After some consideration I decided to make a written guide to what I consider a pretty decent template for any melee skill in the game for the Phrecia event. The credit for this one goes to Woolie who posted his ward stacking dual strike character early in the league and got me thinking: we can flick with that. A few PoBs later, I realized you could adapt this build to pretty much any other melee skill out there, with only a few changes to supports gems and small tweaks to the passive tree.

Links

• PoB with notes: Generic Ward Stacking Melee Template
• Link to my character PoB: https://pobb.in/GUDCoX9M_15u
• Link to my character in PoE ninja: MalkWardFlicker

Showcases

• Double Strike vs. The Feared
• Flicker Strike vs. T17 mapping with 127% increased map effect (I die a few times)
• Cyclone vs. T16 8-mod mapping

To make all these showcases only a few gem swaps and passive tree respecs where used. The gear didn't change.

Ward Stacking Template: How does it work?

So I'll try to keep this one brief. Ward stackers use the unique belt Ynda Stand with 20% defense quality to gain ward equal to 60% of their equipped body armour. This effect combines with Antiquarian's Kalguuran Armour to futher push the conversion to 110%. By using a well crafted (read: dense fossil spam) Conquest Lamellar the chestpiece can generate upwards of >6800 Armour + Evasion which converts into around 7500 flat ward.

The build goes on to stack sources of increased ward/global defenses: mainly Antiquarian's Starlight Reflector (+100% increased global defenses), some small ascendancy passives (+50% increased global defenses), and finally a well rolled iron flask (up to +30% increased ward), for a total of 180% increased ward, allowing the build to easily break past 21,000 ward.

From there, we use the unique gloves Nightgrip to gain 10% of this ward as additional generic chaos damage: around 2,100 added chaos damage. This flat chaos damage can be used anywhere: attacks, spells, mines, traps, herald of ice explosions, skills gained from items like Abberath's Hoves... anywhere!

Scaling Generic Attack Damage

That said, chaos damage is remarkably hard to scale through the passive tree. Even generic sources of attack damage near marauder/duelist are scarce. For an attack build to work we have to find a way to scale generic attack or melee damage.

One option would be crafting a very expensive 12-passive attack cluster. However a simpler soltuion would be to tap into the randomized bonuses from Lethal Pride. Not only can we gain generic sources of increased melee damage in radius of the jewel, but it also pumps the build with strength so that we can replace small strength passives with tattoos that increase generic melee attack damage.

Antiquarian further adds a decent 100% increased damage and 25% increased attack speed in the form of Adrenaline through the Runic Tablet ascedancy. This adrenaline buff is not something we can easily activate, but with a 10 second duration we only need to activate it sparingly for us to benefit from it.

From there we need to support our generic chaos damage with more multipliers. We look at the usual suspects: resistance penetration, attack speed, critical strike chance + multiplier, and finally withered stacks since we are a chaos build.

Since withered is very powerful multiplier, one idea comes to mind: stacking quality on the Withering Step so that we can apply as many stacks of withered as possible with just one use of the skill gem. By opting into the amulet Ashes of the Stars we can pump +30% quality on all our gems, and for some attack gems this can often result in very desirable modifiers, such as flicker strike scaling chance to generate frenzy charges on hit.

Defensive Layers

While we can't make full use of ward due to Nightgrip "75% damage taken bypasses ward", we still get to benefit from the small 25% portion that does get absorbed. Given our gigantic pool of ward, we effectively 'negate' 25% of all damage whenever it wards a hit.

To help mitigate damage, we use block and spell block to spread damaging hits further apart so that we can regenerate our ward inbetween hits.

The rest is just stacking defensive layers such as maximum resistances, endurance charges, leech, regen, armour, and life until the build feels nice to play.

What skill to use?

The great thing about this template is that it works with most melee skills as it provides much needed base damage. The rest of the generic increases to attack damage and damage multipliers such as crit are also versatile enough to make things work no questions asked.

That said, some skills like Lightning strike have damage components such as projectiles that don't scale at all with generic "melee" damage. In those cases the template will only work partially.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of skills that can break 40 million damage with the template:

• Flicker Strike
• Double Strike
• Dual Strike of Ambidexterity (dual wielding Paradoxica + Brightbeak)
• Cyclone of Tumult
• Reave
• Perforate
• Cleave
• Lacerate

Why not take Lioneye's Hair?

The short answer: because paradoxica would require a whooping 318 dexterity. It's tempting to find a way to ignore dexterity entirely, but an obvious solution such as Supreme Ostentation would prevent us from using another timeless jewels like Lethal Pride. What's more, capping accuracy only costs 6 dedicated passive points and a helmet suffix, so it hardly seems worth the hassle. As ugly as it is, taking a 2nd small ascendancy passive ends up being the simpler solution.

What's the budget?

The overal template is extremely cheap for the power it provides, tallying around 50 divines total. The two biggest purchases being Svalinn (10 divines) and Ashes of the Stars with 30% quality (10+ divines). The rest of the gear can be self crafted with essence spam for the most part, with only the hunter influenced helmet requiring recombinators.

That said, since this build relies on bonuses granted by Lethal Pride, there's no telling how cheap or expensive this jewel can be when trying to find the perfect seed.