This Starter Melee Build is INSANELY TANKY! - Boneshatter of Complex Trauma Juggernaut [PoE 3.28]

> 3.28 CHANGES < - Autoexertion reservation went from 15% to 20%. We drop flesh and stone to fit it now, but Flesh and Stone wasn't really needed anyway. - The build mostly dodged all other nerfs from this patch! And imbued gems can really benefit this build a lot. > IMBUED GEMS < Imbued gems allow you to corrupt a 20/20 gem to add a level 1 support, this might be hard to do for our build since we use a transfigured gem(so harder to get), but here are some options: - Endurance Charge on Melee Stun would be the absolute best option, since there is no damage difference between level 1 and level 20 gems. - Cruelty wouldn't be too bad for your mapping speed and will probably have some uptime even against bosses, but it's not super reliable on bosses. - Unbound Ailments is decent damage and some more bleed uptime. - Ideally don't add Deadly Ailments, even if it's listed highly in PoB, since this will reduce your hit damage so much it mostly kills your leech. - Fortify allows you to drop the Fortify mastery, gaining you a skillpoint and 3 fortification stacks. - Just decent damage gems that slightly outscale a 21/20 Boneshatter will be: Overextertion, Maim or Efficacy. - A bunch of level 1 gems will be decent to have if you don't have a level 21/20 gem as an alternative, think gems like: Faster Attacks or Increased Area of Effect. If you have a 7th link that replaces any of the links currently in the build, you can add Maim support, this will add about 28% more bleed dps. If you ever run into mana issues after adding a 7th link you can simply pick up the "10% reduced mana cost of skills" mana mastery at the Spirit of War node on the tree. > What Bloodlines ascendancy? < Dropping Unrelenting for "That didn't happen!" from the Delirious Bloodline is great to get VERY tanky, at the cost of some damage you'd get from your jewels otherwise. With the amount of recovery we have you'll almost always recover back the 40% of your hit before it actually applies. > Leveling < We level with the tried-and-tested Sunder all the way to Merciless lab. For weapon upgrades you can vendor a Rare Rustic Sash with a Blacksmith's Whetstone and a 2H Axe of any rarity to get a Magic Axe back with 50-64% increased Physical Damage. If you're someone who wants to swap to their endgame skill early, don't do so before picking up either "Unflinching" on your ascendancy or "Inexorable" on the tree. You likely want to run Determination as well to mitigate the self-damage. > What map mods should I avoid? < - Phys reflect - Avoid bleed - Monsters cannot be stunned(EASY TO MISS, DESTROYS YOUR CLEAR) - Monsters steal charges on hit There are some other mods that are annoying, but you can deal with them. Above mods will completely brick your build. Make sure that on eater altars you don't click "players have -% physical damage reduction" either, since the self-damage from Boneshatter will kill you if you do that. Regex: "!er,|tun|f ph|on," > Tincture stuff < Your Tincture is very important for your damage. By not rolling increased effect and by taking the "10% of damage taken recouped as mana" mastery we can sustain this for a long time compared to some other builds. If you don't mind pressing it more often you can roll increased effect on it for even more damage. > Getting 100% chance to bleed < The tree in this build is very lenient on getting you chance to bleed, so getting to 100% shouldn't be a problem. That being said: if you get some other sources of chance to bleed you can replace nodes on the tree for more damage(usually by just pathing around the other side of a wheel). Other sources of bleed chance: - Veiled prefix on axes for %phys and 25% chance to bleed - Jewel suffix for 5% chance to bleed - Eater of Worlds glove implicit for bleed chance(likely not really worth it over the consistency of getting more aggravate chance) > Kaom's Sign < Kaom's Sign provides a lot of power for this build for a very common unique. While ideally you use a Synthesis Implicit +1 Endurance Charge ring in the endgame, these are so rare I wouldn't really consider it an option. The advantage of Kaom's Sign being this common is that you can vaal them(or even double corrupt). A list of some useful corruptions, approximately in order of usefulness: - Bleeding cannot be inflicted on you - 14-16% to all Elemental Resistances - 15-25% increased Global Physical Damage - 20-30% increased Rarity of Items Found(great for finding Gold) - 8-10% increased Attack Speed - Cannot be Poisoned > Divine Shield < Basically: if you have ANY energy shield: take Divine Shield. If you have none: don't take it. Easiest place to get some ES is by using a Crystal Belt before you use Ryslatha's Coil. > Dealing with mana < - If you get a 6-link early on, you can link Lifetap as your 6th link to prevent having to rush mana nodes or crafting -mana cost on jewellery - Having a source of physical damage leeched as mana is great, on the tree we take Spirit of War, but you could drop that and get it on gear or a jewel instead - -mana cost on rings and amulet helps a lot, but later on we want to ideally replace our rings with Kaom's Sign(or a Synthesis Implicit +1 endurance charge ring if you're rich), so don't come to rely on this too much. - Picking up the 10% reduced mana cost of skills mastery at the Spirit of War notable on the tree will help with mana issues too > Pride or Determination? < If you have half-decent gear you don't really need the armor Determination provides, so you might as well use Pride. If you ever feel like your mitigation is lacking somewhat, feel free to swap in Determination instead of Pride though, since Pride doesn't add enough damage to justify potentially dying for. > Can I add explosions? < While you can technically add Haemophilia, this likely doesn't add as much clear as you might think, especially since it means you miss out on 1 (or potentially 2) additional strikes. If you want more clearspeed I'd recommend getting +2 strike gloves, onslaught on boots and then anointing Sione's Ambition. > Spell suppress? < Technically you could fit Spell Suppress in builds like this by picking up Entrench(with Iron Reflexes along the way), using hybrid armour/evasion gear with suppress on it and a small suppress cluster jewel. With the changes to suppress in 3.27 I wouldn't really recommend this though, since it's a lot of investment and this build is already plenty tanky without it.