Memezerker - Chain Hook Rage Vortex Berserker - 3.28 Build Guide

Guide Version 1.0 - Normally I mention I'm only human here, and that I can only hope I've gotten everything into the notes here that absolutely needs to be. Not for this build, no. Honestly, it's a wonder there's even a reason to play the combination of skills this way at all! Below is my best attempt at guiding you there, because getting to the point where this build 'feels good' to play is honestly the most difficult part of it. =================================================================================================================================================================================================== =================================================================================================================================================================================================== =================================================================================================================================================================================================== Leveling - Leveling is an utter CRAPSHOOT with this build, and unless you want a 'challenge run' for your league start, you should not touch Chain Hook early. Is it doable? Sure, especially if you have leveling gear, but it's not 'good', and the passive tree we plan to use as a whole is not set up in a way that's conducive toward a 1-Hander start. Get a 2-Hander, and use Sunder or another classic leveling skill until Cruel Lab AT LEAST. The attached Leveling Tree shows you how efficiently we can pick up lots of damage on a 2-Hander start in a way that isn't quite as good for a 1-Hander, and you will especially feel that. The other reason I recommend starting this way, especially if you're the rare, brave soul that wants to league start this, is because you probably have to farm out Rage Vortex of Berserking yourself. It's very, very easy to blitz normal lab over and over again after you've done Cruel Lab, making it a good time to get that over with; alternatively you can just buy the gem if it isn't too expensive. This isn't a new player friendly build, so if being told 'use a generic leveling strat until x' has lost you, then I'm already pensive about you playing the build at all. We plan to use Resolute Technique while leveling, but you will likely not be able to get that for a while; running some level of Precision in the interim and/or picking up Eagle Eye + 500 Accuracy Mastery can really help manage this if necessary. Your First Ascendancy is Crave the Slaughter. We invest in Rage early, and want to get the best use out of it we can. Cruel Lab and Beyond - This is when the build starts to feel good, but you probably need to understand how it functions first. Rage Vortex of Berserking is a very unique skill, because that swirling vortex of death inherits pretty much everything that you attach to the initial use. You can also overwrite the Rage Vortex by using it again, resetting what's applied to it, but ALSO resetting the ever increasing rage dragin. In this way, something like Multistrike will give it the effect of the strongest, third swing. What's much BETTER than Multistrike is Intimidating Cry, which gives the whole Rage Vortex a juicy DOUBLE DAMAGE. For this same reason, we put Multistrike on Chain Hook, because Chain Hook does a few things for the build first and foremost. First, it generates Rage implicitly, making it great for maintaining the vortex. Second, it has one of the fastest Base Speed Multipliers in the entire game (160%). Third, Multristrike will 'auto-target' after the first swing to new targets, making it function like a less hectic Flicker Strike. Rage also increases the Base AoE on Chain Hook, and if you're too close for the 'chain animation', it actually functions very similarly to Cleave. Do be aware that some niche bosses (like Kitava) have this nasty habit of forcing the 'chain animation' on every swing, but this is mostly just a minor nuisance. Your Second Ascendancy is Rite of Ruin. Your Third Ascendancy is Defy Pain. As a special note about Rite of Ruin, we more or less NEVER suffer the downside, because while Rage Vortex of Berserking is active, our Rage is actively draining. Neat, right? This is also why we have some decent investment into Rage generation on the tree, and why I recommend the Rage Support be used early on with Chain Hook. Don't forget to Intimidating Cry and re-use Rage Vortex of Berserking to reset your Rage degen periodically; all of these factors combined allow you to live at Maximum Rage more or less indefinitely! Up until Mapping, you can really choose to do whatever you want on the build with nary a care in the world as far as 1-Hand + Shield vs Dual Wield in concerned. At Mapping, you start to convert to Shield, because we want a Lycosidae. This does more than just allow us to spec out of Resolute Technique, but that will be something we make our way to down the line. It also gets us started on investing in Block Nodes, and the Versatile Combatant Keystone. Capped Block is one of the best ways to keep any character alive in