Take Smite Slayer DEEP into the Endgame [PoE 3.27]

Levelling All of these tips assume a fresh start, or at least not using a dedicated reroll build (like Hollow Palm.) If you have another levelling setup you feel more comfortable with you can definitely do that. PConc could also be good on a fresh start but as I'm not familiar with that I don't want to share questionable information about it. The important thing is that you have fun while efficiently clearing the campaign. If you wanted to mule Smite you could kill Hillock on a Templar and then get the quest reward before starting your duelist. This only matters for a fresh start, and I haven't tested it myself so I can't speak to how good it would feel, but it's an option. Act 1: Spectral Throw - Added Fire Damage - Faster Attacks Frostblink Leap Slam - Faster Attacks Sniper's Mark Enduring Cry Act 2: Herald of Ice Poacher's Mark Also make sure you pick up Elemental Damage with Attacks and Trinity for levelling in your offhand setup, along with Flesh and Stone and Blood Rage Help Alira early (you can also choose to Kill All Bandits if you don't want to respec but it's hard for 1 point to beat 15 Elemental Resistance this early) Act 3: Smite - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Faster Attacks (if you have a 4th link Trinity is great if you can proc it, otherwise you can use something like Added Cold Damage / Added Fire Damage / Rage) Haste Act 4: Smite - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Multistrike - Trinity / Added Cold Damage / Added Fire Damage (Trinity is best but you have to make sure you're proccing) Mark on Hit - Poacher's Mark - Lifetap If you have extra sockets you can also grab a Stone Golem or Fire Golem from the quest reward at the end of the act. It's not a lot of power but it does something with an empty socket at this early stage of the game. Ascendancy Order Lab 1 - Impact Lab 2 - Brutal Fervour Lab 3 - Bane of Legends Lab 4 - Headsman You could also take Brutal Fervour last. Your damage will feel much better but you lose the only defense we get from our Ascendancy so there is a real opportunity cost to this. Early Maps This guide is tailored to trade, but you could absolutely play this build in SSF. You're just going to spend longer getting some of these uniques. I'll have an early maps gear set with barebones stuff to get you started. Once you're strong enough to break into Tier 16s your immediate priority should be getting Rakiata's Dance. For the price this sword is absolutely unmatched, and can easily carry you through Uber bosses and juiced T17 mod content. If you're on a second character and have the money you can just pick this up right away and shift your focus over to every other piece of gear. Prior to Rakiata's Dance I think you're better off using a Rare Axe. Hatchet Master is so strong early and the Rage generation from the Mastery is incredible until you can easily gain Rage from other sources. Because of our position on the tree it's trivial to cap Spell Suppression. You can get a low roll on a single piece of gear, Eldritch Implicit on Gloves, or even a craft (body armour is the best spot for this.) Make sure you check your build in PoB before you switch away from Precise Technique. My build wasn't stronger without it until after I had gotten my first 2 stones, but this was on a fresh start so your experience may vary greatly. The important thing here is to test out your changes here in PoB before you commit to swapping into Crit. Getting a Lethal Pride asap is huge, essentially solving our Strength by itself. Try to get some combination of Endurance Charge on Kill, Intimidate on Hit, and Gain Rage on Hit (prioritizing in that order.) If you just have the first 2 nodes that's still an excellent starter jewel, and you can always go back later to get one with more useful nodes. You can also look for jewels to go into the other viable socket we have, so you have quite a few options here. You can use the "Find Timeless Jewel" function at the bottom of the Tree tab here, and I've already plugged in the 3 nodes we care about. You can change the jewel socket to search up at the top, and if you want to drop one of the nodes from being mandatory simply replace the last 1 in that line with a 0. The Taming is amazing for damage and ele res at the cost of losing life in that slot. I do recommend using it but if you're feeling squishy and want to level you could drop it for a rare ring with a good life roll and whatever other stats you need to fill out your character. Yoke of Suffering is very similar to Rakiata's Dance. You CAN beat it with a rare but it's incredibly hard to do and would be MUCH more expensive. Because of this you should just pick up Yoke whenever you can afford it and ignore that slot until you're very deep into the endgame. Getting a good Conquest Lamellar is massive for your survivability, and in 3.27 this is easier than ever before. You can source this from the Genesis Tree, buy a Fractured base and craft (these are relatively cheap this league) or just find one that fits your needs buy it. If you already have Rakiata's Dance and 6 linking your new body armour would be expensive you can just run a single 6 link in your weapon and put off the second 6 link til you build up your stash again. This shouldn't be a problem