The Tankiest Life Based Character on HC (Incredibly budget friendly) | Molten Blast Bloodmage

PoB: https://pobb.in/QIPkU59I2855

Sup gamers, I wanted to make a follow up post on my guide (here) since it caught some flack for only clearing the campaign (on HC BTW) so, I re-rolled on HC to do it again and blasted my way up to t15 maps

The thing I really want to stress about this build and HC builds in general is that YOU NEED TO MAXIMIZE AROUND PHYS MAX HITS

I've seen a lot of "one shot" builds being posted by people in t0 uniques that are walking around with 4k phys max hits and the reality is those people are going to be dieing all the time in end game maps to normal rares with big phys hits. This build im showcasing is the only life based character I've seen that is able to get up to ~10k phys max hit

Defenses:

The reason we're able to be so tanky is because:

- Overflowing Life
- Grasping Wounds
- Cloak of Flames
- Stacking Sources of % PDR on gear

Armor is a completely useless stat on big phys hits (which is the only thing that will really kill you) so you need to find an alternative

The most meta alternative is to stack ES since (for some fucking reason, like really why GGG) ES characters get a ton of % ES on the tree giving them a huge EHP pool while mitigating 0% of the hit. I think that's pretty dumb so I wanted to find a way to be as tanky as these characters while being life based and this is what I came up with

Offense:

Molten Blast is an INCREDIBLY strong mechanical ability because the projectiles can shotgun mobs and it already has good enough baseline numbers that with Ele Dmg + Bleed support (once u ascend the Blood Mage Ele Bleed notable) you just start instantly clearing zones with just holding down RMB

The build technically isn't one button because we take HUGE advantage of Hammer of the Gods but that is genuinely the only other button we press and we only do it on bosses or otherwise messed up rares

I use a blasphemy setup to proc aggravated bleeds thanks to the blood mage ascend even though it's not optimal. I just really don't like the way curses work in PoE2 so I use blasphemy to avoid having to manually cast that jank and its a huge plus on this build since it's just another DPS increase for our generic clear

Leveling Pre-Ascend:

I equipped a mace at level 2 and started to bone shatter + infernal cry my way to victory. It's a little bit of a struggle since we get 0 damage nodes but if you are upgrading your mace every base type it's completely fine

On HC I leveled like this until 38 since I went with the defense ascend first (Grasping Wounds)

Leveling Post-Acend:

Once you get ele bleed online start bum rushing bleed magnitude nodes and flat dmg on the tree and you'll immediately start feeling the damage come through.

Herald of Blood feels so good for the clear but I did have to find +spirit on gear to use it alongside blaspehmy until we got the final spirit passive in the interludes

The bossing damage will feel a bit weak by the end of act3 but that completely changes once you get hammer of the gods. You will start one tapping bosses and it's honestly the best feeling

LMK what you think of the guide and what I should do better next time, chur