#Intro

• Profile (character name: SmoothBrainMcClane)
• PoB link

So I posted my Lacerate character the other day, and it was pretty well received. This build, unlike the Gladiator, is a high-budget build (several hundred exalts is a lot for me) that I would not do as a league starter. This is more of a showcase and less of a recommendation.

#The Theory

This character is an attempt to theorycraft around the new Ritual base type, Penitent Mask. Penitent Masks are great for stacking Fortify effect, but their downside is pretty punishing for dealing with physical damage. However, there are two ways to avoid that downside: (a) not having any physical damage reduction to begin with, since physical damage reduction can't be below zero, and (b) shifting incoming physical damage to other damage types.

Earlier in the league, I spent a week or so crafting this triple-Elevated helmet. With the help of that helmet, this build ends up with 84% of physical damage from hits taken as other damage types (mostly fire, but also a bit of cold and chaos). With so little physical damage taken from hits, there's little reason to invest in physical damage reduction at all (except to mitigate bleeding).

I decided on Chieftain to get an extra 15% of physical damage taken as fire. However, Chieftain's position on the skill tree gives him easy access to a good amount of armour and endurance charge scaling. In order to still take advantage of this, I take the Transcendence keystone to make armour apply to elemental damage from hits (and nearly all damage I take is elemental now). Note that I don't go all-in on armour scaling for Transcendence for this character. If I did want to get ridiculously tanky, I'd go with a Formless Inferno instead.

In order to still take advantage of endurance charge generation, I decided to try out the new Arn's Anguish belt. It turns my six practically useless endurance charges into brutal charges, which altogether give me 36% more DPS. The belt also comes with a good amount of life and a solid chunk of armour, so it synergizes with the build concept pretty well.

Here is a summary of the build's defenses at level 97:

• 7351 maximum life
• 64% physical taken as fire, 12% as cold, 8% as chaos
• Transcendence, 43K armour unbuffed, 88K buffed
• 110% increased Fortify effect (42% less damage from hits)
• 75% chaos resistance
• Corrupted Blood and elemental ailment immunity

#Final Impressions

I had a lot of fun planning this build, and it was fun crafting all the gear (with lots of Harvest, of course). I almost never play the same build twice anyway, but that's especially true of this character because getting all the right pieces together will be a lot harder with the Harvest nerfs (which are entirely fair). Some thoughts on how to improve this character:

• Imbalanced Guard would help considerably for being able to tank the really big one-shots but make me more susceptible to many smaller hits. I'm not sure whether I'd prefer to take it or not.
• The "120% increased Fortify effect while focussed" suffix on body armour would make it easier to tank large hits on demand. Going from 42% less damage taken to 66% less would be a 0.59x multiplier to damage taken. In other words, 70% more effective HP for four seconds on demand. The only reason I haven't done this is that I'd forget to use it all the time, and I'm running out of convenient keybinds for all my skills. Honestly, those are shitty excuses for giving up so much utility.

#Extra Videos

In the Gladiator thread, I got a handful of people asking how the build's clear speed was. I don't think I'll get the same interest this time since this isn't a good starter build and will be much harder to pull off next league. Regardless, this build's clear speed is carried by the Elevated explode mod, area scaling, and physical-to-fire conversion. Here's a quick video of an Atoll clear (no Rituals):

• T16 Atoll

As a bonus, here's a Maze of the Minotaur run. This one's slower since I do the Rituals (and it's a Fortressed one, so the monsters are pretty tanky):

• Maze of the Minotaur

Once again, I'm happy to record other content if requested.