Quick Mercenary Guide for Melee and Slammers | POE 3.26 | Slayer Earthshatter and Howlcrack

Lots of good leveling guides out there, use any preferred Slam Skill. Check out more qualified leveling guides if you want to speed run campaign. I'm not a min maxer so I just use Earthshatter the whole way. Sunder is better though. Leveling in Act 1 is especially rough as melee, I like using Splitting Steel though. Obviously the most important upgrade is your weapon. Can use belt vendor recipe for weapon but in all honesty I have never had to use it since I've played since breach league. I just pick up any portential rares and ID them, craft from there. You will find a decent weapon by the time you get to maps. By decent I mean any 2 mod combination of phys / acc - phys - flat phys - atk speed. For early mapping, drop an Aura to solve mana issues. I normally drop Pride as Pride just ins't needed until later bosses/rares due to ramp requirement. Cluster Jewel - Cry Wolf / Mob Mentality / Warning Call / Lead by Example. Lead by Example outpaces the other prefix options IMO. I normally just craft onslaught on chest but onslaught for bosses just feels really good, try to get it one way or another. Savage Intensity - another way to help Mana Issues, gives you access to another Rage Mastery - good option notable. I don't think Berserk is worth using anymore, I rather just stay at high rage. Leveling Tree - It is normally a good idea to go Precise Techniques earlier than I have in the tree. The reason why I don't path that way initially is because for newer or more casual palyers, they'll have trouble maintaining it while leveling. If you're a better player than me (you probably are), then go for it! MANA!!!! Mana has become more an issue in 3.25, while leveling and into maps drop an aura, prob Pride to ease mana issues. Late game mana issues, still there...warcries to second wind massively increase mana cost. With triple elreon craft on two rings and ammy...17 mana is crazy. In trade, 100% get echoes of creation asap. SSF like me, I'm gonna put warcries in body armor 5 link lifetap. I've been testing having our normal warcry setup put into chest linked with lifetap to bypass mana issues...this becomes a problem when we get Echoes of Creation but early on, this is probably the play. Zerker - I think if you play Berserker...you don't even bother earth shattering because you had dead points on Zerker. Exerting twice as many attacks is amazing for non earth shatter...Ground Slam will prob be awesome and I think that's where Zerker shines. CHIEFTAN SPECIAL!!!!!! I dunno, did my best but not sure how to build the Chief. Warcry buff effect. With infinite power we always generate maximum buff effect / max power of a warcry, we do not go over whatever the max power per the skill gems is, according to Mark fomr GGG reddit post four years ago. With 105% warcry buff effect, does the 25% added phys to fire become 50% (a little over?) due to buff effect? 25% more armour become 50% more from seismic? Max resist from Ancestral Cry goes from +3% max to +6% max?? Battlemage from 2.5% base crit to 5% base crit? Etc from each of the buff from warcries. With warning call, you'll legit have 100% uptime on max charges. Overexertion is crazy with Cheiftan, you'll be exerting with 4 to 5 warcries giving 100% more damage (if 5 warcries exerting). Crafting an Endgame Axe - Common method (especially for SSF like me) farm Essence of Contempt (Deafining) until you can a either hybrid / phys - acc with high local attack speed, or pref a combination of both. Hopefully open prefix so you can craft %phys which can give you 750 - 850 pdps which can clear the game. With quality changes, it should be higher but I don't know if POB has the new weapon changes yet. Pref weapon base? Vaal Axe or Karui Chopper - I prefer Vaal since the attacks speed on Karui is painful. In Trade? Just buy, historically two handed axes aren't expensive. I don't think even with melee buffs that it'll be super popular but who knows, I haven't played trade in years.