Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/z343u9/boneshatter_recoup_juggernaut/

#[The Short Version]

The build is more expensive, does less damage initially but can ramp higher, and my favorite Unique Axe has to move to live on a farm with my grandparents.

#[Build Overview] The goal with this build is to leverage Kaom's Spirit gloves to turn Juggernaut's massive life regen into massive rage regen, and use that to sustain berserks that should never be allowed to last that long. Because of the level requirement to the Kaom's Spirit, this build levels as your everyday Boneshatter build until you level up enough and have the life recoup needed to equip the gloves without one shotting yourself.

Compared to the previous league, we're losing Mantra of Flames from the drop pool. This means the "I Win" button for scaling damage is gone, and needs to be found elsewhere. I would consider it the highest honor if MarkGGG confirmed or denied it either way, but please dont @ him on my behalf, I'm 99% certain its gone (and that 1% is some Hopium I had lying around.)

So I sat down today and got to work on modifications.

#[The PoBs]

The results are the Following PoBs at various stages of developing the build (since I will probably play it again this league). Note that I dont provide a leveling build, since you should just level how Carn recommends in his guides, due to this build not getting it's defining unique until maps. The number in parentheses is a rough estimation of how much trauma you will have with totems down and 9 seconds of build up. Not super precise, but good enough to ballpark the damage against things that matter.

Leveling Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT50E05_w94&ab_channel=Zizaran

Red Maps Core build (60): https://pastebin.com/fpHkEiu9

Ashes of the Stars 40% quality(80): https://pastebin.com/aDAPGA74 Only use this if you cannot survive going to 60% quality, a bricked Enhance is not super expensive.

Ashes of the Stars + Enhance 60% Quality (115): https://pastebin.com/1xUTu2T4 Do note that the Enhance should actually be a bricked regular enhance, since those are significantly cheaper.

Ashes of the Stars + Awakened Enhance 80% Quality (125): https://pastebin.com/96WYTRgg

#[What Needs to Change]

We need a way to scale our damage higher, now that we dont have the large base damage from Mantra of Flames bloating our base damage. This means relying on a more traditional means of scaling Boneshatter: Trauma for days.

To account for this, we will need to have significantly more physical damage reduction and/or downrank Boneshatter. I'll show the math on how to sort this out later in the write up.

Since the only thing my current tree didn't do was stack quality on Boneshatter, I guess we're stacking quality. Shoutout to /u/Hyperiium for keeping me thinking about this, it definitely helped with a breakthrough I had, even if it didn't ever end up helping with your questions :V

With the removal of Mantra of Flames, we aren't hardlocked into scaling fire. This means that provided you can survive 291 trauma stacks (if you dont use Increased Duration) or 437 stacks (if you do) you can go Headhunter and transcend humanity. If you cannot survive that many stacks, Soul Eater will kill you 100% from too many hits per second.

#[Bad News First]

Damage is down. There's no getting around it. Mantra of Flames was absolutely broken and overpowered. Accounting for its loss is going to mean we need to ramp longer to hit the same numbers, and the build is going to be more expensive because of it. However, because we need to slap ourselves more often now to ramp higher, we do get more recovery and it necessitated more mitigation. Basically, we traded damage for Beef.

Also a bit of a downside is that since we're switching to pure physical, Inspiration isn't super great anymore which means we need to have 7 cost reduction on each ring because I'm not going to figure out how to pay for 30 attacks at 7 mana each with only one -cost ring.

As a more personal Bad News: Wings of Entropy cannot survive the high trauma counts that we'll be reaching. It'll be great early on, but will eventually need replacing to really get the numbers up.

#[Answers]

First thing's first, introducing new tech: Enduring Cry with 100% uptime.

By stacking enough cooldown reduction from the tree, and combining passives with a Crusader influenced shield we can give Enduring Cry a buff that lasts longer than its cooldown that grants us 3% additional physical damage reduction per endurance charge. Facilitating this is moving a point from Unstoppable to Unflinching to give a sixth endurance charge, for a total of 18% additional physical damage reduction. Additionally, we can take an Armour ES shield to get another source of up to 8% increased physical damage reduction, as well as more ES to make our recoup more effective. Personally I would opt for a 12% ele resist shield myself, prioritizing strong ES rolls over life. If there are crafters in the chat who know the best route to rolling this, shoot me a line but otherwise I'm assuming my best bet is "spec essences/harvest lul"

Second is using another source of flat IPDR: a Watcher's Eye.

Since the only aura we care about to get going is determination, getting a budget jewel with only 7 or 8% IPDR shouldn't break the bank too badly, and we have the option to later branch out to adding a vitality life recovery mod later at personal choice, or get a flat armour + IPDR Watcher's. Later revisions led me to realize we can fit in another aura, but gem starvation prevents more. Getting an IPDR Watcher with a matching aura mod is of course the logical progression.

