[3.28] [4k] (Bonus Content) Poor Man's Ward Loop: Blight-Ravaged Map - Path of Exile

-----[ HOW THIS BUILD WORKS ]----- TABLE OF CONTENTS: - Cast When Damage Taken - Taking Damage - Staggered CWDT - Spells and added Damage - Mechanical Significances & Interactions - Triggerbots - Scaling Damage - Sustain & Damage Taken - Core Items - Leveling - Tips & Tricks - Honorable Mentions - Performance & Networking (NOTE: If you are colorblind, press CTRL + A to select all the text, and then choose DEFAULT in the color palette above. This should make the text more readable for you.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cast When Damage Taken --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The core concept of the build is centered around the CWDT gem to automatically trigger spells via a damage taken feedback loop. In order for this to work, we need to take a certain amount of damage from hits, also known as the "damage threshold" that you can find listed on the gem itself. This threshold increases as you level up the gem, which also automatically makes it increasingly more difficult to achieve the highest possible trigger rate. Each spell linked to CWDT gains a global cooldown that is shared across the same spells. I.e. Ice Spear and Ice Spear of Splitting will not work together if the cooldowns overlap. It's important to note that spells that are on cooldown will not track damage taken during this time. Damage tracked by supported spells resets upon visiting new areas (that have a loading screen) and can also be reset by unequipping the spell gem (unconfirmed). There's a certain trigger order that dictates which spell will be triggered in which order, as shown here: (1)-->(2) | (4)<--(3) | (5)-->(6) Body Armour -> Left ring -> Main Hand -> Right ring -> Off Hand -> Helmet -> Amulet -> Gloves -> Boots In the above mentioned example, depending on where either Ice Spear is socketed, only the one in the higher trigger priority will be triggered first, applying the global cooldown and preventing the second copy from being triggered. As in, say you have regular Ice Spear socketed in the body armour (1) and Ice Spear of Splitting socketed in body armour (2), regular Ice Spear will always trigger first and go on cooldown, preventing the other from being triggered. To avoid any confusion: Yes, transfigured gems are considered the "same" gem but with altered mechanics. It is technically possible to use multiple copies of the same skill, but only if they are socketed in other CWDT setups (section "Staggered CWDT") and only if their cooldowns don't overlap. For this particular build, this is not feasible due to the maxed out trigger rate. However, this trigger order is mainly only relevant assuming that all triggers are ready to fire at the same time, which they will not do in this build due to varying damage taken thresholds that take priority. (Because a spell cannot be triggered if the damage threshold is not met, regardless of trigger order.) CWDT's base cooldown is 0.250 seconds, though in reality this ends up being 0.264 seconds due to server tick rate (during which it cannot update the cooldown state). To clarify, the server updates every 33 ms and cooldown has to fit within this window. If you check the math, you'd need 8 server ticks for the CDR check to be completed, as on server tick 7 (33 * 7 = 231) the spell is still on cooldown. Hence the effective 0.264 (231 + 33) cooldown. Which is a known fact that PoB also respects in its "effective trigger rate" calculations. These are the relevant % increased Cooldown Recovery Rate breakpoints for this build: 0% -> 3.79 triggers per second 9% -> 4.33 triggers per second 27% -> 5.05 triggers per second 52% -> 6.06 triggers per second 90% -> 7.58 triggers per second 153% -> 10.1 triggers per second (currently not possible) The gem also has an inherent less damage multiplier for triggered spells that is more significant at lower gem levels. For example, a level 1 CWDT gem applies a 65% less Damage multiplier. This modifier affects ALL damage dealt by supported spells. Spells supported by CWDT have a maximum level before they stop being triggered. Said level is equal to the level requirement of the CWDT gem. I.e. a lvl 1 CWDT gem has a level requirement of 38, thus it can only support spells that require up to level (38), for example a level 1 (12) up to level 8 (38) Blazing Salvo gem. Refer to section "Spells and added Damage" for additional information. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Taking Damage --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Damage Taken feedback loop is achieved via Eye of Innocence and igniting enemies with critical hits from Fire Damage (conveniently granted by Ngamahu's Sign). This ring is also used to counteract/balance out the self hit damage received, to make sure - at baseline and bare minimum - that our own triggers don't kill us immediately. Every hit that ignites an enemy will deal a base 100 Fire Damage to us - 120 with a 20% quality amulet - which translates to 25-30 damage taken after 75% Fire resistance. Same reason why you want to avoid -max res maps, if able. Critical hits with Fire Damage inherently ignite, so we stack crit chance where possible to achieve 100% chance to crit, for guaranteed Ignites and critical hits for more damage. I recommend at least 80% crit chance to have this build function somewhat properly. This brings your chance to ignite to roughly 85% with non-crits included, which is what I would consider the minimum for this build. Because this build requires Damage Taken to function, you cannot stack too much defense or damage reduction, as it will otherwise break the build. You can easily notice this in maps with a resistance shrine that kinda bricks the build. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Staggered CWDT --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Because we are using a feedback loop in combination with cooldown spells, the proper technique is to use what I call "staggered CWDT" setups. By setup, I'm referring to each set of CWDT + linked spells in X item sockets. CWDT lvl 1 has a damage threshold of 528. CWDT lvl 2 has a damage threshold of 583. CWDT lvl 3 has a damage threshold of 661. ...so on and so forth. The way I do this is that I use multiple CWDT setups that are level (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5). Each spell that gets triggered (with some exceptions, i.e. Assassin's Mark) will apply damage to us when it ignites and then feeds into the next tier's CWDT's damage counter. This creates that feedback loop that makes the build work the way it does. As of version 3.28 Mirage Edition, I have further optimized this to a point I believe to be more or less optimal and more consistent overall, as it's practically impossible to test/adjust for every single micro variable. Gem quality is absolutely crucial here - corrupted 23% quality gems specifically - to achieve an 11% lower damage threshold. For example, a lvl 1 23% CWDT gem has a damage threshold of 528 * 0.89 = 469 (rounded down), and 475 with 20% quality. This might not seem like much, but it makes a difference. (Take note that you do not want to accidentally overlevel these gems as that cannot be reversed if corrupted. Make sure to keep track until they are leveled, then lock the gem levels and forget about it.) Applying this to our current order of CWDT setups, we get a damage threshold (DT) of (with 23% quality gems): DT 1: 469 +49 DT 2: 518 +70 DT 3: 588 +57 DT 4: 645 +77 DT 5: 722 Because of the self inflicted Fire Damage by Eye of Innocence, it only takes a couple of hits to trigger the next tier of spells. This is one of the reasons why this build relies heavily on A.) multi-hit spells and B.) Triggerbots for the doubled triggers. I chose to not further raise the tiers, as their DT scaling starts to increase quite a lot. For example, going from lvl 6 to lvl 7 CWDT (highest setup) has a DT of 892, which translates into a DT difference of +94. And it steadily increases. And if I were to shift the tiers to spread out the DT scaling, it starts to look even worse. For example, going from lvl 1 to lvl 3 CWDT has a DT difference of 119. Thus, the next best is, in fact, a lvl 2 CWDT. So on and so forth. There's also a very valid reason why I use projectile spells: Not only because of their range advantage (and other mechanics they interact with), but because they have a travel time. This travel time is important to a degree because, remember, spells that are on cooldown cannot track damage taken. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spells and added Damage --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All skills have an Added Damage Effectiveness multiplier that dictates how much a skill benefits from added flat damage. They are generally balanced around this, so many multi-hit skills have lower values to compensate. This is the entire driving force behind this build's damage potential. Because of the high damage penalty from CWDT, we can use sources of high flat damage to scale the base damage of supported spells to greater levels than they normally would have. For example, a level 1 Fireball would have a base damage of 9-14 Fire Damage. The maximum supported spell level for a lvl 2-3 CWDT gem in this case would be a lvl 12 Fireball with a base damage of 255-383 Fire Damage. But, because Fireball has a flat damage multiplier of 260% at gem level 1, we can make use of this via The Burden of Shadows to grant it a massive amount of base damage that vastly outpaces a level 12 gem. Of course, a lower level CWDT gem means a higher damage penalty as well, but we can get a lot more consistent damage and a significant increase in triggers per second this way. And because gems generally also scale up in Mana Cost with levels, we can use this to add a lot of flat damage without the additional cost. This is why the build uses level 1 spells and added flat damage with high multipliers where possible. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mechanical Significances & Interactions --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Certain spells, for example Spark of the Nova and Fireball, greatly benefit mechanically from sources of Pierce. Spark's projectiles will be destroyed on hit by default, and Fireball will explode on impact by default. These behaviors can be changed with Pierce to allow Spark's projectiles to hit one more time (assuming they haven't expired yet) and Fireball's explosion to only occur on the final hit. Furthermore, this is required for the interaction with Return, otherwise the projectiles would be destroyed on impact and unable to return. Meaning, for example, thanks to Pierce, Fireball can hit a boss, travel through it and not explode in its face, then return (assuming it has not hit anything else) and hit it again as it explodes. If not for Pierce, it would explode on impact and fail to return. Important to note here, though, is that this can alter other projectiles to allow them to hit an enemy an additional time. For example, for projectiles that will not be destroyed, they can still return without a source of Pierce after hitting targets, but they cannot hit the same target again they are returning from. So, in order for this to work, the projectile has to be able to travel through the enemy and hit it again on its way back. Thus, Pierce is an essential part in the build and absolutely should not be skipped. In general, this means that we can squeeze out more hits from projectile spells we use, which plays a vital role in how the build functions and performs, as I've explained in other sections. Until you obtain a Vitality Watcher's Eye, you will not have access to Pierce, as you will have to use Eldritch implicit gloves to grant you Life Leech from Chaos Damage. This is not the end of the world and the build will function just fine, it's just not very ideal. Knockback is a very useful tool to have, especially in this build. It forcefully repositions an enemy when you hit them. This is a vital strategy to keep enemies at bay and potential melee damage away from you. The direction of the push depends on the relative position to the entity that applied the Knockback. Which in this case are the Triggerbots. Use this with strategical movement - by walking in front of the Triggerbots in a sweeping motion - to force enemies towards walls for bonus shotgunning. There are some enemies that cannot be knocked back (i.e. Shaper and Friends), but like 99% of the relevant ones can be pushed. Hinder serves a similar purpose, except that it applies a movement slow. This is highly effective against charging enemy Rhoas, giving you more time to dodge their attacks. Other than that, I think it's self-explanatory. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Triggerbots --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Triggerbots not only double the amount of spells we can put out per second, but they are vital to the build, because, as I've described above, we need to meet certain damage thresholds per second to max out our trigger rate. At 7.5 triggers per second, we need to (at least) take 469 * 7.5 = 3517 damage taken per second to cap our lowest trigger rate. This can only happen when you have so many spell hits that you can take a ton of damage quickly. Note: You do not have to double that number for the Triggerbots, as the damage taken dictates when the spells trigger, and they merely double that. Triggerbots do not multiply the damage taken required. At base 14 projectile spells triggered in total, with 15 triggers per second, that's 14 * 15 = 210 spell casts per second. Assassin's Mark excluded. Not accounting for multi-hit spells and also not including returning projectiles, at 30 self hit damage taken, that's already 210 * 30 = 6300 damage taken per second. The highest CWDT setup has a DT per second of 722 * 15 = 5415. So, once the loop is fully feeding into itself, the max trigger rate will be achieved within a few seconds (projectile travel time etc.), depending on how many enemies you hit. Now, you might be reading this and thinking why wouldn't I increase the CWDT tiers even further, then? Because the napkin math above is simply the sustained (optimal) output. The spells have a cooldown timer during which they do not track damage taken. As you increase the threshold, the damage taken goes up, but we are lowering the cooldown timer even further. Meaning, as the spells go off cooldown, the projectiles are just returning and feeding into the DT again, triggering the spells in a row. When you increase this threshold, the spells might be off cooldown, but it takes more hits to trigger them again. The result is that the build