this league, but might be an issue in the future when 6 links aren't as common as they are in 3.27. Clusters are great but I would wait to put them in until you have good enough gear that you can trim some of the fat off the tree. Getting high res on your gear allows you to save a bunch of points, getting more Suppression on gear saves points, you have options here. For Smite links... check whether Increased Critical Strikes or Increased Critical Damage is better for you. If Trinity won't proc then you can run both of these or Added Lightning Damage Grafts 3.27's borrowed power comes in the form of Grafts. Storming Eshgraft is great if you want more damage, but also adds another button to press (this doesn't bug me but I know some people don't like that.) Aegis Tulgraft is great as it gives us some extra defense and gives us access to Non Vaal Strike Skills Target an Additional Enemy. Max Res during the shield is also great, and anything that boosts the power of the shield is also good. Lately I've also been running a Molten Xophgraft and with these 2 shields plus a normal guard skill (Steelskin on my current version as I've opted to focus more on Evasion than Armour.) I'm using Aer0__'s tech (https://youtu.be/FIUrGr1D5KA?si=sJU5f1syc_2N5xcr) here and it has drastically upped my survivability. These grafts are quite expensive, so if you can't get a double CDR graft just pick up the best one you can that has mods to increase uptime (CDR is king, but Skill Effect Duration is still fine.) For corruptions we'd really love Attack Speed per Frenzy Charge. You can look on the market for these or you can try to make them yourself. What I've been doing lately is replacing a graft and then corrupting the worse one. It's a gamble but if you hit you can either save a lot of money or get something better than what exists on the market. Lategame Optimization Eventually we drop Impact from our Ascendancy and pick up Masterful Form. At 7 Frenzy Charges (all 3 from the tree and the 1 from the Ascendancy) this is less damage than Impact but not by a lot, and in exchange we get 3 more Endurance Charges and save a point. Progenesis is hands down the single biggest upgrade to our survivability. It's very expensive but it's worth it, and even if you were to add Mageblood I think you would continue to use Progen for mapping as it's just that good. You could carry a Tincture with you and swap for bosses if you don't mind that and feel like you need the extra DPS in those fights. Getting the Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 10 Fortify implicit on Rakiata's Dance is really nice and if you can get one for a reasonable price it's solid. Not only is it a nice damage boost but you free up your Eater of Worlds implicit on your body armour, and the fortify feels much more reliable. I got mine for 10d with decent damage rolls and linked/colored/qualitied myself. Long term I'd love to double corrupt a nice one with Fortify and any other relevant implicit (Attack Speed is best here.) One thing to keep in mind when going for corrupted implicits is that you're losing a significant amount of Accuracy. Make sure you solve this before switching or it'll feel bad. I've intentionally avoided getting Mageblood this league as I wanted to see how far I could take this build without it. MB is obviously great and I think it would be a great fit, but it also makes just about anything good and I wanted to play without it for a while. I'm planning on picking one up soon since I've knocked out most of the other expensive things I would want. You could drop Blood Rage since we already have good Frenzy Charge generation and use a Level 1 Vitality to open up those mods on a Watcher's Eye. If you are adding Mageblood prior to my final update that includes it then I suggest switching your Auras around a bit. Drop Haste and Wrath, pick up Purity of Lightning and Determination, and run Runegraft of Treachery. Fit in Melding of the Flesh and run with a Topaz Flask for a huge boost to your max res. Map Regexes Prior to getting level 5 Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks we can't run Elemental Reflect. Picking this up is a really nice QoL but not a priority until your gear is looking solid. The "Safe" Regexes include mods that we can run but that are likely to get us killed. I use these regexes when I'm focused on levelling, but if you're not concerned with Experience you can use the "Risky" regexes and open up your pool of runnable maps. For the T17 mod regexes I have left in quite a few annoying mods even in the "Safe" regexes. I would encourage you to check out PoE.re and make your own regex if you find that mine have too many map mods that annoy you. At the end of the day we're here to have fun and if things like Drowning Orbs are taking away from that there's no problem avoiding those mods. The reason I don't is just to keep my map pool as open as possible. Before Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks T16 Safe - "!er,|eec|tal d|o al" T16 Risky - "!eec|tal d" T17 Safe - "!o al|'v|teal|om$|f el|net|ever" T17 Risky - "!om$|f el|ever" After Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks T16 Safe - "!er,|eec|o al" T16 Risky - "!eec" T17 Safe - "!o al|'v|teal|om$|ever" T17 Risky - "!om$|ever" Hopefully this helps some of you have a good time!