To scale our damage: Ashes of the Stars and Enhance Wombo-Combo

To be abundantly clear on something: You absolutely need 28% or better quality on the Ashes of the Stars. Without it you can never reach the 80% quality breakpoint (and the 60% will be more expensive, requiring a properly +1'd Enhance!). A 15% reservasion efficiency mod allows the decision to run Discipline (requiring more int rolls on gear) or Pride (less effective hp, more unga for your bunga). I assumed Discipline would be the default choice, and would use it myself. If you use Pride, make sure to break the CWDT link into CWDT - Immortal Call and Enduring Cry - Increased Duration, otherwise you can't afford IC.

Because we get 1% increased attack speed with Boneshatter per trauma per 20% gem quality, stacking gem quality becomes our best way to scale up our damage by creating a feedback loop that lets us get more and more stacks per second. There are two main ways one can go about this, each with pros and cons. You can use Increased Duration, which makes the ramping more consistent, or you can skip it for another pure damage gem which leads to slightly more downtime vulnerability, but also less dependence on ramping to higher trauma. Technically Increased Duration can ramp higher, but I personally will prefer a damage gem. Just mouse over everything in PoB, and replace the gem that gives the lowest damage (usually Increased Critical Strikes or Ruthless).

Note that Wings of Entropy cannot survive past ~250 stacks of level 20 boneshatter without either gear that's too expensive to be worthwhile, or without flasks / immortal call active. However with the 60% quality build it can survive if it downranks Boneshatter to level 19 after the +1 from Ashes of the Stars. Once you get your 60% Boneshatter your priority should be replacing Wings of Entropy with the 1H + Shield arrangement.

Speaking of the 1H + Shield, the weapon absolutely should be the fastest thing you can get your hands on. Preferably a Siege Axe with T1 Attack speed, but any weapon with a 1.4 speed base should be fine. Wings will be higher dps until ~500 dps and 1.85 APS can be reached, so that's about what your goal should be.

Eventually with enough Divines burning a hole in your pocket you can upgrade to a lvl 5 Awakened Enhance to reach 80% quality, and at that point go nuts. I think given the choice of lvl 5 Awakened Enhance vs Headhunter I would go Enhance, because it helps with bullying bosses which I always find fun.

#[Build Mechanics]

How much Recoup is needed? 0.5 x maxLife / ((0.5 x maxLife) + (0.5 x ES)) x 0.9 x 100 = R, where R is the minimum amount of recoup needed to sustain your life. I recommend going at least 10% extra, more is better. The reason why I divide ES in half here is because Executioner existed, and I dont think the "Can't recover above low life/es" affix is gone from rares. The .9 represents how much life loss is prevented due to Petrified Blood.

Why does ES matter? Because of Divine Shield, 3% of the physical damage prevented is given back as energy shield regeneration. Because we hit ourselves so fast with massive hits we then mitigate to basically nothing, we have enough regeneration to always refill ES before our next swing tries to body us. Our ES is always full, and should be considered better than life point for point thanks to reducing how much recoup we require. If someone turns this into a redux of Wardloop I wont even be mad.

How much Trauma can I survive?

1. In Path of Building go to Configuration, and under the Enemy Stats section set "Is the Enemy a Boss?" to No

2. Set the Enemy Skill Physical Damage number up to at least 1:1 with your armour as a starting point

3. Check the Calcs tab, if under "Damaging Hits" you have 2+ hits per death, repeat the process after adding a couple thousand points to the Enemy Skill Physical Damage box.

4. Once you reach 1 hit per death, take a thousand or two off until you're back to surviving 2 hits.

5. Divide the Physical Damage input by how much trauma you generate per swing (mouse over boneshatter in the skill tab), and then subtract 1 or 2 from the result just to be on the safe side.

Remember that your cap on Trauma is 289 without Increased Duration Support and 438 with 440 with a 21/20% Increased Duration (this is because your attack speed can never be faster than 30.3 swings per second, and our trauma lasts 9.6 seconds of 14.4 seconds, respectively). Note that rampant Trauma Stacks are only really a thing with 60 or 80% Boneshatter quality, and to a lesser extent 40%. If your defensive stats support more trauma than what you can actually gain, level up your boneshatter gem until you can't.

Why not use Flagellant Flasks? Boneshatter doesn't proc em, and I figure ~9-15% chance on hit to get a flask charge seemed more reliable, averaging ~3-4.5 charges per second ~~per flask.~~ I misread the wiki, and somehow got it in my head that only the Pathfinder ascendency variant of gain on crit charges had the cooldown. I would probably swap all but a Diamond Flask of Crit Chance to either Flagellent or Reduced Charges Used. Flagellant is probably best because once we're rolling we're not making effort to move unless it's a one shot. I still like Surgeon for a Crit Chance diamond flask because you only need 20 charges and it basically helps sustain itself.

What Auras should be considered? Once you have Ashes (with 15%+ reservation!) you have a few strong contenders for the Aura you choose: Discipline (best defense, but requires an extra Int roll on gear), Hatred (in the middle) and Pride (best offense). I dont think any of those three can be considered the wrong choice, and I leave it to personal preference which one people take.