems you'll be using once you hit maps in your Weapon Swap. Acendancy Order: 1st Lab - First to Strike, Last to Fall 2nd Lab - Fortitude 3rd Lab - Worthy Foe 4th Lab - Unstoppable Hero We don't take Worthy Foe until we're swapping over to Smite for mapping. The Campaign trees already give us Accuracy so Fortitude has more benefit until the swap. Unstoppable Hero is last because you won't really get benefit from it until you have more levels and stronger gear. Smite vs. Smite of Divine Judgement: Regular Smite has much better single target but worse clear and requires "Non-Vaal Strike Skills Target an Additional Nearby Enemy" either as a Mastery or Eldritch Implicit on Gloves Smite of Divine Judgement has much better clear but worse single target. While the Mastery/Implicit is nice it is not strictly necessary on this version. Either way you want the Vaal version of your gem for access to Vaal Smite. Merc/Configs: By default I'm setting everything in this version to the highest investment version, but there are instructions below to change the Mercenary off of the Doryani's Prototype version if you want to look at the Rakiata's Dance variants of the build. General Endgame Notes: For early mapping gear setups I've included barebones gear with instructions for crafting in the name of the item. The Rakiata's Low Budget setup is gear that I had in 3-4 days SSF practice before the league + Rakiata's Dance. The Mid Budget setup is the same gear set with the addition of Yoke of Suffering. We're also running Perseverance in the belt slot, but if you're hurting for Strength early in your progression you can replace this with a Stygian Vise that has Life, Strength, and some Resistances. The best way to solve for Strength is to run a Lethal Pride as shown in the various trees. The MB 6 Link Aura setup is my current high investment version of the build at the time of making this PoB. All of the rare gear in this version was crafted by me. This is likely not something most players will get to but if you want to push the build far this is one way to do it that has worked out very well for me. Rakiata's Dance is our BEST sword option as a Two Handed Sword build. I've included a 5x T1 Sword from Craft of Exile for you to compare, but this sword is 100% worth the investment as soon as you can get it. I rushed getting this on day 1 for my 3.26 start. In theory you could do better with something like a Mirror Sword but if the option is a relatively cheap unique or a Mirrored item I'm taking the unique every time. For the tree you can drop the bottom Endurance Charge nodes if you can gain Endurance Charge on kill through other means (such as Lethal Pride or a Veiled Modifier.) If your Armour is lower than roughly 10k use Automation + Steelskin for Defense. Once you have decent Armour switch Steelskin for Vaal Molten Shell (you can either use a level 10 with a level 6 Cast When Damage Taken or keep Automation.) Before Enlighten there is a free gem socket in the build. I think you want to get Enlighten early as it frees up other points on the tree but until you get it you can run whatever else you'd like in this socket. Corrupting Fever is just to activate Adrenaline from our Ascendancy. Once your Life total gets a big higher you'll need an additional support to raise the cost enough to proc Adrenaline with a single button press. Second Wind is perfect for this and also helps out Frostblink just a bit. Before using The Celestial Brace you can replace the "Non-Vaal Strike Skills target 1 additional nearby Enemy" mastery with "Monsters cannot Block your Attacks" if you have the former as an Eldritch Implicit on Rare gloves. This allows you to ignore some additional map mods as well as making certain monsters mods easier to deal with. If you're using Perseverance you have a flexible flask slot. If you're also using Bottled Faith then a Diamond Flask is great for helping you reach crit cap. If you're not yet using Bottled Faith you can run something like a Quicksilver Flask or a Jade Flask in this slot. 1 Handed Sword + Shield Variants: I think these are worse on a budget (less than 50 div, and possibly closer to 100) but become wildly powerful with enough investment due to how overtuned Doryani's Prototype Mercenaries are this league. The tradeoffs here are that your damage and survivability are better, but if your Mercenary dies your damage becomes incredibly scuffed. You also lose access to Garb of the Ephemeral on your Merc which gives some great quality of life. I've included a "budget version" for trees and gear but this is still fairly expensive as rings for