mapping, and this method of doing it doesn't go quite to 75/75, but is very point efficient. A +5% Block Corruption on Lycosidae or some Tattoos may be necessary to get those last few bits of Spell Block, however. All things considered, the Aggressive Bastion node will keep your Endurance Charges up for now, so you can hold off on Admonisher and the accompanying Minimum 10 Power Warcry Mastery that comes with it until you start throwing your blender at Pinnacle Bosses and the like. Getting all of our Reservation Effects (Auras + Other) going is a bit of a process. Early on, I tend to prefer defense, so I stick to Determination and have Flesh and Stone + Blood and Sand going (Blood Stance). Pride comes with an Aul's Uprising, and that could/will be expensive, especially early. Don't forget you can get an Aul's Uprising for Determination and then use a Pride gem either as well; do whichever is cheapest. Petrified Blood is our secret survivability tech that I owe a major thanks to Youtube User DaJodad for, because I had written it off as a possibility and they weren't having it. Runegraft of Treachery has ZERO downside on this build, something I overlooked, and we already grab Spirit of War, which means the mastery for 12% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills is right there for a single point investment. Consider also that we don't put Chain Hook in a 6-Link (thus keeping the cost down), and Rage Vortex of Berserking inherently costs Life instead of Mana, and you'll find that everything just BARELY fits. This gives us Overleech, as our Life no longer recovers above half for anything but Flasks, and that Overleech also becomes our bulwark against Petrified Blood's one weakness: Degens. At this point if you turn the PoB off of Pinnacle and set to standard enemies, you'll see our reported Effective Hit Pool is "inf", which is good, because only enormous spikes of damage can really worry us at that point. As an added benefit, you can pre-emptively smash your Life Flasks when facing down a Slam, which effectively gives you an absurd boost to Max Hit. The real reason Petrified Blood is so nasty on this build though is because of how it interacts with Defy Pain. By reserving no life, using Petrified Blood almost doubles the effect! At a certain point, this build does a magic trick even I hadn't expected when I started testing: it somehow validates the use of a 1-Hander with Rage Vortex of Berserking. With a Brutal Restrain to Nasima, we can give ourselves 25% More Critical Strike Chance with no downside, becaues Lycosidae doesn't care if we're Blind, and neither does Armour! That Brutal Restraint also needs to give one affected node 25% Increased Critical Strike Chance, and then combined with the other Crit Nodes we take on the Passive Tree and a 20/20 Ambush Gem, we do the unthinkable: We cut Intimidating Cry. We give up the enormous power of Double Damage for the Ambush-Guaranteed, 1-Hander Only Super Crit, which is effectively Quadruple Damage, AND you can scale it higher! At this point, the build flies through your garden-variety T16s and even escapes the gravitational pull of being a 'meme build' to some degree. It's not more than a meme because there are just so many skills better for a league start, but all things considered, what it offers at this level of investment is very passable for the 'cool factor', if that appeals to you. For our Pantheons, we need to find space to handle Freeze, Chill, and Shock, so we go for the classic Brine King + Garukhan; Brine King is doubly good because we turn Unwavering Stance into Second Sight. DO NOT UPGRADE THE GARUKHAN PANTHEON! YOU WILL BRICK SECOND SIGHT! GEARING CONCERNS =================================================================================================================================================================================================== Unless specified otherwise, get the best Armour base you can for most slots. WEAPON: You want a Siege Axe, because high Attack Speed benefits this build at every step of the way. Even Rage Vortex of Berserking's Hit-Rate is scaled by it. Outside of that, you want as much Physical DPS as possible, alongside some Crit. It's not the easiest thing to acquire, but if the Base Crit isn't high enough it's not the end of the world; you can pick up more on the tree to compensate since Ambush makes our Base Crit so massive anyway. If you end up with an axe that has an open Prefix, you could consider Hits Can't Be Evaded, which would allow you to swap out Lycosidae for something else if that strikes your fancy. Unsurprisingly, a really well rolled Soul Taker works here as well, but it likely will be too expensive. SHIELD: Lycosidae, unless you get Hits Can't Be Evaded from somewhere else. At that point you can pursue all sorts of options to increase your defense/survivability, but as far as I could tell at an (admittedly) very brief glance, there were no obvious DPS options to compensate for likely using a less-good weapon. HELMET: Armour, Life, Resistances. Phys taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning really helps, and so can Reduced