becomes stuttery and stops working properly, breaking the feedback loop, similar to when you get a max resist shrine buff and the loop is suddenly not working right. So, while the numbers work on paper, the reality is that not every single hit will always connect and align perfectly with the cooldowns. Thus, increasing the DT further is simply not a good idea. In a similar fashion, as people have asked me about this a lot in the past: No, you cannot just make the build tankier. Damage Taken is tracked after damage mitigation. It's one of the caveats of this build that you learn to live with as you play it. With Triggerbots, every spell that damages us will do so twice (but also pay the cost twice when cast). This is the reason why I keep saying that this build would be be dead if Triggerbots were to be removed from the game. It just wouldn't be the same anyway. I recommend speccing into them a bit later to avoid any issues with Recovery. If you take them too early, you will either be left with inconsistent casts due to a lack of Life/Mana, or die as a result. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scaling Damage --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aside from all the flat damage, we need to scale our damage somehow. I opted for crit because I needed chance to ignite anyway, and this was the best way of going about it. I've tried Elemental Overload (Elemental) variants in the past (with old versions of Martyr of Innocence), and they are just not comparable to any crit based versions. Furthermore, we make use of Wither via The Balance of Terror to increase the Chaos Damage enemies take, and in addition to that we use the Force of Darkness and Heart of Darkness passives for Penetration. The Despair Curse is used to lower the enemy's Chaos resistance to basically zero (most of the relevant enemies have 30% base Chaos res). Sources of Chaos Penetration and Resistance Reduction (RR) are rather rare, so this and Wither is pretty much all we have access to. A Militant Faith jewel with the Dominus roll adds the Inner Conviction keystone passive, which allows us to make use of our Power Charges to grant us more Spell Damage. In order to consistently generate Power Charges for the build, Assassin's Mark requires at least 15% quality. Alternatively, you can temporarily spec into the Mark the Prey passive wheel and use the Frenzy Charge on Hit mastery. This only works with the keystone provided by the jewel. Power Charges not only grant more damage, but also crit chance and crit multi, so each one you stack will add a noticeable boost to your damage. The build doesn't have a lot of sources of increased Damage, so it somewhat makes up for that with tattoos and a few passives, though any additional sources would add significant damage. Unfortunately, there's always some kind of tradeoff. For example, speccing into an additional jewel socket to allow for the use of Replica Reckless Defence for self Ignites via Eye of Innocence for the % increased Damage bonus is simply not feasible. The opportunity cost is far too high - even though the damage gain would be significant - as all the other jewels are uniques we need, and trading passives is not worth the loss in Life and Damage for what you get in return. For example, you would be trading ~7-8% more maximum Life for ~5-7% more Damage. I don't think that's worth it when more max HP means we can take more damage. The build has enough DPS for most content as is. Assassin's Mark is used to further raise the base crit chance of our spells against enemy targets. I highly recommend to use Eldritch rare boots with Brittle Ground implicit until you aquire the Forbidden jewels. You can still use Sniper's Mark for Split and thus better clear, if you prefer, but then you'll have to use Brittle Ground boots for the extra crit, which locks you out of max triggers. Unnerve on Hit from Eldritch implicit on gloves makes enemies take increased Spell Damage, which is effectively additive with Wither and other similar sources. At full stacks and while unnerved, the enemy takes 100% increased damage. Which is basically always the case because this build has so many hits per second. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sustain & Damage Taken --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The main sources of sustain are comprised of Life Leech, Life Regen, Life Recoup, Life gained on Kill and Life gained on Hit. The Life on Hit is mandatory to counteract the Life Cost of spells. This is best utilized with multi-hit spells. For example, with 60 total Life on Hit (flat + Ngamahu's Sign), Ice Spear with its 6 total projectiles costs 26 Life per cast, yet could potentially (assuming all projectiles hit) grant up to 360 Life on Hit per cast, not accounting for Return. This covers the cost of other higher Mana Cost spells, but does not necessarily prevent you from dying to, for example, self inflicted damage while at really low health. And because of this excess of sustain, the build can even run Less Recovery maps, up to a degree, though I do not recommend this. This massive amount of Recovery is also what gives the build its "defense" against many smaller hits and makes it feel fairly "tanky". Early on, when you don't yet have access to a Vitality Watcher's Eye, I recommend you pick up additional Recoup from the Vampirism passive wheel. You will not be able to outheal something like Shaper Beam, but it will suffice for the time being. Keep in mind, though, that your ring needs a positive roll to outheal the self damage, and every spell you add also increases the Recovery per second required. Also, you should pick up the +50 Life regen mastery for the time being. I did explore for a bit the idea of a Cord Belt and anointed Inexorable for Endurance Charge generation paired with Immortal Call, and I must say it did not really make a meaningful difference in the long run. It provided limited aid in some situations, i.e. against ganks from Abyss rares, but that's about it. The duration is simply too short - even with a potential 5 charges - and it did not help with overall burst damage as much as I would have liked. However, it did occasionally and noticeably help against enemy porcupines and their on-death spikes explosions, but those can be manually avoided/dealt with in most situations. And so far, on my way to 100, I've died to those exactly 1 time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Core Items --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In general, the build consists of these core items: - The Burden of Shadows - Eye of Innocence - Ngamahu's Sign - Malachai's Simula These items make up the engine that makes it all possible. Eye of Innocence for the self hit damage, Ngamahu's Sign to counteract said self damage, and The Burden of Shadows as the main source of flat damage. Previous iterations would rely on Martyr of Innocence to scale Elemental Damage, and also reduce the Mana Cost of spells to zero or near zero, but as of version 3.26, the build uses Malachai's Simula for the Blood Magic keystone passive. This turns the Mana Cost of all triggered spells into Life Cost, adding a not insignificant risk to the build's playstyle, but it can be managed/mitigated with clever use of mechanics and mechanical (gameplay) skill. Some Life Regen is needed to counteract the Life Loss from The Burden of Shadows, and until you have enough of that to balance it out, you will need to constantly swap weapons to not die during downtime, i.e. as you run from pack to pack. As of version 3.28, the build no longer uses The Covenant and rare Brittle Ground boots, but instead uses a rare body armour with a % base spell crit chance mod. We lose a bit of DPS this way, but it also removes a significant amount of Life Cost. All other items are basically flexible, with some (more or less) exceptions: You absolutely want Unset Rings and a Mechanical Belt to add more sockets to the build, which then allow you to incorporate more spells, as that is another primary factor in scaling its damage and general performance. As of version 3.28, you can use the new Cord Belt base instead, allowing you to anoint the Golem's Blood passive for much needed regen and HP. This is entirely optional, as you can pick up Life regen elsewhere. To start the loop without having to stand still to cast spells, we use Doedre's Elixir to apply a big hit at once. At 8k Life and 75% Chaos resistance, the flask will deal 1k Chaos Damage to you, which is enough to trigger all the spells immediately. Keep in mind, though, that the spells cost Life to cast, so try to avoid doing this when you are at low health. The belt mod "Gain a Flask Charge when You deal a Critical Strike" is optional, but still desirable. In general, you won't be needing the flasks during map clear, but each Doedre's Elixir offers only 1 use, so it could come in clutch in certain situations. However, this adds a significant increase in cost when crafting such a belt. This mod is mainly reserved for the ultimate crafters among you, or those with plenty of currency to spare. For everyone else, you can simply weapon swap to Forbidden Rite and cast it a few times to start the loop yourself. More risky this way, but it serves as your emergency start button. The Forbidden jewels are essentially required to cap out crit chance for all spells, as not every spell has high enough base crit chance. Mystical Infusion will set their base crit chance to that of your main hand weapon's. This is why a The Burden of Shadows with a crit enchant is necessary, as every single spell that you add, regardless of what crit chance it has listed, will have the 8.40% crit chance override it as their new base crit chance. Together with Assassin's Mark and a shaped spell crit chest, you are looking at ~11% base spell crit chance. For most spells used in this build, it means that their base crit chance is effectively doubled. In a way, one could consider The Balance of Terror a core item, as it provides access to Wither, which almost doubles your effective damage output. Note: The Curse has to be self cast, hence the ring corruption. With the new Volatile Vaal Orb, you can achieve an even higher tier of item progression, for example getting a The Burden of Shadows with a 25% roll. This adds quite a notable amount of DPS and is absolutely worth the chase. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leveling --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In general, this is not a league starter. Or rather, a very bad one. I highly recommend to start building this character on day 2-3 of the league, as some of the required items will be easily available by then. Refer to the multiple passive trees I added. They give you a good direction on what nodes you want to pick as you level up. Those are mainly guidelines, so adapt and adjust as necessary. You can choose to help Alira for the additional resistances, then later respec into Oak (requires 20x Orb of Regret + 1x Amber amulet sold to a vendor). As for skills, you can start out with Explosive Trap and later switch to Lightning Trap. If you prefer to use a different skill, that's also fine. It just needs to be a hit based spell. If it's not a Trap, don't spec into the Trap nodes. If you are starting this as your second character of the league, I highly recommend to use Lightning Trap of Sparking instead. It is simply superior in every way. You will want to use the Pierce Support (only for regular Lightning Trap) and Increased Critical Strikes Support gems. The rest is up to you, though I highly recommend Immolate Support (requires a source of added Fire Damage for Ignites). Since this spell has a damage multiplier of 240%, it can greatly benefit from added flat damage such as found on certain unique items, or base items such as Goat's Horn wands (that can also roll # to # X Damage added to Spells). I like to pick Arctic Armour as my quest reward in Act 2, because it grants early Freeze immunity. Later on, I like to run Purity of Elements until I gear up with enough resistances and levels to run Petrified Blood and Pain Attunement. A rare staff with added flat damage to spells will suffice as a transitional item until you gain access to The Burden of Shadows. While Lightning Trap is solid as is, if you prefer a more active playstyle, you can use something like Cyclone + Cast While Channeling + Spark of the Nova / Forbidden Rite of Soul Sacrifice (requires Energy Shield). I recommend to use a few CWDT setups as your support and backup DPS as you take damage from enemies. Once you aquire Eye of Innocence, you can start to transition into the actual build. Order of Ascendancy notables: - Shrapnel Specialist - Like Clockwork - Perfect Crime - Born in the Shadows -> Unseen Hand (Bloodline) Some good leveling uniques for this build: - Replica/Tasalio's Sign - Nycta's Lantern - Thousand Ribbons - Doedre's Tenure - Replica Prismweave - Axiom Perpetuum - Ngamahu's Sign - Carnage Heart - Tear of Purity - Praxis --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tips & Tricks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you engage enemy packs, try to avoid walking into them in a straight line. That's a quick way back to your hideout. Instead, try and swerve around and into them, avoiding projectiles and causing melee enemies to chase you. Still, you will occasionally get one-tapped by stacked monster packs that hit you simultaneously. My number one cause of death, all the time, every time. Also, be mindful of how and when you use your Doedre's Elixir or Forbidden Rite. What I like to do is pair it with a use of my life flask to help offset the initial damage taken. Ward is incredibly useful here, even if we don't have much. Same applies to bosses. As the build uses returning projectiles, you have to swerve into them, then stay as close as possible and move around them in a swirling motion. Never backtrack, if able. That's the golden rule of PoE; always keep moving. Standing still for too long, or walking back into explosions or whatever, can easily get you killed. Such bullshit deaths get incredibly annoying past level 90. The way I do it is that I pay less attention to the mobs themselves and more attention to the ground. This way, I can spot volatiles much easier, though it can occasionally happen that you accidentally dash into some. The loss of Grafts from the previous league is slightly irritating, as we now have to go back to a dual mod Watcher's Eye that is considerably more expensive, plus we lose access to Endurance Charges. It's a minor hit to eHP, but a hit nonetheless. If you keep dying, you could need more damage, or more levels for more crit. Yes, unironically. If too many enemies are