The Unleashed + Scarred Faith Earthshatter Lich

This is the build I've been cooking all league. I didn't have much time to play but I think I'd record some vids and ending the league before PoE1.

PoB: https://pobb.in/RQTkeoC1ub_B

edit: I imported my character while opening Palsteron's Grim Pillar pob xdd. It's the correct one now.

edit 2: I forgot to mention a very important thing. If you want to play this build without sweating every map, you'll need to get 100% reduced armour break taken. Because if you got fully armour broken, Scarred Faith will prevent any ES recovery, which could be lethal if you're also taking DoTs.

Sources of reduced armour break taken: Barrier of Venarius 25%, Knight of Izaro 25%, Unbreakable 50%.

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The core mechanic of this build is Lich's Eternal Life node. That node is very insane for tankiness since it was introduced.

And this league, it's even crazier, with the new Stoat Idol for 5% (10% in Darkness Enthroned) and most importantly, The Unleashed and its Legacy rune.

The Unleashed and its Legacy rune is a conditional ES bypass, it only works for hit, and it only works if that hit happen when you have less than half ES.

So, let's say you have 100 maximum ES, if you have 51 ES right now, and you take 10 damage, The Unleashed won't work at all. Not that you take 10 damage, the 2 damage will make you have 49 ES left, and then the 8 damage will be mitigated.

And since the Unleashed + its Legacy grant up to 56% bypass, if you can make it always work, it'll be one the best hit mitigation mechanic in the game.

And to achieve that, I pair it with Scarred Faith.

If you also play PoE1, you may be familiar with Ghost Dance tech. Ghost Dance in PoE 1 prevents you from recover ES above evasion, and if you keep your evasion a little lower than your maximum ES, your ES will never be full, and you will have ES overleech.

Scarred Faith is the same, it prevents you from recover ES above armour, so if you keep your maximum armour a little below half ES, your ES will never be above half maximum ES, and the Unleashed will always be on full effect!

*A small tip if you want to play this build. Before you finish the build, juggling ES and armour is extremely annoying, but you can use Skeleton Frostmage to increased/decrease your ES to match the situation.

So, I'll always have: 12% from Atziri's Disdain, 31% from the Unleashed, 25% from Legacy of the Unleashed, 10% from Stoat Idol, 10% from Lich, and 5% from passive tree, for a 93% hit damage bypass Energy Shield. In other word, you'll take only 7% damage from all hit in the game.

Now, the problem is recovery, Scarred Faith also prevents ES recharge and regeneration, so recovery is a problem. Until I found some weird tech.

I don't know if it's a well known tech, but the "life can't be changed" from Lich's Eternal Life is not a mitigation. It just makes your life stay the same. Yes, the result is you take less damage, but not because it's a mitigation, but because your life can't be changed.

Which means it's perfect for Recoup.

Let's say you have 93% hit damage bypass ES, and you take 100 fire damage, your ES will go down 7 points, but you actually take full 100 fire damage.

Storm Driven makes you recoup 15% of elemental damage taken as ES, so if you take 100 fire damage, you'll recoup 15 ES.

So, your ES actually took 7 damage, but you recouped 15 ES from that same hit.

So, if an elemental hit can't one shot me, it can't kill me, and I've never met any hit that can one shot me in this game, including Grand Expedition and 200% delirium, and yes, even Arbiter of Ash's Donut and Corridor. I'm nearly level 97 and have 0 death.

For physical and chaos it's much less, but for chaos you can use the expensive augment that makes you take chaos damage as elemental, and for phys you still have Glazed Flesh for 3%, and very small amount of hit in this game is pure phys.

But I will say this, this build is not immortal, DoT can still kill this build. It's not that this build is very weak against DoT, because we still have 37% DoT bypass ES, 90% fire res, and around 3.3k ES, but compared to hit, it's scarier.

For damage, you actually can play any build you want. I just want to use Medved's and Berserk, so I decided to go Earthshatter.

If you have any question, feel free to ask!