Mana Cost of Attacks if you're rocking Eldritch Implicits. This build doesn't ask a lot of its gear, so you're generally free to do odd things with it if you're meeting your Resistance requirements just fine elsewhere. Also, you can save a Passive Point if you take Maximum Lightning Resistance as your Exarch Implicit, which may be more valuable to you. BODY ARMOUR: No Life Mods, as much Armour as you can get, and Additional Physical Damage Reduction are the key 'value' mods. All Max Res and Phys taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning are probably your best Eldritch Implicits. Any other affixes can be whatever you need. GLOVES: Lots of wants on this slot. Armour, Life, Flat Phys Added to Attacks, and Attack Speed are all something you eventually want, in as big a value as you can manage. Eldritch Implicits aren't too great here, but you can get more Flat Phys or Attack Speed, and you can get a bit of extra Physical Leech alongside it. This slot in particular feels like it has a lot of potential for more extravagant upgrades. BOOTS: Free space! Get Movement Speed, Armour, Life, and whatever else you want. As for Eldritch Implicits, Action Speed does NOT affect Rage Vortex of Berserking's Hit Rate, so Movement Speed is fine. So is Chaos Resistance or any other stat you care for, as we don't terribly need much Movement Speed either. For the Eater Implicit, %Regen per Endurance Charge is nice; %Regeneration Rate isn't as good because so much of our Recovery is based on Leech. BELT: Mageblood, like almost any other build. You can't afford a Mageblood though, so you get Stygian Vyse and a Murderous Eye Jewel instead. Life, Armour, Resistances, Stats on the belt. Flat Added Physical Damage and more Life on the Jewel. Simple. If you have an open Prefix on the belt, you can craft %Damage, which is nice. AMULET: Aul's Uprising with either Determination or Pride. While you're working on that, Flat Phys to Attacks, Life, and %Armour are all great. Obviously you can fix Stats and Resistances here as well, but you will be losing them at some point and should be prepared for that. All of that said, Defy Pain is crazy good with Petrified Blood, which means Defiance of Destiny is too. I don't know how good exactly, and it's very expensive, but it could be good enough to cut Determination. RINGS: Flat Added Physical Damage gets better the faster you are, so this is a premium stat. Life obviously, Flat Mana Cost Reduction crafts are also very good. The Steel Ring base is optimal for this, but puts a lot of pressure on Resistances, so worry about that later. Catalyst for Physical or Attack, whichever is cheaper. %Attack Speed is a fine Suffix, but puts even more pressure on Resistances, so don't feel pressured to prioritize it. FLASKS: Oriath's End is a pretty neat pickup for clear boost, because we have the open slots and eventually this item ends up pretty cheap; consider when you cut your Mana Flask. Outside of that, Quicksilver and Granite are great; Granite with Charged Gained When Hit and the Use When Full enchant is pretty standard practice. Outside of that, I'm a double Life Flask enjoyer, and I tend to prioritize for Bleed + Poison Immunities. JEWELS: One Rare Jewel with Block is great for hitting cap, and affords us some extra damage. Brutal Restraint (Nasima) has already been explained above, 7461 is my personal favorite because it gives us the Crit we need, 10% Attack Speed, and a clean Onslaught for 8 Seconds on Kill. A Watcher's Eye with relevant Pride and Determination mods is also very nice, I like %Increased Physical Damage and Reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes. IMBUED GEMS: Chain Hook can pick up a level 1 Maim, which is great because Maim's Increased Physical Damage Taken modifier is the same at all levels. Rage Vortex of Berserking looks to Impale, granting ~22% More Damage because 60% Increased Chance to Impale is really strong, and scaling the support normally only grants %Increased Impale Effect anyway. Obviously there are lots of options here, but these two stick out especially, at least as far as my short-notice dive has produced. EXTRAVAGANT UPGRADES: I have no idea. Honestly, I am completely burnt out thinking about this build after getting it this far, but at a glance I can tell there's a lot of optimization to be done, and lots of potential avenues for semi-significant improvement, especially if you're willing to invest big. That said... I will be streaming at launch and for a while afterward, likely every day for the first week. Don't be afraid to stop by and say hi, ask about this or any other build, or even just call me bald. If you want pick my brain about ways to shake up for improve the build, ABSOLUTELY come by and do it. If you figured out a way to improve things, I'd love to add it to the PoB and give you a shoutout for your innovation! And just in case as a disclaimer, this is a build guide, not a porsche. If you make your own build guide using this as a base that goes crazy, I'd love a shoutout of my own, but even so it's completely necessary. Happy farming Exiles, and see you on Mirage launch!