alive for too long, you run a greater risk of getting killed. And the lower your DPS, the more lag you get in higher tier content, resulting in the same outcome. Besides, you absolutely need a high crit chance to heal quickly and to sustain the loop. I kept getting comments about this quite often, and it really boils down to this: If you don't crit, the build doesn't work and you die. It really is that simple. Here's a list of upgrades with the most noticeable (and immediate) impact: - Spell crit chance body armour - Brittle Ground boots (mostly temporary) - 20% quality Eye of Innocence - +1 Curse Eye of Innocence + Despair skill Ngamahu's Sign - Balance of Terror - Vitality Watcher's Eye - Eldritch gloves with +1 Pierce - Forbidden jewels - Quality gems --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Honorable Mentions --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The new Hextoad Support seemed promising at first, and the skill looks fun - and technically would be a perfect fit for this build due to its 400% damage multiplier - however, I ultimately decided not to incorporate it for these reasons: - It takes 2 sockets, and they have to be linked (Curse + Support) to boot. - It would need to have everything doubled to be even worth considering. That includes the time to trigger the first time, as well as the trigger interval. As it stands, a base 1s interval that scales down to 0.8s is simply not enough. - The frogs initially take too long to come out and pop, which leaves you extremely vulnerable if you want to rely on these for damage. They are really cool, though, especially because their explosions pack a punch and the spell does get doubled with Triggerbots. Sadly, mechanically speaking, it does not fit into PoE 1's gameplay loop. Promising skill, for sure. To be honest, the exploding frogs should just be a standalone skill. I would love to use it then, even as is. As it stands, though, requiring 2 sockets is a no-go, as maxed out frogs have roughly the DPS of a single low damage spell in this build. I stopped using Volatile Dead because it mathematically doesn't actually makes sense. The balls have a starting animation that lasts approximately 0.67 seconds, and they then have to move out and seek targets and explode. This wouldn't be a problem if not for the 60 ball limit. The thing is, as we go up in trigger rate, the balls will never actually get a chance to explode, as they will be replaced before they hit anything. Even at the very easy to reach 12 triggers per second (6 * 2 with Triggerbots), with 3 balls each, we can create up to 36 balls per second, yet roughly half of them have even fully emerged. With continuous casting of the spell, we reach the limit at 1.67 seconds, which leaves (at most) a 1 second window for the balls to reach the enemy and explode. Depending on where they spawn (from Unearth's corpses), it would simply take them too long to reach their targets with the movement speed they have. They are not projectiles, they don't scale that way. Thus, the only damaging part here would be the explosions themselves, which is just far too low damage. This was probably the case the whole time unless really close to a boss, but I never actually noticed due to all the spam going on. Only downside is that the lingering balls had a usefulness to them with their homing behavior. Still, I find Crackling Lance of Branching and Ethereal Knives of the Massacre a better combo for near instant clear. Especially Crackling Lance, which has a rather massive AoE and comes out lightning fast. In the past, I have made variants with AoE spells. While this is technically still very much a thing, especially with many of them having high damage effectiveness and near instant damage output, I simply do not consider this a viable strategy anymore. If you do want to explore this, though, I suggest you use spells such as Firestorm of Meteors, Crackling Lance of Branching, and so on. Unironically, the screen cancer would be even worse. Firestorm of Meteors, specifically, but too good not to use. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Performance & Networking --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This build is very CPU intensive. I highly recommend an AMD CPU with 3D V-cache such as the X3D series. I personally own a 9800X3D + RTX 4080 + 32GB DDR5. I play in 4k with DLSS Quality and maxed out settings. Sound Channels set to High. PoE currently supports CPUs with up to 16 threads, i.e. my 9800X3D with 8 cores and 16 threads. The extra cache does make a difference, I know that from first hand experience. If you are experiencing performance problems, it can mean a couple different things. The number one cause for a performance bottleneck is a lack of damage, literally, as enemies will stay alive for too long and cause steadily increasing lag. The first thing to do is check which networking mode you are on. Options -> Game -> Networking Mode. Set that to Predictive! The build is literally unplayable on Lockstep. Cap your FPS! Either do it in-game or externally such as in the Nvidia Control Panel, and limit it to whatever your monitor supports. This alone already takes a load off your hardware. There's no reason not to do this. This is not an e-sports title. I play the game on a 120 Hz TV with G-Sync and V-Sync enabled, and FPS locked to 116 in the control panel. Next, press F1 while in combat and look at the corresponding graphs and bars. If the red bar is constantly spiking and consistently the longest, it's your CPU that is hitting its limit. If it's the blue one, it's your GPU. It's important to understand how to deal with such bottlenecks (there is always a bottleneck, that's just how that works). If your blue bar is spiking, your graphics settings are too high (unlikely in this particular case, but technically possible). Use DLSS, if able, or lower your resolution. This is also true in reverse - to some extent - if your red bar is consistently the longest. As in, you can try and increase the resolution to give your CPU more time to render as the GPU needs more time as well. Not intuitive, but yeah. The lower your resolution, or rather, the less stress you put on the GPU, the more stress you put on the CPU because it tries to keep up with the GPU's rendering speed. Both go hand in hand and sort of "talk" to each other. The frame time graph in-game (the small numbers next to the colored bars) tells you which component takes the longest time to render. Lower number = better. Ideally, you want these to be closer together for both CPU and GPU under load. Naturally, with this build the CPU graph will be dominant, however, first stand in your hideout and look at it. Then refer to the above advice. If your VRAM bar is full, you need to lower your resolution/graphics settings. A GPU with at least 4GB VRAM is recommended, though PoE isn't very VRAM heavy in general. Disable Global Illumination and use Shadows only. Options -> Graphics -> Lighting -> Shadows (default). Next, enable Dynamic Culling and Triple Buffering in the Graphics settings. You can also try Dynamic Resolution, but that generally turns everything into a blurry mess. Only use it as a last resort. Now, here's the thing. If your problem is low FPS, use Triple Buffering. If your problem is huge lag spikes, use Double Buffering. Another option is to literally disable the sound effects, which you have to do outside of the game. This may or may not make a difference. Feedback on this method is a little inconsistent. For this particular build, it might just make the difference for you, as all the spells with their overlapping sound effects really hammer your CPU. Mine can handle it, yours maybe cannot. I hate playing without sound, as I like the "noise" the build makes, so I have mine enabled. \Documents\My Games\Path of Exile\production_Config.ini -> open in Notepad++ and edit these sections as follows (game has to be closed) and then restart the game: master_volume2=100 ambient_sound_volume2=false dialogue_sound_volume2=100 sound_effects_volume2=false music_volume2=false chat_alert_sound_volume=100 reverb_enabled2=false item_filter_sound_volume2=100 mute_in_background=false channel_count=low Next, make sure to try different renderers in the options. There's no definitive answer to this, but I play with the DX12 renderer and it's generally the most recommended. You can try Vulkan or DX11 to see which works better for you. Quick sidenote here: Whenever you change the renderer or update your graphics drivers, the CPU has to rebuild shaders, which will cause a stutter effect for a while. This will resolve itself for the next time you visit that area/run the map. So, in order to properly test which renderer works best for you, run the same map 2-3 times, then switch, and do it all again. In general, I recommend you have at least a 6 core 12 threads CPU from the last 3-5 years. Thread and core count alone do not dictate performance here. I.e. an AMD FX-8300 from 2012 isn't gonna do squat here. This build runs better on CPUs with newer architecture, but can still be playable with lower budget options such as the Intel i5-12400 or Ryzen 5500/5600. With some drawbacks, of course. It's also worth exploring ReBAR, HAGS and Ultra Low Latency Mode. I can't say for sure if it helps, but I had these enabled when I temporarily needed to use an i5-12400 after my i7-13700K bricked itself. I also played in 4k. Juiced T17s or other high monster HP/damage reduction content aside, it was very much playable. And that was with a much weaker iteration of the build where monsters took longer to die. That's about all the help I can offer. I'm no expert on this topic, so refer to Google for other possible solutions. If none of it helps, it probably means your CPU is too weak for this build. That's unfortunately the bottom line.