Dominating Blow 3.19 - Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra League Start Build Guide

Abbridged Leveling Explanation for people too lazy to watch the video ;) - Kill Hillock, get Smite, get Raise Zombies, clear mud flats + get your quicksilver, get Holy Relic + Ancestral Call (and Frostblink). Slap your way to prison, get Melee Splash for zombies, NOT minion damage (they already die too easy). Kill Brutus. Pick up Flame Dash and Vitality to boost survivability, and get a Molten Shell now or later (not important right this second). Get to Level 12 Gems, pick up Absolution; Weapons should be sceptres so you can Smite + Absolution (Smite gives a damage aura and activates Holy Relic to keep minions alive). As for your skill tree, you want to follow it out to Resolute Technique, and then go get all of your minion nodes whilst getting whatever life nodes are available along the way. Flesh Offering can also be picked up now if you have plenty of currency. Go to Act 2, take Herald of Purity for now, and if you're still lucky with currency you can get Desecrate now as well. Pick up Controlled Destruction from Silk and give it to Absolution, but be ready to swap it over to your Holy Relic at 28. Continue on; in my experience, everything on a 2-link cleared just fine at this point. In Act 3, pick up Determination (don't use it yet), Vulnerability, and Convocation (get the minion mastery that reduces the cooldown, and then use it a lot). When you kill Gravy-sauce (Gravicius) and get Dominating Blow, socket Melee Splash AND Ancestral Call into the links. Last damage link can be Melee Phys or Minion Speed; one will feel better for bosses, the other will feel better for clear. At this point, you drop Herald of Purity for Determinations, and ditch your zombies. Holy Relic and Dominating Blow are all you need now, with one additional minion joining later. Get rid of Smite as well, if it wasn't obvious, and along the way you want to pick up Pride (as well as Desecrate, Flesh Offering, and Molten Shell if you still haven't). At this point, you also drop your sceptres for a 2-hander (better range, 4-link, chance at +2 Melee Gems mod (THIS IS HUGE!)). Continue on into Act IV and pick up Carrion Golem from the first quest reward. Give it Maim, and maybe some defensive supports to help keep it alive down the line; an Animate Guardian can ultimately replace this if you're comfortable using one. When you beat Kaom and Daresso and get the final tier of supports, replace Melee Splash with Multistrike. Sentinels of Dominance have an AoE attack they can use to help clear without Melee Splash, but if you drop Ancestral Call, you will have a very, very hard time keeping Sentinels up at all. This support is replaced much later in mapping with the +1 Strike modifier from searing influence on your gloves slot. That said, Multistrike gives you the attack speed you need, and your asendancy gives you onslaught; Minion Speed is now significantly less mandatory if you want to run another, punchier damage support. Most of the leveling from here on out is filling out your tree and adding things in as you go. The Determination Reservation Efficiency Mastery and Templar Reservation Efficiency Nodes will let you run Determination + Pride comfortably, which will result in a big damage boost. Getting more Life, Armor, and Maximum Resistances will likewise help, and will be the majority of your tree progress from Act 6 onward (by this point, you've likely filled out all your minion nodes on the top side of the tree). The build goes from heavy item independency to heavy item dependency at this point, and the focus of early maps should be getting a +2 Melee Gems 5-link weapon (or better!), as well as the minion damage craft from Betrayal (not specific to any member, just do Betrayal and hope for veiled weapon drops; it's not rare). A +2 All Minion Gems Helmet and Bone Rings are the new 3.19 arrivals we're after, but as they're not in the game, I can't say for certain how difficult these will be to acquire. Bone Rings have a hybrid Minion Life/Minion Damage Mod, which has the life tag. Harvest crafting for Life should make getting a Max Life, Minion Life+Dmg Bone Ring relatively easy, so if the bases aren't hard to find this might be incredible early power to take advantage of. Helmets go up to +2, but +1 may be available even relatively early in the campaign, so keep an eye on those helmet mods, because +1 All Minion Gems helmet would make your leveling life very, very easy. If getting a +3 Staff is difficult, or you're in SSF, you might want to sacrifice the block and aim for a 2-handed mace at first. These have a much smaller pool of mods, and are much easier to roll. Obviously, giving up 20% spell block is not ideal, but with recombinators gone getting an ideal judgment staff will probably be much harder. The PoB currently simulates that you will have +2 All Minion Gems on your helmet slot. This modifier is going to be extremely important for any minion build, so the rarity is a non-factor; whether or not it's difficult to get, acquiring it is going to be a test that every minion build must face in 3.19. Ideally, a level 3 Awakened Melee Splash is used for clear, as this imparts a +1 bonus to Strike skills (Dominating Blow is a Strike skill!) If Brass Dome proves to be extra expensive, you may want to settle for a +3 or +4 All Maximum Elemental Resistance roll instead. Divining these will be harder, and although the item itself hasn't been changed, it may have been removed to another rarity tier in the unique rebalance. A high armor roll with +4 is probably better than a low armor roll with +5 anyway. If you're comfortable with Animate Guardian, it's likely a superior choice to Carrion Golem for your Maim setup. Powerful unique options like Leer Cast can have it impart bonuses more significant than what the Carrion Golem does as well, although this item could be very rare now, and comes with certain opportunity costs (On death, Animated Guardians lose the items that comprise them forever in most situations.) (8/16/2022) - Added 'Mapping Start' skill tree to show what you want mapped out before entering maps, and an 'Early' gear set to show the types of equipment you want to get going at the start of mapping (Super Easy Starter Weapon (TM) included). Level 100 "Finished" tree available under 'Future' tree. Alternative "Ideal" Belt, Amulet, Finished Weapon, and Gloves available under 'Future' gear set. There are further ways to push the DPS on this build in a big way... Ashes of the Stars does incredible things with Phantasmal Dominating Blow, allowing for an additional 3 normal sentinels. Set instances of damage on the Phantasmal Dominating Blow setup to 14 to reflect this. Elegant Hubris at the northern witch Jewel slot can give you access to several very easily reached, very point efficient 80% Minion Damage nodes. Ceaseless Feast unique Gloves can be used to reduce an enemy's armor to zero, but you need to annoint Tribal Fury for +1 strike if you do this. Bone Rings are not available at the time of this guide, but will be the ideal ring for the minion-specific affixes they offer. This can include minion damage, and comes with resistance for minions as an implicit, which helps take our already good minion survivability up a notch.