Day 1 Volcanic Fissure Of Snaking UPDATE + FAQ - Path of Exile 3.26

----Read Notes----- Important: Make sure you use the "loadout" function on the top right, to properly see each variant of the build, since they all have different gems/skill trees/gear/configs. Leveling PoB: https://pobb.in/iF0eis8GcgTC Bandits: Help alira. Once your gear is good you can swap to kill all (sell onyx amulet and 20 regret orbs to a vendor to change bandit choice) Patheon:Brine king (use your 1st divine vessel to become freeze immune) - minor is situational, can take PDR, burning ground immune or poison reduction. Anoints: "Divine judgement" is your cheapest anoint, but "Deep Breaths" is your best early DPS anoint. Once you get yoke of suffering, you'll swap to "winter's spirit" so you can reliable chill. Clever thief is a Great early game option to solve all leech issues. Intelligence/dex requirements: If you're struggling with attributes you can keep all of your dex/int gems low level (including punishment curse), until you get attributes on gear. - As a side note, warcries that are linked with autoexertion don't have to be leveled up Blood and sand, which stance?: You should always be in blood stance for the 15% more damage Quality on gems: Prioritize volcanic fissure and intimidating cry for 20% quality, it's quite big for damage/clear, After that quality the warcry you're selfcasting (infernal cry) If you're running merc lab for snaking, then you can usually get both volcanic fissure and intimidating cry to 20% quality before maps. Lab running for VFoS?: You can either run merc lab to farm your volcanic fissure (roughly 1/8 labs) or you can start mapping with sunder and buy it on trade later on, the choice is up to you. Make sure you bring a volcanic fissure with you to merc lab to swap at the divine font. (running merc lab is pretty useful to quality some gems, like intimidating cry) Axe or Mace? - Early on kaom's primacy(axe) is by far your best option, it's also a tier 4 unique so it should be relatively cheap. In the endgame a mace is overall better because of the AoE, but it's more expensive since the cluster jewel is not cheap. I recommend to go axes early on until you have currency to invest. Volcanic fissure mechanic: Do not namelock bosses with volcanic fissure or you will not triple hit. Aim anywhere around them (Essentially you want the 1st explosion to hit their side), really easy to do. How do I solve leech? - Early on you will link infernal cry with mana leech and use lifetap on volcanic fissure. "Clever thief" anoint can also solve your mana/attack damage leech Do not convet 100% to fire without having attack damage leech. So you either need blood drinker tattoo or Clever thief before taking the fire mastery for 100% fire conversion. Enduring cry: Before getting "mob mentality" on your medium cluster you will need to use enduring cry on pinnacle bosses to sustain your endurance charges. Gear: Early game/mid game is pretty self explantory, you just want high life, resist and armour on every piece. Ideally have "increased elemental damage with attacks" on rings/belt, but not mandatory. As for your weapon, kaom's primacy is by far your best early weapon for the price. You'll need a 850~ DPS axe to beat this in power. Note: Once you acquire yoke of suffering, you'll only want to convet 99% of your phys to fire. Reason being, you want to bleed/poison and you need any amount of physical damage. So we stop using fire mastery and go for 39% conversion on gloves. Cluster jewels: A large cluster with fuel the fight is pretty big upgrade, as this will give you reliable mana leech. The medium clusters are good but not mandatory, try to get "lead by example" for perm-onslaught. Important: Make sure you either craft or use 1 skill point on "warcries cannot exert travel skills", this can be crafted on your ring, amulet or belt. Note: in endgame it can be beneficial to not have this craft, as exerting while leap slamming will actually increase your overall ES regen. What about suppression?: If you're not playing HC or not farming ubers then suppression really isn't needed, it has a very high oppurtinity cost for berserker. You can go for it i you want, but ele mitigation is pretty comfy with 84-86 max res (eventually get +2 max res jewels). Item priority: For damage, axe is always your highest priority. Kaoms axe is about equal to a 850 phys DPS Axe. For defense, high life on gear with a high armour chest is very important. Make sure you're taking all the max res nodes on the skill tree, as this is where you get all of your ele mitigation from(along with +1 max res on chest). Map mods to avoid: reduced recovery/cannot leech/elemental reflect (phys reflect can be annoying, but still doable) and cooldown recovery (doable, but you'll lose a lot of damage) Once you have echoes of creation you will also want to avoid reduced armour. - Anything else is doable, but stuff like -max is always going to be dangerous (as it is for any build). Endgame+ gear priority: 1k+ dps axe then I would go for Echoes/yoke, they are roughly the same dps, but yoke requires less setup on your gear. Buy whichever is cheaper. (if you buy echoes you need glorious vanity - Doryani) - When you go yoke, make sure you convert 39% of phys to cold damage with gloves After that, light of meaning (if it's really cheap you can get it early on) and then eventually balance of terror(will need to anoint doomsayer on yoke for +1 curse)