a Doryani's Prototype Merc are very costly. I personally think that for low budget the Rakiata's Dance variants will vastly outperform the 1h + shield variants, but I wanted to include options. Watcher's Eye Mods: All of the following are solid options for us, and I'll list them in my order of preference for each skill. Determination - Physical Damage Reduction > Reduced Extra Damage from Crits (this last one is great early but becomes redundant if you use Garb of the Ephemeral on your Merc. Precision - Crit Multi > Attack Damage > Attack Speed Haste - Phasing > Debuffs Expire Faster (I wouldn't prioritize either of these but if you get 2 of the above mods with one of these it's a nice bonus.) Wrath (for 1h Variants) - Lightning Pen > Lightning Damage > Lightning Convert > Crit Chance If your Merc is using an aura you can get mods for that as well, but I've chosen not to include those here. Lethal Pride: The most important thing for us to get here is Endurance Charge on Kill. Ideally we would also get at least 2 Maximum Fortification nodes, and then anything else that's useful is a nice bonus. Getting any Lethal Pride early will be a huge benefit to us, essentially covering all of our Strength needs on its own. Aside from Rakiata's Dance I would say this is the most important thing for us to pick up. Mercenaries: To input your Mercenary into PoB create a fresh PoB and put all of their gear on. Include any relevant Auras, then click Import/Export, check the "Export as Support" option, Export and then Copy the code. Go back to your original PoB and click on the Party tab. Paste the code into the box and click Import. By default on this version of the PoB I've included the Doryani's Prototype Mercenary, but I've also included a below for the Merc I used with the Rakiata's Dance variants. Rakiata's Dance Merc: https://pobb.in/KN0U8_RZ95S- Doryani's Prototype Merc: https://pobb.in/vT1711TwwxkC For the Rakiata's Dance variants my preferred Merc is a Bladecaster with Grace and Aspect of the Spider. Asenath's Gentle Touch provides Temporal Chains on hit along with some Explode for us to help with clear. We also run Fenumus' Spinnerets for boots in order to add another stack of web through Aspect of the Spider. This combination will significantly slow enemies around us and provide boosts to our defenses, single target damage, and clear. Rounding out the gear we run Leer Cast, Kaom's Binding, Perquil's Toe (lol meta) and then for the chest you can run Doppelganger Guise on a budget or Garb of the Ephemeral as a much stronger option. For Rings I just use Rares with Life/ES and Res. For the weapon you can use a decent wand or rune dagger and a high ES Titanium Shield with whatever res you're missing. If you want to slap on a unique for the weapon Divinarius is a decent option. It gives the Merc more AoE and some damage, although the Merc really doesn't deal damage anyway. For the Svalinn + Doryani's Prototype Merc Setup our goal is to get -200 Light Res on just our rings and hopefully they have a few other stats we like. Big Resistance rolls, Regen/Recoup, or life are all solid options. These rings are expensive and my current rings aren't ideal, but they get the job done. My preferred Mercenary here is a Kineticist with Haste and Inspiring Cry, but there are other options that work as well. The Kineticist is great at applying Temporal Chains from Asenath's Gentle Touch and can wear any gear. If you got a Merc with Wrath your damage would be higher, but the fall off if your Merc dies would also be much worse. Map Mods: I'm including a few different regexes that I use here. The only map mod that's a hard brick is "Monsters Cannot Be Taunted" as this ruins our Accuracy. Aside from that, you can technically run any map mod, although I do avoid a few when rolling just because they're annoying. T16 Regexes Harsh Regex (Only avoids "Monsters Be Taunted") - "!elo" Comfy Regex (Avoids above + Less Recovery, No Regen, Reflect, and Cannot Leech) - "!efl|eec|gen|elo|s rec" 4 Babies Regex (Avoids above + Reduced Max Res. Safest regex for pushing levels) - "!efl|eec|gen|elo|s rec|o al" T17 and Originator Regexes Basic Regex (Avoids what I consider most likely to brick a map. There are still some annoying mods in here but IMO they're all manageable) - "!eec|'v|gen|f el|net|taun|s rec|o al|ever|f ph" Loose Regex (Minimal, only use this at high investment and with Awakened Elemental Damage to Attacks and Garb of the Ephemeral on your Merc) - "!eec|gen|taun|s rec|ever" Risky Regex (Removes all Recovery related mods from the above regex. Use at your own risk) - "!taun"